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Background: Current literature promotes a student-centred approach with an active learning design, as such curricula have demonstrated improvements in outcomes such as critical thinking and clinical competence. Current literature demonstrates success in North America and Europe. However, research in low-resource countries have highlighted resource- and satisfaction-related issues due to such shifts. This study implements a case-based learning (CBL) intervention at Kasturba Medical College Mangalore Campus (KMCMG), India. Faculty and undergraduate medical student perceptions are explored in order to understand the contextual factors that will lead to an effective, acceptable and feasible medical curriculum. Methods: This cross-sectional, mixed-methods study employed a Likert scale questionnaire and semi-structured focus groups to 3rd year medical students (n=248), as well as semi-structured interviews with faculty (n=10) in the Department of Community Medicine. Cases were created through a co-development process with KMCMG faculty. Questionnaire data was analyzed by descriptive statistics and qualitative data was analyzed primarily by an inductive-iterative approach. Results: Both faculty and students find CBL to be more valuable than the traditional lecture-based method, and find CBL meaningful for students as future physicians. Comments highlighted the importance of student preparedness and of trained facilitators in order to enhance the learning experience. A significantly larger proportion of Indian schooled students, versus those who studied abroad, felt that CBL helped acquire new information (p=0.016), enhanced their clinical approach (p=0.008), and believed the role of the facilitator was important (p=0.001). Conclusion: Feedback towards CBL was found to be satisfactory in all aspects, and both students and faculty would like to see more CBL sessions in the future. Limitations such as faculty shortage and the inability to use informational technology at this time should be taken into consideration when moving forward. It is recommended that a resource-light version of CBL be considered, to provide robust orientations to faculty and students, and to further engage with faculty and students in order to enhance the CBL experience. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

Case-based learning (CBL) is commonly used in physical therapy curricula even though not much evidence exists as to the effectiveness of this instructional tool in physical therapy education. Through qualitative evaluation methodology, the researcher investigated the utilization and implementation of this instructional methodology in selected physical therapy curricula, as well as its perceived effectiveness by physical therapy students, faculty, and administrators. Data collection was performed through classroom observations, interviews,and focus group interviews at eight physical therapy programs across the United States that identified themselves as moderate to high implementers of CBL. Through the analysis of the qualitative data gleaned from the participants, case-based learning was found to be a very effective instructional methodology in these academic programs as described by administrators, faculty, and students alike. Specifically, case-based learning was found to effectively enhance students' learning, problem solving skills, clinical preparedness, and confidence levels. Barriers that may limit the effectiveness of the implementation and utilization of case-based learning were discussed, including stakeholder buy-in, time and cost requirements, an individual knowledge and skill with case-based learning techniques. Multiple factors were found to exist that positively influence the effectiveness of the implementation and utilization of case-based learning including techniques that make the learning experience safe, real, impactful, and empowering.

<p>As long as there have been computers, one goal has been to be able to communicate with them using natural language. It has turned out to be very hard to implement a dialog system that performs as well as a human being in an unrestricted domain, hence most dialog systems today work in small, restricted domains where the permitted dialog is fully controlled by the system.</p><p>In this thesis we present two dialog systems for communicating with an autonomous agent:</p><p>The first system, the WITAS RDE, focuses on constructing a simple and failsafe dialog system including a graphical user interface with multimodality features, a dialog manager, a simulator, and development infrastructures that provides the services that are needed for the development, demonstration, and validation of the dialog system. The system has been tested during an actual flight connected to an unmanned aerial vehicle.</p><p>The second system, CEDERIC, is a successor of the dialog manager in the WITAS RDE. It is equipped with a built-in machine learning algorithm to be able to learn new phrases and dialogs over time using past experiences, hence the dialog is not necessarily fully controlled by the system. It also includes a discourse model to be able to keep track of the dialog history and topics, to resolve references and maintain subdialogs. CEDERIC has been evaluated through simulation tests and user tests with good results.</p> / Report code: LiU{Tek{Lic{2006:29.

Univ. Diss--Kaiserslautern, 2002.

