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The goal of this research was to determine how to productively provide in the unique needs of academically gifted learners in the intermediate phase in the South African education system. The study comprised an empirical, qualitative investigation to this end. Individual interviews with primary school principals and focus groups with primary school teachers, academically gifted learners in the intermediate phase and parents served to determine what the educational needs of academically gifted children are. Secondly, a mini-education system for academically gifted learners was planned and a programme for academically gifted learners was developed within this mini-education system. The information for the development of the programme was gathered from the interviews and focus groups. The paradigm that forms the foundation of this research includes elements of a Christian world view and is complemented by elements of interpretivism, constructivism, pragmatism and post-modernism. The literature study on academically gifted learners revealed that these learners possess their own unique characteristics. Although academically gifted, these learners experience many cognitive, social and affective problems in the current education system. The structure of the education system, educational productivity and self-managed and interactive learning as teaching strategy were highlighted as internal determinants of an educative nature that influence academically gifted learners. The current condition of gifted education in South Africa and on an international level form the internal determinants of historical nature. If education to gifted learners, and specifically academically gifted learners, in South Africa is compared to other countries, it is clear that there are still many gaps in the education system. The main external determinants that influence educational provision to academically gifted learners include the demography of academically gifted learners, the economic environment of academically gifted learners, science and technology, the role of politics in the educational provision to academically gifted learners and the co-workers and competitors in the educational provision to academically gifted learners. The number of learners is increasing and that means that the need for educational provision to academically gifted learners is increasing. A distance-based programme is ideal, as academically gifted learners are scattered across our country. The main goal of this study was to plan a mini-education system that will provide in the unique needs of academically gifted learners in the intermediate phase in an educationally productive way in South Africa. The framework for the strategic planning of a mini-education system was used as research method. An achievable, sustainable and affordable distance-based educational programme for academically gifted learners was planned and a grade 4 pilot module developed within this mini-education system. The findings of this study suggest that the framework for the strategic planning of a mini-education system can be successfully used in planning a system that can effectively provide in the needs of academically gifted learners in the intermediate phase. From the interviews and focus group it was also clear that there is a need for educational programmes intended for academically gifted learners and that these programmes can be successfully implemented at schools. / MEd (Comparative Education), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

Although the White Paper on Families (2013) stipulates that family resilience should be strengthened in family preservation services, no guidelines exist for social workers in the South African context to do so. A need for practice guidelines for social workers in rendering services to families to strengthen family resilience was identified. The following central research question was formulated: How and by doing what, can social workers foster and sustain family resilience? The Intervention Design and Development (IDD) model of Rothman and Thomas (1994) was adapted for the study which included qualitative research to explore and describe the understanding, experiences and suggestions of social workers on family resilience for informing the family resilience intervention guidelines. Data was collected through focus- group and face-to-face semi-structured interviews with social workers employed by the Department of Social Development, and the NGOs from Gauteng, North West and Limpopo province. Tesch’s steps (cited in Creswell 2009:186) were used to analyse the data systematically and data was verified by Guba’s model (cited in Krefting 1991:214–222). Implementing steps 1–5 of phase 1, steps 1–3 of phase 2, step 2 of phase 3 and steps 1–3 of phase 4 of the IDD model, “Practice Guidelines for Social Workers to foster and sustain Family Resilience” (“The Guidelines”) were developed by translating the family resilience theory into practice to guide social workers to be able to develop and implement a family resilience intervention. The content of “The Guidelines” include an introduction containing the social work service delivery principles, the theoretical approaches of service delivery to families and the legislative and policy framework for services to families that would underpin a family resilience intervention. Section 1 of “The Guidelines” was developed and structured around the understanding of the family resilience construct and the family resilience process model on how family resilience operates. Section 2 of “The Guidelines” is presented in a question and answer format. This section provides practical guidelines on how to identify the target group for family resilience interventions, the reciprocal relationship between individual resilience and family resilience, family resilience interventions following the social work intervention process (i.e. intake, developmental assessment, a family developmental plan, and intervention strategies in accordance with the basket of services for families and monitoring and evaluation), how to integrate the domains of family resilience into the family resilience intervention, the need for education of both the social worker and client family on family resilience, the multi-dimensional aspects of the family requiring a multi-disciplinary approach and the role that the safety of family members play when rendering a family resilience intervention. / Social Work / D. Phil. (Social Work)

