This research investigates the existing situation regarding libraries and Learning Resource Centres (LRCs) and their infrastructure in Oman, with particular reference to those institutions in the educational system. A range of issues regarding management and organisation, resources and users are explored, as well as the adoption of modem technology in these libraries and LRCs. Two models were developed for the study. The first model was prepared to show the organisational information system, while the second model examined the impact of different types of information-seeking behaviour on the use of information sources. Data have been collected both via questionnaires and interviews. The questionnaires involved the investigation of school library users (teachers and students) in preparatory and secondary schools; and academic libraries and LRC users (faculty and students) at Sultan Qaboos University, Colleges of Education and Technical Industrial Colleges. The interview questions were put to the directors and heads of libraries and LRCs. The survey focused on eleven areas: staff; budget, acquisitions, policies, co-operation, library and LRC use, resources, services, information technology, education and future development.

No description available.

Research in the last decade has focused on the impact of the caregiver role (Cantor, 1983), the nature of caregivers (Brody, 1981, 1983), and the stress and burden associated with caregiver (Zarit, Todd and Zarit, 1986). Health professionals working with caregivers have attempted to focus on interventions to reduce feelings of burden and to increase effective coping. Evaluation of educational interventions to reduce caregiver stress and burden has been a recent research focus. Unfortunately, research has shown that it is altruistic to believe that caregiver stress and burden can be alleviated by educational interventions. Family caregivers are faced with the task of learning about the nature and complexity of dementia and the unusual behaviours which accompany Alzheimer's disease. A resource booklet, written to assist caregivers to learn about the disease, about management strategies and about their own feelings may be more effective than interventions to reduce stress. The evaluation focused on whether the resource booklet would provide information which family caregivers would perceive to be relevant and useful. The evaluation was conducted using a convenience sample of ten caregivers. Two time intervals were used to collect information on caregivers' reactions to the resource booklet; one week following the initial reading of the booklet and 4-6 weeks post-reading. A written questionnaire at time one, and follow-up telephone interviews at time two, were used to measure caregivers' reactions to the booklet. Results indicated that the information in the booklet was useful in assisting caregivers to manage care, and that the caregivers found the booklet easy to read and the format acceptable. / Thesis / Master of Science (Teaching)

Diabetes has become one of the most severe deceases due to an increasing number of diabetes patients globally. A large amount of digital data on diabetes has been collected through various channels. How to utilize these data sets to help doctors to make a decision on diagnosis, treatment and prediction of diabetic patients poses many challenges to the research community. The thesis investigates mathematical models with a focus on neural networks for large scale diabetes data modelling and analysis by utilizing modern computing technologies such as grid computing and cloud computing. These computing technologies provide users with an inexpensive way to have access to extensive computing resources over the Internet for solving data and computationally intensive problems. This thesis evaluates the performance of seven representative machine learning techniques in classification of diabetes data and the results show that neural network produces the best accuracy in classification but incurs high overhead in data training. As a result, the thesis develops MRNN, a parallel neural network model based on the MapReduce programming model which has become an enabling technology in support of data intensive applications in the clouds. By partitioning the diabetic data set into a number of equally sized data blocks, the workload in training is distributed among a number of computing nodes for speedup in data training. MRNN is first evaluated in small scale experimental environments using 12 mappers and subsequently is evaluated in large scale simulated environments using up to 1000 mappers. Both the experimental and simulations results have shown the effectiveness of MRNN in classification, and its high scalability in data training. MapReduce does not have a sophisticated job scheduling scheme for heterogonous computing environments in which the computing nodes may have varied computing capabilities. For this purpose, this thesis develops a load balancing scheme based on genetic algorithms with an aim to balance the training workload among heterogeneous computing nodes. The nodes with more computing capacities will receive more MapReduce jobs for execution. Divisible load theory is employed to guide the evolutionary process of the genetic algorithm with an aim to achieve fast convergence. The proposed load balancing scheme is evaluated in large scale simulated MapReduce environments with varied levels of heterogeneity using different sizes of data sets. All the results show that the genetic algorithm based load balancing scheme significantly reduce the makespan in job execution in comparison with the time consumed without load balancing.