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International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 28-31, 1996 / Town and Country Hotel and Convention Center, San Diego, California / We report on the initial design and development of a prototype computer-mediated response system, the Fault Induced Document Officer (FIDO), at the UC Berkeley Center for EUV Astrophysics (CEA) Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer project (EUVE). Typical 24x7 staffed spacecraft operations use highly skilled expert teams to monitor current ground systems and spacecraft state for responding to anomalous ground system and spacecraft conditions. Response to ground system error messages and spacecraft anomalies is based on knowledge of nominal component behavior and the evaluation of relevant telemetry by the team. This type of human-mediated operation is being replaced by an intelligent software system to reduce costs and to increase performance and reliability. FIDO is a prototype software application that will provide automated retrieval and display of documentation for operations staff. Initially, FIDO will be applied for ground systems. Later implementations of FIDO will target spacecraft systems. FIDO is intended to provide system state summary, links to relevant documentation, and suggestions for operator responses to error messages. FIDO will provide the operator with near realtime expert assistance and access to necessary information. This configuration should allow the resolution of many anomalies without the need for on-site intervention by a skilled controller or expert.

The nature and competitiveness of the modern software development industry demands that software engineers be able to make accurate and consistent software cost estimates. Traditionally software cost estimates have been derived with algorithmic cost estimation models such as COCOMO and Function Point Analysis. However, researchers have shown that existing software cost estimation techniques fail to produce accurate and consistent software cost estimates. Improving the reliability of software cost estimates would facilitate cost savings, improved delivery time and better quality software developments. To this end, considerable research has been conducted into finding alternative software cost estimation models that are able produce better quality software cost estimates. Researchers have suggested a number of alternative models to this problem area. One of the most promising alternatives is Case-Based Reasoning (CBR), which is a machine learning paradigm that makes use of past experiences to solve new problems. CBR has been proposed as a solution since it is highly suited to weak theory domains, where the relationships between cause and effect are not well understood. The aim of this research was to determine the applicability of CBR to software cost estimation. This was accomplished in part through the thorough investigation of the theoretical and practical background to CBR, software cost estimation and current research on CBR applied to software cost estimation. This provided a foundation for the development of experimental CBR software cost estimation models with which an empirical evaluation of this technology applied to software cost estimation was performed. In addition, several regression models were developed, against which the effectiveness of the CBR system could be evaluated. The architecture of the CBR models developed, facilitated the investigation of the effects of case granularity on the quality of the results obtained from them. Traditionally researchers into this field have made use of poorly populated datasets, which did not accurately reflect the true nature of the software development industry. However, for the purposes of this research an extensive database of 300 software development projects was obtained on which these experiments were performed. The results obtained through experimentation indicated that the CBR models that were developed, performed similarly and in some cases better than those developed by other researchers. In terms of the quality of the results produced, the best CBR model was able to significantly outperform the estimates produced by the best regression model. Also, the effects of increased case granularity was shown to result in better quality predictions made by the CBR models. These promising results experimentally validated CBR as an applicable software cost estimation technique. In addition, it was shown that CBR has a number of methodological advantages over traditional cost estimation techniques. / Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2002.

This exploratory study investigates the hypothesis that case-based reasoning (CBR) systems have advantages over rule-based reasoning (RBR) systems in providing automated support for Tier-2 help desk operations. The literature suggests that rule-based systems are best suited for problem solving when the system being analyzed is a single-purpose, specialized system and the rules for solving the problems are clear and do not change with high frequency. Case-based systems, because of their ability to offer alternative solutions for a given problem, give help-desk technicians more flexibility. Specifically, this dissertation aims to answer the following questions: 1. Which paradigm, rule-based or case-based reasoning, results in more precise solutions to problems when compared to the solutions derived from system manuals? 2. Which paradigm, rule-based or case-based reasoning, is more convenient to maintain in terms of knowledge modification (i.e. addition, deletion, or modification of rules/cases)? 3. Which paradigm, rule-based or case-based reasoning, enables help-desk technicians to solve problems in shorter time, and therefore at lower cost? This is an exploratory study based on data collected from field experiments. RBR and CBR based prototypes were set up to support Tier-2 help desk operations. Trained help desk operators used the system to solve a set of benchmark problems. Data collected from this exercise was analyzed to answer the three research questions. This exploratory study supported the hypothesis that the case-based paradigm is better suited for use in help desk environments at the Tier-2 level than is the rule-based paradigm. The case-based paradigm, because of its ability to offer alternative solutions for a given problem, gave the help-desk technician flexibility in applying a solution. Alternatively, the rule-based paradigm provided a solution if, and only if, a rule existed for a solution meeting the exact problem specifications. Further, in the absence of a rule, problem research time, using the rule-based paradigm, extended the time required to formulate a solution thereby increasing the cost. This research provided sufficient information to show that the help-desk knowledge based system utilizing the case-based shell provided better overall solutions to problems than did the rule-based shell.

Tese de Doutoramento. Engenharia Informática. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 2011