Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

Little is known about the distribution and habitat suitability of yellow rails (Coturnicops noveboracensis) throughout their breeding range. Yellow rail and vegetation surveys were conducted at 80 wetlands in south-central Manitoba in 2010-2011 to evaluate the effectiveness of repeat-visit, call-broadcast night surveys for detecting this species and habitat associations of this species at the 3-km landscape, patch, and plot scales. Yellow rails were detected at 44% of the study wetlands. Yellow rail detection was imperfect (0.63 in each year), but call-broadcast increased the number of yellow rails detected. Future yellow rail survey efforts should employ call-broadcast and at least three surveys per survey point. Yellow rail presence was positively influenced by the amount of marsh/fen in the landscape and the proportion of rushes at the study wetlands. These characteristics should be considered when identifying potential yellow rail habitat in south-central Manitoba.

Marketplace Ministries, specifically BAM and tentmaking, can be used in North Africa to effectively share the gospel in culturally impacting ways. Chapter 1 introduces the concept of BAM by presenting various definitions of BAM and finding a desirable definition for the purpose of this study. After finding a satisfactory definition for BAM, marketplace ministries are discussed and a suitable framework is developed for the use of tentmakers. The chapter reviews the relevant literature related to the practices and ministries of BAM and tentmaking. Chapter 2 examines the biblical and historical basis of BAM and tentmaking as effective strategies for reaching the lost. Old Testament principles are established for the use of marketplace ministries and the lives and work of Paul, Priscilla, and Aquila are examined as examples of those who used business to carry out ministry. Lastly, some historical flashpoints of missionaries and missionary enterprises that used business to carry out their missionary task are given. Chapter 3 examines some of the contemporary issues related to the practice of BAM and tentmaking especially as it relates to a mission structure such as the IMB. I give three criteria for tentmakers that must be exhibited to be effective; identity, integrity, and intentionality. Patrick Lai's continuum for tentmakers is discussed and evaluated based on those criteria. Chapter 4 delves specifically into tentmaking and the role of the IMB from Richmond to North Africa. Interviews were conducted with key leaders in Richmond VA, London, England, and North Africa. A survey was developed, distributed, and evaluated among missionaries in North Africa with the IMB. The survey is delimited to IMB personnel with the dual purpose of establishing a baseline for how tentmaking can be used in organizational structures and to see what needs IMB personnel are experiencing as they work on the field. Questions are answered that were raised as a result of practitioners dealing honestly with identity, integrity, and intentionality on the field. Chapter 5 examines the paradigm shifts necessary to make BAM and tentmaking viable in today's world of CAN/RANs. Discussion centers in the areas of missionary selection, education, training, and the funding of tentmakers and their platforms. For tentmaking to be effective in nations hostile to the gospel, shifts will have to be made in the areas of supervision, policy, and strategy. / The author of this dissertation requested and received permission for the author's name to be redacted.

I dagens samhälle används internet för kommunikation mellan människor runtom i världen. Det första videosamtalet gjordes runt år 1940 och det är dags fören utveckling, där 3D är något som skulle kunna göra videomöten mer verkliga.För att möjliggöra detta så konstruerades ett system som skulle kunna ta in datafrån olika time-of-flight- och färgkameror och en ljudenhet. Denna data ska sedankomprimeras och sändas över internet för att kunna spelas upp på någonannans 3D-skärm. För att samtalet inte ska kännas fördröjt måste samtliga delartillsammans ske inom realtid. De utvecklingsmetoder som har använts är parprogrammeringoch en variant utav testdriven utveckling. Systemet har utvärderatsutifrån tidmätningar, bildkvalitet och datastorlek för att hitta en bra balansmellan tid och kvalitet. Systemet konstruerades med fem delar: insamling avbilder och ljud, bilduppskalning, komprimering och avkomprimering, internetöverföringsamt rendering. Resultatet visade att de delar som berörs av datastorlekoch bildkvalitet kunde uppnå en bra balans mellan tid och kvalitet. Dockkunde inte alla mål uppnås då vissa delar tog upp mer tid än realtidsmålet samtatt alla delar inte han konstrueras. Eftersom systemet byggdes upp modulärt såkan de delar som inte uppnådde målen förbättras eller bytas ut. Utifrån resultatetkunde sedan lösningsförslag ges för att förbättra resultaten för en eventuell vidareutveckling. / In todays society internet is used for communication between each other aroundthe world. The first video call was made around the year 1940 and it is time fora development, where 3D is something that can make video calls more real. Tomake this possible a system was constructed that would be able to get data fromdifferent time-of-flight cameras and color cameras and audio devices. That datashould later on be compressed and transmitted over internet to be able to play iton someone else’s 3D-display. To prevent the feeling of delay in the call, allparts together must happen in real time. The development methods that havebeen used is pair programming and a variation of test-driven development. Thesystem has been evaluated by time messurements, image quality and data sizeto find a good balance between time and quality. The system was constructedby five parts: capturing of images and audio, image upscaling, compression anddecompression, network streaming and also rendering. The result showed thatthe parts affected by data size and image quality could achieve a good balancebetween time and quality. However, all goals could not be achieved becausesome parts where too slow for the real time goal to be achieved and also someparts could not be constructed in time. Since the system was built up modularlythe parts that did not achieve the goals can be improved or replaced. Based onthe results, solution proposals was made to improve the results for a possiblefurther development.

