International literature suggests that curriculum changes that have occurred in higher education globally over the last two decades, more specifically the shift from subject-based curriculum to integrated curriculum have been perceived by many academics as having affected their work with regard to course designing, teaching and assessment. Studies of academics’ response to such changes have argued that the way academics perceived these changes and the meanings they made of them influenced the implementation of these curriculum changes. This case study investigates lecturers’ perceptions of how one curriculum reform, the introduction of the Credit Accumulation and Modular Scheme (CAMS) in higher education in Rwanda, has affected lecturers’ work. One of the aims of the study was to analyse how lecturers understand CAMS and the changes it has introduced in their work. A second aim was to analyse how these perceptions and changes are negotiated in their teaching practices. Sixteen lecturers from Kigali Institute of Education were interviewed. Analyses of lecturers’ accounts of their teaching experiences revealed that lecturers espoused the intended changes that CAMS introduced in their work. However, although they claimed that the changes have affected their teaching and teaching arrangements- course designing, teaching and assessment- in actual practices many of them have not always managed to shift their thinking. CAMS requires lecturers to function in teams. However, although they have been trying to do so many of them have not managed to work out how to make more substantive changes to the way they think about the knowledge to be taught, their actual teaching and assessment practices. They have tried to keep boundaries of their disciplines while CAMS requires them to integrate their teaching.

The global stiffness behaviour of modular-based two storey timber structures was studied under prescribed horizontal displacements at the upper corners of the volume modules. To be able to study this behaviour, a numerical finite element model was created in Abaqus. A parametric study was performed in which the geometry and spring stiffness of joints were varied until the enough stiff module was attained for safe transfer of shear forces through the module structure. The FE-model was parameterized to have possibility to vary positions of door and window openings in the volume modules. These openings had influence on the global structural behaviour of the two storey module structure since the side wall with two openings showed less reaction forces at its top corner point A compared to the other wall point B. In addition, the module#3 was assigned with small spring stiffness in x-direction representing friction in the joint between the volume modules. This was done without uplift plates and angle brackets. The findings showed that there was significant slipdeformation between the volume modules and small reaction forces at points A and B. The spring stiffness value in x-direction was varied until large value was obtained which resulted in overall shear deformations of the walls in both volume modules. When the angle bracket and the uplift plates were introduced between the modules when small spring stiffness along the joint between the volume modules was used, the results showed that most of the shear forces were transferred through the angle brackets instead of the fastener joints between the modules. Moreover, the results showed that the reaction forces at the points A and B increased when the angle brackets were assigned in the module. Furthermore, the results also showed that uplift plates used in the model worked well for simulations with low vertical spring stiffness between the modules.

This master's thesis dissertates of partial reconfiguration methods based on programmable structures. In theoretical part it deals with difference and modular-based method of Xilinx's FPGAs Partial reconfiguration. Options of both reconfiguration techniques were written for Spartan 3, Virtex II, Virtex 4 and Virtex 5 processors. Diference-based method was in practical part tested on Spartan 3E Starter Kit and modular-based on ML501 board. All configuration bitstreams are included on CD. Xilinx Inc. provided all needed software tools such as ISE9.2i and PlanAHEAD.