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This thesis compares the tool-using behaviors and environments of nine chimpanzee study sites. In addition, tool-use in other animals is discussed, as is the social behavior of chimpanzees and the different contributions of wild and laboratory studies. Research centers on two primary questions:  Do chimpanzee study sites differ significantly in the types of tool-using behaviors they employ?  Is the amount of tool-using behaviors related to annual variability in rainfall or the overall wetness of a site? No significant differences exist between the different communities being studied. A significant correlation was found between diversity of tool-using behaviors and perhumidity index, a measure of overall wetness of a particular area. Finally, no correlations were found between diversity of tool-using behaviors and annual variability and rainfall. This analysis casts further doubt on the hypothesis that hominin technology evolved as a response to living in dryer, more open environments. / Tool-use and evolution -- Chimpanzee behavior -- Wild vs. captive studies -- Tool-use by chimpanzees -- Environment, study sites and methods -- Results / Department of Anthropology

Handover from one healthcare professional is an essential component of patient care. This can be a challenge in community care where staff provide interventions in the patient’s home and do not have the benefit of face-to-face interactions with colleagues. The purpose of this quantitative study was to explore the perceptions of nurses working in community care about handover and their views on using an electronic handover tool as opposed to their current email system. The goal of the study, to assess whether nurses would have a greater understanding of their patients’ needs through standardized reporting as opposed to emailed narratives of time and tasks was studied. Nurses completed a pre, post likert-type survey, and reviewed an electronic handover tool. Both surveys were analyzed by nursing professional designation and age to explore whether either factor influenced opinions. Nurses reported that handover was important and they supported a standardized communication tool as opposed to relying on an email system without structure. / Graduate / 0569 / nmichaudhamilton@gmail.com

The aims of this research were to describe the role that coaching plays in the development of educators and to make recommendations for the way in which schools can make use of coaching as an educator human resource development tool at the workplace. According to the findings from the literature review, coaching plays an important role in the success of novice educators. Educators who are coached typically develop a strong self-concept, become consistent in the implementation of policies and procedures, show a greater focus on the teaching and learning purpose within the classroom and display more confidence in themselves, which increases their personal ability and selfefficacy to help and develop learners, and thereby increasing the learners' love for learning and academic achievement. Educators who display the personal traits mentioned in the above paragraph, according to the findings from the literature study, become effective and expert educators who have something to offer to the learners and are recognized as professionals in their field. Various researchers in the reviewed literature stress the need for coaching for its inherent potential of being a panacea for educator attrition and turnover which are always the result of job dissatisfaction. The qualitative research method in the form of focus group interviews was used to elicit primary empirical data from a population sample of eighteen educator participants who were all at post level one. This educator participant population sample was engaged by the researcher on a three-day coaching session in Outcomes-Based Education and Training as a new teaching and learning system in South Africa. After this three-day coaching session, the participants were interviewed to determine the role that coaching plays in the development of educators, with a view to making recommendations for the way in which schools can make use of coaching as an educator human resource development tool at the workplace. The results of the empirical research revealed that educator participants who formed the population sample of this research experienced the three-day coaching session which the researcher conducted as follows: developmental; providing support and guidance; leading to paradigm shifts; setting aside any power differences to offer a relaxed atmosphere; and eventful. Recommendations for educational practice and further research were made. / Thesis (M.Ed.)--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2006.

Handover from one healthcare professional is an essential component of patient care. This can be a challenge in community care where staff provide interventions in the patient’s home and do not have the benefit of face-to-face interactions with colleagues. The purpose of this quantitative study was to explore the perceptions of nurses working in community care about handover and their views on using an electronic handover tool as opposed to their current email system. The goal of the study, to assess whether nurses would have a greater understanding of their patients’ needs through standardized reporting as opposed to emailed narratives of time and tasks was studied. Nurses completed a pre, post likert-type survey, and reviewed an electronic handover tool. Both surveys were analyzed by nursing professional designation and age to explore whether either factor influenced opinions. Nurses reported that handover was important and they supported a standardized communication tool as opposed to relying on an email system without structure. / Graduate / 0569 / nmichaudhamilton@gmail.com

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A software developer explores a software system by asking and answering a series of questions. To answer these questions, a developer may need to consult various sources providing information about the program, such as the static relationships expressed directly in the source code, the run-time behaviour of a program recorded in a dynamic trace, or evolution history as recorded in a source management system. Despite the support afforded by software exploration tools, developers often struggle to find the necessary information to answer their questions and may even become disoriented, where they feel mentally lost and are uncertain of what they were trying to accomplish. This dissertation advances a thesis that a developer's questions, which we refer to as conceptual queries, can be better supported through a model to represent and compose different sources of information about a program. The basis of this model is the sphere, which serves as a simple abstraction of a source of information about a program. Many of the software exploration tools used by a developer can be represented as a sphere. Spheres can be composed in a principled fashion such that information from a sphere may replace or supplement information from a different sphere. Using our sphere model, for example, a developer can use dynamic runtime information from an execution trace to replace information from the static source code to see what actually occurred. We have implemented this model in a configurable tool, called Ferret. We have used the facilities provided by the model to implement 36 conceptual queries identified from the literature, blogs, and our own experience, and to support the integration of four different sources of program information. Establishing correspondences between similar elements from different spheres allows a query to bridge across different spheres in addition to allowing a tool's user interface to drive queries from other sources of information. Through this effort we show that sphere model broadens the set of possible conceptual queries answerable by software exploration tools. Through a small diary study and a controlled experiment, both involving professional software developers, we found the developers used the conceptual queries that were available to them and reported finding Ferret useful.

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- McMaster University, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 187-195). Also available via World Wide Web.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Also available in print.