This study is a descriptive analysis of corporate learning resource centers. The study was designed to incorporate historical background and current status, organization and personnel, types and amount of alternate delivery instruction, and selected cost considerations in the establishment and maintenance of a learning resource center. A functional definition was furnished, with a deliberative attempt to encompass related synonyms. Discussion included training types or instructional delivery medium distinctions. A contribution of this study was the development, field testing, and enhancement of a survey instrument, which reflects the steps to be followed by those planning implementation of any learning resource center. Findings of this study indicated that learning resource centers were young and transitioning to increased on-line individualized and self-paced learning. Training and learning will become much less interdependent. Training types will increasingly become nontraditional and technology driven. Courseware will be received and managed remotely. Partnerships and cooperative efforts are mandates for business and higher education. Learner mobility will become normative, not the exception. Internet training will rapidly increase, most quickly among small business. Learning resource centers will continue to become more cost effective. This study proposed the redefinition of both learner and educator roles within a changing learning resource center environment. It was suggested that the learner role must become more active and that the corporate educator role, as a result of technology, will increase in passivity, tending toward that of facilitation. Implications and recommendations were specifically noted for both business and higher education. Specified nomenclature of "learner centers" or clearly "learner centered" has been advocated, reflecting the continuing evolution of the learning resource center. Technology, instructional media, mobility, availability and sharing of resources, less formalization, life-long learning, fiscal issues, Internet access, information and knowledge explosion, and downsizing, all combine to provide the view and demarcation of the new "learner centers."

Learning Resource Centre, or LRC, is an international phenomenon and a response to the changing society that came with the development of information technology. The LRC concept spread internationally during the 1990s and began to influence Swedish collage libraries at the end of the decade. The main purpose of this study is to analyze if and how Swedish college libraries have incorporated the LRC concept. Is there a Swedish LRC model? Is the LRC concept still interesting or was it a trend that is now out of date? Interviews with eleven people from six college libraries aim to show how they define the concept LRC and how it has been integrated in to their organisations. In order to explain how these six collage libraries have related to and developed their own LRC concept an organisational theory with a mythical perspective has been used. This perspective is related to an institutional perspective and is presented by the Norwegian professors Tom Christensen, Per Lægreid, Paul G. Roness and Kjell Arne Røvik in Organisationsteori i offentlig sektor. This study concludes that there is no Swedish model, however there are some undeniably Swedish characteristics. The concept LRC is never or seldom used and the activities connected to LRC have become ordinary activities at college libraries. The substance of the LRC remains and has improved the chances for use of and collaboration within the organisation. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The impact of Internet technology on critical thinking is of growing interest among researchers. However, there still remains much to explore in terms of how critical thinking can be fostered through online environments for higher education. Ten years ago, Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2000) published an article describing the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework which provided an outline of three core elements that were able to describe and measure a collaborative and positive educational experience in an online learning environment, namely teaching presence (design, facilitation, and direct instruction), social presence (the ability of learners to project themselves socially and emotionally), and cognitive presence (the extent to which learners are able to construct and confirm meaning through sustained reflection and discourse). This dissertation extends the body of research surrounding the CoI framework and also the literature on developing critical thinking in online environments by examining and exploring the extent to which teaching and social presence contribute to cognitive presence. The researcher was able to do this by offering 189 learners enrolled in 10 research methods courses and educational research courses an opportunity to use an innovative online resource (Research Design Learning Resource – RDLR) to assist them in learning about educational research and developing research proposals. By exploring how participants used this resource the researcher was able to gain insight into what factors contributed to a successful online learning experience and fostered cognitive presence. Quantitative and qualitative research approaches (mixed methods) were used in this study. The quantitative results indicated that both social and teaching presence had a strong positive relationship with cognitive presence and that learners generally perceived to have a positive learning experience using the RDLR. The qualitative findings helped elaborate the significant quantitative results and were organised into the following themes: making connections, multiple perspectives, resource design, being a self-directed learner, learning strategies, learning preferences, and barriers to cognitive presence. Future directions for critical thinking in online environments are discussed.

