Across the period in which this research was conducted, there has been an increasing emphasis in government and university policies on the promotion of technology integration in higher education. This emphasis has also become evident in Commonwealth and State government policies relating to preservice teacher education because of the need to ensure that teachers enter the profession with the types of technological skills and competencies that can enhance teaching and learning. The research reported in this thesis describes the experiences and perceptions of computer-based technologies from the perspective of academic staff and graduates from two preservice teacher education courses in a Queensland university. The research was conducted in two phases using a repeated cross-sectional longitudinal design. In Phase 1 of the research conducted in 1997, and in Phase 2 in 2002, questionnaires were used to gather data. In Phase 1 of the research, participants comprised 43 academic staff members involved in two preservice teacher education courses and 72 first or second year graduate teachers from these courses. Items in the academic staff and graduate teacher questionnaires elicited information on a range of issues related to the technologies including knowledge and confidence levels, acquisition of knowledge, current and future usage in teaching, advantages and disadvantages of teaching with the technologies, the importance of the technologies to higher and preservice education and the adequacy of preservice teacher education to prepare new teachers to use technologies. Graduate teachers were also questioned about barriers to their classroom use of technologies. Further questions for academic staff investigated the existence of factors that facilitate usage of technologies and the degree to which the presence or absence of these factors constituted barriers or incentives to technology use. A number of questions also explored attitudes surrounding the valuing of teaching, research and publishing. Results from the first phase of research revealed that both academic staff and new teachers made little use of technologies in their teaching. The most salient barriers to academic staff technology use included lack of technical advice and support, time, and lack of evidence of improved student learning and interest. There was also a widely held perception among academic staff that teaching was not valued by their university and that, in particular, innovation in teaching deserved greater recognition. For graduate teachers, barriers to technology use included lack of computers and resources, lack of school funding, and lack of knowledge and training. In Phase 2 of the research, participants comprised 40 academic staff members and 123 graduate teachers from the same two preservice teacher education courses. Participants were again questioned about knowledge and confidence levels, acquisition of knowledge, current and future usage in teaching, and the adequacy of preservice teacher education to prepare new teachers to use technologies. In light of new research and building on findings from the first phase of data collection, several new questions were added. These questions related primarily to the nature and availability of training and how preservice teacher preparation in technology use could be improved. Results from the second phase of research indicated that, among academic staff and graduate teachers, there had been considerable increases in knowledge and confidence levels in relation to the technologies, along with increased levels of usage. Both groups were also significantly more likely than their earlier counterparts to report that preservice teachers were adequately or well prepared in the use of technologies. For graduate teachers, lack of equipment and resources were ongoing barriers to technology use. Training in technology use appeared to be less of an issue for graduate teachers than academic staff with most reporting access to, and satisfaction with, inservice training opportunities. Encouraging too, was the finding that these graduate teachers were significantly more likely than their 1997 counterparts to attribute their knowledge of the technologies to preservice teacher education. While positive change in technology use was evident across this period, continued efforts to support and integrate technology in preservice teacher education remains important, as does support for the innovative use of technology to promote learning in schools.

Title: Creation of marketing communication within the business plan of the new created e-shop Objective: The main goal of the final diploma thesis will be the creation of marketing communication for the new created online store. Methods: The theoretical and practical knowledge of internet marketing acquired during the study of the issue and in the long-term employment relationship in the area of social media was used to write the final diploma thesis. It were used qualitative research methods, such as focus group and in-depth interview. Also these methods of qualitative research together with informal interviews helped to analyse the appropriate tools of marketing communication. Results: The result of the final diploma thesis is the creation of a marketing communication campaign for the new internet shop. The campaign focuses on advertisement on social network and paid PPC advertisement. Realizing adverts on social network is planned for Facebook and Instagram platforms, which are currently a very powerful tool for marketing communications. PPC ad placement is designed for Google's web search engine, which also has a high potential for marketing communications. Other elements of the proposed marketing communications are questionnaire, e-mailing, search engine optimization and competition. The...

In this Bachelor thesis I explore sound and room as elements in design of user interfaces, both theoretical and practical in a specific application domain, to identify some of the advantages and disadvantage associated with these elements. As application domain I studied email clients and their usage at home amongst students at Blekinge Institute of Technology. In the study I found an activity, which seems to be highly distributed in the physical room where the user is located. The activity was notification of email and could take place in an arbitrary location of the home. I then augmented this activity with ideas from my theoretical assumption about room and sound. The result was a rule-based agent for notification of email, which primarily uses sound as interaction style. / I fokus för mitt arbete står två begrepp, ljud och rummet samt att skapa en fusion mellan dem i ett gränssnitt. Båda är områden som med tiden har fått ökad betydelse för IT design.

