A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science Johannesburg, 2012 / The Internet is a technology that has become a big part of people’s daily living. Through its ability to act as a support medium in the different functions for which people use it, the Internet was introduced to academic institutions as a tool to enhance students’ academic experience in the mid 1990s. Today, the Internet plays a major role in the classroom, from course materials being available online to larger ranges of academic resources being a few clicks away, the influence of the Internet on campus is incontestably felt. This dissertation looks at finding evidence of an association between Internet usage and academic performance among university students. It addresses the need to evaluate whether the Internet is fulfilling the role it was initially brought on campus for. In this dissertation, a qualitative and a quantitative study were developed to measure students’ Internet usage on campus, the reasons for which they use it and how the Internet influences their academic grades. 389 3rd year students from different academic disciplines participated in this study. In summary, the results of this study show that the Internet exerts some influence on students’ academic performance but no link of causality between the two could be established.

No description available.

No description available.

The paper in the broadest sense looks to the usage of the internet and our obligations if at all any, there to be. We use the case of Wikipedia as a reference site. We used literature from the free rider problem, we deconstructed the literature into relevant elements, and then built a framework to which the case of Wikipedia can be applied. The results of the application shows, at times, users are not merely surfing when they browse the internet, they are free riding and as such may be morally liable to those internet sites.

This thesis is based on an Australian Research Council funded research grant. Fifty-one qualitative interviews were conducted with human service workers to gain an understanding of their interpretations of their clients’ ‘drug problems’ and of their own role, the service system and wider policies. Although harm minimisation has been Australia’s official drug policy since 1985, little is known about how harm minimisation is ‘enacted’ in the helping culture. To date human service workers have not been recognised in their constitutive role in harm minimisation discourse. Whilst a significant part of drug policy interventions are delivered via human services, the helping subject has not come under scrutiny. The drug using subject remains ill-conceived as a result of neglecting its partnering others or indeed its overlapping with other subject positions. Moving beyond recognising workers only in terms of staff opinions and attitudes, a relational and multi-level approach is adopted to introduce more complexity into the debate. After a brief historic discussion of the creation of the ‘human service worker’ and the ‘drug user’ (as client) and methodological considerations about discourse analysis, the thesis proceeds with the introduction of a conceptual framework consisting of four levels: the individual, relational, institutional and cultural political economic level. These levels are used to examine the existing literature on ‘drug problem factories’ and for the analysis of the data. By focusing on these levels the critical analysis of the interview material shows that ‘harm’ and ‘minimising’ are themselves contested categories and that different harms and different harm producing and minimising practices can be identified some of which have come into discourse, others are excluded or entirely absent. The human service workers struggle to make sense of their own role and to define how drug users are being ‘helped’ and could or should be helped. Their understanding of harm minimisation discourse aligns with, supports and/or resists other discourses such as (neo)liberalism, neoconservatism, prohibition and economic rationalism. The workers are portrayed as having substituted increasing complexity for initial simplicity in the course of working with ‘drug users’. In summary, this thesis offers a poststructuralist analysis of how harm minimisation is constituted, negotiated and undermined from the perspective of human service workers and shows how the service systems’ helping cultures enrol human service workers in harm producing and harm minimising practices. Harm minimisation consists of discursive and non-discursive elements and is a product of deliberate social forces as well as messy contingencies and unintended consequences.

This study proposes a seven step evaluation model for evaluating library services using criteria based on community needs. The evaluation modal does not concern itself with direct measures of library processes but with examining the end product of those library processes in the form of services offered to the library's community. The model is intended to reveal discrepancies between community needs and library outputs and provide planning steps which will assist the professionally competent librarian to match library outputs to community needs. The final step in the evaluation model is intended to provide data on library effectiveness in meeting community needs. For the purposes of this study "library community" is defined as the target population for a particular library, encompassing non-users as well as actual users. Every library is intended to provide services to a specific community unique to itself. The model is presented as a general model, with implementation guidelines and checklists, as a basis for developing an evaluation plan for the specific situation of each individual library. A pilot study based on the evaluation model is described. The pilot study consisted of an evaluation of the Audiovisual Services section of the Australian National University Library and was conducted over an eighteen month period. The pilot study demonstrated the effectiveness of the evaluation model as a planning tool for matching library services to community needs.

