No description available.

Zugl.: Mannheim, Univ., Habil.-Schr., 2007.

Bachelor-Arbeit Univ. St. Gallen, 2006.

<p>This disseration measurses the ROI of the institution’s investment in HPC facilities, and an application of a production function to create a model that will measure the HPC facility investment’s impact on the financial, academic, and reputational outputs of the institution.</p>

The introduction of technology and the widespread use of ICT in the wealthier nations have led teacher-educators to integrate technological applications in their teaching environment. The research investigated the new teaching modes created by teacher-educators in teacher-training colleges in Israel, due to their transition from traditional teaching to distance-teaching through the Internet. This was a qualitative research using case study within an interpretative paradigm that enabled the researcher to consider the viewpoints of the informants together with her own viewpoint. The research tools included: 14 open interviews, a non-participatory observation, documentation reading and the writing of a personal log. The rich variety of research tools enabled triangulation of data. The conceptual framework of the research was based on theories of teacher-training, distance-teaching, academic disciplines, and several teaching dimensions: organisation and representation of data, organisation and management of teaching and different types of interaction. The research findings indicated intrinsic and extrinsic motives for the teacher-educators transition to distance-teaching. The transition created a pedagogy characterised by four teaching modes that corresponded to different academic disciplines. Each discipline harnessed the technology for intensive use in one or more of the teaching dimensions. The Representation mode used by teacher-educators in the natural sciences and statistics used a large variety of data representations and Internet writing characterised by multiple links. The Interactive mode employed by teacher-educators in the field of literacy principally dealt with formative assessment of the students' writing and used virtual communication tools to tighten the teacher-learner inter-personal interaction. The Organisational mode used in education disciplines focused on organisation and management of teaching and learning through the use of computer applications. The Holistic mode employed by teacher-educators in the fields of education and literature, in substance constituted a combination of all the characteristics of the above-mentioned modes with an emphasis given to social presence of both learners and the teacher. Analysis of the teaching modes led to the creation of a typology of four modes positioned at different points along the following scales: organisation of teaching, flexible – fixed, types of interaction few – multiple; data representation, creative – conservative; computer literate – computer users. There was a clear contrast between teacher-educators teaching education disciplines as a continuation of traditional frontal teaching and those who had previously taught in workshops. At the crossroads of pedagogy with technology, the changes in location, time and lesson character have meant that the implementation of the teaching paradigm of Zeichner and the teaching orientations of Feiman-Nemser have taken on fresh dimensions. The new teaching modes necessitate appropriate training for all teacher-educators working in distance-teaching in accordance with their academic disciplines. The research findings contribute to the reduction of a gap in knowledge concerning the new teaching modes of teacher-educators teaching distance-learning in a teacher-training college in Israel.

Stuttgart, Univ., Diss., 2002.

Networking - building up professional and social relationships and their maintainance in the most compact network possible - that is one of key activities of todays' companies. Creation of new contacts is for a non-profit organisation (e.g. a destination company) next to essential. This thesis gives a theoretical background by description of networking mechanism, his importance and his use in professional organisations. Then the analysis should describe the situation in the Czech Republic: how tourism organisations apply networking in communication with interest groups in the destination, because successful networking could notably help promote the destination to its (potential) visitors.

