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Thesis (Ph.D.) University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Education. / In recent years Universities have attempted to articulate the generic outcomes of the educational experiences they provide, beyond the content knowledge that is taught. In Australia these outcomes have come to be known as generic skills or generic graduate attributes, although they are also referred to by a range of other terms. Much like aspects of a mission statement, universities have claimed that these are the core outcomes of higher education at the particular institution and that every graduate of every degree will possess these. However there is considerable variability in what is claimed by different institutions, both in terms of which outcomes are included and the nature of these outcomes, ranging as they do from low level technical skills to complex personal attributes and values. As outcomes, this variability is magnified in the inconsistency with which such attributes are addressed in the curriculum and, where they are addressed, in the variety of pedagogical approaches employed. The observation of such variability was the starting point of this study. This research is broadly situated within the phenomenographic perspective on teaching and teaming (Marton & Booth 1997). In the investigation described in this thesis, phenomenographic analysis is used to identify and describe the qualitatively different ways inwhich a group of academics, from different disciplines, understand the teaching and learning of graduate attributes in the context of their own courses and teaching. Four qualitatively distinct conceptions of the nature of graduate attributes and their place amongst the outcomes of a university education are identified. These are related to six distinct understandings of the way in which students develop such attributes at university. The relationships between these two hierarchical aspects of academics' understandings of graduate attributes, (conceptions of what it is that is taught/learnt and conceptions of how it is taught/learnt) constitute seven logical and internally consistent understandings of the phenomenon. These seven understandings represent three broad approaches to the teaching and learning of graduate attributes. The conceptions identified in this analysis provide a way of making sense of the variety of policy statements and the range of curricula approaches reported in the literature. Moreover, these conceptions of graduate attributes provide a tool to support current attempts to implement systematic curriculum reform across a university.

Canadian engineering schools are required to follow an accreditation program as outlined by Engineers Canada. This program determines the qualifications of a graduating engineer through a series of graduate attributes. These attributes are an outline of the skills/abilities required in their educational programs. This study was developed in conjunction with Manitoba Hydro to determine an understanding of the knowledge gaps between a senior professional engineer and a newly graduated engineer. Training and engineering design knowledge transfer is a primary concern for this corporation. The research question focused on determining the activities of a senior and junior group of engineers and how these activities differed. The second question was on determining the skill/ability level of a new engineering graduate upon entering the workplace. This skill/ability level can be determined with respect to the graduate attributes. Data was collected using a mixed method approach. Interviews were conducted with a group of professional engineers and another group of engineers in training. Following the interview process two sets of questionnaires were completed by each group of participants. One questionnaire was based on engineering activities undertaken in the workplace. The second questionnaire was based on assessments of graduate attribute requirements and abilities for new graduates. The findings showed that engineering activities for these participants matched closely to information as reported in the literature. It was also determined that differences between the two groups in the study were due to the supervisory duties of the senior group and the technical nature of the junior groups responsibilities. Findings for the second question showed that engineers in the workplace are more critical of their skill/abilities that are newly graduated engineers. The study showed that this group of participants felt the level of knowledge for a newly graduated engineer was at an introductory level. They also indicated that generally this level was adequate for the responsibilities of the workplace. It was determined that the most important skill area was in the social aspects of the graduate attributes and this was the area of the greatest deficit in educational knowledge.

This thesis is an attempt to give a workable account of 'God', to exhibit its logical status and to show how it can be introduced into language. The first chapter, after rejecting the view that 'God' is not a referring expression, notes the differences between various types of referring expression, and considers the objections to taking 'God' as a descriptive term, a title, and a proper name. It is concluded that 'God' is the proper name of a spirit, the objections to the other accounts being held to be decisive. The second chapter explores the notion of a spirit. The view that all persons must be corporeal is rejected and a concept of a person is developed which shows how it is possible for persons, both corporeal and incorporeal, to be identified and individuated. Finally it is shown how it is possible to predicate emotions of incorporeal persons. The third chapter shows how it is possible, given the nature of God, to fix the reference of 'God'. It is held that certain referring expressions have their references fixed by playing a role in such an interpretation of experience. Religious faith is shown to be such an interpretation of experience, able to fix the reference of referring expressions, because it has criteria for determining the validity of certain statements made within the interpretation. Finally it is shown how the reference of 'God' can be fixed within this interpretation.

Thesis (Ph.D.) University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Education. / In recent years Universities have attempted to articulate the generic outcomes of the educational experiences they provide, beyond the content knowledge that is taught. In Australia these outcomes have come to be known as generic skills or generic graduate attributes, although they are also referred to by a range of other terms. Much like aspects of a mission statement, universities have claimed that these are the core outcomes of higher education at the particular institution and that every graduate of every degree will possess these. However there is considerable variability in what is claimed by different institutions, both in terms of which outcomes are included and the nature of these outcomes, ranging as they do from low level technical skills to complex personal attributes and values. As outcomes, this variability is magnified in the inconsistency with which such attributes are addressed in the curriculum and, where they are addressed, in the variety of pedagogical approaches employed. The observation of such variability was the starting point of this study. This research is broadly situated within the phenomenographic perspective on teaching and teaming (Marton & Booth 1997). In the investigation described in this thesis, phenomenographic analysis is used to identify and describe the qualitatively different ways inwhich a group of academics, from different disciplines, understand the teaching and learning of graduate attributes in the context of their own courses and teaching. Four qualitatively distinct conceptions of the nature of graduate attributes and their place amongst the outcomes of a university education are identified. These are related to six distinct understandings of the way in which students develop such attributes at university. The relationships between these two hierarchical aspects of academics' understandings of graduate attributes, (conceptions of what it is that is taught/learnt and conceptions of how it is taught/learnt) constitute seven logical and internally consistent understandings of the phenomenon. These seven understandings represent three broad approaches to the teaching and learning of graduate attributes. The conceptions identified in this analysis provide a way of making sense of the variety of policy statements and the range of curricula approaches reported in the literature. Moreover, these conceptions of graduate attributes provide a tool to support current attempts to implement systematic curriculum reform across a university.