Research on social networks has established that those who bridge the gaps between dense social groups (i.e. structural holes) are granted a “vision advantage” compared to those who are embedded in dense groups. A common explanation for the advantage is that bridging a structural hole provides the broker with access to diverse information. What is less clear is how this process performs when the organizational context is turbulent. I propose that in a turbulent organizational context, when the organization is experiencing dramatic changes, employees benefit less from building a repertoire of diverse information and instead benefit more from adopting socially distant information. Information discussed by members of the organization which are several steps away from an employee would be more valuable in a turbulent context. Socially distant information would be more rare as people become rigid in response to threat, and it would be more relevant as local information becomes obsolete. To explore this idea, I study the case of two large organizations undergoing a merger integration. The members of the higher-status, acquiring organization experience relative stability compared to members of the target firm, who experience a great deal more uncertainty. The higher-status firm dominated the merger, the top management of the target firm was replaced, supervisory structures are changed, employees are forced to develop new routines, learn new technologies, and had to uproot their social support networks and move across the country. This case provides an opportunity to examine how two information flow mechanisms, which mediate the relationship between broker positions and individual career benefits, are altered in the presence of organizational turbulence. I measure information variance and the adoption of socially distant information of 612 organizational members by fitting a topic model on a dataset of email content covering a 14-month period immediately following the merger of two large consumer product firms. I test my hypotheses using a latent difference score model to test the impacts of increases in information variance, constraint, and adoption of socially distant information on increases in employee salary. I find that organizational turbulence alters the ways in which information flows provides benefits. Within turbulent contexts the pathways between access to diverse information and improved career outcomes are destroyed. Instead adopting socially distant information and information associated with power and status provides more benefits to the individual than incrementally improving a repertoire of diverse information. This study contributes to research on M&As, organizational change, and social network theory by expanding our understanding of the impact of organizational turbulence on the information mechanisms driving advantage in open networks.

This study researches phenomenon of the Biology Teachers Network (BTN), a distributed Community of Practice (CoP). The membership of the BTN is voluntary. The BTN is supported by a core group of members and administered by single moderator. The network uses a manually operated email system to communicate and share information as an automatic listserv proved to be beyond the capabilities of the membership. Etienne Wenger is the authority on the theory of CoPs and provides in depth background to the processes that are evident in a CoP. A CoP consists of the Domain, Practice and Community and through a process of negotiation of meaning, learning takes place through identity formation. CoPs can exist online in the form of distribute CoPs. Passionate leadership is essential for the formation of a CoP as is the voluntary participation of the members. A Naturalistic case study methodology is considered to be the most appropriate research tool. In this study a focus group interview and a collection of emails were used as data sources. The data was analysed using three instruments derived from the literature. The conclusion from the analysis of the data was that the BTN is a vibrant and fully functional distributed CoP in the coalescing stage. Participation in the BTN has led to an increase in professional development and ICT skills amongst some of the member teachers. The fact that this was achieved through the use of email instead of sophisticated websites suggests that this model of distributed CoP is suitable for the professional development of teachers in South Africa. / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Curriculum Studies / unrestricted

