The present research developed and assessed the Team Workload Questionnaire (TWLQ). Despite extensive workload studies, little research has been conducted on the workload experienced by teams. Team workload has largely been ignored by research with no validated theory constructed or dedicated team workload measures available to researchers and practitioners. The research was conducted in two studies with study 1 focusing on the development of the TWLQ with 216 members of sports team completing a team workload measure after games or practise. In study 2, 14 dyadic teams performed two sessions of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) search-and-rescue task. The TWLQ was used to measure the team workload demand of the task. Study 1: Principle Axis Factoring method with Direct Oblimin rotation indicated three separate factors for the TWLQ with the factors classified as Task Workload, Team Workload, and Task-Team Balancing. Study 2: The TWLQ exhibited differential sensitivity, with the three factors measuring unique components of the workload demands in teams. The TWLQ is a valid and reliable subjective measure that can be used to assess the workload demand in team tasks. It provides researchers a tool to advance the understating of team workload and gives practitioners the means to assess the workload demands of team tasks in applied settings.

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Workers experience combined physical and mental demands in their daily jobs, yet the contribution of these concurrent demands in the development of work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) is not clearly understood. There is a need to understand how concurrent demands interact with different work parameters, such as force levels, muscles employed, and types of exertion, to influence physiological responses. Furthermore, whether muscle capacity is altered with these concurrent demands remains unclear. The current research was conducted to address these needs through three experimental studies that evaluated changes in physiological, performance, and subjective measures. The first study investigated muscle-specific responses to concurrent physical and mental demands during intermittent static work. Mental demands adversely affected physiological responses with increasing physical demand. Furthermore, greater motor and mental performance impairment was observed at either end of the physical demand spectrum. Finally, these interactions were muscle-dependent, with postural (shoulder and torso) muscles indicating a greater propensity to interference due to concurrent demands than executive (wrist) muscles. The aim of the second study was to evaluate differential effects of exertion type (static and dynamic) during concurrent physical and mental work. Concurrent physical and mental demands adversely affected physiological responses during static exertions compared to dynamic exertions. Furthermore, static exertions were more susceptible to decrements in muscle output and mental task performance than dynamic exertions, specifically at higher force levels. The last study quantified the effects of concurrent physical and mental demands on muscle capacity (endurance, fatigue, and recovery) during intermittent static work. Additional mental processing was associated with shorter endurance times, greater strength decline, increased fatigability, and slower cardiovascular recovery. Concurrent demand conditions were also associated with higher levels of perceived fatigue, and rapid increases in rates of perceived exertion, time pressure, mental load, and stress. Overall, the current research provides a comprehensive understanding of the interactive effects of physical and mental demands on physiological responses and task performance. These findings may facilitate the development of task design strategies to help reduce the risk of workplace injuries and to increase worker performance. Finally, outcomes from this research can contribute towards the revision of current ergonomic guidelines to incorporate concurrent assessment of physical and mental demands. / Ph. D.

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Problems in scientific computing often consist of a workload of jobs with dependencies between them. Batch schedulers are job-oriented, and are not well-suited to executing these workloads with complex dependencies. We introduce Jole, a Python library created to run these workloads. Jole has three contributions that allow flexibility not possible with a batch scheduler. First, dynamic job execution allows control and monitoring of jobs as they are running. Second, dynamic workload specification allows the creation of workloads that can adjust their execution while running. Lastly, dynamic infrastructure aggregation allows workloads to take advantage of additional resources as they become available. We evaluate Jole using GAFolder, a protein structure prediction tool. We show that our contributions can be used to create GAFolder workloads that use less cluster resources, iterate on global protein structures, and take advantage of additional cluster resources to search more thoroughly.

The policy decisions of the 1990's were designed to maximise the potential for older people to remain in their homes for as long as possible and to prevent unnecessary admission to hospital. The NHS and Care in the Community Act (1990) created the role of care management within Social Work (in Scotland) which made it necessary for district nurses to artificially separate the health and social care needs of older people. Whilst health care remained free at the point of delivery, social care was chargeable so the decisions taken by district nurses had implications for the care older people subsequently received. This study was set in an NHS Trust in Scotland and considered how district nurses constructed health and social need when assessing the care needs of older people. Following a pilot study, the main study was undertaken in two phases. The first phase profiled caseload data from 23 district nurses which was used to inform the researcher of current trends in decision making and to purposefully select nurses to interview. A Grounded theory approach was used to undertake 16 in depth interviews until a saturation point was reached and no new data emerged. Following detailed analysis based upon the method described by Strauss and Corbin (1990), core categories of context, gerontological knowledge and personal values emerged to inform the theory of how district nurses construct need. The contribution to new knowledge in this area includes an addition to the theoretical understanding of care delivery. The study has identified the key role played by the assessment of risk and the appraisal of family support. Gerontological knowledge and personal values have been shown to be central to both the assessment of risk, and the appraisal of family support. The study has also identified strategies used by district nurses to manage their workload, some based upon a rational response to the management of work and others. including the avoidance of less popular patients and carers, which are open to question The only area of district nursing care where the delivery of both health and social care is uncontested, is where patients are terminally ill

