This qualitative case study, framed by a constructivist perspective, addresses a deficit in the literature and the knowledge base of a first year experience (FYE) academic program at a large, urban university regarding freshmen perceptions of meaningfulness in their courses. Existing studies identify concepts related to meaningfulness, but do not shed light on attributes which may inhere in those. These studies are inadequate for FYE curriculum planning due to their discipline specific contexts, quantitative nature, or sole focus on motivation. Furthermore, existing conceptualizations present meaningfulness from the etic (faculty/researcher) perspective rather than the emic (student). This is especially problematic in a postmodern era in which some scholars propose that students experience the classroom differently than educators. Purposeful sampling identified student participants. Semi-structured interviews were conducted, and participants provided reflective journals throughout the data collection period. Interviews and journals were based on exploratory research questions related to the words participants use to convey meaningfulness, the experiences they find meaningful, and “what about” experiences they find meaningful. Students shared insights regarding what problems prevent meaningfulness. Data collection and analysis occurred in conjunction with the transcription of interviews, note-taking about emerging themes, member checking of transcripts and ideas regarding coded themes, review of appropriate literature, and exploration of theories and existing ideas. Trustworthiness and credibility existed through measures of triangulation that promote accuracy of data and findings. Analysis led to the creation of categories to answer the four guiding research questions. Integration of those categories with scholarship in curriculum studies and educational psychology provided insight and discussion regarding students’ perceptions of meaningfulness in first year experience courses. The idea of academic states (emotional transition, academic pragmatism, and survival) emerged from participants’ words describing their experiences. Interactive learning (lectures, group discussions, and practice) and opportunities where students were offered challenge/choice were practices associated with meaningfulness. Energy and comfort were the underlying aspects of experiences perceived as meaningful, and participants offered insights into what problems may exist that prevent students from perceiving their courses as being meaningful, or having meaningful aspects (once n’ done and checklist approaches). The study also prompted implications for future research. / Department of Educational Studies

This dissertation examines the financial statement effects of firm attributes on the components of equity, the market reaction effects on key events in the adoption of IFRS, and the cumulative earnings response coefficient effect in the context of IFRS adoption in Canada. Firm attributes were tested for association with the adjustment to retained earnings at the transition date when first adopting International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS.) Evidence from the analyses of the adjustment to retained earnings model revealed a statistically significant association between the adjustment to retained earnings and the firm attributes of volatility of income, internationality, and firm industry. Market reaction was measured for two key events of IFRS adoption: early adoption announcement and the release of first quarter financial results under IFRS. A negative mean for Cumulative Average Return (CAR) resulted from tests of both events. However, only the negative mean CAR from market’s reaction to the release of first quarter financial results under IFRS demonstrated statistical significance. The adjustment to retained earnings model used in this study developed a benchmark for tests of value relevance. In the test of value relevance, the benchmark or unexpected adjustment to retained earnings was tested against the actual adjustment to retained earnings for market reaction. The results from the tests of value relevance were not statistically significant. This study contributes to the literature by identifying firm factors: volatility of income, internationality, and industry as firm factors associated with the adjustment to retained earnings upon adoption of IFRS. Further, evidence from the event study demonstrates that the market reacts negatively to the adoption of IFRS and suggests that the Canadian market may not perceive IFRS as an improvement in financial reporting or a reduction in information asymmetry.

This study investigates the understanding of emoticons and emojis used in text messages. Theaim of this study is to determine whether there is a universal understanding of emoticons andemojis, which is important considering the number of people using them every day whensending text messages. Many studies have been made of communication via text messagesand the usage of emoticons and emojis, but no study has focused on the interpretation of thesymbols and the importance of the context.For the purposes of this study, a questionnaire was completed in an uppersecondary school (Swedish gymnasium) in Stockholm, during normal school hours inNovember 2014, by 90 16-19 year old students. The result was then analysed through a‘Relevance Theory’ perspective, and in the light of the works of, amongst others, Saussure,Peirce and Thomas.The result revealed that, for the interpreter of a text message, it is important thata textual context is established, in order for the interpreter to be able to understand what theemoticons or emojis used in text messages mean. The result also showed that the emoticonsand emojis do not have a meaning in themselves and that they can have different meaningsdepending on the situation, and the mood or the person for whom the message is intended.

The primary aim of this research is to investigate methods of improving the effectiveness of current information retrieval systems. This aim can be achieved by accomplishing numerous supporting objectives. A foundational objective is to introduce a novel bidirectional, symmetrical fuzzy logic theory which may prove valuable to information retrieval, including internet searches of distributed data objects. A further objective is to design, implement and apply the novel theory to an experimental information retrieval system called ANACALYPSE, which automatically computes the relevance of a large number of unseen documents from expert relevance feedback on a small number of documents read. A further objective is to define a methodology used in this work as an experimental information retrieval framework consisting of multiple tables including various formulae which anow a plethora of syntheses of similarity functions, ternl weights, relative term frequencies, document weights, bidirectional relevance feedback and history adjusted term weights. The evaluation of bidirectional relevance feedback reveals a better correspondence between system ranking of documents and users' preferences than feedback free system ranking. The assessment of similarity functions reveals that the Cosine and Jaccard functions perform significantly better than the DotProduct and Overlap functions. The evaluation of history tracking of the documents visited from a root page reveals better system ranking of documents than tracking free information retrieval. The assessment of stemming reveals that system information retrieval performance remains unaffected, while stop word removal does not appear to be beneficial and can sometimes be harmful. The overall evaluation of the experimental information retrieval system in comparison to a leading edge commercial information retrieval system and also in comparison to the expert's golden standard of judged relevance according to established statistical correlation methods reveal enhanced system information retrieval effectiveness.

