Title: Tool for Collaborative XML Schema Integration Author: Jiří Meluzín Department: Department of Software Engineering Supervisor: Martin Nečaský, Ph.D. Abstract: The aim of the thesis is to develop a technique for collaborative creation of mappings of two XML schemas. More precisely, it will support a concurrent participation of several users at the same mapping via the Web. The method will be based on current XML schema mapping techniques but will extend them with the support for collaboration. The developed technique will be implemented in a user-friendly web application. The tool will support concurrent change operations invoked by the collaborating users, their merging and/or prioritization. Moreover, it will also keep previous versions of the mapping so it will be possible to return to an arbitrary previous version. The thesis will analyze current methods for XML schema integration and collaborative schema editing and integration. The tool will be implemented on the base of Google Wave and GWT framework. Keywords: XML Schema, integration, collaboration

"Innovate or die" is a long-standing creed in industry. Collaboration between companies is one route that businesses are pursuing with vigour, in an effort to gain competitive advantage. Few UK companies look to the dedicated research institutes (DRDCs) that exist as a source of innovation and industrial collaboration. This is despite the high regard bestowed on the creative abilities of the scientific teams at these centres of excellence. The purpose of this study is not to answer why this is so, but to help improve the chances of success when it occurs. The study was born out of a Government-funded LINK project, which evaluated the benefits, to project commercialisation, of conducting market research in tandem with the technical stages of R&D at public research institutes. Exposure to the professional cultures, work ethos and personal attitudes of team-members at the DRDCs and their commercial partners alerted the researcher to the challenges presented by technology transfer between such organisations. The literature is populated by studies that detail the stresses and strains of technology transfer. However, little attention has been directed exclusively at cases involving DRDCs. The primary aim of the study is to identify the driving forces behind technology transfer success from DRDCs to industry. It draws on the framework of the IMP Group to structure the context of investigation. It uses the findings of past studies to structure the content of investigation. A qualitative approach involving 13 detailed case studies constitutes its methodology. The cases cover both public and privately-funded DRDCs in the UK and the Netherlands, including examples from agricultural engineering, food sciences and biotechnology. The results highlight seven key antecedents as areas at which good management practice should be targeted. The study concludes by addressing the underlying mechanisms behind transfer process success. It finds that it is too simplistic to focus on any one of the three dimensions of technology transfer (organisational, human and environmental) 'at the exclusion of the others, as past studies have done. Successful transfer is found to depend on three cross-dimensional underlying mechanisms:- • checking the innovation is appropriate to the recipient • establishing a suitable transfer process • and providing an effective conduit for routing the knowledge transfer.

Degree: Master of Science in Engineering Department: Engineering / Multi-Agent Systems are becoming a popular paradigm for many engineering applications. However, there is still much research to be performed in this fast growing field. In this thesis, the effect of learning in multi-agent systems on communication and collaboration between agents is investigated. This research focuses on agents learning local cooperative behaviour from a centralised agent, as well as using learning to reduce the amount of communication between agents that use negotiation to achieve their goals. A simple test problem is formulated in MATLAB. The effect of learning is clearly seen to reduce the amount of communication between agents by up to 50%, while still maintaining cooperative behaviour. The agents are also demonstrated to learn to a large degree cooperative local behaviour from a central system.

Thesis advisor: Mary Crane / Literary Constellations resituates collaboration within the networks of books and people in the publishing industry in early modern London. Though print technologies and publishing practices are most often understood as providing the conditions for the development of single authorship, this project proposes that print also produced new forms of collective literary endeavors. Looking into the book industry, especially the activities of publishers within the Stationers' Company, I present collaboration as creative activity dispersed among interconnected people and books in the literary arena. This approach expands the recent scholarly attention to collaborative literary activity while remaining grounded in the social and economic context in which books were produced. Not only were books written, translated, edited, marketed, printed, and sold collectively in various ways, but the publishing industry as it developed in London created new avenues for imagining books as existing within meaningful collectivities and as well. Each chapter of this project examines a publishing event and traces its connections in the arena of books to illuminate the dynamics of collaborative publishing. Readings of the literary works are crafted by finding, illuminating, and taking seriously the traces among, between, and in texts. The first chapter examines the 1551 English translation of Utopia as a representative example of a collaborative literary process that includes writing as one in a larger constellation of literary efforts that produce the book. I further explore how the publisher Abraham Veale developed a specialty in health-related texts in translation, of which Utopia becomes a part. Chapter 2 introduces the English translation of the Aeneid published by Abraham Veale, which included a supplementary "thirteenth book," and which was produced in a collaborative group of translators and annotators. This continuation of the epic raises questions about the potential for groups of agents in print to continue the work of poetry indefinitely. Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene directly responds to the English Aeneidos and its collaborative continuing of the work of Virgil, and in the process articulates an individualist model of literary writing and reading. The third chapter turns to the interdependence of play writing and publishing with other books in the marketplace. I argue that Pericles was published as part of an identifiable group of books, and so operates in an interdependent cluster of collaboratively built stories. Finally, Chapter 4 argues that news was a collaboratively produced print genre with close associations with printed plays. The project of selling individual dramatic authorship in the First Folio and Ben Jonson's late plays required the disentanglement of play texts from their associations with news. Part of this move toward disentanglement includes Jonson's satiric depiction of the stationer Nathaniel Butter and his news syndicate in The Staple of News. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: English.

