Academics encounter problems with the selection, evaluation, testing and implementation of e-assessment software tools. The researcher experienced these problems while adopting e-assessment at the university where she is employed. Hence she undertook this study, which is situated in schools and departments in Computing-related disciplines, namely Computer Science, Information Systems and Information Technology at South African Higher Education Institutions. The literature suggests that further research is required in this domain. Furthermore, preliminary empirical studies indicated similar disabling factors at other South African tertiary institutions, which were barriers to long-term implementation of e-assessment. Despite this, academics who are adopters of e-assessment indicate satisfaction, particularly when conducting assessments with large classes. Questions of the multiple choice genre can be assessed automatically, leading to increased productivity and more frequent assessments. The purpose of this research is to develop an evaluation framework to assist academics in determining which e-assessment tool to adopt, enabling them to make more informed decisions. Such a framework would also support evaluation of existing e-assessment systems. The underlying research design is action research, which supported an iterative series of studies for developing, evaluating, applying, refining, and validating the SEAT (Selecting and Evaluating an e-Assessment Tool) Evaluation Framework and subsequently an interactive electronic version, e-SEAT. Phase 1 of the action research comprised Studies 1 to 3, which established the nature, context and extent of adoption of e-assessment. This set the foundation for development of SEAT in Phase 2. During Studies 4 to 6 in Phase 2, a rigorous sequence of evaluation and application facilitated the transition from the manual SEAT Framework to the electronic evaluation instrument, e-SEAT, and its further evolution. This research resulted in both a theoretical contribution (SEAT) and a practical contribution (e-SEAT). The findings of the action research contributed, along with the literature, to the categories and criteria in the framework, which in turn, contributed to the bodies of knowledge on MCQs and e-assessment. The final e-SEAT version, the ultimate product of this action research, is presented in Appendix J1. For easier reference, the Appendices are included on a CD, attached to the back cover of this Thesis.. / Computing / PhD. (Information Systems)

M. Tech. (Information Technology, Faculty of Applied and Computer Sciences) Vaal University of Technology / A reliable and efficient information system (IS) is critical for Eskom so that it is able to manage and meet its energy demands. A reliable power supply provides stakeholders with the confidence that supply of power is managed sustainably, effectively and efficiently. Thus, an information system is integral in the effective and efficient generation, distribution and transmission of electricity. The purpose of the study was to investigate IS evaluation criteria and to develop a comprehensive framework that will serve as basis for IS evaluation across Eskom. The research study additionally investigated IS evaluation methods and instruments that are currently used in Eskom. This study produced an information systems success evaluation framework. The proposed model was built by reviewing well-established information systems success models and information systems theories found in the literature. This research study followed the interpretive research paradigm combining it with qualitative case study. The research findings linked information systems success to top management support, change management process and information quality. The findings of the study alsorevealed that quality of IS department’s service as perceived by users can greatly influence IS success. The results of this study provided enlightening reference benefit for Eskom, which was in line with Eskom’s goal of improving business processes, efficiencies and eliminating waste.

Business-IT alignment (BITA) continues to be a top management concern. It generally refers to a preferred condition in which the relationship between business and IT is optimised to maximise the business value of IT. Early approaches in both research and practice have focused on the role of IT in supporting business strategies. Today, a more extended approach of BITA has been embraced that recognises soft factors that are related to people and culture issues at both tactical and operational levels of organisations. ‘Why alignment is important’ is not the crucial question today. In fact ‘how it can be achieved and matured’ is the real concern of business executives. There exists a number of theoretical models for conceptualising BITA, however, they have different focuses and contain different BITA components. Therefore, there is a need for a means of supporting practitioners for selecting an appropriate model. Furthermore, there is a need for a more practice-oriented research that target higher maturity of BITA by understanding the organisational context, including barriers that hinders BITA and the mutual relationships between organisational culture and BITA. Thus, the overall problem addressed in the thesis is the following: In spite of extensive literature on business-IT alignment, there is still limited maturity of business-IT alignment in practice due to the limited knowledge on barriers that hinder BITA achievement from practitioners’ perspective, on the means for supporting the selection of an appropriate model for assessing BITA, and on mutual relationships between BITA and organisational culture. Based on this research problem, five research objectives were developed. The first two objectives corresponded to barriers to achieving BITA and supporting the selection of BITA model respectively. The remaining three objectives corresponded to the two unidirectional influences between BITA and organisational culture (OC) and to the mutual relationships between them respectively. Different research methodologies and strategies were applied to achieve the research objectives, including qualitative and quantitative studies as well as design science. The results presented in the thesis, each corresponding to an objective, are the following:  A list of barriers that practitioners can use as a basis for better achievement of BITA, a better focus on strategic vs. tactical barriers, and their relationships to BITA components. An evaluation framework that supports practitioners in selecting appropriate BITA models for assessing and modelling BITA. An extended version of the strategic alignment model (SAM) of Luftman (2000), which considers organisational culture. An analysis of the impact of BITA components on organisational culture profiles. A BITA-organisational culture integrated view that supports decision-makers in facilitating decisions regarding both BITA and organisational culture. The results of the research provide both theoretical and empirical contributions to the business-IT alignment research and practice. / MIT