There has been much advancement in the field of data and information quality (DIQ) since two decades ago. However, despite a large number of the theoretical and empirical studies in this field, there is a lack of understanding about the mechanisms and dynamics of forming, adjusting and changing organisational users’ (information consumers) assumptions and expectations based on which they perceive the quality of information required for making decision in order to perform a task within an organisational environment. Although it is already known that information consumers perceive the quality of information according to the requirements of the organisational task and the context of use, how the task requirements affect information consumers’ expectations of information quality has been a black-box in the body of literature. The main objective of this research is to contribute to the literature of DIQ by exploring the role of the setting of a task within an organisational context in the formation, development and change of information consumers’ underlying expectations of information quality. Information consumers’ assumptions and expectations are called information quality (IQ) frames by this research. Moreover, this research examines the role of IT artefacts, which are used to support performing the task, in these dynamics. As an organisational task is usually performed by a group, the role of the task group of which information consumers are members is investigated by this research. Having adopted a multi-case study design, this thesis has targeted seven different task groups in seven different organisations from multiple industries. This in-depth qualitative research also employs interviews as the main source of data and documents as the secondary source of data. The collected data and empirical evidence is analysed using the thematic analysis and pattern coding. This study’s theoretical contributions to the body of literature are as follows. Firstly, the findings indicate that information consumers should not be simply categorised into domain-specific experts or novices for understanding the mechanisms that affect their IQ frames. Regarding the domain of the task, an information consumer might have domain-related experience that differentiates him from both an expert and a novice. Moreover, this study found that the organisational-specific experience plays a significant role in these dynamics. Secondly, four different settings of a task within an organisational context have been recognised and the insights have been provided into the likely impact of each setting on IQ frames. The findings show that the setting of a task that affects IQ frames is enforced by the interplay between the degree of situatedness of the task and the degree of its explicitness. Thirdly, this research contends that the role of other members of a task group contributes directly to the setting of a task rather than directly influencing their colleague’s IQ frames. Fourthly, this thesis confirms that the organisational resource limitations and the time pressure, which were already mentioned in the literature, affect how information consumers perceive the quality of information but the empirical evidence reveals that other types of pressure such as the pressure of a competitive market has a similar role, therefore, it is argued that in general the organisational pressure impacts the way information consumers perceive information quality. However, this thesis argues that this influence is mediated by the setting of a task. In other words, the organisational pressure can increase the degree of situatedness of a task within an organisational context. Finally, the findings of this study indicate that information consumers’ interpretation of how an IT artefact enables a task within an organisational context is the key mechanism through which the IT artefact can participate in forming, adjusting or changing their IQ frames. The interpreted type of an IT artefact, its interpreted capabilities, the organisational intervention and the IT support by IT technicians of an organisations are the main four factors that govern the influence of the IT artefact on information consumers’ IQ frames. In addition, the computing environment in which the IT artefact operates in, information consumers’ level of IT knowledge and prior experience of using the IT artefact can be involved indirectly in these dynamics. The theoretical contributions of this research have led to the development of a framework for IQ frames and the underlying dynamics have been explained in detail. In addition to the theoretical contributions, this study has a number of practical implications for organisations and management regarding the importance of the organisational settings in how information quality is judged by organisational users (information consumers).

<p>Biometric technology is used in daily life, for authentication purposes. Perceptions about the privacy and security of biometrics are of great interest (Olorunsola et al., 2020). Ho et al. (2003) specifically added privacy to their biometric acceptance model as a potential influence on intention to use the technology since privacy about biometrics was found to be peoples’ primary concern. Surveys of perceptions and use of technology (Buckley & Nurse 2019; Carpenter et al. 2018; Olorunsola et al. 2020) have used many different models to predict people's willingness to use biometrics. Venkatesh, Thong, et al (2012) used the reliable and valid UTUAT2 (Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology), a consumer-based model, with phone biometrics. Could the UTAUT2 model explain variance in intention to use phone biometrics? Phone biometrics are defined as biometrics used on a mobile smartphone but are referred to as phone biometrics throughout this study. A survey using the UTAUT2 basic questions was posed to <em>n</em> = 329 people who owned a mobile phone, lived in the United States, and used phone biometrics, to see if the model explained the “intention to use” phone biometrics. An example application of phone biometrics was biometrics used on a personal phone. Example use cases included using biometrics to unlock a phone, using fingerprints or face, or opening or authenticating specific applications within the phone.</p> <p><br></p> <p>Venkatesh developed the UTAUT2 model to explain the intention to use in a consumer setting. His earlier model (UTAUT) examined intention to use in an organizational setting. The challenge was that these models are old (the UTAUT2 model is almost ten years old at the time of writing), and phone biometrics is a rapidly changing consumer technology. The overarching research question is whether the UTAUT2 model can explain the intention to use phone biometrics. The results showed that UTAUT2 constructs accounted for 79.1% of the variation in intention to use phone biometrics. </p>

Masters in Public Administration - MPA / The absence of coordinated Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) in the South African public administration from 1994 to 2005 highlighted the gap in standardised national evaluation system where the National Evaluation Policy Framework (NEPF) acknowledged that there was an unexploited possibility to utilise evaluations to enhance the public sectors usefulness, competence, influence, and sustainability. Within the Western Cape Government (WCG), systems for M&E to strengthen performance reporting exist, but the implementation of these existing systems is piecemeal with fragmented approaches to monitoring and evaluation across the various departments. This study investigated staff readiness for Monitoring & Evaluation at the Western Cape Education Department (WCED). To achieve this goal, it employed a quantitative research method with a cross-sectional sample. / 2024