Time is the educational resource educators most desire, but which is in shortest supply. Educators cannot add more days to the 12-month calendar year, or minutes to the day. Whatever control is to be had over the calendar and clock rests in the way time is managed by those in the position of decision-maker. This study examined the change in one middle school's schedule, from a traditional seven period to a four period extended block, as it related to teacher perceptions about time for staff development, instructional preparation, and staff collaboration. Additionally, the study examined teacher perceptions regarding student achievement, student contact overload, and school climate as a result of the change in the school schedule. Subjects for the study were drawn from practicing classroom teachers and other licensed personnel employed at the site school. Two research instruments, the School Schedule Questionnaire Survey and School Schedule Interview Survey, were used to gather data. The School Schedule Questionnaire Survey used a Likert Scale, which asked each subject to respond to a series of statements by indicating whether they strongly agreed, agreed, were undecided, disagreed, or strongly disagreed. This study concludes that teacher perceptions about time available for staff development, instructional preparation, and staff collaboration are greatly influenced by their perceptions about the degree to which they control that time, and can make decisions about its use. It also concludes that teacher perceptions about student achievement is difficult to assess without quantitative measures, and that although teachers felt the schedule had a positive impact on student achievement, most were concerned about the lack of objective measures when making such an assessment. And finally, it concluded that class size may not be the determining measure to assess teacher perceptions about student contact overload, that the total number of students a teacher comes into contact with each day has a greater impact on their perception in this area. / Graduation date: 1999

This qualitative and quantitative study examines the potential improvement in aggressive student behaviors when a block schedule is implemented in a rural, low socio-economic and multi-cultural middle school. The number of incidents of physical aggression and harassment were obtained from official school records for the years 1992-1996. Interviews were also conducted with staff members who had long term tenure in the school and who had a clear vision of student behaviors both pre and post-block schedule implementation. The face value of the school record data suggest a dramatic improvement in student behaviors. These data corroborate very closely with interview information. Teachers believe behaviors have substantially improved. In 1992-1993 there were 30 assaults in the school. In 1993-1994 there were 15, in 1994-1995 there were 0, in and in 1995-1996 there were 4. The substantive conclusion is the development and implementation of a block schedule in this particular middle school was highly successful in helping alter the aggressive behaviors of students. / Graduation date: 1997

This dissertation focuses on developing inspection schedules to detect non-self- announcing events which can only detected by inspections. Failures of protective sys- tems ,such as electronic equipments, alarms and stand-by systems, incipient failures and the emergence of certain medical diseases are examples of such events. Inspec- tions are performed at pre-determined times to detect whether or not the event has occurred, and necessary actions are taken upon the detection. In this research, my interest is in developing effective inspection schedules to detect non-self-announcing events that balance system downtime and inspection effort. To evaluate the quality of an inspection schedule, I use the availability (for re- placeable) and the detection delay (for non-replaceable systems) as performance mea- sures. When the monetary cost of inspection and the cost of delay are difficult to determine, non-monetary performance measures become more meaningful. In this research, the focus is on maximizing availability or minimizing detection delay given a limited number of inspections or a limited inspection rate. I show that for replace- able and non-replaceable systems, it is possible to construct inspection schedules that perform better than periodic inspection with respect to our performance measures. The occurrence of the event I would like to detect may be influenced by certain individual characteristics. For instance, the risk of developing a certain type of dis- ease might be different for different subgroups within the population. In this case, because of the non-homogeneity in the population, benefits of performing screening tests may not be fully achieved for each sub-group by using an inspection strategy developed for the entire population. Thus, it may be of value for an individual to learn more information about his/her likehood to have the disease. To address this issue, I analyze the change in the expected delay if schedules are based on the whole population information or the individual information and provide numerical results.

The main objective of this research is to devise a risk-based methodology for developing emergency operation schedules (EOS). EOS are decision tools that provide guidance to reservoir operators in charge of making real-time release decisions during major flood events. A computer program named REOS was created to perform the computations to develop risk-based EOS. The computational algorithm in REOS is divided in three major components: (1) synthetic streamflow generation, (2) mass balance computations, and (3) frequency analysis. The methodology computes the required releases to limit storage to the capacity available based on the probabilistic properties of future flows, conditional to current streamflow conditions. The final product is a series of alternative risk-based EOS in which releases, specified as a function of reservoir storage level, current and past inflows, and time of year, are associated with a certain risk of failing to attain the emergency operations objectives. The assumption is that once emergency operations are triggered by a flood event, the risk associated with a particular EOS reflects the probability of exceeding a pre-established critical storage level given that the same EOS is followed throughout the event. This provides reservoir operators with a mechanism for evaluating the tradeoffs and potential consequences of release decisions. The methodology was applied and tested using the Addicks and Barker Reservoir system in Houston, TX as a case study. Upstream flooding is also a major concern for these reservoirs. Modifications to the current emergency policies that would allow emergency releases based on the probability of upstream flooding are evaluated. Riskbased EOS were tested through a series of flood control simulations. The simulations were performed using the HEC-ResSim reservoir simulation model. Rainfall data recorded from Tropical Storm Allison was transposed over the Addicks and Barker watersheds to compute hypothetical hydrographs using HEC-HMS. Repeated runs of the HEC-ResSim model were made using different flooding and residual storage scenarios to compare regulation of the floods under alternative operating policies. An alternative application of the risk-based EOS in which their associated risk was used to help quantify the actual probability of upstream flooding in Addicks and Barker was also presented.