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Aim:   It  has  been  demonstrated  that  customer  satisfaction  is  critically  important  to  the performance of grocery stores (Bamford and Xystouri, 2005). In Gävle, there is heavy competition among the three big brands - ICA, Willy:s and Coop. Therefore, the study of  customer  satisfaction  in grocery  stores  in  Gävle  is  worth  researching.  This  paper aims to establish major attributes that underlie sub-attributes, to examine which pose the  most  dynamic  influences  on  the  degree  of  customer  satisfaction  in  the  different store formats.  Method:  The  method  framework  consists  of  analysis  of  three  samples  of  customers who purchase in the three store formats of ICA, Maxi ICA, ICA Sätra Store and ICA Nära. Following  a  weighted  mean  calculation  of  the  15  sub-attributes,  thus  the  result  can show  us  the  influence  of  the  identified  attributes  and  sub-attributes  on  customer satisfaction.  Result & Conclusions:  The  degree  of  customer  satisfaction  in  Maxi  ICA  is  highest,  followed  by  Sätra  ICA and  ICA  Nära.  The  attributes,  such  as  additional  service,  store  location,  and  store environment exert greatest influence on customer satisfaction in the three  formats of   stores.  The  principal  sub-attributes,  such  as  opportunity  to  meet  friends,  attractive price,  convenient  car  parking,  location,  wide  range  of  food  and  helpful  staff act dramatically.  It is concluded that additional service and location satisfy customers most. The degree of customer satisfaction in grocery stores in Gävle, as different formats of stores can meet customers' different needs and requirements.  Suggestions for future research:   Four  suggestions  for  future  study  are  introduced.  Firstly,  researching  in  other  cities, such as Stockholm or Malmo, is advisable, as both of them differentiate from Gavle in terms  of  size  of  city  and  geographic  context.  Secondly,  research  on  comparison among ICA and its competitors is also advisable to be conducted as it can investigate Swedish retailing industry from a different aspect. Thirdly, Uutialo (2001)’s result appears  to  be  against  yours, the  gap  between  Uutialo’s and  ours  is  advised  to  be examine  further.  Lastly,  the  future  researchers  are  also  advised  to  concern  about  the relationship between traditional retailing industry and e-commerce.  Contribution of the thesis:  This work contributes to extant literature by assessing differences in the main factors that contribute to satisfaction in grocery stores in Gävle, depending on different store formats,  as  customer  satisfaction  is  commonly  linked  with  service  marketing. Moreover, the field of grocery market in Gävle has not studied before the way we did, so this thesis has its original value.

Existing methods used for service discovery assume that the world is static, con- sidering a predetermined set of attributes. As a result, current discovery techniques return many results that are irrelevant. Our approach to high quality service dis- covery improves the results’ relevancy by considering dynamic attributes with values changing over time. Using this approach, we reveal structure from the data to satisfy the consumers’ experiences. Web service quality is a set of dynamic attributes used to rank services with similar functionalities. When picking a service to execute financial transactions effi- ciently, we might consider availability, reliability, response time, and transaction cost as quality indicators. Supporting dynamic attributes is a feature critical to providing exceptional quality service discovery. In addition, effective service discovery requires detailed context models that describe both static and dynamic features. The context takes into consideration the situation of the service, the operating environment, the users’ circumstances, and their preferences. For instance, latency is an important issue in stock trading services with direct impact on revenue. One of the main challenges in enabling dynamic service discovery is developing techniques and models to handle the novel aspects of the web service paradigm. This challenge leads to a variety of research questions related to measuring, monitoring, or querying of dynamic attributes, while guaranteeing integrity and validity. We outline an architecture framework called Static Discovery Dynamic Selection (SDDS) to gather and manage dynamic attributes considering both context and do- main information at discovery time—augmenting static mechanisms. The architec- ture of SDDS defines individual components that collectively satisfy flexible and ac- curate service selection with a robust resource management approach capable of con- sidering high-frequency data. Moreover, we devised a multi-criteria decision making algorithm that considers the knowledge domain and the user context, and accordingly, the algorithm returns a small set of accurate and reliable results. As part of the SDDS framework, autonomic computing adds self-adaptability by taking highly dynamic context information into account. The impact of our method is demonstrated in an implementation of the model. We demonstrate that increasing the adaptability of the web service discovery by including context information provides a noticeable reduction in the number of results returned compared to static web service discovery methods. We extend the proposed infrastructure to ascertain whether a particular service satisfies, at execution time, specific security properties. We introduce the notion of certified web service assurance, characterizing how consumers of the service can specify the set of security properties that a service should satisfy. In addition, we illustrate a mechanism to re-check security properties when the execution context changes. To this end, we introduce the concept of a context-aware certificate and describe a dynamic, context-aware service discovery environment. / Graduate