O presente trabalho consistiu em realizar uma proposta metodológica de análise quantitativa da sustentabilidade de estabelecimentos agropecuários fluminenses através do emprego do marco metodológico proposto por Sauvenier et al. (2006) e van Cauwenbergh et al. (2007), denominado SAFE (Sustainability Assessment of Farming and the Environment Framework). Conforme a aplicação para sistemas agrários realizada por Sánchez-Fernández (2009) e por sua vez, incorporando a quarta dimensão da sustentabilidade (dimensão institucional), ademais das três dimensões clássicas neste tipo de análise (econômica, social e ambiental), seguindo a sugestão do IBGE (2010), com base nas recomendações do Livro Azul da ONU (1996). Esse procedimento contou com a colaboração e validação de um painel composto por 16 especialistas em agricultura fluminense o que permitiu selecionar 20 indicadores de sustentabilidade, derivados de 17 critérios, 8 princípios e 4 dimensões. Dos resultados alcançados e de seus possíveis desdobramentos, a proposta metodológica sugerida pode ser considerada uma ferramenta potencialmente útil para guiar as políticas públicas que incidem sobre o setor. / The aim of this study was to develop a practical methodology for evaluating the sustainability of farms by means of the methodological framework proposed by Sauvenier et al. (2006) and van Cauwenbergh et al. (2007), called SAFE (Sustainability Assessment of Farming and the Environment Framework), according to the application for agricultural systems performed by Sánchez-Fernández (2009) and incorporating the fourth dimension of sustainability (institutional dimension) besides the three classical dimensions adopted in this type of analysis (economic, social and environmental), following the suggestions of IBGE (2010), based on the recommendations of the UN Blue Book (1996). This procedure was validated by a panel of 16 experts in fluminense agriculture that supported the selection of 20 sustainability indicators, derived from 17 criteria, 8 principles and 4 dimensions. Through the results achieved and their possible outcomes, the proposed methodology for agricultural sustainability quantitative analysis could be considered as a potentially useful tool to improve current agricultural policies.

O presente trabalho consistiu em realizar uma proposta metodológica de análise quantitativa da sustentabilidade de estabelecimentos agropecuários fluminenses através do emprego do marco metodológico proposto por Sauvenier et al. (2006) e van Cauwenbergh et al. (2007), denominado SAFE (Sustainability Assessment of Farming and the Environment Framework). Conforme a aplicação para sistemas agrários realizada por Sánchez-Fernández (2009) e por sua vez, incorporando a quarta dimensão da sustentabilidade (dimensão institucional), ademais das três dimensões clássicas neste tipo de análise (econômica, social e ambiental), seguindo a sugestão do IBGE (2010), com base nas recomendações do Livro Azul da ONU (1996). Esse procedimento contou com a colaboração e validação de um painel composto por 16 especialistas em agricultura fluminense o que permitiu selecionar 20 indicadores de sustentabilidade, derivados de 17 critérios, 8 princípios e 4 dimensões. Dos resultados alcançados e de seus possíveis desdobramentos, a proposta metodológica sugerida pode ser considerada uma ferramenta potencialmente útil para guiar as políticas públicas que incidem sobre o setor. / The aim of this study was to develop a practical methodology for evaluating the sustainability of farms by means of the methodological framework proposed by Sauvenier et al. (2006) and van Cauwenbergh et al. (2007), called SAFE (Sustainability Assessment of Farming and the Environment Framework), according to the application for agricultural systems performed by Sánchez-Fernández (2009) and incorporating the fourth dimension of sustainability (institutional dimension) besides the three classical dimensions adopted in this type of analysis (economic, social and environmental), following the suggestions of IBGE (2010), based on the recommendations of the UN Blue Book (1996). This procedure was validated by a panel of 16 experts in fluminense agriculture that supported the selection of 20 sustainability indicators, derived from 17 criteria, 8 principles and 4 dimensions. Through the results achieved and their possible outcomes, the proposed methodology for agricultural sustainability quantitative analysis could be considered as a potentially useful tool to improve current agricultural policies.

The Heimdal Framework presented in this thesis is a step towards an unambiguous framework that reveals the objective strength and weaknesses of the security of components. It provides a way to combine different aspects affecting the security of components - such as category requirements, implemented security functionality and the environment in which it operates - in a modular way, making each module replaceable in the event that a more accurate module is developed. The environment is assessed and quantified through a methodology presented as a part of the Heimdal Framework. The result of the evaluation is quantitative data, which can be presented with varying degrees of detail, reflecting the needs of the evaluator. The framework is flexible and divides the problem space into smaller, more accomplishable subtasks with the means to focus on specific problems, aspects or system scopes. The evaluation method is focusing on technological components and is based on, but not limited to, the Security Functional Requirements (SFR) of the Common Criteria.