The impact of Internet technology on critical thinking is of growing interest among researchers. However, there still remains much to explore in terms of how critical thinking can be fostered through online environments for higher education. Ten years ago, Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2000) published an article describing the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework which provided an outline of three core elements that were able to describe and measure a collaborative and positive educational experience in an online learning environment, namely teaching presence (design, facilitation, and direct instruction), social presence (the ability of learners to project themselves socially and emotionally), and cognitive presence (the extent to which learners are able to construct and confirm meaning through sustained reflection and discourse). This dissertation extends the body of research surrounding the CoI framework and also the literature on developing critical thinking in online environments by examining and exploring the extent to which teaching and social presence contribute to cognitive presence. The researcher was able to do this by offering 189 learners enrolled in 10 research methods courses and educational research courses an opportunity to use an innovative online resource (Research Design Learning Resource – RDLR) to assist them in learning about educational research and developing research proposals. By exploring how participants used this resource the researcher was able to gain insight into what factors contributed to a successful online learning experience and fostered cognitive presence. Quantitative and qualitative research approaches (mixed methods) were used in this study. The quantitative results indicated that both social and teaching presence had a strong positive relationship with cognitive presence and that learners generally perceived to have a positive learning experience using the RDLR. The qualitative findings helped elaborate the significant quantitative results and were organised into the following themes: making connections, multiple perspectives, resource design, being a self-directed learner, learning strategies, learning preferences, and barriers to cognitive presence. Future directions for critical thinking in online environments are discussed.

The impact of Internet technology on critical thinking is of growing interest among researchers. However, there still remains much to explore in terms of how critical thinking can be fostered through online environments for higher education. Ten years ago, Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2000) published an article describing the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework which provided an outline of three core elements that were able to describe and measure a collaborative and positive educational experience in an online learning environment, namely teaching presence (design, facilitation, and direct instruction), social presence (the ability of learners to project themselves socially and emotionally), and cognitive presence (the extent to which learners are able to construct and confirm meaning through sustained reflection and discourse). This dissertation extends the body of research surrounding the CoI framework and also the literature on developing critical thinking in online environments by examining and exploring the extent to which teaching and social presence contribute to cognitive presence. The researcher was able to do this by offering 189 learners enrolled in 10 research methods courses and educational research courses an opportunity to use an innovative online resource (Research Design Learning Resource – RDLR) to assist them in learning about educational research and developing research proposals. By exploring how participants used this resource the researcher was able to gain insight into what factors contributed to a successful online learning experience and fostered cognitive presence. Quantitative and qualitative research approaches (mixed methods) were used in this study. The quantitative results indicated that both social and teaching presence had a strong positive relationship with cognitive presence and that learners generally perceived to have a positive learning experience using the RDLR. The qualitative findings helped elaborate the significant quantitative results and were organised into the following themes: making connections, multiple perspectives, resource design, being a self-directed learner, learning strategies, learning preferences, and barriers to cognitive presence. Future directions for critical thinking in online environments are discussed.