Depression är en funktionsnedsättande problematik som påverkar en stor del av den vuxna populationen varje år. Trots ett omfattande behov av hjälp så råder det brist på tillgång till effektiv behandling. Kognitiv Beteendeterapi (KBT) är en evidensbaserad metod som har stöd vid behandling av depression och förmedlad via internet skulle metoden kunna tillgängliggöras för fler. Dock är det i dagsläget oklart vilka format och vilket innehåll som kan användas när behandlingen förmedlas via internet, samt vilken betydelse den terapeutiska alliansen har för en behandling som till största del sker på distans. Syftet med denna avhandling var att undersöka effekterna för olika format av internetbehandling (epostterapi, guidad självhjälp och blended treatment) vid depression, samt alliansens roll i dessa format. Studiernas resultat visar på att epostterapi och internetförmedlade självhjälpsprogram med behandlarstöd var effektiva metoder för att behandla depression. Alliansskattningar var höga, vilket visar att en positiv terapeutisk allians kan uppnås i internetbehandling. Patientskattningar av allians kunde inte predicera utfallet i någon av behandlingarna, men behandlarskattad allians predicerade förbättring på depressionsskattningar i blended treatment. Den här avhandlingen innehåller den första randomiserade kontrollerade studien på KBT-baserad epostterapi vid depression, samt det första internet-förmedlade självhjälpsprogrammet baserat på beteendeaktivering och ACT. / Depression is a debilitating disorder that affects a large part of the adult population every year. Yet there is still a lack of access to effective care for people in need. Cognitive Behaviour therapy (CBT) is an evidence-based method for treating depression that together with the increased availability of Internet services provides an opportunity to increase access to effective treatment. Internet-based interventions can be effective in the treatment of depression, but there is a lack of knowledge concerning which formats of delivery that can be used and if therapeutic alliance is of equal importance when providing treatment over the Internet. The overall aim of this thesis was to examine the effects of different treatment formats (email therapy, guided self-help, and blended treatment) in internet-based CBT for depression and to further examine the role of alliance in these treatment modalities. Findings from this thesis show that email therapy and internetbased treatment programs were effective methods for treating depression. Alliance ratings were high, showing that a positive therapeutic alliance can be achieved in internet-based treatments. Patient-rated alliance could not predict outcome in any of the different treatment formats. However, therapist-rated alliance predicted change in depression during blended treatment. This thesis includes the first randomized controlled study on CBTbased email therapy, and the first internet-based behavioral activation program with ACT-components, for adult depression.

This thesis deals with the theme Moving information system in the cloud. The paper first describes the issue theoretically. It is defined and characterized by cloud computing as the current major trend in the implementation of information technology. A description of individual actors and models emerging in cloud computing, its brief history, related technology underlying or expand cloud computing, client issues and reference architecture model. It also includes an analysis of the current state offered cloud services, compared to open source and proprietary solutions, and was implemented insight into the upcoming National Strategy for Cloud Computing The case study move e-mail system to a hosted private cloud is demonstrated by the complexity of the entire process and the rugged environment of government institutions. On the basis of theoretical knowledge and case studies in the last chapter proposes a model that would in general help in deciding whether the institutions of government information systems migrate to cloud computing, which is also in line with the forthcoming national strategy.

The work examines legislative requirements for records management systems and databoxes system. It suggests processes and records office system as a universal solution suitable for deployment in a wide range of organizations.

The motivation of this work is to understand E-shape analysis and how it can be applied to various classification tasks. It has a powerful feature to not only look at what information is contained, but rather how that information looks. This new technique gives E-shape analysis the ability to be language independent and to some extent size independent. In this thesis, I present a new mechanism to characterize an email without using content or context called E-shape analysis for email. I explore the applications of the email shape by carrying out a case study; botnet detection and two possible applications: spam filtering and social-context based finger printing. The second part of this thesis takes what I apply E-shape analysis to activity recognition of humans. Using the Android platform and a T-Mobile G1 phone I collect data from the triaxial accelerometer and use it to classify the motion behavior of a subject.

In Afrikaans only Sowel Stefans Grové as N.P. van Wyk Louw is kontemporêre, Afrikaanssprekende kunstenaars wat binne ’n Westerse kultuur grootgeword het en in die Westerse kunstradisie opgelei is. N.P. van Wyk Louw se epiese gedig, Raka, het as inspirasie vir verskeie kunswerke gedien, waaronder skilderye van Alexis Preller en Cecil Skotnes. Twee vooraanstaande Suid- Afrikaanse komponiste is ook geïnspireer deur Van wyk Louw se werk: Graham Newcarter se ballet Raka het in 1967 verskyn en ’n gelyknamige simfoniese toondig in die vorm van ’n klavierkonsert verskyn in 1996 uit die pen van Stefans Grové. Terwyl verskeie ander komposisies van Stefans Grové as onderwerpe van uitgebreide navorsing gebruik is, is relatief min bekend oor die aard en samestelling van hierdie toondig en die raakpunte en verskille wat tussen die musiek en die oorspronklike gedig bestaan. Hierdie studie ondersoek die wyse waarop ’n erkende literêre werk deur ’n vooraanstaande Suid-Afrikaanse digter ’n nuwe gedaante aanneem binne die omvang en beperkings van ’n musikale vorm. Die studie fokus op hoe Stefans Grové verskillende musikale parameters soos ritme, melodie en struktuur in sy simfoniese toondig, gegrond op N.P. van Wyk Louw se epiese gedig Raka , aanwend. / Dissertation (MMus (Performing Art))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Music / MMUs / unrestricted