Thesis (M.Ed.)--Regis University, Denver, Colo., 2008. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Mar. 11, 2008). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Western Australia, 2007.

This study is devoted to investigating links between the mental processes of visual composition and those of linguistic composition. The study has two components, each of which compares visual/verbal pairs. First is a comparison of visual and verbal features in picture books created by students. These books are alphabet books created in the tradition of "ABC" books for children. They were produced using standard desk-top publishing techniques. Because desk-top publishing involves text and graphics, it is an environment in which an individual's skill with both sentences and pictures may be studied. Second is a set of case studies of students' visual and linguistic compositions. These compositions have been constructed within the constraints of computer based microworlds designed by the researcher. (Computers are compositional tools with a new generality. They let the two media meet on common ground.) This study accentuates the importance of the computer as a tool for generalized composition, perhaps the most important role of computers in education.

This study investigates developments in the practice of teachers who have engaged in a series of workshops on the integration of new technologies into their work in the English for Academic Purposes (EAP) classroom. It looks specifically at developments in actions and knowledge during and after a teacher education programme, and how these developments shape or reshape teachers' specific professional practice of using technology in EAP teaching. Added to this, it explores ways in which teachers articulate their sense of EAP as a subject and EAP teaching as a profession, and tries to situate technology's role within that. Drawing on a theoretical framework of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) (Mishra & Koehler, 2006; Koehler & Mishra, 2009), and second-generation Activity Theory (Engeström, 1987), this story of development unfolds through a case-study narrative over the bounded timeframe of eighteen months. The setting is a university language centre in the United Kingdom, where the workshops took place, and three teachers have been selected as cases to represent the story of developments, and changes in practice occurring in line with the delivery and aftermath of this teacher education programme. Significant changes were noted in the teachers' specific professional practice of using technology in their teaching, and the study suggests that as technology becomes embedded in EAP teaching, there is an associated re-thinking of practice in other areas, particularly the role played by, and nature of, EAP content. As such, this supports one of the central arguments for the development of TPACK, in that the introduction of technology to existing conceptualisations of Pedagogic Content Knowledge (PCK) (Shulman, 1986) has demanded that teachers question their existing pedagogy, and lay the foundations for development in their practice as a whole (Mishra & Koehler, 2006, p. 1063). This study then is a story of development and teachers' personal reflections on practice, giving shape to a final report that hopes to make a contribution to understanding, defining, and opening the way for further research into EAP practice in the digital age.

This thesis focuses on the development of a malaria vaccine as an avenue to explore global health partnerships. In the last twenty years, public-private partnerships have become a prominent organizational form in global health. Hundreds of large transnational collaborations and countless smaller collaborations between the public, private and non-profit sectors have been established. Partnerships have been supported by the large increase of donor funding for research and control of infectious diseases in impoverished countries and many aim to develop or provide vaccines, medicines or interventions. Analysts generally agree that partnerships are saving many lives and revolutionizing drug and vaccine development for infectious diseases. However, while partnership is a notion that connotes equity and mutuality, often global health partnerships operate in contexts that involve vast disparities in power and resources and there is little known about the impacts of partnerships on the places where they operate. This raises the questions: How do global health partnerships operate in practice? What are their impacts in the places where they operate? Addressing these questions, this thesis examines a partnership established to develop the most advanced malaria vaccine, named RTS,S. Based on 17 months of ethnographic research in Tanzania and interviews with representatives of partnering organizations in Belgium and the United States, I trace the development of the RTS,S vaccine from laboratories to its clinical trials across Africa. I explore the social relationships formed between private companies, philanthropic institutions and non-profit organizations in the North, and research institutions and communities in north-eastern Tanzania, where a malaria vaccine clinical trial was conducted. Analyzing the impacts of the malaria vaccine partnership, I focus on community development, construction of infrastructure, the building of human capacity, provision of health care and extraction of data. The focus on partnerships is intended to improve understanding about this ever-increasing social, political and economic formation in global health, and contributes to discussions and debates about how partnerships operate and their role in international development, global health governance and transnational medical research.

