The evaluation of creative participatory community projects remains a controversial issue in politics, policy and the arts, its focus sharpened by the reality or rhetoric of austerity. Despite the recent plethora of policy documents and reviews there is little consensus about how projects should be evaluated or what constitutes good evidence about the impact on individual and collective wellbeing of ‘being creative’. This research set out to develop and trial feasible and effective evaluations for small to medium sized projects in the West Midlands of the UK based on field research into how impact is produced. Through mainly qualitative research in diverse contexts it was able to identify a range of conditions in projects reflecting the interrelationship of creativity and participation in which positive impact could be maximised. The research sought to theorise the impact of these conditions using elements of Actor Network Theory and Freire’s concept of praxis, concluding that impact is likely to be incremental, partial and non-linear. Central to this theorisation was the synthesis of evidence about the impact of creativity and embodied making on thinking, affect and a sense of agency, with ideas about how people change, producing a new evidence-based theory of change. In a practice-led approach, new creative methods were trialled in which data produced by participants had aesthetic as well as communicative value and the evaluation process itself contributed to positive impact. While it was possible to evaluate aspects of this impact through episodic interventions, field trials showed that it was more effective to develop a systemic evaluation strategy. Such a strategy needed to be participatory and integrated into project planning, in order to respond to the stochastic systems creativity inevitably provokes. This proved to offer two advantages: the potential to engage many stakeholders, not just as respondents but also as agents actively defining and measuring evaluation outcomes; and the potential for reflection about impact as process rather than outcome. These findings were then implemented in a number of projects, including trials of the Arts Council UK’s developmental Children and Young People’s Quality Principles. The method has been identified as ‘improving the conversation’ amongst partners, stakeholders and artists who can re-position themselves as active agents of evaluation rather than mere respondents, using the tropes, practices and materials of their own professional practices.

O Laboratório Virtual é um ambiente de estudo que visa complementar a ação docente em sala de aula, a fim de trabalhar conceitos abstratos de maneira experimental e que usa recursos virtuais como estratégia de ensino para aulas de física. Este laboratório foi desenvolvido a partir da filmagem de sistemas reais com o objetivo de observar todo o movimento de um objeto junto a um instrumento que possibilitou a medida de sua posição. Posteriormente, foi incorporado ao vídeo um código de tempo, de modo que, ao transformá-lo em quadros independentes, as imagens extraídas permitem medir a posição ocupada pelo corpo em instantes conhecidos. Com uma tabela de posição por tempo, toda a evolução dinâmica do sistema pode ser obtida. As experiências, alocadas em http://www.fep.if.usp.br/~fisfoto/index.html, vem sendo usadas desde 2004 em cursos de mecânica da graduação em Licenciatura em Física da Universidade de São Paulo e são uma inovação no método de desenvolvimento curricular, que busca na tecnologia uma outra maneira de trazer a experimentação para o contexto do ensino. Analisamos o experimento do Giroscópio, objeto de frequente estudo nas aulas de mecânica, a fim de adquirir elementos para avaliar o comportamento do Laboratório Virtual como ferramenta didática. Foram entrevistados 12 alunos que participaram da atividade, com o intuito de verificar se os objetivos da proposta tinham sido atingidos, a fim de analisar o grau de apropriação dos conceitos trabalhados na mencionada experiência. Para fundamentar essa análise, recorreu-se à equilibração e ao subsunçor propostos por Piaget e Ausubel, respectivamente. Dos relatos dos alunos foi possível localizar as situações que denotavam assimilação e/ou acomodação. A categorização de partes das entrevistas permitiu a elaboração do esquema de raciocínio desenvolvido pelos alunos, identificando suas concepções prévias ou os conhecimentos de que se apropriaram para explicar o funcionamento do giroscópio. Da análise das entrevistas, pode inferir-se que os objetivos do laboratório foram alcançados e que o mesmo pode ser aceito como material didático complementar às disciplinas presenciais, dando suporte para que conteúdos teóricos possam ser trabalhados em situações reais com o auxílio de Tecnologia de Informação, de maneira experimental. / The Virtual Laboratory is a study environment that complements lecture activities, aiming the understanding of abstract concepts from the analysis of recorded experiments as a physics-teaching strategy. This lab was developed from the videos of real systems, where the object under study moves over an instrument that allows measuring its position. A time code is incorporated to this video, which is subsequently unfolded. The extracted images permit the measurement of the position occupied by the object at known instants. With a table of position and time, the dynamic evolution of the system can be obtained. The experiences, located at http://www.fep.if.usp.br/~fisfoto/index.html, have been used since 2004 with students of Bachelor in Physics Education of the University of São Paulo mechanics courses. It is an innovative methodology in the curriculum, since demands information technology to approach the experimental activities in the lecture context. We analyzed the gyroscope experiment, frequently studied in lectures of mechanics, to assess how the Virtual Laboratory behaves as a teaching tool. Twelve students who participated were interviewed, in order to evaluate whether the proposed goals were met, trying to analyze the appropriation of concepts by means of the Virtual Lab. We applied the balancing and subsumer concepts proposed by Piaget and Ausubel, respectively, in this analysis. Students\' comments allowed sorting out situations denoting assimilation and / or accommodation. The categorization of elements of the interviews made it possible to describe the development of the reasoning scheme developed by these students, identifying preconceptions or knowledge needed to explain properly the physical phenomenon. From the interviews analysis, it can be inferred that the lab objectives have been achieved and that it can be accepted as a complementary material to teach theoretical concepts by working with real situations, using the Information Technology to provide access to experiments.

