This thesis is a manifestation of efforts to integrate FM into the development process through a greater involvement of Facilities Managers in the property development industry. It also presents an original contribution to knowledge in a form of a validated best practice, which is identified as the facilities management-development process (FM-DP) integration framework. The framework potentially serves as a guide to Facilities Managers and other professionals in various organisations in the property development industry to optimise the value of Facilities Management (FM) in the development project and to achieve sustainable development. The study was conducted as an exploratory sequential mixed methods design in order to identify the issues that limit Facilities Managers from being involved in the property development industry, when they are known to be an appropriate professional to optimise the value of FM in the development process. Qualitative approach has been used as a core component of this research in order to obtain confirmation of the critical issues obtained from the literature review. To develop the framework, a survey questionnaire was used followed by relevant statistical procedure and analysis. To ensure validation, a member-checking approach was implemented through focus group interview. The validated framework reveals that there are 52 best practices to be considered by Facilities Managers or other professionals in the property development industry to optimise the role of FM in the development process for sustainable development. In addition, the framework discovers that best practices are required in all stages of the development process. Nevertheless, Stage 4: Technical Design is crucial, as it requires most of the best practices that drive the integration of FM into the development process. The framework demonstrates a ‘killing two birds with one stone’ strategy: (i) exploiting the framework is expected to increase the profile of FM among other professionals, (ii) encouraging a greater involvement of Facilities Managers in the property development industry, which (iii) leads the project to a sustainable development agenda.

In the context of continuous innovations in information and communication technology (ICT) and its impact on higher education, this descriptive study explores the state of instructional technology (IT) integration by university lecturers in pre-service secondary school teacher education programs in Zimbabwe. Specifically, the study examines how the lecturers conceptualize IT integration, how they integrate IT into their instruction, the support given by their institutions, and the constraints they face. The qualitative methodology used is basic or generic in nature (Merriam, 1998). Twenty-one lecturers in the colleges of education at 3 universities participated. The 3 data collection methods used are questionnaires, interviews and analysis of documents. Analysis of data was inductive and Miles and Huberman’s (1994) interactive data analysis model was employed. Findings show that the conceptualization of IT and its integration by the majority of the lecturers was largely as hardware in nature, with focus put on viewing technological tools as audiovisual aids. Lecturers with qualifications in educational technology (ET) viewed IT and its integration from what Schiffman (1995) calls a narrow systems view. Most of the lecturers used technological tools for illustrating key points in their lecture delivery and lecturers who used computers used these for lecture preparation. Lecturers’ computer proficiency and competencies were at the basic level in Internet usage, with little confidence shown in basic productivity software skills and in IT integration tasks and processes. The lecturers’ integration of IT was at the Entry and Adoption stages (Dwyer, Ringstaff and Sandholtz, 1991). Institutional support was characterized by poor availability and access to appropriate technological tools by both lecturers and students, and in the context of a hyper-inflationary operating environment, constraints ranged from lack of institutional funding, to the absence of an IT integration policy framework, and lack of appropriate initial and continuous staff development. This study is part of the genesis of instructional technology research in the Zimbabwean context. It is hoped that insights gleaned will influence policy, practice and future research. From a global perspective, this study will add to the limited knowledge and literature on instructional technology integration in “developing” and/or low-income countries like Zimbabwe.

This project details the development of a new framework known as the Coordinated Knowledge Management method to enable complete task integration of all low and midlevel tasks for process industries. The framework overcomes past problems of task integration, which made it impossible to have a fully integrated system and with integration being limited to data acquisition, regulatory control and occasionally supervisory control. The main component of the project includes the use of hierarchically structured timed place Petri nets, which have not previously been used for integrating tasks in intelligent process operations management. Tasks which have been integrated include all low-level tasks such as data acquisition, regulatory control and data reconciliation, and all mid-level tasks including supervisory control and most significantly the integration of process monitoring fault detection and diagnosis. The Coordinated Knowledge Management method makes use of hierarchical timed place Petri nets to (i) coordinate tasks, (ii) monitor the system, (iii) activate tasks, (iv) send requests for data updates and (iv) receive notice when tasks are complete. Visualization of the state of the system is achieved through the moving tokens in the Petri net. The integration Petri nets are generic enough to be applied to any plant for integration using existing modules thus allowing the integration of different tasks, which use different problem solving methodologies. Integrating tasks into an intelligent architecture has been difficult to achieve in the past since the developed framework must be able to take into account information flow and timing in a continuously changing environment. In this thesis Petri nets have been applied to continuous process operations rather than to batch processes as in the past. In a continuous process, raw materials are fed and products are delivered continuously at known flow-rates and the plant is generally operated at steady state (Gu and Bahri, 2002). However, even in a continuous process, data is received from the distributed control system (DCS) at discrete time intervals. By transforming this data into process events, a Petri net can be used for overseeing process operations. The use of hierarchical Petri nets as the coordination mechanism introduces inherent hierarchy without the rigidity of previous methods. Petri nets are used to model the conditions and events occurring within the system and modules. This enables the development of a self-monitoring system, which takes into account information flow and timing in a continuously changing environment. Another major obstacle to integration of tasks in the past has been the presence of faults in the process. The project included the integration of fault detection and diagnosis a component not integrated into current systems but which is necessary to prevent abnormal plant operation. A novel two-step supervisory fault detection and diagnosis framework was developed and tested for the detection and diagnosis of faults in large-scale systems, using condition-event nets for fault detection and Radial Basis Function neural networks for fault diagnosis. This fault detection and diagnosis methodology detects and diagnoses faults in the early stages of fault occurrence, before fault symptoms propagate throughout the plant. The Coordinated Knowledge Management method and the newly developed fault diagnosis module were developed in G21 and applied and tested on the Separation and Heating sections of the Pilot plant for the Bayer process at the School of Engineering Science, Murdoch University. Testing indicated that the use of an intelligent system comprising of Petri nets for integration of tasks results in improved plant performance and makes the plant easier to monitor increasing profits. The fault detection and diagnosis module was found to be useful in detecting faults very early on and diagnosing the exact location of faults, which would otherwise prove to be difficult to detect. This would also increase plant safety, reduce wastage and improve environmental considerations of the plant. References Gensym Corporation (1999). G2 Reference Manual (Version 5.0), Cambridge, MA. Gu, T. and P. Bahri (2002). A Survey of Petri Net Applications in Batch Processes, Computers in Industry, 47 (1), p. 99 – 111.