As in many service organizations, hospitals use a variety of shift types when scheduling nurse resources. In general, the operational decisions of workforce planning can be divided into two interrelated problems: (1) midterm planning in terms of shift assignments for up to six weeks at a time, and (2) the short-term daily adjustment of schedules. Individual nurse profiles are a function of a unit's skill requirements, labor laws, and other qualifications, and are results of the long-term planning decision. At the midterm level, the goal is to match nurse resources with the expected workload over the planning horizon. Rosters are designed to maximize personnel preferences as well as minimize cost. To investigate this problem, a large-scale integer program model was developed and solved with two methodologies. The first is based on Lagrangian Relaxation based heuristic, which uses a combination of subgradient optimization and Bundle methods, with variable fixing strategy and IP-based heuristic. The second methodology is a branch-and-price algorithm that makes use of several new branching rules, an extremely effective rounding heuristic, a dual bound procedure, and specialized aggregation scheme. To extend the algorithms to solve different levels of nursing skills, a downgrading strategy is used by giving scheduling priorities to higher level of worker. The midterm schedules provide a blueprint for the monthly work assignments of the staff. Because of absenteeism and unpredicted demand fluctuations, though, a hospital-wide reallocation of resources is needed on a daily basis. While the overall goal is to ensure adequate coverage at minimize cost, a secondary goal is to minimize changes to the assigned rosters. Nevertheless, to allow more flexibility, nurses are permitted to work in several units during a shift rather than just their home unit. An IP-based column generation methodology was developed to solve this problem and applied within a rolling horizon framework. The idea is to consider 24 hours at a time, but implement the results for only the first 8 hours. All algorithms were tested on data obtained from a 400-bed US hospital. The results show an order-of-magnitude improvement over current approaches in terms of solution quality and computation times. / text

No description available.

Background: How to optimally integrate simulation into a surgical training program is relatively unknown. We studied the effect of varying the practice schedule into either blocked or random patterns (termed contextual interference) on the long-term retention and transfer of surgical skills. Methods: 36 participants were randomized to practice 4 tasks from the Fundamental of Laparoscopic Surgery (FLS) program using one of three training schedules (blocked, random, no training). Skill was assessed using FLS scoring and hand-motion efficiency scores. Results: A positive benefit of training was seen over the controls for all 4 tasks (p<0.05). No difference was seen between the blocked and random groups in the amount of skill acquired, skill learned, or transfer of skill. Conclusion: The application of contextual interference was unable to differentiate between the blocked and random training groups. This could be due to the complexity of the tasks and/or the inexperience of the learners.

No description available.

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of course frequency on attitudes of college students toward physical education. A secondary purpose was to establish the effects of fitness level on attitudes toward physical education. Finally, the interaction of course frequency and fitness level on attitudes toward physical education was to be identified.Students enrolled for PEG 124 (n = 97) served as subjects for this study. There were 68 male subjects and 29 female subjects. The three times a week course frequency had 42 subjects, whereas the two times a week course frequency had 55 subjects.Subjects completed an adaptation of Adam’s (162) survey on attitudes toward physical education the first week of class and the last week of class. To estimate each subjects fitness level, the Rockport Institute’s One-Mile Walk Test was administered.A 2x3x2 ANOVA was used to analyze the data. Results indicated that course frequency, as well as fitness level, had no significant effect on attitudes toward physical education. Moreover, the interaction between course frequency and fitness level was non-existent. Further analysis did reveal that there was a significant change in attitudes from the pre-test attitude survey to the post-test attitude survey for the entire sample. However, this change could not be attributed to any of the variables that were analyzed in this study. There also was no statistically significant difference in attitudes toward physical education between males and females. / School of Physical Education

The purpose of this thesis is to study the development process and final applications of class scheduling systems. This study helped in listing the additional features required to build a better system for class scheduling. Thus a system, Class Scheduler, is developed using Visual Basic as a front-end application which meets the class scheduling requirements including the functions of querying, generating reports and checking for constraints. Versions of class scheduling had been developed using Visual C++ in 1995 and using COBOL in 1983. A comparison of the development process and the resultant systems is made in this thesis. / Department of Computer Science