O Laboratório Virtual é um ambiente de estudo que visa complementar a ação docente em sala de aula, a fim de trabalhar conceitos abstratos de maneira experimental e que usa recursos virtuais como estratégia de ensino para aulas de física. Este laboratório foi desenvolvido a partir da filmagem de sistemas reais com o objetivo de observar todo o movimento de um objeto junto a um instrumento que possibilitou a medida de sua posição. Posteriormente, foi incorporado ao vídeo um código de tempo, de modo que, ao transformá-lo em quadros independentes, as imagens extraídas permitem medir a posição ocupada pelo corpo em instantes conhecidos. Com uma tabela de posição por tempo, toda a evolução dinâmica do sistema pode ser obtida. As experiências, alocadas em http://www.fep.if.usp.br/~fisfoto/index.html, vem sendo usadas desde 2004 em cursos de mecânica da graduação em Licenciatura em Física da Universidade de São Paulo e são uma inovação no método de desenvolvimento curricular, que busca na tecnologia uma outra maneira de trazer a experimentação para o contexto do ensino. Analisamos o experimento do Giroscópio, objeto de frequente estudo nas aulas de mecânica, a fim de adquirir elementos para avaliar o comportamento do Laboratório Virtual como ferramenta didática. Foram entrevistados 12 alunos que participaram da atividade, com o intuito de verificar se os objetivos da proposta tinham sido atingidos, a fim de analisar o grau de apropriação dos conceitos trabalhados na mencionada experiência. Para fundamentar essa análise, recorreu-se à equilibração e ao subsunçor propostos por Piaget e Ausubel, respectivamente. Dos relatos dos alunos foi possível localizar as situações que denotavam assimilação e/ou acomodação. A categorização de partes das entrevistas permitiu a elaboração do esquema de raciocínio desenvolvido pelos alunos, identificando suas concepções prévias ou os conhecimentos de que se apropriaram para explicar o funcionamento do giroscópio. Da análise das entrevistas, pode inferir-se que os objetivos do laboratório foram alcançados e que o mesmo pode ser aceito como material didático complementar às disciplinas presenciais, dando suporte para que conteúdos teóricos possam ser trabalhados em situações reais com o auxílio de Tecnologia de Informação, de maneira experimental. / The Virtual Laboratory is a study environment that complements lecture activities, aiming the understanding of abstract concepts from the analysis of recorded experiments as a physics-teaching strategy. This lab was developed from the videos of real systems, where the object under study moves over an instrument that allows measuring its position. A time code is incorporated to this video, which is subsequently unfolded. The extracted images permit the measurement of the position occupied by the object at known instants. With a table of position and time, the dynamic evolution of the system can be obtained. The experiences, located at http://www.fep.if.usp.br/~fisfoto/index.html, have been used since 2004 with students of Bachelor in Physics Education of the University of São Paulo mechanics courses. It is an innovative methodology in the curriculum, since demands information technology to approach the experimental activities in the lecture context. We analyzed the gyroscope experiment, frequently studied in lectures of mechanics, to assess how the Virtual Laboratory behaves as a teaching tool. Twelve students who participated were interviewed, in order to evaluate whether the proposed goals were met, trying to analyze the appropriation of concepts by means of the Virtual Lab. We applied the balancing and subsumer concepts proposed by Piaget and Ausubel, respectively, in this analysis. Students\' comments allowed sorting out situations denoting assimilation and / or accommodation. The categorization of elements of the interviews made it possible to describe the development of the reasoning scheme developed by these students, identifying preconceptions or knowledge needed to explain properly the physical phenomenon. From the interviews analysis, it can be inferred that the lab objectives have been achieved and that it can be accepted as a complementary material to teach theoretical concepts by working with real situations, using the Information Technology to provide access to experiments.

The aim of this master's thesis was to get acquainted with cluster analysis, clustering methods and their theoretical properties. It was necessary select clustering algorithms whose properties will be analyzed, find and select data sets on which these algorithms will be triggered. Also, the goal was to design and implement an application that will evaluate and display clustering results in an appropriate manner. The last step was to analyze the results and compare them with theoretical assumptions.

This master´s thesis evaluates the economic situation of HAL-KON, s. r. o. in the years 2006 – 2008. There is in accordance with theoretical knowledge performed evaluation of company with a few of valuation methods.