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The study was designed to compare faculty workload systems used by Christian College Coalition schools and their counterparts in public higher education. Research into the relationships between the nature of institutional ownership (public versus private), the existence of a labor management agreement, and faculty workload hours also was performed.Eighty-six percent of respondents use a semester hours system for accounting faculty workload. While chi-square analysis (.05 level) indicated that unionized schools are more likely to be public institutions, faculty hour assignments or the number of faculty activities granted load credit were not found to differ significantly based on unionization.Faculty hour workload assignments in public and private colleges were not found to be significantly different (.05 level). While the sample contained only institutions with a 1991 full-time equivalent enrollment of 3,000 or less, a negative correlation (R= -.2157) between enrollment and faculty workload was found. On average, responding institutions give quantitative load credit for seven activities other than teaching, such as, student teacher supervision, administrative assignments, coaching, and department chairmanship.3 / Department of Educational Leadership

An investigation on how educators experience their workloads against the background of teacher shortage. This research study seeks to explore educators’ experiences of the effects of educator shortage on the academic performance of Grade 12 learners in the Butterworth Education District, in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. The research study was a result of the South African literature in education which over- emphasises the poor quality of teacher development as though it is the only cause of the poor academic performance of learners in South African Senior Secondary Schools. For example, the Centre for Education Policy Development Evaluation and Management (CEPD) (2000, p.130) asserts that “Training for educators and managers has been spotlighted in the Curriculum Review Report”. Through this study the researcher wanted to explore other possible explanations for the poor academic performance of the Grade 12 learners in the Butterworth Education District. The research study seeks to investigate whether educator shortages in Senior Secondary Schools could be responsible for the poor academic performance of learners in Grade 12. It was imperative therefore to look into the views and experiences of educators in this regard, with the object of finding the extent of educator shortages in schools, and the possible measures to address the situation, if it is a reality in schools. Six schools were selected, with each providing five participants who made a sum of 30 educators who volunteered to participate in the study. The study was an interpretive survey, where the qualitative methodology was used. The data was collected using semi-structured interviews. A tape recorder was also used to ensure that participants were not misrepresented in the analysis and discussions of the findings. The data was presented, analysed and discussed according to the patterns and themes derived from the sub-research questions. It emerged from the study that there are educator shortages in most senior secondary schools in the Butterworth Education District. This was due to the policies and reports which were contrary to one another. Contradictory reports were produced by three highly respected research institutions the National Teacher Educator Audit (NTEA) there was an oversupply of educators in South African schools (Hofmeyr and Hall 1996). On the other hand the research was conducted by the Pre-Service Education and Training (PRESET) and In-service Educational Service and Training (INSET) published that there is serious educator shortage in South Africa. There was a lack of insight from the Management of the National Department of Education, together with the Provincial Managers of education. These managers of the DoE failed to note that the decisions that they had made in 1994, of ensuring that all learners between ages of 7 and 15 should be taken by parents to school, would negatively affect the future of education if it was not properly planned for. This call for all learners of the above mentioned ages to go to school was made in line with the South African Schools Act No. 84 0f 1996. The implication of the Governments call to send more learners to school, whether parents had money or not, was that more educators had to be employed in the future but that did not happen. Instead, a once-off policy of severance packages was implemented by the government, which led to a lot of good educators taking their packages and leaving the profession. Literature reveals that Teacher Training Colleges were closed at about the same time. The literature also reveals that before the closure of Teacher Training Colleges there was a challenge of redeployment which was also not properly planned, implemented and monitored by the Provincial Managers of the DoE. The study reveals that poor planning of this process led to overcrowded classrooms, a phenomenon which was further exacerbated by the fact that the salaries of Principals and the HoDs in schools were linked to the number of learners the school had admitted. This had its own ramification like schools over-admitting learners because it meant more money for the principals and Heads of Departments. The study has revealed serious consequences which emanated from the educator shortage as a result of overcrowded classes. The literature also reveal that educators get employed and use the profession of teaching as a stepping stone for better paying professions. According to Peltzer, et al. (2005, p.35) “around 21 000 educators were leaving the system annually, although up to 30% of these were temporary teachers.” South Africa faces challenges with its pool of available educators. One of these challenges is that of attracting new educators into the teaching profession and another is the challenge of how to retain those already in the system (DoE, 2005 p.13). In the event that there are teacher shortage in the system the DoE is using the available educators to teach larger classes than they are capable. This causes problems when these teachers have to teach outside their areas of specialization. These consequences include the fact that educators are teaching more than six classes a day, and educators are overloaded; they do not have sufficient time to provide individual attention to the learners, mark leaner assessments, provide feedback on time, or do remedial work. The study also revealed that most educators are suffering from burnout and stress due to too much workload. The study has also shown that educators work even on Saturdays and holidays to try to finish the syllabus. As a result, there are very few young stars who aspire to making education their career. More educators are changing their careers because they know that life is about improved standards of living. The question is: What is the use of having all the good policies aimed at improving the quality of teaching and learning if there are insufficient implementers (educators) of these policies in schools. The policies include School Based Assessment (SBA), Annual National Assessment (ANA), Systemic Evaluation, Common Tasks for Assessments (CATs), Whole School Evaluation (WSE) and the Integrated Quality Management Systems (IQMS). Recommendations have been proposed on the strategies that the DoE may employ to address the educator shortage in schools and the quality of education.