A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Education in fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master Of Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instructional Studies at the University Of Zululand, 2018 / The study examined the perceptions of University of Zululand academic staff members towards adopting Science Shops. Science Shops represent a participatory action research programme which began in the Netherlands and introduced to the University of Zululand with a view to enhancing the university-community relationships. The study specifically focused on the academic staff members who participated in the NUFFIC training programme that gave birth to the idea of Science Shops. NUFFIC is a Dutch acronym of The Netherlands Organization for International Cooperation in Higher Education - translated into English. The study used a qualitative research approach to explore the perceptions of academic staff about SSs. Qualitative research techniques were adopted for the study. A semi-structured questionnaire with open-ended questions was designed and used to obtain information from the ten (10) academic staff members who participated in the study. Focus group interviews were also conducted with the participants as a way of seeking additional information which was not covered in the questionnaire. The purposive sampling technique was used to select the participants from the four (4) Faculties at the participating institution, namely Faculties of Arts, Commerce, Administration and Law (CAL), Education, and Science and Agriculture. Overall, results revealed that the participants perceived Science Shops as an important programme that merited adoption and integration into the University curriculum. The majority of the participants also believed that Science Shops had the potential to restructure the University for relevance (as its motto goes), in teaching, research and community service. Furthermore, Science Shops were seen as a possible means to generate alternative income for the University. However, some challenges were highlighted by the participants which they saw as needing attention before the Science Shop concept could fall on fertile ground. These challenges included the overpopulated classrooms, inadequate knowledge and orientation about community engagement research, and the nature of research in the Science Faculty which appeared not to be amenable to community participation.

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The problem at hand is an attempt to evaluate the industrial-arts shops of three schools on the basis of pupil interests. Primary emphasis will be placed upon the various interests of industrial-arts pupils, and then the shops will be studied for the purpose of discovering whether they foster such interests as the pupils may have been shown to possess.

The purposes of this study are to survey the growth of safety concepts in industry and in school shops, to point out the fundamental factors involved in a functioning and worthwhile program of safety education in secondary schools, and to indicate safe practices to be followed by operators of machines in wood and metal shops in secondary schools in order to minimize to the utmost the possibility of accident in such shops, and to set forth a recommended procedure embodying a program of safety for wood and metal shops in secondary schools.

There are many factors to be considered when studying the lighting of industrial arts shops. Adequate light is one of the most important factors, and by adequate lighting is meant light that is sufficient in quantity and quality. Other factors to be considered include the location of the shops in the building, the windows, interior painting, width, and length, and the ceiling height of the shoprooms. The study herein is directed toward better lighting in the industrial arts shops for more efficient work.

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A local utility company processes a variety of jobs each day including meter reading, service shut-offs, emergency response, and customer service work. For the Company, a specific workflow begins with automated meter-reading (AMR) and ends with collections/service shut-offs (CSOs) for accounts with excessively late payments (AMR-CSO workflow). There are considerable and systemic sources of variability in both the workload and resource demands of the AMR-CSO workflow including order arrival, order release schedules, order batch-sizing and maintenance scheduling. This project draws on theory from the job-shop problem to explore possible means to mitigate this variability. We hypothesized that controlling various forms of input variability would lead to reduced downstream workload variability. Using discrete event simulation we tested a variety of measures to reduce input variability in the workflow. Consistent with other literature we find that various workload control tactics have limited impact on output measures and system performance. However, we found that system is much more sensitive to resource capacity variability. One input control tactic we call Targeted Release allowed us to reduce Company capacity variability which suggested significantly improved outcomes. These initial results are promising for both the Company and for future investigation of tactics to mitigate resource capacity variability.

Abstract: Background: Sweden is one of the biggest coffee consuming countries in Europe with the average annual coffee consumption per capita as high as 8.2kg. This mass consumption of coffee therefore creates high level of competition amongst coffee providers in the Swedish coffee market. There are numerous coffee shops and even some food chains and retail stores selling their own brand of coffee. This study will focus on Generation Y, as they will soon be the majority of consumers. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to investigate and analyze what factors affect Generation Y’s loyalty to coffee shops and examine what forms the basis of Generation Y’s loyalty for coffee shops. Methodology: In this thesis, the research method is based on a quantitative approach using a questionnaire to collect data. The findings are established by using both existing literature and primary data. The questionnaire consists of 432 respondents and 400 respondents’ data was used to answer the research question. The respondents consist only of Generation Y who has lived in Sweden for longer than six months. Conclusion: This study has shown that the most important factor that affects people of Swedish Generation Y to become loyal customers to coffee shops is being provided a comfortable and suitable environment. The second important factor is product quality. The third factor is service. However, for those who are students and unemployed Swedish Generation Y, price is also a factor that could influence their loyalty. Moreover, Coffee shops can use loyalty programs to get their customers’ higher customer loyalty. Key words: Coffee shops, Generation Y, Customer loyalty, Customer satisfaction