The inspection (verification) or Certification firm is to utilize professional specialist, technology and equipment, standing on an independent¡Aimpartial and objective position to conduct inspection, testing and assessment on the quantity/quality of commodity, performance of machinery and components, and implementation of the established quality system, then provide the supplier/buyer and stakeholder with certificate or report for fulfilling the contractual obligation or commitment made in the trade transaction activities. The inspection and certification are playing the role of pioneer in the process of technological development, and they are also one of the necessary pusher for business and industrial enterprises to achieve the target of enhancing product quality¡A obtaining international accreditation and increasing international competence. In the current society of free trade and free economy, the inspection or certification firms, along with the consumers¡¦ awareness and the drastic competitions among inspection or certification industries, facing the daily increasing competition and consumers¡¦ demanding, should make research of how to adopt an appropriate competitive strategy, to look for the market niche, to enhance service quality, to understand customers¡¦ real needs and customers¡¦ satisfactions so as to broaden service scopes and customer groups for the purpose of accomplishing the objective of building the firm to last forever. - iii - This study is to explain the characters, current status and outlook of the inspection or certification industry, and to analyze the development history, performance and achievement of SGS Group in Taiwan - the world leader of verification, testing and certification organization. By employing the industry analysis method addressed by Porter and the SWOT analysis for Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threat, we discussed the effect of ¡§five forces¡¨ on SGS Taiwan¡¦s business strategy, the correlation of service quality and customers¡¦ satisfaction, and currently its implementation of the managing tools of Balanced Scorecard and ISO 9001 quality management system. In summary, we have derived the Key success factors for the inspection or certification industry, and submitted suggestions of strengthening business model and management strategy for other inspection or certification firms as reference and benchmark enabling them to provide best and integrated services for the business and industrial enterprises in Taiwan who are pursuing quality. Key words:Inspection, Verification, Certification, Business Strategy, Service Quality, Customers Satisfaction.

Under the rapid evolution of the domestic medical environment, reform of healthcare policies, lift of limitations of medical laws, implementation of national health insurance, and the change of payment systems, domestic medical institutes all perceived the importance of management. For effective management and continuous growth of hospitals, the demand for professionally trained Diplomate of Taiwan College of Healthcare Executives significantly increased and many medical affair management professionals had been cultivated in schools. A licensing system was set up in such background. Having been implemented for several years, this licensing system has shown limited effects. To understand the opinions of medical institutes and governmental departments on the implementation of this system, in-depth interviews were performed on license holders, service receivers, and high-ranking executives in the government to collect opinions from various perspectives and analyze the problems. The research findings showed: 1. Diplomate of Taiwan College of Healthcare Executives are equipped with basic knowledge about medical affair management and hold a positive attitude toward further training, but they still lack practical experience and professional capabilities. Therefore, their contribution to hospital management is limited, and it is urgent to improve the professional capabilities of Diplomate of Taiwan College of Healthcare Executives. 2. Due to the difference between Diplomate of Taiwan College of Healthcare Executives and medical personnel in their work properties and influence on patient¡¦s life, a more conservative view was considered during the enactment of the certification system. 3. As to the position and acquisition of a Diplomate of Taiwan College of Healthcare Executives license, it was suggested that medical affair management be developed into a subspecialty and graded, and test subjects and training courses be planned for each subspecialty and grade.

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The goal of this report is to synthesize my current understanding of teacher reflective practice as addressed in academic literature and to specifically examine the potentials and limitations of video recording in the reflective process of teachers. I trace my experience and growth in reflective practice as a bilingual elementary school teacher and consider how teachers as researchers/participants in reflective practice cohorts can contribute to the professionalism of teaching. As a result of my findings I make recommendations toward appropriate professional develop using video reflection as a key component in the development of novice teachers via the mentor/mentee framework. This report contributes to the knowledge base regarding reflective practice and to the growing literature on video recording in the reflective process of teachers. It also provides insights into the potential for action-based research by practicing teachers. Implications and recommendations for teachers and researchers are included. / text

