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The community of Black River First Nation located along the shores of Lake Winnipeg in eastern Manitoba began as a seasonal Anishinaabe fishing village, and became a permanent settlement upon entering into Treaty in 1876. A renewed interest within the community to preserve traditional knowledge and remain connected to the past led to my involvement with the community. Upon learning of a historic settlement site once connected by an extensive water and land based transportation network, design decisions were made to reintegrate this network into the community. This practicum explores how a change in settlement location has impacted community development and proposes a design strategy for the historic Black River settlement site that creates destinations and travel routes to enhance and rediscover connections to the lands and waters that shaped the community. / May 2016

This is an original work. It is a full length novel. The main character is Zeso Eliza Greylin.

M. Ed. / Many higher education institutions face the loss of subsidy due to the high attrition rate of students. Despite the many advantages of alternate access programmes documented in literature, numerous Engineering Faculty members and members of the management of the University of Johannesburg believed that first time applicants with A and B symbols on their senior certificate were stronger students than those students who had completed an alternate access programme. Furthermore, they felt that the alternate access students took up the places which should have been given to those students with excellent senior certificate results. While many studies have been conducted on alternate access programmes there appears to be no evidence of the academic benefits that students derive from them. This generic qualitative study focused on what students perceive to be the academic benefits of alternate access programmes for their mainstream study. Purposeful sampling was used to select Engineering students from the 2005 and 2006 cohort to participate in focus group interviews and the data gathered during the interviews were analysed and interpreted using an Interpretivist lens. The themes that emerged from the study confirmed that students found the programmes to be beneficial but that they became aware of most of the academic benefits only once they joined the mainstream students in their second year of study. This study revealed the alternate access students were of the opinion that there are a number of academic benefits that they had derived from the alternate access programmes. They were in agreement that these benefits had helped to prepare them for mainstream study and they concluded that the benefits had contributed to their academic success in their mainstream studies. The findings of this study suggest that alternate access programmes have an important role to play in providing students with access, support and success in mainstream studies which in turn leads to the increased throughput of students and higher education institutions retaining subsidy.

M.Ed. / The aim of this study is to determine the role of pre-existing levels of digital literacy on the academic performance of students who are enrolled for the National Diploma Information Technology at the University of Johannesburg. The majority of students entering the University of Johannesburg are black and come from schools and communities which do not enjoy the same technologically rich environments as that of their counterparts, yet on entering their first year of studies, they are expected by lecturers to perform at the same level as those from advantaged backgrounds. Students enrolled in 2008 were targeted, using a mixed methods study that incorporated both quantitative and qualitative data to illuminate the factors related to digital literacy that may have influenced the students’ likelihood to succeed in the Information Technology modules. The data that were collected were brought in relation to the students final marks for the subject Information Systems 1 Module A (Computer Concepts). It emerged that the computer literate students performed significantly better during the first semester compared to the computer illiterate students. The computer illiterate students indicated that the lack of computer experience influenced their ability to pass computer related subjects; however, it was not the only limiting factor as socioeconomic factors also played a role. Other results showed that students battled to keep up with the fast pace with which subjects were lectured. The students’ level of the English language is a predictor of their success in the Diploma and more than 70% of students were unable to use the Internet.

The purpose of the research was to investigate academic writing challenges faced by first year B.Ed. students at the University of the Witwatersrand in order to assist tutors support these students. One of the main findings is first year B.Ed. students find it challenging to move from school literacies to academic literacy, and thus they need to be ‘initiated’ into academic literacy. The findings indicate that students need assistance with reading the articles on which essays are based, with understanding what essay questions require them to do, with quoting and referencing from sources and with the ‘mechanics’ of writing. A further finding is that some students face academic writing challenges because they resist being initiated into academic conventions for several reasons. The study concludes with some recommendations to course designers and tutors including the recommendations.

Thesis advisor: Ana Martínez-Alemán / The past thirty years have seen an unprecedented expansion of access to higher education among traditionally disadvantaged groups. Along with increased opportunity, this access brings new challenges, including student preparation and social and academic integration of college campuses (Pascarella, Pierson, Wolniak, & Terenzini, 2004). One area of academic integration that requires further examination is how first-generation students acquire the written academic language they will need to succeed in college courses. Because language is closely tied to identity, acquiring academic language can have personal and social effects (White & Lowenthal, 2011). In addition to the struggles that these students have in acquiring academic language, they also bring alternate forms of cultural capital (Yosso, 2005) that are not captured in traditional assessment. This qualitative study considered the academic language acquisition of ten first-generation college students who completed a transitional bridge program. Writing samples from four different time points were assessed with an operationalized definition of academic language to capture how these skills were acquired during the first year. The samples were then analyzed using Critical Discourse Analysis to identify alternate forms of cultural capital. Finally, the same ten students were interviewed about their experiences of academic language during their first year of college. The results of this study show that students benefitted from direct instruction of academic conventions and other assumed expectations of academic discourse, and they were most successful with assignments that drew on lived experience. The writing samples also revealed critical forms of alternate cultural capital that must be recognized and leveraged in academic settings. Finally, students saw the process of academic language acquisition as voluntary, conscious, and ultimately worthwhile. Understanding the challenges these students face, as well as their unique strengths, is vital to their full inclusion within the university and for meaningful diversity in higher education. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