The Alliance+ project is a teacher professional development program that integrates technology into mathematics and science lessons. The effectiveness of this innovative program was evaluated in terms of students‟ perceptions of the classroom learning environment and their attitudes towards science/mathematics. The sample consisted of 759 students of seven mathematics/science teachers (four Alliance+ participants and three non-participants) in one middle school in Miami-Dade County, Florida. The students responded to learning environment scales based on the Constructivist Learning Environment Survey (CLES) and the What Is Happening In this Class? (WIHIC) questionnaires to assess their perceptions of the classroom learning environment. Additionally, they responded to an attitude scale modeled on the Test Of Science-Related Attitudes (TOSRA) to assess their attitudes towards mathematics/science. It was found that Alliance+ teachers were more successful than the non-Alliance+ teachers in promoting a classroom environment with more cooperation among students during the science/mathematics lessons. Additionally, Alliance+ professional development model was differentially effective for mathematics and science teachers in terms of three learning environment scales (namely, Teacher Support, Cooperation, and Critical Voice), but not in terms of students‟ attitudes to science. In terms of Cooperation, Alliance+ teachers were more effective than non-Alliance+ teachers for mathematics, but comparable in effectiveness to non-Alliance+ teachers for science. For Critical Voice, Alliance+ teachers were slightly more effective than non-Alliance+ teachers for mathematics, but considerably less effective than non-Alliance+ teachers for science. / In terms of Teacher Support, Alliance+ were less effective than non-Alliance+ teachers for science, but comparable in effectiveness to non-Alliance+ teachers for mathematics. However, teachers who did not participate in the Alliance+ project were more effective than the teachers who participated in the Alliance+ project in providing a positive learning environment in which the students perceived more teacher support and in promoting positive attitudes towards science/mathematics. Qualitative data results revealed that the Alliance+ teachers had not received sufficient support from their school administrators and Alliance+ trainers and lacked the resources that were necessary for them to implement the project successfully, which could possibly be an explanation for the quantitative results in favor of the non-Alliance+ teachers. This study also investigated outcome-environment associations. It was found that associations existed between students‟ attitudes towards science/mathematics and their perceptions of the classroom leaning environment (especially personal relevance, teacher support, and cooperation).

The proposed research aspires to provide new insight on issues of applied Roadmapping and advance the state of the art in Roadmapping and its practice. It provides a conceptual model and an integrated process framework for the development of a Third Generation, Meso-level, Co-innovation Dynamic Roadmapping (from now on called ‘Dynamic Roadmapping’), which integrates policy, research, industry, and organisational roadmapping methodologies, in order to manage the development and adoption of systemic innovations in complex domains. It has been developed to meet the needs of increasingly complex systemic innovations where multiple organisations are involved as co-innovators and many other intermediaries and decision makers need to be included in the innovation adoption process. These types of innovations are usually driven by the interplay of multi-dimensional and cross-impacting factors derived from changes in social, market, economic, political and technology systems. Thus, the ‘Dynamic Roadmapping’ does not presuppose a single desired future for complex domains, but several futures, based on the complementary strategic perspectives of inter-dependent stakeholders, which need to be contextualised and negotiated at various sectoral, national and regional levels in order to be adopted. The ‘Dynamic Roadmapping’ approach supports the achievement of the realisation of the desired futures through two main components: a ‘co-innovation group’ and an ‘observatory function’. The co-innovation group is formed from all the necessary co-innovators, adopters, decision makers and users that are needed in order for the innovations to be developed and adopted. Their function is predominately ‘normative’ describing “what they want to happen” and “how” it will happen. The observatory function provides foresight and sense making methodologies to the co-innovation group, in order to constantly review and adapt their roadmaps in light of the emerging changes that can impact the roadmaps’ realisation and adoption. A conceptual model and its theoretical grounding have been built in order to bridge support for roadmapping activities among different innovative communities (e.g. in policy, research, industry and practice) and foster their collaboration via stakeholders’ innovation networks. The proposed conceptual model and its process framework have been evaluated in a case study in order to establish its validity in the European context and provide implications to theory and practice. A pilot of this framework is first implemented for the area of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL). The impact of this research is: - Managing uncertainty in Future planning - Managing and implementing emergent Roadmaps for systemic innovations - Monitoring and adapt the produced Roadmaps according to change factors in emerging reality - Ensure their adoption in complex domain This research work has been funded by an EU Marie-Curry Fellowship grant via the DYRECT project no. 255182. The proposed integrated framework has been adopted by the EU TEL-Map project (in education sector) and EU CRe-AM project (in creative industry sector). It has been documented in many European project deliverables as well as in international conference papers, and in journal papers.