Collaboration among teachers in some shape or form is becoming increasing popular among the educational system. The goal of this thesis is to determine whether teachers find value in collaboratively working in a Web environment and if we can use collaboration to improve educational content. We took a Web-based intelligent tutoring system, called ASSISTments, and incorporated a collaboration feature allowing teachers from around the Web to work together to create content for their students. The previous ASSISTments model did not allow for any form of collaboration; teachers using ASSISTments were not able to modify each other's content. By creating the opportunity for teachers to work together, we hypothesized that the educational content within ASSISTments would improve. To help improve education content among ASSISTments, we also deemed it necessary to improve the tool that teachers used to create problems for their students. Using surveys and interviews, we obtained feedback from teachers supporting our changes of the ASSISTments system and validating our claims that they found value in collaboratively working in a Web-based environment.

Sepsis is a life-threatening organ dysfunction disease process that costs the healthcare system millions of dollars each year. By using existing assets, the number of patients admitted to the hospital suffering from sepsis secondary to community-acquired pneumonia can be reduced. The purpose of this project was to improve and expand the scope of practice of the registered nurse working in a private medical office to initiate treatment for suspected CAP using evidence-based practice. Data from the last quarter of 2017 and the first quarter of 2018 were compared. The purpose of comparing these data sets was to examine outcomes of patients who received empirical treatment for CAP using both the complaint-specific protocol (CSP) and algorithm to see if these patients had lower rates of hospitalization than those who received the standard treatment. None of the patients who were treated using the CSP and algorithm were admitted to the hospital. Two patients were diagnosed with CAP before the implementation of the CSP and algorithm in the last quarter of 2017. The implications for social change resulting from the project are expansion of the scope of practice of the RN to work collaboratively with the physician in empirically treating CAP in the patients at the clinic to prevent hospitalization for pneumonia.

Using a quasi-experimental design, the researcher investigated the comparative effects of individually-generated and collaboratively-generated computer-based concept mapping on middle school science concept learning. Qualitative data were analyzed to explain quantitative findings. One hundred sixty-one students (74 boys and 87 girls) in eight, seventh grade science classes at a middle school in Southeast Texas completed the entire study. Using prior science performance scores to assure equivalence of student achievement across groups, the researcher assigned the teacher’s classes to one of the three experimental groups. The independent variable, group, consisted of three levels: 40 students in a control group, 59 students trained to individually generate concept maps on computers, and 62 students trained to collaboratively generate concept maps on computers. The dependent variables were science concept learning as demonstrated by comprehension test scores, and quality of concept maps created by students in experimental groups as demonstrated by rubric scores. Students in the experimental groups received concept mapping training and used their newly acquired concept mapping skills to individually or collaboratively construct computer-based concept maps during study time. The control group, the individually-generated concept mapping group, and the collaboratively-generated concept mapping group had equivalent learning experiences for 50 minutes during five days, excepting that students in a control group worked independently without concept mapping activities, students in the individual group worked individually to construct concept maps, and students in the collaborative group worked collaboratively to construct concept maps during their study time. Both collaboratively and individually generated computer-based concept mapping had a positive effect on seventh grade middle school science concept learning but neither strategy was more effective than the other. However, the students who collaboratively generated concept maps created significantly higher quality concept maps than those who individually generated concept maps. The researcher concluded that the concept mapping software, Inspiration™, fostered construction of students’ concept maps individually or collaboratively for science learning and helped students capture their evolving creative ideas and organize them for meaningful learning. Students in both the individual and the collaborative concept mapping groups had positive attitudes toward concept mapping using Inspiration™ software.

