This investigation assessed the utility of a selection-based instructional program in teaching relations between driving behavior and driving stimuli in addition to the emergence of topography-based responding. A selection-based instructional program was delivered to three individuals with intellectual disabilities and/or learning disabilities in order to teach participants relations of sameness between automobile operation stimuli and driving behaviors. Participants were directly taught relations between video models of vehicle operation, road sign outlines, and textual stimuli of road signs using a selection-based instructional protocol delivered via a computer program. Following mastery of the selection-based instruction the emergence of selection-based responding on symmetrical and transitive posttest probes at the mastery level was observed for all 3 participants. Furthermore, movement on posttest generalization vehicle simulator probe was observed for one participant.

Despite the increase in popularity of handheld devices, text entry on such devices is becoming more difficult due to reduced form factors that limit display size, input modes, and interaction techniques. In an effort to circumvent these issues, research has found that five-key methods are effective for text entry on devices such as in-car navigation systems, television and gaming controllers, wrist watches, and other small devices. Five-key text entry methods use four directional keys to move a selector over an on-screen keyboard and an Enter key for selection. Although other researchers have described five-key character layouts using alphabetical order and predictive layouts based on digraph frequencies, there is considerable latitude in designing the rest of a comprehensive on-screen keyboard. Furthermore, it might be possible to capitalize on the relative strengths of the alphabetic and predictive layouts by combining them in a hybrid layout. Thus, this research examines the design of alternative keyboard layouts for five-key text entry techniques. Three keyboard layouts (Alphabetical, Predictive, and Hybrid) were selected to represent standard and less familiar arrangements. The analysis centered on a series of controlled experiments conducted on a research platform designed by the author. In this work, when the immediate usability of three alternative keyboard layouts for supporting five-key text entry was investigated, results indicated no statistically significant differences in performance across the tested keyboards. Furthermore, experimental results show that following immediate usability, but still at the onset of learning, there was no overall difference in performance among the three keyboard layouts across four text types. However, the Alphabetical keyboard surpassed both the Predictive and Hybrid keyboards in text entry speed in typing Web addresses. The nonstandard keyboards performed superior to the Alphabetical keyboards in typing Words/Spaces and Sentences, but performed no better in typing Address strings than the Alphabetical. Use of mixed effects modeling suggested that the longitudinal data was best fitted by a quadratic model. Text entry performance on all three layouts improved as a function of practice, demonstrating that participants could learn the unfamiliar layouts to complete text entry tasks. Overall, there was no indication that use of nonstandard layouts impedes performance. In fact, trend in time data suggests that the learning rates were greater for the nonstandard keyboards over the standard layout. Overall, participants preferred the Hybrid layout. In summary, this dissertation focused on creating and validating novel and effective five-key text entry techniques for constrained devices.

This investigation evaluated a computerized behavioral skills training package for teaching responses to interview skills by adolescents and young adults with learning disabilities. The package consisted of instructional videos, video-modeling, rehearsal, feedback, and selection-based instruction. Experiment 1 replicated and extended recent research which has suggested that a selection-based protocol operating on a lag schedule of reinforcement is an effective and efficient method for teaching responses to interview questions (O’Neill, Blowers, Henson, & Rehfeldt, 2015; O’Neill & Rehfeldt, 2014). The purpose was to address some of the limitations of these studies while testing the limits of the selection-based protocol in promoting topography-based responses to interview questions by adolescents and young adults with learning disabilities. Experiment 2 evaluated the efficacy of the computerized behavioral skills training protocol while simultaneously comparing the basic package to an identical package plus the selection-based protocol from Experiment 1. This experiment attempted to isolate the additive effect of selection-based instruction from that of computerized behavioral skills training for teaching topography-based responses to interview questions by adolescents and young adults with learning disabilities.

The goal of this thesis is to create a music player for smartphones as well as PCs that works with local music files in the user's device and which can learn which songs does the user like based on their actions during listening to music. The music player can, among other things, remember which songs were skipped by the user, when was volume turned up, or how many times was a certain song played. Each song has a score that is calculated based on these actions. With a higher score, there is also a higher chance of playing the song in the future. The results of my thesis are two full-featured versions of music player, which are capable of communication with each other to ensure synchronization of song scores. The main benefit of this thesis is an improvement of user experience during listening to music, which is achieved by the application's algorithm for song selection and minimalistic user interface.

The final diploma thesis defines factors that significantly influence managements of basic schools in their decisions regarding the selection of class teachers in terms of the performed HR activities. Selection and appointing a suitable candidate to a position of a class teacher is a responsible personnel activity which poses high demands on each management worker in the field of education. It is demanding because a class teacher is in many ways the most important person who contributes to and presents the image of the school through everyday close contacts with clients, among others with pupils, parents, public, the school founder and colleagues. To a certain extent it is possible to say that the class teacher provides an outward representation of the organisation and his/her behaviour has a strong impact on how the community and public view the organisation/school. General groups of factors that influence the selection of class teachers were identified based on the results of a preliminary research and subsequently verified in the main research. The discovered factors are divided into two groups including HR oriented factors and factors arising from the teacher's competences. The demonstrated results of the research will serve newly appointed directors as a manual and guideline helping them in...

A pragmatic method for selecting components and devices from a database or parameterized models is developed in this thesis. The quantitative framework presented here is sufficiently general to accommodate an entire device assembly, a component, or a sub-assembly. The details pertaining to a device or a component are classified into three sets of variables: (i) user-specifications, s (ii) device parameters, p , and (iii) device characteristics, c . Functional, practical, and performance-related attributes that a user can provide comprise user-specifications. Since, most often, a specification cannot be specified as a single number, we allow the user to enter a range with lower and upper bounds. Device parameters comprise the geometry and material properties, and device characteristics include functional requirements and performance criteria. Thus, for a device, all its functional and utility attributes are contained in the union of sets s and c , whereas the geometry and the material properties are in set p . The equations governing the physical behavior of the device are written in terms of s , p , and c . These equations may sometimes be readily available; when they are not, it may be necessary to formulate them as required. By solving the governing equations along with the inequalities that arise from the lower and upper bounds on s , we obtain feasible ranges on p and c . Then, for any pair of device characteristics, a 2D feasible map is drawn, to visually portray the consequences of user-specifications. If the feasible map is null, small, or large, it indicates that the user-specifications are infeasible, stringent, or there is much scope for design, respectively. This can be inferred even before the designs are considered. Juxtaposed on the feasible map are points or lozenges corresponding to the quantitative attributes of the entries in the database. The ones that lie inside the feasible map can be reckoned as meeting the user-specifications and thus, enabling selection. On the other hand, if there is no database or none of the devices in the database lie inside the feasible map, we can identify the feasible ranges of all the design parameters for every point inside the feasible map. This information is useful to the designer to redesign and arrive at feasible designs by using parameterized models of the device. A Graphical User Interface (GUI) is developed to facilitate the user-interaction. The utility of the selection framework is demonstrated with a variety of case-studies including miniature pumps, heat pulse-based soil-moisture sensors, springs, flywheels, compliant mechanisms, micromechanical suspensions, etc. The latter two use kineto-elastic characteristics of deformable components. The framework, when used for materials selection, can be seen as an extension of Ashby’s materials selection method. This is also illustrated with two examples.