Emerging information and communication technology (ICT) introduces many opportunities for the improved transfer of business documents throughout the trading process in the construction industry. Perceived and actual benefits have been realised throughout many studies however the relative success or failure has not been fully investigated for neither an individual organisational basis or throughout a complete supply chain. This research fills this knowledge gap by focusing on the feasibility of success before any design or development is undergone. The primary objective was to explore, explain and understand the nature of an organisation in the construction industry with reference to the adoption of technology and electronic trading methods such as electronic data interchange (EDI) and other methods of electronic commerce (Ecommerce). The second objective was to dissect the primary research and discover the key construct elements that exist and make an organisation what it is. These four quadrants or related business influences will form the basis for the factors governing success or failure of an adoption for both a stand-alone organisation and one within a supply chain. The third objective was to development a new analytical tool for determining success prior to the adoption of new technology into an existing business framework. The fourth objective was to test the tool within the construction industry in the UK and analyse the results. This research adopted a quantitative research approach in the form of a questionnaire that when data was recorded and analysed could produce a graphical representation of an organisation. Three models have been developed, they are focused toward determining success; (1) stand-alone organisational success, (2) supply chain success, (3) period of time taken to achieve successful adoption. This research helps us to understand the nature and extent of intra-organisational factors that influence the adoption of new technology. Secondly it provides the four key factors (four quadrants) that determine successful adoption: human resources, management, processes, and culture. Thirdly, these factors provide the building blocks for newly developed models. This provides for a clearer understanding of whether new information technology and communication developments can be successfully adopted into any organisation. Lastly, the research can help us understand the barriers to, and levers for, successful adoption. This research has some limitations that need to be acknowledged, most importantly the ‘target model’ was constructed from four quadrants that are evenly sized and weighted based on a questionnaire that suffers from a similar issue, further research is needed to address this weighting issue.

Cell Therapies are promising clinical instruments with significant therapeutic potential and commercial promise. However, the industry engaged in their commercial and clinical development faces significant financial, technical, regulatory and market challenges. These challenges are compounded by an understanding gap in the cell therapy industry. Commercial failures and financial difficulties have forced the industry to address the need to provide value and estimate and control costs early in the development timeline. The problem is that this issue is not being systematically or thoroughly addressed in the academic community while they pursue potential future treatments. Articles that highlight the need to understand costs and value are appearing with increasing frequency highlighting a growing consensus that work needs to be carried out in this area. However examples of models and tools to predict or estimate or even calculate costs in developing and producing a product do not exist in the literature. This work consists of three parts. Part one entails a new model of the characteristics observed in cell therapy new product development. This model is an evolution of an activity based dependency structure matrix (DSM). Result from the model suggests that some favoured development strategies (such as applying for an orphan indication status) provide less financial benefit than is commonly expected. The ability to scale manufacturing levels between clinical trial phases is also a pressing problem. 3 Part two presents a model to predict the cost of manufacturing and delivering a cell therapy product. This cost of good supplied (COGS) model combines both rules and predictive activity based costing across multiple manufacturing platforms, cell types and supply chain configurations. This model highlights the significant cost burden of validating both single and, more markedly, multiple sites of manufacture. The model also examines the potential for economies of scale when using different production technology in the manufacture of human Mesenchymal Stem Cells. Based in part on the results and knowledge gleaned in parts one and two, part three outlines the development of a novel, scalable expansion system developed to enable lower cost, controlled manufacture of adherent cell populations. While still at an early stage of development the technology has demonstrated the ability to maintain cells in a high rate of growth for a longer period than traditional culture techniques. This allows for the creation of a manufacturing technology with a higher expansion ratio than manufacturing systems on the market today.

acase@tulane.edu