Advances in information and communication technology and the ready availability of Global Positioning Systems (GPS) have made it possible for citizens to create information on the internet expressing their personal perceptions in the form of pictures, videos and text narratives associated with geographic locations. The term Volunteered Geographic information (VGI) was coined to describe the processes whereby non-professionals or “citizen scientists” participate directly in spatial data creation, editing and shared use. VGI offers promise as an innovative way for members of the public to participate directly in the use, production and sharing of spatial information that is relevant to issues of personal or community concern and as a means of addressing some of the issues associated with traditional public participation methods. Planners can find meaning in the heterogeneous, time-sensitive, geo-social geographic information created by citizen volunteers in a bottom-up participation process where planners give up some control over what data is collected and from whom. However, uncertainties associated with volunteered geographic information include relevance, credibility, representativeness and quality of the geographic information. This thesis investigates the opportunities and barriers to the use of volunteered geographic information as public participation in planning. A framework and methodology for collaborative quality control of VGI through multi-criteria subjective relevance ratings of the VGI by its producers and users is put forward in this thesis. The relevance rating framework for quality control of VGI is based on the use of relevance in information retrieval in information science to improve the relevance of search engine results. This concept is transferred to the quality control of VGI contributions to determine the best VGI contributions to be used in planning as public participation. A VGI web application prototype, including the subjective relevance rating system, was created and a methodology and demonstration of its use for public participation was presented.

<p>The National Curriculum Statement introduced mathematical literacy officially in 2006. Learners in general perform poorly at mathematics in South Africa but there is strong belief that learners should graduate from schools sufficiently literate to deal with the mathematical issues they will encounter in out-of-school situations. Based on this, this study is an investigation of the contexts, which grades 8 &ndash / 10 learners would prefer to engage with mathematics. The aim of this study was thus to investigate mathematical literacy in relation to learners&rsquo / motivations for the contexts they would prefer to deal with in mathematical literacy. The emphasis of the study is to concentrate on learner&rsquo / s written motivations for mathematical contexts. Data were collected using a questionnaire that deals with contexts for mathematics.</p>

<p>This thesis was based on a larger international comparative study called the ROSE (Relevance of Science Education) project. The study investigated the affective factors pupils perceive might be of relevance for the learning of science and technology using the ROSE survey questionnaire, and was aimed at providing data that might form part of an empirical basis for local adaptation of the science curriculum.</p>

In capital market research (CMR) studies of the value relevance of accounting numbers are founded upon the concept that, in equilibrium, the book values are equal to or have some long-term relationship with the market value and that market returns are related to book returns. This thesis seeks to resolve a gap in the CMR by examining 30 selected individual firms listed on the Australian stock market during the period 1950 to 2004, using equilibrium correction modelling techniques. Even these limited prior works used cross-sectional techniques rather than the long-run, time-series, analysis used in this study. Moreover, dynamic analysis in the CMR has tended to focus on indexes or portfolio data rather than using firm-specific case study data of the type modelled here. No prior research has taken this approach using Australian data. The results of this thesis indicated that an equilibrium correction relationship between market values and book values for firms listed on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) could be determined by using accounting and macroeconomic regressors. The findings of the thesis were consistent with the literature in terms of the variables suggested and important in the firm's valuation from the three main approaches, the analysts (industry) approach, the finance and accounting theory (textbook) approach and the CMR literature approach. The earnings, dividends and book value variables are significant in their relationships with the firm's market values. The models constructed were typically more informative and had an increased forecasting performance compared with the a priori models tested, based on theory and the literature.

An important difference exists between the way humans communicate route knowledge and the turn-by-turn route directions provided by the majority of current navigation services. Navigation services present route directions with the same amount of detail regardless the route segment’s significance in the instructions, user’s distance from the destination, and finally the level of user’s familiarity with particular parts of the environment. (For complete abstract open document)

Contextual information retrieval (CIR) is a critical technique for today’s search engines in terms of facilitating queries and returning relevant information. Despite its importance, little progress has been made in its application, due to the difficulty of capturing and representing contextual information about users. This thesis details the development and evaluation of the contextual SERL search, designed to tackle some of the challenges associated with CIR from the World Wide Web. The contextual SERL search utilises a rich contextual model that exploits implicit and explicit data to modify queries to more accurately reflect the user’s interests as well as to continually build the user’s contextual profile and a shared contextual knowledge base. These profiles are used to filter results from a standard search engine to improve the relevance of the pages displayed to the user. The contextual SERL search has been tested in an observational study that has captured both qualitative and quantitative data about the ability of the framework to improve the user’s web search experience. A total of 30 subjects, with different levels of search experience, participated in the observational study experiment. The results demonstrate that when the contextual profile and the shared contextual knowledge base are used, the contextual SERL search improves search effectiveness, efficiency and subjective satisfaction. The effectiveness improves as subjects have actually entered fewer queries to reach the target information in comparison to the contemporary search engine. In the case of a particularly complex search task, the efficiency improves as subjects have browsed fewer hits, visited fewer URLs, made fewer clicks and have taken less time to reach the target information when compared to the contemporary search engine. Finally, subjects have expressed a higher degree of satisfaction on the quality of contextual support when using the shared contextual knowledge base in comparison to using their contextual profile. These results suggest that integration of a user’s contextual factors and information seeking behaviours are very important for successful development of the CIR framework. It is believed that this framework and other similar projects will help provide the basis for the next generation of contextual information retrieval from the Web.