Business organisations today are faced with the complex problem of dealing with evolution in their software information systems. This effectively concerns the accommodation and facilitation of change, in terms of both changing user requirements and changing technological requirements. An approach that uses the software development life-cycle as a vehicle to study the problem of evolution is adopted. This involves the stages of requirements analysis, system specification, design, implementation, and finally operation and maintenance. The problem of evolution is one requiring proactive as well as reactive solutions for any given application domain. Measuring evolvability in conceptual models and the specification of changing requirements are considered. However, even "best designs" are limited in dealing with unanticipated evolution, and require implementation phase paradigms that can facilitate an evolution correctly (semantic integrity), efficiently (minimal disruption of services) and consistently (all affected parts are consistent following the change). These are also discussed / Computing / M. Sc. (Information Systems)

The aim of this thesis is the proposal of a framework for creation of a business plan for IT related projects. Emphasis is targeted on proposing usable framework evolved from theoretical findings. The first part describes the term business plan on theoretical level. Moreover, the first part includes the development of IT investments in start-up projects. The second part relates to a new proposed framework for creation of a business plan for IT related projects, based on the outcomes from the first part. The third part describes practical example of the proposed framework. It includes the Executive Summary and the complete business plan for the IT start-up project (specifically area of hardware installation, configuration and sales), based on the new framework.

La presente tesis aborda la temática del Diseño Industrial y los estímulos de tipo sensorial, perceptivo y emocional que las personas que utilizan los productos reciben en su experiencia de uso. Dichos estímulos, tales como el ajuste preciso en el funcionamiento de un mecanismo, la suavidad de una superficie, el ruido adecuado al cerrar una puerta, etc., se captan mediante los sentidos, se perciben y despiertan en el usuario emociones y reacciones, generando una relación con los objetos más allá del uso básico y práctico, llevando a preferirlos entre otros productos con prestaciones primarias similares, asociándolos a experiencias gratas, e incluso a evocar experiencias de vida a través de los productos que se utilizan. Este ámbito, enmarcado dentro de la disciplina del Diseño Industrial, pero también en la psicología, el marketing, la neurociencia y otras áreas, es enfocado actualmente de muy diversas formas. Así enfoques como la “Ingeniería Kansei”, el “Diseño Emocional”, el “Diseño para la Experiencia”, el “Análisis Sensorial”, son algunos modos y métodos de analizar y definir el tema, y se utilizan cada vez más en las grandes empresas. Esta tesis analiza diversos enfoques y metodologías de aplicación de este tipo de factores en el proceso de Diseño y desarrollo de productos y propone algunas herramientas adecuadas para su integración en las micro, pequeñas y medianas empresas (MiPyMEs). / Jacob Dazarola, RH. (2015). Percepción y Emoción en el Diseño de Productos. Análisis y Propuestas para su integración a las MIPYME [Tesis doctoral]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/48551

<p dir="ltr">Digital Health technologies have revolutionized healthcare delivery, offering innovative solutions that enhance access, improve patient outcomes, and optimize the use of resources. Despite this advancement, health outcomes remain disparate across different social groups, with underprivileged populations at an increased risk of poor health outcomes due to inadequate access to care. Digital Health technologies serve as a critical intervention in mitigating these disparities, particularly for groups affected by geographical, economic, and infrastructural barriers.<br><br>The purpose of this study was to conduct a review of the current state of Digital Health technologies, including Software as a Medical Device (SaMD), Wearable Health, Portable Diagnostic Devices, and remote care platforms, and their impact on healthcare accessibility. Employing qualitative methodology, this metasynthesis emphasized an important discovery: the need for a paradigm shift among stakeholders in healthcare towards integrated and digitally-driven patient care. This shift requires more than just an understanding of new technologies. It demands a fundamental re-evaluation of patient care methods and the orchestration of the entire healthcare system towards integrated digital practices. Importantly, this study found that the pace of digitalization must be carefully managed and cultural factors must be considered and signals the urgency for a balanced approach to digital integration in healthcare.</p>