A progressiva virtualização dos materiais educacionais e a ascendente proliferação de linguagens híbridas na internet vêm desafiando a educação a concentrar-se não somente na dimensão inteligível, como também nas qualidades sensíveis presentes nos recursos de aprendizagem. A semiótica tem oferecido subsídios teóricos e metodológicos para o refinamento e qualificação na comunicação desses recursos, enquanto objetos estratégicos de significação a serem percebidos pelo educando. A pressuposição trabalhada nesta tese é de que há um descompasso nos inúmeros modos de gerar som e imagem em movimento, preponderantemente apoiados em saberes técnicos e tecnológicos, em detrimento de teorias com perspectiva de leitura da multiplicidade de produções culturais da contemporaneidade. Tem como objetivo compreender os processamentos expressivos e os mecanismos semânticos de articulação intra e intersistêmicas de diferentes linguagens no audiovisual, que resultam da reunião de traços das partes heterogêneas em uma totalidade de significação. Como referencial teórico-metodológico, utilizam-se conceitos da semiótica discursiva, focalizando o estudo das linguagens sincréticas. Essa teoria ofereceu as bases para articular as dimensões sensíveis e inteligíveis ao conceito de sincretismo no exame do corpus selecionado. O recorte para investigar essa articulação circunscreve um exercício de leitura de três vídeos, qualificados como textos sincréticos: Fallingwater (2007), L’altro (2009) e Jarbas Agnelli: Birds on the wires, a história e a música por trás de uma foto (2009). A análise qualitativa focalizou os procedimentos de sincretização, através das relações estabelecidas entre as diferentes linguagens, identificadas ora por superposição de traços, ora por homologação de categorias. Destas análises é possível depreender que as substâncias visuais, verbais e sonoras não podem ser pensadas como meros recursos da expressão que reforçam ou enfatizam elementos do conteúdo. Essas substâncias não somente podem criar efeitos de iconicidade pela sua figuratividade, como também chamam atenção para a enunciação, participando efetivamente da construção do sentido nas experiências de leitura. Tais relações desvelam um universo complexo pautado por conceitos como complementação, reiteração, contraste e diferenciação de elementos topológicos, eidéticos e cromáticos do plano de expressão, em articulação com os componentes sintáticos e semânticos do percurso gerativo de sentido que integra o plano de conteúdo. Destaca-se a pertinência dos elementos de análise constituídos por esses dois planos da linguagem, nas suas relações com as dimensões do sensível e do inteligível, para a compreensão dos textos contemporâneos de natureza multifacetada e polissêmica. Observa-se que os efeitos de sentido produzidos por meio dos processos de sincretização das diferentes linguagens nos vídeos estudados contribuem para a pesquisa na área da educação, por desvelar as inter-relações dos termos subjacentes ao texto sincrético como um todo. Em situações de ensino e aprendizagem, eles permitem aos sujeitos docente e discente desenvolverem reflexões e competências de leitura, ao propiciar as análises dos eixos da manifestação e da imanência em textos audiovisuais. / The progressive virtualization of educational materials and the rising proliferation of hybrid languages on the internet have challenged education to focus, not only on the intelligible dimension, but also the sensible qualities present in learning resources. Semiotics has offered theoretical and methodological support for the refinement and qualification on communicating these resources, as objects of strategic signification to be perceived by the student. The assumption worked in this thesis is that there is a mismatch in the many ways of generating sound and moving images, mainly supported by technical and technological knowledge, in preference to theories in reading perspectives of the multiplicity of contemporaneity cultural productions. This work aims at understanding the expressive processes and semantic mechanisms of intra and inter-systemic linkages of different languages in audiovisual, which result in reunited features of the heterogeneous parts into a totality of signification. As a theoretical and methodological framework, we use the concepts of semiotic discourse, focusing on the study of syncretic languages. This theory has provided the basis for articulating both sensible and intelligible dimension to the concept of syncretism in the examination of the selected corpus. The clipping to investigate this linkage circumscribes an exercise in reading three videos, described as syncretic texts: Fallingwater (2007), L'altro (2009), and Jarbas Agnelli: Birds on the wires, a história e a música por trás de uma foto (2009). Qualitative analysis focused procedures of syncretization through the relationships established between different languages, sometimes identified by overlapping features, other times by approval of categories. From these analyzes it is possible to conclude that the visual, verbal, and sound substances cannot be thought of as mere resources of expression that reinforce or emphasize elements of the content. These substances can not only create effects of iconicity by its figurativeness, but also draw attention to the enunciation, effectively participating in the construction of meaning in reading experiences. These relationships reveal a complex universe guided by concepts such as complementation, reiteration, contrast, and differentiation of topological elements, eidetic and chromatic in the expression plan, along with the syntactic and semantic components of the generative process of meaning that integrates the content plan. The relevance of the analysis made by these two plans of language, in its relation with the dimensions of the sensible and the intelligible, to understand the multifaceted and polysemic nature of contemporary texts, is highlighted. It is observed that the effects of meaning, produced through syncretization processes of different languages in the videos studied, contribute to research in the area of education by unveiling the interrelationships of the terms underlying the syncretic text as a whole. In situations of teaching and learning, they enable that faculty and students develop reflections and reading skills, by providing analyzes of the axis of manifestation and immanence in audiovisual texts.