This thesis is based on a case study of faculty collaboration and community in a postsecondary education setting. Drawing on what educational theorists and practitioners have learned in their research on faculty collaboration, development, and professional community building, the study investigated specific aspects of collaborative processes that can help create strong professional educational communities. The study focused on 6 full-time faculty members at a postsecondary college in Ontario. As participant observer in this study, I worked in an environment that enabled me to interact both individually and collectively with faculty members through a program accreditation process, particularly in completing an accreditation self-study. Using transcripts and field notes from semi-structured interviews, observations, and my own reflections, I analyzed faculty interactions and perceptions of the self-study process. The thesis recounts the past history of the program as told by the faculty participants, outlines the nature of the program accreditation, and presents faculty perceptions of their role and identity within the faculty community. The thesis outlines the changes that occurred among the faculty and the factors that appeared to contribute most profoundly to those changes. It suggests specific ways in which leaders within the world of postsecondary education can foster a culture of faculty engagement and trust geared toward facilitating curricular and educational change. It also identifies factors and resources needed to attract, retain, and empower faculty to work together to ensure sustainable program quality and, ultimately, student success. Besides the need for strong leadership to promote and guide change, and structural factors rooted in and responsive to faculty experience, the study points to the critical role that relational factors play in fostering a collaborative culture. The thesis concludes with specific suggestions arising from the study regarding: institutional policy and practice, how to facilitate professional growth among faculty in postsecondary environments, and avenues for further research on collaboration and faculty community.

This thesis is based on a case study of faculty collaboration and community in a postsecondary education setting. Drawing on what educational theorists and practitioners have learned in their research on faculty collaboration, development, and professional community building, the study investigated specific aspects of collaborative processes that can help create strong professional educational communities. The study focused on 6 full-time faculty members at a postsecondary college in Ontario. As participant observer in this study, I worked in an environment that enabled me to interact both individually and collectively with faculty members through a program accreditation process, particularly in completing an accreditation self-study. Using transcripts and field notes from semi-structured interviews, observations, and my own reflections, I analyzed faculty interactions and perceptions of the self-study process. The thesis recounts the past history of the program as told by the faculty participants, outlines the nature of the program accreditation, and presents faculty perceptions of their role and identity within the faculty community. The thesis outlines the changes that occurred among the faculty and the factors that appeared to contribute most profoundly to those changes. It suggests specific ways in which leaders within the world of postsecondary education can foster a culture of faculty engagement and trust geared toward facilitating curricular and educational change. It also identifies factors and resources needed to attract, retain, and empower faculty to work together to ensure sustainable program quality and, ultimately, student success. Besides the need for strong leadership to promote and guide change, and structural factors rooted in and responsive to faculty experience, the study points to the critical role that relational factors play in fostering a collaborative culture. The thesis concludes with specific suggestions arising from the study regarding: institutional policy and practice, how to facilitate professional growth among faculty in postsecondary environments, and avenues for further research on collaboration and faculty community.

Collaboration is considered to be an alternative strategic planning approach for delivering services and addressing organization mandates. These initiatives provide an opportunity “in which autonomous actors interact through formal and informal negotiation, jointly creating rules and structures governing their relationship” (Thomson and Perry 2006, 23). Stakeholders recognize the potential for increasing organizational capacity by engaging in relationships that collectively address common concerns through the integration and coordination of resources. The underlying principle of this research is to provide insight on the contributions that are required to facilitate initiatives and engage stakeholders in processes that achieve collaborative goals. This research assesses the motivations needed to participate in integrated planning strategies and identifies the resources required to create the capacity to support successful outcomes. The primary purpose of the research is to provide stakeholders with knowledge and appreciation for the complexities involved in collaborating, with a particular focus on the human resources that are necessary to facilitate stakeholder relations. The objectives of the research are to undertake a qualitative evaluation of stakeholders’ experiences involved with a collaborative initiative and to determine how the collaboration goals of participants are achieved. The Habitat Conservation and Stewardship Program (HCSP) was identified as a case study, because it provided an ideal opportunity to evaluate a public sector agency that was motivated to initiate integrated planning strategies. Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) implemented the HCSP to “enhance habitat protection and expand community capacity to steward fish habitat resources” (HCSP Evaluation Team 2001; Fisheries and Oceans Canada Habitat and Enhancement Branch 2001a, 1). The DFO recognized that in order to meet the goals of the collaboration they would implement a convener role to engage all interested parties. This research emphasizes the contributions of conveners by analyzing the processes and activities that they use to engage stakeholders and produce successful outcomes. Participants who are motivated to engage in collaborations expect to benefit from their involvement but it is recognized that conveners play an integral role in achieving collaborative goals and therefore, their contributions should be valued.