In computational finance, finite differences are a widely used tool in the valuation of standard derivative contracts. In a lower-dimensional setting, high accuracy and speed often characterize such methods, which gives them a competitive advantage against Monte Carlo methods. For option contracts with discontinuous payoff functions, however, finite differences encounter problems to maintain the order of convergence of the employed finite difference scheme. Therefore the timesteps are often computed in a conservative manner, which might increase the total execution time of the solver more than necessary.     It can be shown that for American call options written on dividend paying stocks, it may be optimal to exercise the option right before a dividend is paid out. The result is that yet another discontinuity is introduced in the solution and the timestep is often reduced to preserve the intrinsic convergence order. However, it is thought that at least in theory the optimal length of the timestep is an increasing function of the time elapsed since the last discontinuity occured. The objective thus becomes that of finding an explicit method for adjusting the timestep both at the dividend instants and between dividend instants. Keeping the discretization in space constant leads to a time non-equidistant finite difference problem.     The aim of this thesis is to propose a time non-equidistant numerical finite difference algorithm for valuation of American call options on stocks with dividends known in advance. In particular, an explicit formula is proposed for computing timesteps at the dividend instants and between dividend payments given a user-specified error tolerance. A portion of the report is also devoted to numerical stabilization techniques that are applied to maintain the convergence order, including Rannacher time-marching and mollification.

Call centers have been introduced with great success by many service‐oriented companies. They become the main point of contact with the customer, and an integral part of the majority of corporations. The large‐scale emergence of call centers has created a fertile source of management issues. In this PhD thesis, we focus on various operations management issues of multi‐skill and multichannel call centers. The objective of our work is to derive, both qualitative and quantitative, results for practical management. In the first part, we focus on architectures with limited flexibility for multi‐skill call centers. The context is that of call centers with asymmetric parameters: unbalanced workload, different service requirements, a predominant customer type, unbalanced abandonments and high costs of crosstraining. The most knowing architectures with limited flexibility such as chaining fail against such asymmetry. We propose a new architecture referred to as single pooling with only two skills per agent and we demonstrate its efficiency under various situations of asymmetry. In the second part, we focus on routing problems in multi‐channel call centers. In the first study, we consider a blended call center with calls arriving over time and an infinitely backlogged queue of emails. The call service is characterized by three successive stages where the second one is a break. We focus on the optimization of the email routing to agents. The objective is to maximize the throughput of emails subject to a constraint on the call waiting time. Various guidelines to call center managers are provided. In particular, we prove for the optimal routing that all the time at least one of the two email routing parameters has an extreme value. In the second study, we examine a threshold policy on the reservation of agents for the inbound calls. We study a general non‐stationary model where the call arrival follows a non‐homogeneous Poisson process. The optimization problem consists on maximizing the throughput of outbound tasks under a constraint on the waiting time of inbound calls. We propose an efficient adaptive threshold policy easy to implement. This scheduling policy is evaluated through a comparison with the optimal performance measures found in the case of a constant stationary arrival rate, and also a comparison with other intuitive adaptive threshold policies in the general non‐stationary case. In the third study, we consider a call center model with a call back option, which allows to transform an inbound call into an outbound one. The optimization problem consists on minimizing the expected waiting time of the outbound calls while respecting a service level constraint on the inbound ones. We propose a routing policy with two thresholds, one on the reservation of the agents for inbound calls, and another on the number of waiting outbound calls. A curve relating the two thresholds is determined.

