published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

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Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

D.Litt. et Phil. (Psychology) / Career planning is a developmental process that can be facilitated by career development programmes. One of the recent developments in these programmes was the introduction of computerized career counselling which enables the user to explore career activities independently. An experimental investigation in which the DISCOVER computerized system was used, was conducted at two universities in an attempt to determine whether DISCOVER could be a useful aid for career counselling in South Africa. First-year university students (N=106) were randomly assigned to one of four groups according to the Solomon Four Group Experimental Design. Subjects completed a biographical questionnaire, the Career Maturity Scale (CMS), Senior Aptitude Test (SAT), New South African Group Test (NSAGT), Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF), PHSF Relations Questionnaire (PHSF), Survey of Study Habits and Attitudes (SSHA), Self-Directed Search (SDS) and the 19 Field Interest Inventory (19FII). Evaluation questionnaires concerning the use of DISCOVER were ·also completed by students as well as counsellors. The main hypothesis, namely that there would be a statistically significant difference between the mean posttest scores on the CMS of the experimental and the control groups, was tested according to the integrated statistical procedure suggested by Spector (1981). The results showed that there is. a statistically significant increase in the career maturity of students after they had used the DISCOVER system, compared with students from the control group (F, 12,15; p <0,0007). After posttest adjustment for pretest differences, the effect of the DISCOVER programme was still statistically significant. It could be predicted with 95 , certainty that a person who used the DISCOVER programme would show an increase of between 0,68 and 2,21 points in his total score on the Career Maturity Scale (CMS). There was no statistically significant interaction effect between the DISCOVER intervention and the pretest. Variables such as aptitude, personality and study habits, correlated statistically significant (p <0,05) with the increase in career maturity after the use of the DISCOVER system.

D.Ed. (Media Science) / The education system in South Africa is at the moment in a state of flux and various strategies are being investigated to address and redress inequities in the system. Many persons would see the computer as playing a significant role in this process. The problem, however, is not whether but how to use the computer effectively and appropriately in the classroom. Should the computer merely be used as a recordkeeping facility, a tool to assist the teacher or as an instrument for assisting learners to develop their full potential as human beings (Schostak, 1988:147; HSRC, 1983a:38; HSRC, 1983b:163). Computer-assisted learning environments have variously been described as the best of learning environments and the worst of learning environments. No doubt, opinions as to the value of such environments can be found at every point along the continuum that joins these two contradictory viewpoints (Doulton, 1984; Hart, 1984; Roach, 1984; Merrill, Tolman, Christensen, Hammons, Vincent & Reynolds, 1986:279). It is the purpose of this study to systematically examine the literature regarding one of these computer-assisted learning environments and to describe its underlying theoretical assumptions in order to assess its significance for education and to provide guidelines for the development and evaluation of software that can be used in the learning environment...

M.Ed. (Computer-Based Education) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

Due to the complex nature of parallel programming, it is difficult to diagnose and solve performance related problems. Knowledge of program behavior is obtained experimentally, with repeated runs of a slightly modified version of the application or the same code in different environments. In these circumstances, comparative performance analysis can provide meaningful insights into the subtle effects of system and code changes on parallel program behavior by highlighting the difference in performance results across executions. I have designed and implemented modules which extend the PPerfDB performance tool to allow access to existing performance data generated by several commonly used tracing tools. Access occurs from within the experiment management framework provided by PPerfDB for the identification of system parameters, the representation of multiple sets of execution data, and the formulation of data queries. Furthermore, I have designed and implemented an additional module that will generate new data using dynamic instrumentation under the control of PPerfDB. This was done to enable the creation of novel experiments for performance hypothesis testing and to ultimately automate the diagnostic and tuning process. As data from such diverse sources has very different representations, various techniques to allow comparisons are presented. I have generalized the definition of the Performance Difference operator, which automatically detects divergence in multiple data sets, and I have defined an Overlay operation to provide uniform access to both dynamically generated and tracefile based data. The use and application of these new operations along with an indication of some of the issues involved in the creation of a fully automatic comparative profilier is presented via several case studies performed on an IBM SP2 using different versions of an MPI application.

The purposes of this study were to design and to evaluate an online system designed to enhance communication skills and project tracking of computer software courses at Ball State University (BSU). Student Online Project Planning and Tracking System (SOPPTS) was designed and field tested to provide real-time feedback from faculty on student progress, offer online guidance for software project planning, produce tracking automation, and facilitate communication between faculty and students.SOPPTS technology was designed under the supervision of W. Zage and D. Zage, professors in the Computer Science Department at BSU.Participants in this study included six BSU undergraduate students, six BSU graduate students and seven BSU faculty members. Each participant was interviewed for one hour in an instructor's office in the BSU Computer Science Department. With the participants' permission, each interview was audio-taped and coded with a letter and number.Data evaluation consisted of narrative summaries of the interviews, an analysis of the evidence in terms of the research questions and the compilation of data to show both emerging themes and major trends.Analysis of the data showed that learning was definitely enhanced, and that faculty evaluations were also strongly enhanced. Participants recommended more SOPPTS applications, both industrial and academic. The emerging themes showed that faculty and students:1) Had more and easier access to information; students' work was better organized; student team spirit grew; students were more accurately evaluated by instructors;2) Had more efficient methods for report submission and record keeping; students interaction with teachers increased; students found SOPPTS better than email;3) Students and teachers could work from various locations, with greater access to record retrieval and submission of reports, so that documents submitted were available to all instead of getting lost;4) Students were motivated by the nature of online task assignment and tracking because of greater accountability; faculty members were happy to see students' project progress online; 5) Improved time and project management through greater awareness of milestones, deadlines and date/ time "stamping" of report submissions.Major trends show that improved access to information and communication facilitated learning, and that planning and tracking skills improved. / Department of Educational Leadership

The purpose of this project is to design, develop and implement an e-commerce shopping cart system based on Microsoft.NET technology and to evaluate ASP.NET technology by developing a shopping cart system.