This quasi-experimental, pre-and-post-test, multi-method design examined e-prompting, and its impact on adherence to a desk-situated workplace exercise program. Fifty volunteer inactive office workers were recruited from a Canadian college. The intervention tested the effectiveness of a 12-week, twice-daily, low resistance, exercise band program with or without e-prompting. Pre-and-post-test data were collected through two questionnaires and measurements of strength/endurance. Additionally, the intranet exercise web site recorded participants' frequency log in data. Quantitative findings showed significant strength improvements in three of the measures (leg press, chest press, bicep curl). Data from the pre-and-post questionnaires found significant positive movement in four questions. Analysis of qualitative data identified two themes, barrier to physical activity and convenience suggesting that the intervention enhanced participants' self-efficacy to perform and adhere to an exercise program. The combination of e-prompting combined with a desk exercise program appears to have the potential to increase physical activity among inactive office workers.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--George Mason University, 2007. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Jan. 18, 2008). Thesis directors: Paul Amman, Duminda Wijesekera. Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Information Technology. Vita: p. 198. Includes bibliographical references (p. 189-197). Also available in print.

Thesis (M.A.)--Carleton University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 104-113). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 2008. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 84-90).

Thesis (M.S.)--University of North Texas, Dec., 2009. / Title from title page display. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Queensland, 2006. / Includes bibliography.

Submitted in fulfilment of the requirement for Masters in Management Sciences specialising in Public Relations, Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa. 2017. / In South Africa the National Plan for Higher Education (NPHE, 2001) brought with it distinct changes to the higher education landscape. Amongst the major changes were the mergers of various higher education institutions. In 2005, the Walter Sisulu University for Technology (WSU) was established through the merger of the former Border Technikon, Eastern Cape Technikon and the University of Transkei. The University caters for students from the Eastern Cape’s Border and Kei regions resulting in communication with a large number of stakeholders. Effective communication as well as developing and maintaining relationships with key stakeholders therefore become pivotal. This study set out to examine the perceived effectiveness of communication strategies between the Walter Sisulu University and students. A mixed method approach found that although respondents felt that communication was satisfactory, concerns were however, raised about the effectiveness of the communication strategies being utilised. The study recommended e-communication as a key strategy to facilitate communication with students. / M

E-mails have become the standard for business as well as personal communication. The inherent security risks within e-mail communication present the problem of anonymity. If an author of an e-mail is not known, the digital forensic investigator needs to determine the authorship of the e-mail using a process that has not been standardised in the e-mail forensic field. This research project examines many problems associated with e-mail communication and the digital forensic domain; more specifically e-mail forensic investigations, and the recovery of legally admissible evidence to be presented in a court of law. The Research Methodology utilised a comprehensive literature review in combination with Design Science which results in the development of an artifact through intensive research. The Proposed E-Mail Forensic Methodology is based on the most current digital forensic investigation process and further validation of the process was established via expert reviews. The opinions of the digital forensic experts were an integral portion of the validation process which adds to the credibility of the study. This was performed through the aid of the Delphi technique. This Proposed E-Mail Forensic Methodology adopts a standardised investigation process applied to an e-mail investigation and takes into account the South African perspective by incorporating various checks with the laws and legislation. By following the Proposed E-mail Forensic Methodology, e-mail forensic investigators can produce evidence that is legally admissible in a court of law.

Within the context of social networks, existing methods for document classification tasks typically only capture textual semantics while ignoring the text’s metadata, e.g., the users who exchange emails and the communication networks they form. However, some work has shown that incorporating the social network information in addition to information from language is useful for various NLP applications, including sentiment analysis, inferring user attributes, and predicting interpersonal relations. In this thesis, we present empirical studies of incorporating social network information from the underlying communication graphs for various text classification tasks. We show different graph representations for different problems. Also, we introduce social network features extracted from these graphs. We use and extend graph embedding models for text classification. Our contributions are as follows. First, we have annotated large datasets of emails with fine-grained business and personal labels. Second, we propose graph representations for the social networks induced from documents and users and apply them on different text classification tasks. Third, we propose social network features extracted from these structures for documents and users. Fourth, we exploit different methods for modeling the social network of communication for four tasks: email classification into business and personal, overt display of power detection in emails, hierarchical power detection in emails, and Reddit post classification. Our main findings are: incorporating the social network information using our proposed methods improves the classification performance for all of the four tasks, and we beat the state-of-the-art graph embedding based model on the three tasks on email; additionally, for the fourth task (Reddit post classification), we argue that simple methods with the proper representation for the task can outperform a state-of-the-art generic model.

An electronic DCT questionnaire, which was specially designed, pilot-tested, and refined, served as the chief instrument. Thirty students participated in the study and formed three cultural groups: ten native English-speaking American students (NS), ten Hong Kong Chinese learners of English (HKCLE) and ten Mainland Chinese learners of English (MLCLE). They completed the e-DCTs online and participated in stimulated recall sessions afterwards in which they were prompted to recall their thought processes while on task. Six American professors evaluated and commented on a random sample of the e-mails (30% of the corpus). The e-mail data were coded with a modified version of the CCSARP (Cross Cultural Speech Acts Realisation Patterns) manual; open-coding and thematic analysis were applied to the stimulated recalls and recipient feedback, with the aid of NVivo 8. / Concerning the interlanguage aspect of the requests, the major findings were: In making status-unequal requests to their professors, students from all three cohorts tended to be indirect in general. The two learners' groups demonstrated a fairly strong pragmalinguistic control in realising specific indirect requesting strategies with a variety of forms; they relied heavily on the conventionally indirect strategy of Query Preparatory (QP). By contrast, NSs exhibited greater flexibility in their strategy choices, which ranged from very direct to indirect. The CLEs were particularly weak in employing certain syntactic devices as downgraders; to compensate, they made excessive use of lexical/phrasal modifiers and external mitigating moves to soften the requestive force. / MLCLEs were found to always be the least confident group in terms of their language use, as compared to the HKCLE group, which was the most confident. The measurements of power difference and social distance were rather approximate among the three cohorts. NSs were more apt to lessen the power distinction and stress the mutuality of 'showing respect', whereas CLEs were inclined to accentuate unequal power distributions, and emphasise the hierarchical asymmetry. Imposition degree was found to be the most dynamic of the three variables. The reasons for its use were multi-faceted, encompassing diverse affective, cognitive, and social factors. / The audience (American professors) perceived that the students were both direct and polite in making requests. The NSs were found to be the most polite and most satisfactory group in terms of their linguistic production. (Mis)matches were identified between the expectations of the e-mail writers and their receivers. Case analyses revealed disparity in student performance and variations in their developmental progress in terms of pragmalinguistic competence, sociopragmatic awareness, and intercultural communicative competence. Based on the findings, pedagogical implications are discussed. Finally, the thesis concludes with suggestions for future studies. / The present study investigated the speech act realisation of requests in student-professor e-mail communication at a university in Hong Kong. This mixed-method study employed an electronic version of DCTs (Discourse Completion Tasks), stimulated recalls, and audience judgements to investigate the verbal behaviour of both native speakers of English and non-native speakers (Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese) who were students at the university. / Pan, Ping. / Advisers: Gwendolyn Gong; Jane Jackson. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-03, Section: A, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 348-363). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese.