Master of Landscape Architecture / Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Howard D. Hahn / Landscape architecture’s scope of knowledge and professional practice is continuously broadening. Formalized certification and certification standards do not exist to date; as a result, limiting the depth of knowledge in landscape architects. Beyond competency in core skills like natural systems, site planning and design, and visualization graphics, the general knowledge base of most landscape architects spans a variety of disciplines. This ability to “see the bigger picture” offers certain strengths when “placemaking”, interacting with allied professionals, and leading project teams; yet there are limited opportunities for landscape architects to formally develop a depth of expertise. An extensive literature search identified forty-one knowledge domains that exist in landscape architecture. This report identifies fourteen domains that landscape architects need in current and future work supported with identified core skills and knowledge in the profession. This report seeks to update the Council of Landscape Architecture Registration Board’s (CLARB) identification of knowledge domains by layering skills and knowledge found in sixty current job postings, literature search, and structured interviews. In addition, this report identifies future trends in the profession and marketplace and future dilemmas landscape architects must address in the next twenty years. Content analysis of certification programs offered to landscape architecture students at accredited schools was conducted. A certification precedent study was conducted to understand the range of certification standards that exist in order to propose a standardized certification program. Thirteen themes are identified in the structured interviews that are incorporated into themes of this report. Overall, professionals feel that landscape architecture’s strength as a generalist profession makes the profession unique from its allied professions. However, some professionals acknowledge that as a landscape architect progresses in his or her career, they tend toward areas of specialization. This report suggests that certifications be offered to graduate students and professionals, explains specialization in the profession, and identifies areas landscape architects need to increase their skills and knowledge in, to stay relevant.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-12T15:53:28Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 arquivo5147_1.pdf: 1704608 bytes, checksum: 9349cd2e19d14f618f798e42efeaab3f (MD5) license.txt: 1748 bytes, checksum: 8a4605be74aa9ea9d79846c1fba20a33 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2004 / In this work we address the conceptualisation of a Simulation Environment for the development of multi-physic simulators based on the Finite Element Method (FEM). Simulators are economical means of understanding and evaluating the performance of abstract and real-world systems. Our simulation perspective is the class of simulations for phenomena represented by a set of functions distributed in space and possibly in time, whose behaviour is based on the FEM. The importance of these simulators has to do with the effectiveness of the FEM, a general-purpose numerical method, which can easily be developed to analyse and solve various kinds of problems frequently found in human daily life, and in its power to provide accuracy and reliability in the solution of partial differential equations. FEM Simulations consider systems of possibly millions of algebraic equations, numerical integrations, mesh generations, matrix and vector manipulations, solutions of linear and non-linear systems, and so on. These features undoubtly justify the development of a specific computational environment. This work emphasizes the adaptation of software engineering practices and methodologies for organizing and reusing the specific domain of simulators formulated using the FEM. The work defines an environment and its architecture for the development of simulators. It also proposes some specific patterns for solving relevant problems of our domain of knowledge, and describes their application through a case study.

The main purpose of this study was to determine preservice science teachers&rsquo / (PSTs) epistemological beliefs regarding the nature of knowledge and learning in the domain of environment through comparing with the domains of biology, physics, chemistry, and mathematics. A total of 12 PSTs voluntarily participated in the study. The sample of this study was consisted of senior elementary PSTs who registered for an elective course titled &ldquo / Laboratory Applications in Science and Environmental Education&rdquo / in the fall semester of 2008-2009 at a public university, in Ankara. The major data of this study was collected by using a semi-structured interview protocol, developed by Schommer-Aikins (2008). The data of this study were analyzed through descriptive statistics and Miles and Huberman approach (1994). The data analyses of this study were presented along with five dimensions of epistemological beliefs. The analysis of omniscient authority indicated that the PSTs less trust in environmental experts&rsquo / opinions, give more importance to informal education in the acquisition of environmental knowledge, and believe that environmental knowledge is justified more on the basis of direct observation. The analysis of stability of knowledge revealed that the PSTs conceived of environmental knowledge as more uncertain. The analysis of structure of knowledge pointed out that the PSTs consider environmental knowledge as more complex. The analysis of control of learning revealed that the PSTs believe that the large percentage of ability to learn can be acquired after the birth more in environment. The analysis of speed of learning indicated that the PSTs believe that much of learning takes less time in the domain of environment. This study provided evidence that epistemological beliefs are multidimensional and domain-specific. Moreover, this study highlighted that the nature of environmental knowledge and learning are also an important issue to be addressed in environmental education.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD ( Language Education) / Ordinarily, Teacher Development at the level of Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.) at Great Zimbabwe University (GZU) comes in two major phases spread over four years - the theoretical and the practical based phases. The theoretical phase comes in the form of courses based on pedagogical content and professional knowledge in the initial years at the university while the practical based phase comes in the form of school-based Teaching Practice (TP) for real and direct teaching experiences. The initial theoretical phase is often based on the liberal arts-like education to develop the whole teacher for adaptable life-long service. This is translated by a number of subject that can vary according the dictates of the focus of a particular national curriculum. TP on the other hand, provides student-teachers the opportunity to apply not only the knowledge acquired in the initial phase but also the schoolbased curriculum they are immersed in plus other contextual experiences they might have. If well-structured and blended, the two phases may ensure a smooth transition from a novice student teacher to an expert professional teacher for long-life practice.

Representações visuais têm sido adotadas na exploração de conjuntos de documentos, auxiliando a extração de conhecimento sem que seja necessária a análise individual de milhares de textos. Mapas de documentos, em particular, apresentam documentos individualmente representados espalhados em um espaço visual, refletindo suas relações de similaridade ou conexões. A construção destes mapas de documentos inclui, entre outras tarefas, o posicionamento dos textos e a identificação automática de áreas temáticas. Um desafio é a visualização de conjuntos dinâmicos de documentos. Na visualização de informação, é comum que alterações no conjunto de dados tenham um forte impacto na organização do espaço visual, dificultando a manutenção, por parte do usuário, de um mapa mental que o auxilie na interpretação dos dados apresentados e no acompanhamento das mudanças sofridas pelo conjunto de dados. Esta tese introduz um algoritmo para a construção dinâmica de mapas de documentos, capaz de manter uma disposição coerente à medida que elementos são adicionados ou removidos. O processo, inerentemente incremental e de baixa complexidade, utiliza um espaço bidimensional dividido em células, análogo a um tabuleiro de xadrez. Resultados consistentes foram alcançados em comparação com técnicas não incrementais de projeção de dados multidimensionais, tendo sido a técnica aplicada também em outros domínios, além de conjuntos de documentos. A visualização resultante não está sujeita a problemas de oclusão. A identificação de áreas temáticas é alcançada com técnicas de extração de regras de associação representativas para a identificação automática de tópicos. A combinação da extração de tópicos com a projeção incremental de dados em um processo integrado de mineração visual de textos compõe um espaço visual em que tópicos e áreas de interesse são destacados e atualizados à medida que o conjunto de dados é modificado / Visual representations are often adopted to explore document collections, assisting in knowledge extraction, and avoiding the thorough analysis of thousands of documents. Document maps present individual documents in visual spaces in such a way that their placement reflects similarity relations or connections between them. Building these maps requires, among other tasks, placing each document and identifying interesting areas or subsets. A current challenge is to visualize dynamic data sets. In Information Visualization, adding and removing data elements can strongly impact the underlying visual space. That can prevent a user from preserving a mental map that could assist her/him on understanding the content of a growing collection of documents or tracking changes on the underlying data set. This thesis presents a novel algorithm to create dynamic document maps, capable of maintaining a coherent disposition of elements, even for completely renewed sets. The process is inherently incremental, has low complexity and places elements on a 2D grid, analogous to a chess board. Consistent results were obtained as compared to (non-incremental) multidimensional scaling solutions, even when applied to visualizing domains other than document collections. Moreover, the corresponding visualization is not susceptible to occlusion. To assist users in indentifying interesting subsets, a topic extraction technique based on association rule mining was also developed. Together, they create a visual space where topics and interesting subsets are highlighted and constantly updated as the data set changes

M. Tech. (Information Technology, Department of Information and Communications Technology, Faculty of Applied an Computer Sciences), Vaal University of Technolog / One of the main research topics in Semantic Web is the semantic extraction of knowledge stored in relational databases through ontologies. This is because ontologies are core components of the Semantic Web. Therefore, several tools, algorithms and frameworks are being developed to enable the automatic conversion of relational databases into ontologies. Ontologies produced with these tools, algorithms and frameworks needs to be valid and competent for them to be useful in Semantic Web applications within the target knowledge domains. However, the main challenges are that many existing automatic ontology construction tools, algorithms, and frameworks fail to address the issue of ontology verification and ontology competency evaluation. This study investigates possible solutions to these challenges. The study began with a literature review in the semantic web field. The review let to the conceptualisation of a framework for semantic knowledge extraction to deal with the abovementioned challenges. The proposed framework had to be evaluated in a real life knowledge domain. Therefore, a knowledge domain was chosen as a case study. The data was collected and the business rules of the domain analysed to develop a relational data model. The data model was further implemented into a test relational database using Oracle RDBMS. Thereafter, Protégé plugins were applied to automatically construct ontologies from the relational database. The resulting ontologies are further validated to match their structures against existing conceptual database-to-ontology mapping principles. The matching results show the performance and accuracy of Protégé plugins in automatically converting relational databases into ontologies. Finally, the study evaluated the resulting ontologies against the requirements of the knowledge domain. The requirements of the domain are modelled with competency questions (CQs) and mapped to the ontology using SPARQL queries design, execution and analysis against users’ views of CQs answers. Experiments show that, although users have different views of the answers to CQs, the execution of the SPARQL translations of CQs against the ontology does produce outputs instances that satisfy users’ expectations. This indicates that Protégé plugins generated ontology from relational database embodies domain and semantic features to be useful in Semantic Web applications.

Representações visuais têm sido adotadas na exploração de conjuntos de documentos, auxiliando a extração de conhecimento sem que seja necessária a análise individual de milhares de textos. Mapas de documentos, em particular, apresentam documentos individualmente representados espalhados em um espaço visual, refletindo suas relações de similaridade ou conexões. A construção destes mapas de documentos inclui, entre outras tarefas, o posicionamento dos textos e a identificação automática de áreas temáticas. Um desafio é a visualização de conjuntos dinâmicos de documentos. Na visualização de informação, é comum que alterações no conjunto de dados tenham um forte impacto na organização do espaço visual, dificultando a manutenção, por parte do usuário, de um mapa mental que o auxilie na interpretação dos dados apresentados e no acompanhamento das mudanças sofridas pelo conjunto de dados. Esta tese introduz um algoritmo para a construção dinâmica de mapas de documentos, capaz de manter uma disposição coerente à medida que elementos são adicionados ou removidos. O processo, inerentemente incremental e de baixa complexidade, utiliza um espaço bidimensional dividido em células, análogo a um tabuleiro de xadrez. Resultados consistentes foram alcançados em comparação com técnicas não incrementais de projeção de dados multidimensionais, tendo sido a técnica aplicada também em outros domínios, além de conjuntos de documentos. A visualização resultante não está sujeita a problemas de oclusão. A identificação de áreas temáticas é alcançada com técnicas de extração de regras de associação representativas para a identificação automática de tópicos. A combinação da extração de tópicos com a projeção incremental de dados em um processo integrado de mineração visual de textos compõe um espaço visual em que tópicos e áreas de interesse são destacados e atualizados à medida que o conjunto de dados é modificado / Visual representations are often adopted to explore document collections, assisting in knowledge extraction, and avoiding the thorough analysis of thousands of documents. Document maps present individual documents in visual spaces in such a way that their placement reflects similarity relations or connections between them. Building these maps requires, among other tasks, placing each document and identifying interesting areas or subsets. A current challenge is to visualize dynamic data sets. In Information Visualization, adding and removing data elements can strongly impact the underlying visual space. That can prevent a user from preserving a mental map that could assist her/him on understanding the content of a growing collection of documents or tracking changes on the underlying data set. This thesis presents a novel algorithm to create dynamic document maps, capable of maintaining a coherent disposition of elements, even for completely renewed sets. The process is inherently incremental, has low complexity and places elements on a 2D grid, analogous to a chess board. Consistent results were obtained as compared to (non-incremental) multidimensional scaling solutions, even when applied to visualizing domains other than document collections. Moreover, the corresponding visualization is not susceptible to occlusion. To assist users in indentifying interesting subsets, a topic extraction technique based on association rule mining was also developed. Together, they create a visual space where topics and interesting subsets are highlighted and constantly updated as the data set changes

Research has established when transferring knowledge, a gap occurs between the sender and receiver due to different expertise. Research has, however, not enlightened how an organization consisting of multiple development departments ensures that individuals with different expertise have the prerequisites needed to transfer knowledge across knowledge domains. The thesis explores possibilities in knowledge transfer processes, specifically among research and development (R&D) departments where the knowledge domain differs. Furthermore, exploring how the two perspectives of spreading and absorbing knowledge can answer how departments can ensure that the knowledge generated can successfully be transferred and interpreted by the receiver. Thus, the receiver understands the critical information and how it can be applied in a specific department. The methodology used was a qualitative case study as the study has conducted together with Husqvarna Group. The data collected was established through 14 interviews with Husqvarna, which have been analyzed in relation to a theoretical framework based on knowledge transfer literature. The focus has been on the organization's research and development departments, where much knowledge is being exchanged.  This study enlightens existing shortcomings within knowledge transfer processes and situations. However, these are general and common for organizations according to theory. The study suggests that individuals and departments more actively build and nurture relations to successfully bridge the gaps that exist. Furthermore, through management, the organization needs to encourage individuals’ motivation and incentives to receive and search for new knowledge. The organization could also consider balancing the existing communication channels, leading to less seclusion and a more inclusive organization. Finally, the entire organization would benefit from considering knowledge transfer as a coherent process, not several isolated processes.

Submitted by Priscilla Araujo (priscilla@ibict.br) on 2017-06-21T19:59:46Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Tese_Marianna Zattar - versão final pós defesa.pdf: 2128379 bytes, checksum: 2e36d0da31c01d094a062e3bf77497ec (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-06-21T19:59:46Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Tese_Marianna Zattar - versão final pós defesa.pdf: 2128379 bytes, checksum: 2e36d0da31c01d094a062e3bf77497ec (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-03-23 / Estuda o processo de produção do conhecimento e as práticas informacionais em grupos de pesquisa no domínio do conhecimento e campo científico da Governança da água, por meio das configurações das redes dos pesquisadores. Parte da compreensão da Governança da água como domínio complexo, de caráter teórico-prático inter e transdisciplinar, ao requerer a participação integrada de diversas disciplinas na reflexão das questões atinentes à gestão das águas, tanto quanto de outros atores do próprio campo científico e da sociedade. Utiliza como referencial teórico-conceitual conceitos de campo (Pierre Bourdieu) e de domínio do conhecimento (Birger Hjørland e Hanne Albrechtsen). Emprega os conceitos de rede social e de prática informacional como elementos operacionais na análise empreendida no campo empírico da pesquisa. Apresenta a composição do campo empírico por meio da identificação dos critérios de seleção dos grupos de pesquisa, dos pesquisadores e dos artigos científicos. Indica a pesquisa documental e a entrevista roteirizada como os métodos utilizados para coleta de dados. Adota, para análise dos dados, as metodologias qualitativa e de análise de redes sociais. Conclui que as dinâmicas e os processos de produção, mediação e apropriação de conhecimentos no domínio do conhecimento da Governança da água devem extrapolar as fronteiras disciplinares da organização do conhecimento como uma alternativa na abordagem crítica de fenômenos complexos. / This thesis investigates the process of knowledge production and informational practices in research groups in the knowledge domain and the scientific field of Water Governance, through the configurations of the researchers' networks. It stems from the understanding of Water Governance as a complex domain, composed of a theoretical and practical character that is interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity, by requiring the integrated participation of several disciplines in the reflection of issues related to water management, as well as other actors in the scientific field and society. It is theoretically-conceptually framed by the concept of field (Pierre Bourdieu) and knowledge domain (Birger Hjørland and Hanne Albrechtsen). It uses the concepts of social network and informational practice as operational elements in the analysis undertaken in the empirical field of research. It is empirically based on the identification of selection criteria for research groups, researchers and scientific articles. It utilizes documentary research and scripted interview as methods of data collection. It adopts, for data analysis, qualitative methodologies and social networks analysis. It concludes that the dynamics and processes of production, mediation and appropriation of knowledge in the knowledge domain of Water Governance must extrapolate the disciplinary boundaries of knowledge organization as an alternative in the critical approach to complex phenomena.