<p dir="ltr">Automated processes are helping companies become more efficient at an accelerated pace. According to Burke et al. (2017), automation processes are dynamic, and such dynamism is data-driven. The resulting insights of data processing allow the implementation of real-time decision-making tasks that companies use to adjust their business strategies, keep their market share, and compete for more. However, those data-driven environments do not work in isolation; these are digital-data-driven setups where connectivity and integration are key elements for such collaboration.</p><p dir="ltr">As Daniel (2023) explained, a fundamental requirement for integrating systems is understanding how each connected system works. This understanding process includes a comprehensive picture of its functionality, architecture, protocols, data structures, and other components to help design the integration of such systems. However, automated decision-making models based on artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms are considered a “black box” that lacks transparency and interpretability.</p><p dir="ltr">Explainability is a concept derived from the EU General Data Protection Regulation implemented in May 2018 by the European Commission. This law requires describing the logic behind automated decision-making processes that can affect data subjects’ interests. As Selbst and Powles (2017) suggested, AI solutions can defy human understanding due to the complexity of their models. Thus, knowing how a system works is difficult to accomplish when AI solutions are involved.</p><p dir="ltr">With the approval of the EU Artificial Intelligent Act by the EU Commission in March 2024, the explainability requirements initially applicable only to those decision-making systems that processed personal data have been extended to all AI algorithms that processed data for systems categorized as high-risk (R. Jain, 2024). New legal obligations are listed in the EU AI Act for high-risk systems; some of these new obligations consist of adapting or producing AI systems to be transparent, explainable, and designed to allow human oversight.</p><p dir="ltr">Under the EU AI Act, high-risk systems are those that could negatively affect the safety or fundamental rights of an individual, group of individuals, society, or the environment in general. Kempf and Rauer (2024) explained that malfunctioning essential systems could risk people’s lives and health or disrupt social and economic activities. Thus, according to the EU AI Act (2024), critical infrastructure systems such as water supply, gas, and electricity are contained in this high-risk category.</p><p dir="ltr">Within the energy sector, and as Niet et al., (2021) defined, the power grid’s ‘System Operators’ are the ones who plan, build, and maintain the electricity distribution or transmission network and provide a fair electricity market and network connections. As per Articles 13 and 14 of the EU AI Act, the systems operator, or any deployer in charge of overseeing an AI system, should be trained and equipped with transparent and explainability elements to understand the capabilities and limitations of the AI solutions so they can stop, confirm, or overwrite the recommendations made by such a model.</p><p dir="ltr">The present dissertation completed a qualitative study, starting with exploratory research to explain the different concepts involved in the study and their relationships. Thus, document analysis, GT-Grounded Theory, and triangulation were used as the primary qualitative research methods to comprehensively explain the challenges regarding the Systems Integration (SI) of AI solutions that require Explainability (XAI) modules. As part of data triangulation methods, informal conversations with subject matter experts were conducted to share the findings of this research and gather insights related to the current stage of XAI's applicability in the energy sector.</p><p dir="ltr">The scope of the population and sample for this qualitative research was composed of various types of data sources, including regulations, guidelines, standards, frameworks, reports in newspapers, dissertations, journals, business journals, and government publications. A total of 902 biographic references were collected in Zotero and then transferred to NVivo for data analysis. The study responded to the following research questions:</p><p dir="ltr">1. What XAI requirements need to be incorporated as part of enterprise and systems integration frameworks for high-risk AI implementations?</p><p dir="ltr">2. What are the critical operational challenges in integrating Explainability modules with AI systems and business processes?</p><p dir="ltr">The purpose of this study was to identify missing elements from the Enterprise Integration framework proposed by Lam and Shankararaman (2007), that are necessary to comply with XAI legal and ethical requirements delineated by the EU GDPR and EU AI Act. The findings included elements such as (a) monitoring of AI industry regulation and establishment of an AI policy, (b) executing fundamental rights impact assessments, (c) defining clauses to share accountability with third-party contributors of the solution, (d) changing the project management approach to be data-centric and (e) defining post-deployment processes to monitor and improve the performance of AI models. This contribution aspiration is to reduce implementation costs by offering a standard set of steps to follow on AI integration projects, facilitating communication between the project team and AI subject matter experts.</p><p dir="ltr">During this study, Lam and Shankararaman’s framework was reviewed against new legal explainability, and transparency obligations imposed by the EU GDPR and the EU AI Act. Then, the missing elements to operationalize those legal obligations were extracted from AI frameworks such as (a) the NIST AI Risk Management Framework (AI RMF1.0), (b) the standard ISO/IEC 42001:2023 Artificial Intelligence Management Systems, (c) the Singapore Model AI Governance Framework, and (d) the Japanese Machine Learning Quality Management Guideline. Finally, a new version of an Enterprise Integration framework incorporating those missing elements is offered, which could be used to guide the gathering of explainability and transparency requirements for enterprise and system integration of high-risk AI solutions, specifically for the electricity sector.</p><p dir="ltr">This paper explores the concept of AI explainability from technical and regulatory perspectives. The researcher expects that the presented findings will contribute to and trigger industry and academic discussions related to understanding this emerging topics' challenges and guide those in charge of implementing and operationalizing XAI solutions.</p>