In the last years, the number of freely available Linked and Open Data datasets has multiplied into tens of thousands. The numbers of applications taking advantage of it, however, have not. Thus, large portions of potentially valuable data remain unexploited and are inaccessible for lay users. Therefore the upfront investment in releasing data in the first place is hard to justify. The lack of applications needs to be addressed in order not to undermine efforts put into Linked and Open Data. In existing research, strong indicators can be found that the dearth of applications is due to a lack of pragmatic, working architectures supporting these applications and guiding developers. In this thesis, a new architecture for the integration and application of Linked and Open Data is presented. Fundamental design decisions are backed up by two studies: firstly, based on real-world Linked and Open Data samples, characteristic properties are identified. A key finding is the fact that large amounts of structured data display tabular structures, do not use clear licensing and involve multiple different file formats. Secondly, following on from that study, a comparison of storage choices in relevant query scenarios is made. It includes the de-facto standard storage choice in this domain, Triples Stores, as well as relational and NoSQL approaches. Results show significant performance deficiencies of some technologies in certain scenarios. Consequently, when integrating Linked and Open Data in scenarios with application-specific entities, the first choice of storage is relational databases. Combining these findings and related best practices of existing research, a prototype framework is implemented using Java 8 and Hibernate. As a proof-of-concept it is employed in an existing Linked and Open Data integration project. Thereby, it is shown that a best practice architectural component is introduced successfully, while development effort to implement specific program code can be simplified. Thus, the present work provides an important foundation for the development of semantic applications based on Linked and Open Data and potentially leads to a broader adoption of such applications.

Magister Educationis (Adult Learning and Global Change) - MEd(AL) / This research paper is based on an investigation of the factors that enabled final year students to persist in a four-year degree programme (Foundation Programme). This study is important given that students who generally enrol for this programme terminate their studies before completion. This is a qualitative study in which interviewing was employed to collect the data. The conceptual framework is underpinned by Tinto’s model of student persistence with specific focus on student involvement through peer group interaction in the formal structure of the classroom. It also hones in on informal engagement which goes beyond the nature of the classroom. It further explores the relevance of academic integration, which encompasses a student’s ability to become well-grounded intellectually in the sphere of the institution in order to respond in a critical and systematic way to its educational demands. In addition, it further interrogates how peer group interaction and academic integration impact students’ ability to persist with their studies. Thus, the findings confirm that relationships exist between peer group interaction, academic integration, and persistence.

The global business environment has changed dramatically in recent years, as competition in complex knowledge-based economies has increased. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems have been viewed as a way to manage increased business complexity, leading to the rapid adoption and implementation of such systems, as ERP can support enterprises to improve their competitiveness. Knowledge management (KM) is crucial for ERP systems implementation, however a highly demanding task. Therefore, the primary concern of this research is to examine the effectiveness of knowledge management activities that would contribute to achieve ERP implementation success. This study adopted mixed methods approach by combining semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire to collect empirical data from ERP professionals in both manufacturing and service sector organisations. In the qualitative phase, it develops the “framework of integrative knowledge” based on empirical evidence, that can improve KM competence for ERP implementation success. Data analysis has been undertaken using a combination of thematic analysis and comparative analysis with respect to 14 ERP implementations in the UK. The framework integrates multiple perspectives in terms of knowledge components to enhance KM competence, including knowledge types, knowledge layers, KM lifecycle and knowledge determinants. It discovered 19 knowledge determinants to drive knowledge management activities during ERP projects, which is another vital contribution to the existing knowledge. Furthermore, the study develops the “knowledge network model” for ERP implementations in order to facilitate the knowledge flows between various stakeholders involved in ERP implementations, which can help to understand the interactions between the knowledge components. Moreover, sub-knowledge types (knowledge elements) under each knowledge type were discovered through empirical evidence. The quantitative phase was adopted to extend the findings of the qualitative phase. The knowledge types and knowledge elements were prioritised using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method through an online AHP based questionnaire with 77 responses from ERP professionals involved in UK ERP implementations. Furthermore, knowledge prioritisation demonstrates how effectively the framework of integrative knowledge can be used during ERP implementations with the help of prioritised knowledge. In total 4 knowledge types and 21 knowledge elements were ranked based on their contribution to achieve ERP success; four variables of information quality, systems quality, individual impact and organisational impact were used to measure ERP success. This study has number of theoretical contributions including framework of integrative knowledge, knowledge network model for ERP implementations and ERP knowledge prioritisation. Moreover, the framework of integrative knowledge can provide ERP practitioners with useful guidance on what the key knowledge determinants are and how the relationships between knowledge components should be best managed to achieve ERP implementation success in business reality.