Tse, Ming Fun. / Thesis submitted in: December 2001. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 142-146). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Problem Definition --- p.2 / Chapter 1.2 --- Contributions --- p.3 / Chapter 1.3 --- Thesis Outline --- p.4 / Chapter 2 --- Literature Review --- p.6 / Chapter 2.1 --- Representing Inexact Knowledge --- p.7 / Chapter 2.1.1 --- Nature of Inexact Knowledge --- p.7 / Chapter 2.1.2 --- Probability Based Reasoning --- p.8 / Chapter 2.1.3 --- Certainty Factor Algebra --- p.11 / Chapter 2.1.4 --- Fuzzy Logic --- p.13 / Chapter 2.2 --- Machine Learning Paradigms --- p.13 / Chapter 2.2.1 --- Classifications --- p.14 / Chapter 2.2.2 --- Neural Networks and Gradient Descent --- p.15 / Chapter 2.3 --- Related Learning Systems --- p.21 / Chapter 2.3.1 --- Relational Concept Learning --- p.21 / Chapter 2.3.2 --- Learning of Fuzzy Concepts --- p.24 / Chapter 2.4 --- Fuzzy Logic --- p.26 / Chapter 2.4.1 --- Fuzzy Set --- p.27 / Chapter 2.4.2 --- Basic Notations in Fuzzy Logic --- p.29 / Chapter 2.4.3 --- Basic Operations on Fuzzy Sets --- p.29 / Chapter 2.4.4 --- "Fuzzy Relations, Projection and Cylindrical Extension" --- p.31 / Chapter 2.4.5 --- Fuzzy First Order Logic and Fuzzy Prolog --- p.34 / Chapter 3 --- Knowledge Representation and Learning Algorithm --- p.43 / Chapter 3.1 --- Knowledge Representation --- p.44 / Chapter 3.1.1 --- Fuzzy First-order Logic ´ؤ A Powerful Language --- p.44 / Chapter 3.1.2 --- Literal Forms --- p.48 / Chapter 3.1.3 --- Continuous Variables --- p.50 / Chapter 3.2 --- System Architecture --- p.61 / Chapter 3.2.1 --- Data Reading --- p.61 / Chapter 3.2.2 --- Preprocessing and Postprocessing --- p.67 / Chapter 4 --- Global Evaluation of Literals --- p.71 / Chapter 4.1 --- Existing Closeness Measures between Fuzzy Sets --- p.72 / Chapter 4.2 --- The Error Function and the Normalized Error Functions --- p.75 / Chapter 4.2.1 --- The Error Function --- p.75 / Chapter 4.2.2 --- The Normalized Error Functions --- p.76 / Chapter 4.3 --- The Nodal Characteristics and the Error Peaks --- p.79 / Chapter 4.3.1 --- The Nodal Characteristics --- p.79 / Chapter 4.3.2 --- The Zero Error Line and the Error Peaks --- p.80 / Chapter 4.4 --- Quantifying the Nodal Characteristics --- p.85 / Chapter 4.4.1 --- Information Theory --- p.86 / Chapter 4.4.2 --- Applying the Information Theory --- p.88 / Chapter 4.4.3 --- Upper and Lower Bounds of CE --- p.89 / Chapter 4.4.4 --- The Whole Heuristics of FF99 --- p.93 / Chapter 4.5 --- An Example --- p.94 / Chapter 5 --- Partial Evaluation of Literals --- p.99 / Chapter 5.1 --- Importance of Covering in Inductive Learning --- p.100 / Chapter 5.1.1 --- The Divide-and-conquer Method --- p.100 / Chapter 5.1.2 --- The Covering Method --- p.101 / Chapter 5.1.3 --- Effective Pruning in Both Methods --- p.102 / Chapter 5.2 --- Fuzzification of FOIL --- p.104 / Chapter 5.2.1 --- Analysis of FOIL --- p.104 / Chapter 5.2.2 --- Requirements on System Fuzzification --- p.107 / Chapter 5.2.3 --- Possible Ways in Fuzzifing FOIL --- p.109 / Chapter 5.3 --- The α Covering Method --- p.111 / Chapter 5.3.1 --- Construction of Partitions by α-cut --- p.112 / Chapter 5.3.2 --- Adaptive-α Covering --- p.112 / Chapter 5.4 --- The Probabistic Covering Method --- p.114 / Chapter 6 --- Results and Discussions --- p.119 / Chapter 6.1 --- Experimental Results --- p.120 / Chapter 6.1.1 --- Iris Plant Database --- p.120 / Chapter 6.1.2 --- Kinship Relational Domain --- p.122 / Chapter 6.1.3 --- The Fuzzy Relation Domain --- p.129 / Chapter 6.1.4 --- Age Group Domain --- p.134 / Chapter 6.1.5 --- The NBA Domain --- p.135 / Chapter 6.2 --- Future Development Directions --- p.137 / Chapter 6.2.1 --- Speed Improvement --- p.137 / Chapter 6.2.2 --- Accuracy Improvement --- p.138 / Chapter 6.2.3 --- Others --- p.138 / Chapter 7 --- Conclusion --- p.140 / Bibliography --- p.142 / Chapter A --- C4.5 to FOIL File Format Conversion --- p.147 / Chapter B --- FF99 example --- p.150