Compared to other South African universities, the Department of Social Work at the UNISA has the highest intake of social work students but also the lowest throughput. Through post-graduate research, the Department of Social Work became aware of the often impeding influence of the personal, social and learning contexts of social work students on their performance, and identified a need for social work-specific student support. The following central research question was formulated: What would a life coaching programme to support social work students within an ODL context comprise of? To explore and describe the specific support needs of social work students, the qualitative research approach was used and data was gathered from focus groups of social work students and individual interviews with recently graduated and employed social workers who studied at UNISA. Tesch’s steps (in Creswell, 2009:186) were used to analyse the data systematically and data was verified by integrating Guba’s model (in Krefting, 1991:214-222) with Yin’s (2011:19-20) three objectives for building trustworthiness and credibility. The Intervention Design and Development (IDD) model of Rothman and Thomas (1994) was adapted and selectively employed, concentrating on Phase 1, 2, 3 (only Step 2) and Phase 4 in order to develop a support programme for this specific context. The goals of the support programme were to enhance student success and throughput, facilitate the personal, academic and professional development of students and to empower students to take ownership of their learning process. An online self-coaching support programme was developed and structured around seven actions towards growth, namely, clarifying my strengths, connecting to my context, clarifying my vision, completing my plan, committing to action and growth, confirming my direction and celebrating completion. The programme is divided into eight coaching conversations, two per level, contains many activities, stories and references to resources. It is designed to be compulsory and integrated into the practical work modules. Although activities are to be completed independently by students, support will be provided by e-tutors, workshop facilitators and supervisors. A programme coordinator will be available online as an e-coach to provide ongoing support to social work students. / Social Work / D. Phil. (Social Work)

Compared to other South African universities, the Department of Social Work at the UNISA has the highest intake of social work students but also the lowest throughput. Through post-graduate research, the Department of Social Work became aware of the often impeding influence of the personal, social and learning contexts of social work students on their performance, and identified a need for social work-specific student support. The following central research question was formulated: What would a life coaching programme to support social work students within an ODL context comprise of? To explore and describe the specific support needs of social work students, the qualitative research approach was used and data was gathered from focus groups of social work students and individual interviews with recently graduated and employed social workers who studied at UNISA. Tesch’s steps (in Creswell, 2009:186) were used to analyse the data systematically and data was verified by integrating Guba’s model (in Krefting, 1991:214-222) with Yin’s (2011:19-20) three objectives for building trustworthiness and credibility. The Intervention Design and Development (IDD) model of Rothman and Thomas (1994) was adapted and selectively employed, concentrating on Phase 1, 2, 3 (only Step 2) and Phase 4 in order to develop a support programme for this specific context. The goals of the support programme were to enhance student success and throughput, facilitate the personal, academic and professional development of students and to empower students to take ownership of their learning process. An online self-coaching support programme was developed and structured around seven actions towards growth, namely, clarifying my strengths, connecting to my context, clarifying my vision, completing my plan, committing to action and growth, confirming my direction and celebrating completion. The programme is divided into eight coaching conversations, two per level, contains many activities, stories and references to resources. It is designed to be compulsory and integrated into the practical work modules. Although activities are to be completed independently by students, support will be provided by e-tutors, workshop facilitators and supervisors. A programme coordinator will be available online as an e-coach to provide ongoing support to social work students. / Social Work / D. Phil. (Social Work)