Thesis (M.S. in Operations Research)--Naval Postgraduate School, March 1990. / Thesis Advisor(s): Wood, R. Kevin. Second Reader: Brown, Gerald Gerard. "March 1990." Description based on signature page as viewed on October 21, 2009. Author(s) subject terms: Set partitioning problem, constraint branch and bound method, enumeration tree. Includes bibliographical references (p. 34-36). Also available online.

Design continuously re-defines its meaning. Over the last years, the way designers interpret information, solve problems as well as prototype and express ideas has received increased attention from domains outside of traditional design, especially from the business world. However, much of the design thinking discourse outside of traditional design centres around a few widely-read practitioner books and only builds on a rudimentary understanding of its principles. Likewise, the academic literature only offers a few rigorous investigations of the application of design thinking in the management and innovation domain, especially when it comes to thedevelopment of novice multidisciplinary teams. Therefore, this thesis provides an evaluation of the influence of the following five key themes discussed in the design thinking literature: Team diversity, iteration, learning styles, creative confidence, and team communication. These themes were explored during a quantitative quasi-experimental research study, which was built on a novel research framework. Data wascollected from 42 German research participants over a period of 10 month. The longitudinal perspective enabled the researcher to illustrate how novices develop design thinking competencies in projects over time. While investigating team diversity, multidisciplinary teams were found to produce significantly better project outcomes than single-discipline teams. On the other hand, diversity of personality traits was not found to have a significant effect on the final performance of teams. The exploration of iteration behaviour revealed that multidisciplinary teams did not iterate significantly more than single-discipline teams. In addition, more experienced participants approached design thinking projects slightly less iteratively thannovices. Overall, the degree of iteration was not found to have a significant effect on the final team performance. Regarding the use of different learning styles, it was discovered that, teams with a balance of learning styles achieved significantly better project outcomes than less-balanced teams. In terms of learning styles, participants approached design thinking tasks mainly through rational conceptualisation rather than concrete experience. Theanalysis of individual and team confidence showed that creative confidence developed slowly and linearly over the course of a project, but only partly carried over to new project and team settings. Furthermore, no evidence was found that higher levels of creative confidence directly influenced the quality of the project outcomes. The investigation of team communication revealed that the importance of individuals in design thinking teams significantlychanged over the course of a project. Contrary to previous assumptions, high degrees of internal team cohesion were found to have a significant negative effect on project outcomes. While several of these findings clarify and reiterate existing design thinking theory, others call for an adjustment of theory and highlight the need for more rigorous research. Several recommendations are offered for practitioners, educators, and researchers on how to incorporate the presented findings into practice and future research.

The aim of the research was to develop a training course that inculcated infonnation literacy that could be implemented by staff at the University of Dar es Salaam library (Tanzania), in order to provide students with appropriate infonnation literacy skills to meet their educational goals. The course was developed from an integration of knowledge from infonnation behaviour research and educational theory with current perspectives of infonnation literacy from Infonnation and Library Science (ILS). The ultimate goal of the research was to create a framework that would be used by public university libraries in Tanzania to teach infonnation literacy courses. The study was carried out in two parts. In the first implementation "pilot" programme, the course was tested by involving librarians who took the entire course, in order to see whether the same course structure could be used to implement to the Masters of Education students. Following adaptations made on the first course, a second course programme was implemented to Masters of Education students by two librarians who attended the first implementation "pilot" programme. Therefore, the success of the course was partly judged on whether it effectively enabled knowledge transfer from the librarians to students. Data collection methods were predominantly qualitative, although quantitative methods in tenns of diagnostic tests were also used. The tests were used to evaluate trainees' knowledge ofinfonnation literacy before and after the course to provide an indication of changes in knowledge. Qualitative methods used included semistructured interviews with librarians and academic staff at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania in order to make sure that assumptions made about students' knowledge of infonnation literacy and the kind of problems experienced by students were correct. Other methods included quizzes, exercises, group reflection and presentations that related to each stage in the course. These methods served to indicate trainees' understanding of what was taught, reflections on the leaming process and provided feedback for improvements on the course. The major findings showed that there was a recognized need for infonnation literacy and that problems such as unfamiliarity with categories of infonnation sources, analysis, synthesis, evaluation and use, were experienced in Tanzania as was the case in other "Western" countries. In addition, librarians were able to transfer skills learned to students, who in turn used the same course materials to teach fellow students who did not participate in the course. Furthermore, the design of the course was facilitated by the integration of Information and library science (ILS) approaches to information literacy with the knowledge of information behaviour and pedagogic theory. The thesis provides recommendations for the library and information curricula to introduce information literacy, teaching information literacy in a holistic way and with librarians participating in teaching and research. In addition, the study recommended that librarians should facilitate the development of information literacy in primary and secondary schools.

A l’articulation de la théorie des nombres et de la didactique des mathématiques, notre recherche vise à étudier la question de la transposition du travail du mathématicien, via l’analyse de processus de recherche de chercheurs, élèves et étudiants sur la recherche d’un même problème non résolu : la conjecture d’Erdös-Straus. Les analyses mathématiques et épistémologiques nous ont permis d’identifier différents aspects du travail du mathématicien et les éléments moteurs dans l’avancée de ses recherches. Cela nous a conduit à développer la notion de « geste » de la recherche pour décrire, analyser et mettre en perspective les processus de recherche des trois publics. Ces analyses ont mis en évidence les potentialités du problème pour créer une situation de recherche de problèmes en classe, plaçant les élèves dans une position proche de celle du mathématicien. Les analyses didactiques se sont appuyées sur la construction d’une telle situation puis sur sa mise à l’épreuve dans un contexte de laboratoire avec des élèves de terminale scientifique. Nous avons analysé finement les processus de recherche des élèves à l’aide des outils méthodologiques développés dans les analyses mathématiques et épistémologiques. Les analyses ont mis en évidence la richesse des procédures mises en oeuvre, un travail effectif dela dialectique entre les connaissances mathématiques et les heuristiques mobilisées, et selonles groupes, une mise en oeuvre de démarches de type expérimental, l’approfondissement de connaissances mathématiques notionnelles et une acquisition d’heuristiques expertes de recherche de problème non résolu. Elles montrent également la pertinence de la notion de «geste » de la recherche pour étudier la question de la transposition du travail des chercheurs. / Our thesis deals with the transposition of mathematician’s reserach activity in mathematical classroom, in the domain of number theory. Our research focuses on the study of a research process for researchers, pupils and students involved in the research of an unsolved problem: the Erdös-Straus conjecture. Our mathematical and epistemological analyses allow us to identify different aspects of the mathematician’s work and the elements for progress in his research. The notion of “gesture” is developed to describe, analyze and contextualize different research processes. This analysis reveals the potentiality of this problem to create a research situation in classroom, where pupils are in a position similar to the mathematician’s one. Didactical analyses are based on the construction of such a situation and its experimentation in laboratory. We study the research process of the students with the methodological tools developed in mathematical and epistemological analyses. This analysis shows several potentiality of this situation: a wealth of procedures implemented, effective work on the dialectical aspects of the mathematical research activity and implementation of experimental approach. The notion of “gesture” is relevant to consider the question of the transposition of mathematician’s work.