The city of Austin in recent years has undertaken a number of planning initiatives to guide future development in the rapidly-growing urban area. What has emerged is a clear commitment to a broad definition of sustainability that includes environmental, economic, and social sustainability among both policy makers and the public. The city of Austin has made great strides towards its goal of becoming a model city for sustainability, but it still faces many challenges. The long-term sustainability of Texas construction jobs is threatened by declining wages, dangerous working conditions, and few employment-based benefits. To help address these challenges, the Workers Defense Project (WDP), a local community-based organization dedicated to improving working conditions for Austin’s low-wage workers, has partnered with industry and community stakeholders to create the Premier Community Builders (PCB) certification program. Certification programs, which require businesses to meet minimum set of standards in exchange for a seal or trademark that publicizes their commitment to corporate social responsibility, have become a popular tool in recent years for improving conditions in a variety of industries. Implementing a certification program, however, often drives up costs associated with adopting more sustainable practices and is highly dependent upon consumers’ willingness to pay a price premium for the certified product. The purpose of this research is to explore consumer willingness to pay among downtown Austin residents and tourists for PCB certification. This exploratory study utilizes a contingent valuation survey as the primary instrument to determine whether or not downtown Austin consumers are willing to pay more for PCB certified construction and identify any demographic or identity-related factors associated with downtown consumers’ willingness to pay for PCB certification. / text

Certifiers have a crucial role in facilitating effective communication in the online and the traditional world. As a way of generating statistically meaningful information, certification has been adopted in financial statements evaluation and more recently in various online communities as well. This dissertation examines three related issues along this common theme: online reputation market, moderation in user-generated content, and strategic communications in the market for certifications, and consists of three essays. The first essay analyzes the impact of various dispute mechanisms on online identity trading. Online identities with a good reputation profile is a valuable and tradable asset. However, with free identity creation, there is room for low quality sellers to free-ride high quality sellers. When there is a lack of incentive for sellers to maintain a good reputation, identity trading becomes ineffective. This essay focuses on the role of an auditing system, such as eBay dispute center, and shows that even a small amount of objective information from the auditors can reverse the negative result and sustain reliable reputation and identity trading. The second essay investigates the impact of moderation on the quality of information in an user-generated content (UGC) environment. In most UGC communities, content contributors have incentive to publish biased or false information. For example, companies hire people to write positive reviews about themselves. This essay establishes a framework for the mechanism design of moderation, and provides insight on how to optimally allocate moderation resource. The third essay examines a market for certification and certifiers' strategic reporting behaviors. The central question is how to induce certifiers to provide statistically meaningful information to investors when they are paid by their client firms. We provide insights on how certifier competition plays an role in firms' certifier choice, how certifiers degrade their accuracies to achieve maximum profit, and how the legal environment impacts the information quality. / text

Project aim – preparation of electronic signature certification authority (CA) project and certificate managing software (information system) prototype. The work reviews the problems of electronic signature infrastructure development in Lithuania. The analytical survey of electronic signature CA was carried out. The standards determining the structure of electronic signature Certificate, CA activities, requirements for Trustworthy Systems Managing Certificates were examined. The organizational structure of CA was prepared and working model was worked out. The workflow model was worked out to depict the hierarchy of certification processes. The use case model were created for certificate issuing, data processing and providing data of revoked certificates. Detail descriptions of information streams between the system and computerized tasks are provided. Structural diagrams on the information streams were created. According to information flows the entity relations diagram was created, the logical structure of data bases (DB) for certificates was developed. The DB Esign of valid certificates and DB Esign_archives of revoked certificates were created. Specification of program modules was made up. Three types of manuals were prepared for system users – a manual for the client, a manual for the user and a manual for the programmer. The certificate managing system prototype was tested. The results of the experiment are presented. For practical realization of the project the... [to full text]