Preeclampsia (PE) is a major cause of perinatal and maternal morbidity and mortality. In the United Kingdom, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) has issued guidelines on routine antenatal care recommending that at the booking visit a woman’s level of risk for PE should be determined and the subsequent intensity of antenatal care should be based on this risk assessment. This method relies on a risk scoring system derived from maternal characteristics and medical history; the performance of screening by this method is poor with detection of less than 50% of cases of preterm-PE and term-PE. The objective of this thesis is to develop a method for the estimation of the patient-specific risk for PE by combining the a priori risk based on maternal characteristics and medical history with the results of biophysical and biochemical markers obtained at 11-13 weeks’ gestation. Such early identification of high-risk pregnancies could lead to the use of pharmacological interventions, such as low-dose aspirin, which could prevent the development of the disease. The data for the thesis were derived from two types of studies: First, prospective screening in 65,771 singleton pregnancies, which provided data for maternal factors and serum pregnancy associated plasma protein-A (PAPP-A). In an unselected sequential process we also measured uterine artery pulsatility index (PI) in 45,885 of these pregnancies, mean arterial pressure (MAP) in 35,215 cases and placental growth factor (PLGF) in 14,252 cases. Second, cases-control studies for evaluating the ten most promising biochemical markers identified from search of the literature; for these studies we used stored serum or plasma samples obtained during screening and measured PLGF, Activin-A, Inhibin-A, placental protein-13 (PP13), P-selectin, Pentraxin-3 (PTX-3), soluble Endoglin (sEng), Plasminogen activator inhibitor-2 (PAI-2), Angiopoietin-2 (Ang-2) and soluble fms-like tyrosine kinase-1 (s-Flt-1). A competing risk model was developed which is based on Bayes theorem and combines the prior risk from maternal factors with the distribution of biomarkers to derive patient-specific risk for PE at different stages in pregnancy. The prior risk was derived by multiple regression analysis of maternal factors in the screening study. The distribution of biophysical and biochemical markers was derived from both the screening study and the case-control studies. The prior risk increased with advancing maternal age, increasing weight, was higher in women of Afro-Caribbean and South-Asian racial origin, those with a previous pregnancy with PE, conception by in vitro fertilization and medical history of chronic hypertension, type 1 diabetes mellitus and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) or antiphospholipid syndrome (APS). The estimated detection rate (DR) of PE requiring delivery at < 34, < 37 weeks’ gestation and all PE, at false positive rate (FPR) of 10%, in screening by maternal factors were 51, 43 and 40%, respectively. The addition of biochemical markers to maternal factors, including maternal serum PLGF and PAPPA, improved the performance of screening with respective DRs of 74, 56 and 41%. Similarly, addition of biophysical markers to maternal factors, including uterine artery PI and MAP, improved the performance of screening with respective DRs of 90, 72 and 57%. The combination of maternal factors with all the above biophysical and biochemical markers improved the respective DRs to 96, 77 and 54%. The findings of these studies demonstrate that a combination of maternal factors, biophysical and biochemical markers can effectively identify women at high-risk of developing PE.

The question how much internationalization is beneficial for emerging-market small and medium enterprises (EM SMEs) remains challenging to answer for both international business (IB) scholars and managers. We explore export strategies of first time exporters and focus on the scope of EM SMEs internationalization activities. We tackle the question whether more focused or more diversified internationalization through exporting is beneficial for EM SMEs. We examine the impact of foreign market (geographic) diversification, product diversification and export intensity on firm performance of an entire population of EM SMEs from an emerging east European market. In addition, we test whether a complex export strategy-an export strategy of simultaneous product- and geographic export diversification-is beneficial for EM SMEs. We use a panel population data of first time Slovenian exporters in the period 1994-2012. We find that diversified internationalization, both in terms of product and foreign market diversity, significantly improves productivity and sales performance for EM SMEs. Furthermore, EM SMEs with complex export strategies enjoy significantly improved productivity and sales performance. / Series: Working Papers / Institute for International Business