The purpose of this study is to measure computer user satisfaction in several organizational settings and to find out if user, system or organizational variables affect the level of user satisfaction. Data was collected from two manufacturing companies and one Australian government department by using a survey based on the semantic differential technique for attitude measurement and open ended interviews. The data was analysed for each organization. The users completing the survey were then treated as a random sample of all organizational users of computer-based information systems and products. The data was analysed to see if differences occurred among groups. The results indicate that for each organization there are areas of high and low satisfaction. Some of these are common to the three organizations, and some areas where change is commonly requested by users are participation in design, training, response time on interactive systems and top management involvement. Differences among users are also indicated and it is shown that users who design their own systems have the highest level of satisfaction. Managerial users appear to be among the users who are least satisfied with their computer-based support.

<p>Living Lab är en öppen innovationsmiljö där innovationer samproduceras, testas och verifieras av användarna, tillsammans med företag och akademin i en kontext som representerar innovationens tänkta användningsområde. Genom samverkan kan olika värden skapas för företagen. Syftet med uppsatsen var att undersöka hur Living Lab skapar värde för företag och vilka värden företag kan identifiera ur de användarcentrerade aktiviteterna. Uppsatsen karaktäriseras av en kvalitativ ansats och grundar sig i en explorativ undersökning med djupintervjuer där fyra företag ligger till grund för uppsatsens resultat. Uppsatsen har visat att Living Lab skapat värden för företag genom att de fått mer tilltalande produkter, identifierat nya användarkategorier och samordnat resurser med företag. Living Lab är därmed värdeskapande för företag genom stöd för utvärdering, ny- och vidareutveckling av innovationer. Samverkan mellan användare, företag och akademin öppnar upp för ett kunskapsutbyte vilket skapar värde för företag då kompetensutveckling äger rum och en djupare kunskap om användarna kan erhållas</p>

El objetivo de esta tesis es poner a prueba una ampliación del modelo de Demandas-Recursos en usuarios de Tecnología de la Información y la Comunicación (TIC), integrando tanto las aproximaciones negativas (burnout) como positivas (engagement) del bienestar psicológico de los empleados y una consecuencia organizacional: el compromiso. Para conseguir este objetivo se han seguido una serie de pasos. En primer lugar, y para realizar una validación transcultural, este modelo se ha puesto a prueba simultáneamente con empleados que utilizan tecnologías pertenecientes a dos países Europeos: España y Holanda. Se han llevado a cabo análisis factorials confirmatorios, modelos de ecuaciones estructurales, así como análisis multigrupo. En segundo lugar, y dada la relevancia de la Psicología Positiva y de los recursos personales (las creencias de eficacia) como variables intervinientes en el proceso de estrés, se han puesto a prueba modelos de espirales positivos de recursos en un estudio longitudinal de laboratorio con usuarios de TICs. Finalmente, se ha evaluado el papel de la eficacia colectiva percibida en usuarios de TICs como variable interviniente en un proceso de estrés motivacional de trabajo en grupo.

Living Lab är en öppen innovationsmiljö där innovationer samproduceras, testas och verifieras av användarna, tillsammans med företag och akademin i en kontext som representerar innovationens tänkta användningsområde. Genom samverkan kan olika värden skapas för företagen. Syftet med uppsatsen var att undersöka hur Living Lab skapar värde för företag och vilka värden företag kan identifiera ur de användarcentrerade aktiviteterna. Uppsatsen karaktäriseras av en kvalitativ ansats och grundar sig i en explorativ undersökning med djupintervjuer där fyra företag ligger till grund för uppsatsens resultat. Uppsatsen har visat att Living Lab skapat värden för företag genom att de fått mer tilltalande produkter, identifierat nya användarkategorier och samordnat resurser med företag. Living Lab är därmed värdeskapande för företag genom stöd för utvärdering, ny- och vidareutveckling av innovationer. Samverkan mellan användare, företag och akademin öppnar upp för ett kunskapsutbyte vilket skapar värde för företag då kompetensutveckling äger rum och en djupare kunskap om användarna kan erhållas