Environmental Education (EE) can play an important role in broadening learners’ understanding of their environment. This is of particular importance due to the major adverse impact we as humans are having on the environment, including the loss of biodiversity and global warming. However, many Canadian teachers are not offered EE content in their teacher education programs (Lin, 2002). Therefore, this study investigates, (a) what knowledge and abilities are important for teaching EE, (b) experiences that have influenced educators’ interest and willingness to teach EE, and (c) the preparation educators could receive to better integrate EE into their teaching practices. Data were collected using an electronic survey (n=148) and semi-structured interviews (n=11). Results showed that among 12 major themes to emerge from the interviews, recognizing the importance of outdoor experiences and having the ability to engage learners were viewed as very important by participants. Interviewees’ recommendations for improving the preparation of educators included introducing mandatory EE components in teacher education programs and promoting mentorship experiences. However, there was no consensus among participants regarding the impact or value of implementing a professional EE certification program. Implications of this study include facilitating the sharing of environmental educators’ perspectives. Suggestions are made for further research on preparing educators who are willing and able to instruct EE, so that more students are given an opportunity to learn about their environment and make informed choices about their impact on the earth. / Thesis (Master, Education) -- Queen's University, 2008-09-20 14:27:12.322

This study is an interpretive one which investigates the value attached to teaching qualifications by educators and other stakeholders, viz. learners, management and council at a FET College. The research focuses on the value of teaching qualifications for Further Education and Training (FET) educators. It suggests the need for professional development of FET educators in light of the new FET Act 16 of 2006 and the implementation of the National Curriculum Vocational (NCV) introduced in 2007. The study is informed by Shulman’s (1986) principles of teacher knowledge and the hypotheses of Kennedy Ahn & Choi (2008) on the value added by teacher education. The data was gathered using a questionnaire comprising three parts; close-ended questions to capture background information, a rating scale to capture the values attached to teaching qualifications and open-ended questions to capture additional data. The study concludes that values are attached to teaching qualifications mainly for the teaching of NC(V) programs and that practical expertise is necessary for skills training programs. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2009.

The purpose of this research was to examine the records of all students who pursued a curriculum at Ball State University which could lead to provisional certification to teach biology in the public schools of Indiana, covering retrospectively, all consecutive years for which complete records could be retrieved, to determine if such provisional certification to teach biology could be predicted by the examination of test scores made by students on the Scholastic Aptitude Test of the College Entrance Examination Board.A statistical comparison was made between the Scholastic Aptitude Test scores of those persons achieving provisional certification to teach biology in the public schools of Indiana and those persons not achieving such provisional certification, to determine whether Scholastic Aptitude Test scores in and of themselves could be used to predict provisional certification to teach biology in the public schools of Indiana.The records of all students at Ball State University who at any time between September of 1965 and June of 1974 pursued a course of study which, if completed, would lead to provisional certification to teach biology in the public schools of Indiana were examined, excluding all who had not been graduated by June of 1974 and those who did not have Scholastic Aptitude Test scores in their files at Ball State University.These students were divided into two groups, Group one was made up of those students who achieved provisional certification to teach biology in the public schools of Indiana and consisted of 331 students, Group two was made up of those students who failed to achieve provisional certification to teach biology in the public schools of Indiana and consisted of 244 students,A statistical comparison was made of the two groups - those certified (group one) versus those who were not certified (group two) - by the use of discriminant analysis, using as variables within the two groups, the bivarients (1) verbal score made on the Scholastic Aptitude Test, and (2) mathematical score made on the Scholastic Aptitude Test, The method of discriminant analysis combines variables within the two groups and then compares those groups on the basis of group differences without regard for their interrelations and partly overlapping information.The statistical analysis of the two groups indicated that there was no significant difference in the scores attained by the students in the two groups on the Scholastic Aptitude Test of the College Entrance Examination Board. The conclusion was made that scores made on the Scholastic Aptitude Test of the College Entrance Examination Board are not valid predictors of provisional certification of biology teachers at Ball State University during the period between September of 1965 and June of 1974.The study recommends that the Scholastic Aptitude Test of the College Entrance Examination Board be evaluated in all areas of advisement, including high school, junior college, and university advisement.The study further recommends that scores attained on the Scholastic Aptitude Test of the College Entrance Examination Board not be used in situations to which they are not applicable and for which they were not designed.The study further recommends that the Scholastic Aptitude Test of the College Entrance Examination Board be totally reexamined by qualified independent researchers to determine not only the value of this test as currently applied, but other possible ways in which this test can be used with validity.