Call centre employees in the insurance industry constantly interacts and negotiates with strangers, and are confronted with the unknown, unfamiliar and the unpredictable. They use interactive display terminals during telephone calls and thus perform multiple-tasks with frequent interruptions. Their jobs are also characterised by repetitive movements, while complex information is processed. In addition, call centre employees often work in noisy environments under time pressure, and their performance is usually monitored on line. Job demands and job resources can influence the well-being of call centre employees. Emotional intelligence is deemed to aid in the conceptualisation of psychological well-being and can be applied as a means to successfully cope with daily demands and pressures. The objective of this research was to determine the relationship between job demands, job resources, emotional intelligence (EQ) and work-related well-being of call centre employees. A cross-sectional survey design was used. The study population (n = 141) consisted of call centre employees in a corporate insurance environment in Gauteng. The Bar-On EQ-i, Maslach Burnout Inventory-General survey, UWES, Job characteristics scale and a biographical questionnaire were used as measuring instruments. Cronbach alpha coefficients, inter-item correlation coefficients, factor analysis, Pearson product moment correlation coefficients and structural equation modelling were used to analyse the data. Principal component analysis resulted in a fifteen factor model of emotional intelligence namely emotional self-awareness, assertiveness, self-regard, self-actualisation, independence, empathy, interpersonal relationship, social responsibility, problem-solving, reality testing, flexibility, stress tolerance, impulse control, happiness and optimism. Regarding the Job Characteristics Scale, eight factors were extracted, namely role clarity, supervision, pay and benefits, workload, job security, colleague support, opportunity to grow and social contact between the call centre agents. For the MBI-GS two factors were extracted namely: exhaustion and cynicism and for the UWES one factor was extracted, namely vigour/dedication. The correlation coefficients indicated that exhaustion was statistically a significant positive correlation (practically significant, large effect) with cynicism and a statistically significant positive correlation (practical1y significant, medium effect) with workload. Exhaustion was also a statistically significant negative correlation (practical1y significant, large effect) with engagement and a statistically significant negative correlation (practically significant, medium effect) with role clarity, col1eague support, self-regard, self-actualisation, flexibility, stress tolerance, impulse control, and happiness. Cynicism showed a statistically significant negative correlation (practical significant, large effect) with engagement and a statistically significant negative correlation (practical significant, medium effect) with role clarity, supervision, opportunity to grow, engagement, emotional self-awareness, self-regard, self actualisation, flexibility, and happiness. The results indicated that EQ directly influences the experience of burnout (main effect), however, no results could be obtained supporting the moderating effect of EQ between emotional demands and burnout. Recommendations were made for cal1 centre management in the insurance industry and for future research purposes. / Thesis (M.Com. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

The technological era in which modern day organisations function, attempting to make every aspect of service more efficient and customer friendly, has cultivated a need within organisations to invent new ways of service. Call centres are one way in which organisations are trying to improve their customer service. For this reason, telephone call centres are one of the fastest growing segments of the service sector. The growth in call centres is attributable to the benefits that they offer organisations. Call centres can improve service and retain customers, increase sales and/or revenue and reduce costs and/or improve efficiency. For this reason, organisations are placing an increasing emphasis on the role of call centres regarding the competitiveness of the company and increased pressure on call centre agents. Research indicated that there are certain stressors in the call centre industry. This is emphasised by the high turnover rate and by high absenteeism levels in call centres. Although some studies seem to suggest that working in call centres can be interesting, overall it seems that working in call centres is a stressful experience. The objective of this research was to investigate the relationship between job characteristics, work wellness and work-related flow of call centre agents in an insurance company. A cross-sectional design was used with an availability sample (N = 176). A self-constructed instrument (JDRS) was used to measure the unique job demands and job resources in the insurance industry. Along with the JDRS, the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory, the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale and the Work-Related Flow Scale were used as measuring instruments. Results showed that the unique job demands in a call centre are pressure, working conditions, workload, and job security. The unique job resources are supervision, resources availability, task freedom, pay and benefits, opportunity for growth, and support. Work wellness was found to comprise burnout, work engagement and work-related flow. Multiple regression analysis showed that 6% of the variance in Mental Distance was predicted by Job Demands, with Working Conditions being the only significant predictor. Within Exhaustion, 11% of the variance explained was predicted by Job Demands, with Job Security and Working Conditions being the only significant predictors. No statistically significant predictions were obtained for Work Engagement and Work-Related Flow (i.e. Absorption and Flow). Recommendations were made for future research. / Thesis (M.Com. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007

The primary aim of this study is to determine whether it is possible to standardize written feedback on L2 student writing for use in a computerised marking environment. It forms part of a bigger project aimed at enhancing the feedback process as a whole The study attempts to establish "best practice" with regards to feedback on writing, by establishing from the literature what works and what should be avoided. Also, an empirical study was launched to establish what lecturers focus on and what marking techniques they use. A set of randomly selected essays from the Tswana Learner English Corpus and the Afrikaans Learner English Corpus were sent to the English departments of different tertiary institutions across the country. The essays were marked by the English lecturers at the relevant institutions. The conclusion was that lecturers typically focus on surface structures, and use ineffective marking techniques. The best practice (and data from the empirical study) was then used to create a set of standardised feedback comments (tag set) that can be used in a specially programmed software package in which students submit their texts electronically. Lecturers can then mark the student essays on the computer, hopefully speeding up the process, while at the same time giving much more detailed feedback. In later stages of the bigger project, students will get individualized exercises based on the feedback, and there are experiments currently being run to try and automate certain pans of the marking process in order to take some strain off the lecturers when marking. The immense archiving abilities of the computer will also be utilized in order to create opportunities for longitudinal studies. The effectiveness of the feedback tag set was tested in comparison to the marking techniques used by the lecturers in the empirical study and a self-correcting exercise. The conclusion was that the feedback tag set is more effective than the other two techniques. but students seem to perform weak overall when it gets to the revision of cohesive devices and supporting arguments. I argue that students are not used to revising these features, since lecturers seldom (if ever) comment on the structural elements of texts. However, the experiment proves that standardization of written feedback is possible to an extent. The implications of the findings are discussed, and recommendations for further research are made. / Thesis (M.A. (English))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2006

Thesis (M.Comm. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.