L'objectif de cette thèse, menée dans un cadre industriel, est d'apparier des contenus textuels médiatiques. Plus précisément, il s'agit d'apparier à des articles de presse en ligne des vidéos pertinentes, pour lesquelles nous disposons d'une description textuelle. Notre problématique relève donc exclusivement de l'analyse de matériaux textuels, et ne fait intervenir aucune analyse d'image ni de langue orale. Surviennent alors des questions relatives à la façon de comparer des objets textuels, ainsi qu'aux critères mobilisés pour estimer leur degré de similarité. L'un de ces éléments est selon nous la similarité thématique de leurs contenus, autrement dit le fait que deux documents doivent relater le même sujet pour former une paire pertinente. Ces problématiques relèvent du domaine de la recherche d'information (ri), dans lequel nous nous ancrons principalement. Par ailleurs, lorsque l'on traite des contenus d'actualité, la dimension temporelle est aussi primordiale et les problématiques qui l'entourent relèvent de travaux ayant trait au domaine du topic detection and tracking (tdt) dans lequel nous nous inscrivons également.Le système d'appariement développé dans cette thèse distingue donc différentes étapes qui se complètent. Dans un premier temps, l'indexation des contenus fait appel à des méthodes de traitement automatique des langues (tal) pour dépasser la représentation classique des textes en sac de mots. Ensuite, deux scores sont calculés pour rendre compte du degré de similarité entre deux contenus : l'un relatif à leur similarité thématique, basé sur un modèle vectoriel de ri; l'autre à leur proximité temporelle, basé sur une fonction empirique. Finalement, un modèle de classification appris à partir de paires de documents, décrites par ces deux scores et annotées manuellement, permet d'ordonnancer les résultats.L'évaluation des performances du système a elle aussi fait l'objet de questionnements dans ces travaux de thèse. Les contraintes imposées par les données traitées et le besoin particulier de l'entreprise partenaire nous ont en effet contraints à adopter une alternative au protocole classique d'évaluation en ri, le paradigme de Cranfield. / The goal of this thesis, conducted within an industrial framework, is to pair textual media content. Specifically, the aim is to pair on-line news articles to relevant videos for which we have a textual description. The main issue is then a matter of textual analysis, no image or spoken language analysis was undertaken in the present study. The question that arises is how to compare these particular objects, the texts, and also what criteria to use in order to estimate their degree of similarity. We consider that one of these criteria is the topic similarity of their content, in other words, the fact that two documents have to deal with the same topic to form a relevant pair. This problem fall within the field of information retrieval (ir) which is the main strategy called upon in this research. Furthermore, when dealing with news content, the time dimension is of prime importance. To address this aspect, the field of topic detection and tracking (tdt) will also be explored.The pairing system developed in this thesis distinguishes different steps which complement one another. In the first step, the system uses natural language processing (nlp) methods to index both articles and videos, in order to overcome the traditionnal bag-of-words representation of texts. In the second step, two scores are calculated for an article-video pair: the first one reflects their topical similarity and is based on a vector space model; the second one expresses their proximity in time, based on an empirical function. At the end of the algorithm, a classification model learned from manually annotated document pairs is used to rank the results.Evaluation of the system's performances raised some further questions in this doctoral research. The constraints imposed both by the data and the specific need of the partner company led us to adapt the evaluation protocol traditionnal used in ir, namely the cranfield paradigm. We therefore propose an alternative solution for evaluating the system that takes all our constraints into account.

This study gives guidelines to enhance online service delivery by the South African Police Service (SAPS by means of its website. It makes various recommendations to achieve this, following various investigations. The SAPS describes its primary goal as “service to the public”. This is in line with the South African government’s Batho Pele (“People first”) initiative to improve the delivery of public services. However, as society is changing in response to the demands of the Internet Age, service providers (for the purpose of this study, police agencies) must, too, adjust. The application of e-Governance will enable these agencies to serve the public with a wide variety of information and services. This study makes recommendations in this regard as well. In the initial study for this work user needs regarding the establishment of the SAPS website were assessed. Subsequently a study was conducted to determine best practices in various English-speaking countries, using an evaluation framework compiled for this purpose. Based on the results gained a measuring instrument was designed to evaluate the SAPS website. Four expert evaluators were then requested to do so. This resulted in an assessment of possible shortcomings of the SAPS website and recommendations for enhancing online service delivery and e-Governance. / Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Information Science / unrestricted

Academics encounter problems with the selection, evaluation, testing and implementation of e-assessment software tools. The researcher experienced these problems while adopting e-assessment at the university where she is employed. Hence she undertook this study, which is situated in schools and departments in Computing-related disciplines, namely Computer Science, Information Systems and Information Technology at South African Higher Education Institutions. The literature suggests that further research is required in this domain. Furthermore, preliminary empirical studies indicated similar disabling factors at other South African tertiary institutions, which were barriers to long-term implementation of e-assessment. Despite this, academics who are adopters of e-assessment indicate satisfaction, particularly when conducting assessments with large classes. Questions of the multiple choice genre can be assessed automatically, leading to increased productivity and more frequent assessments. The purpose of this research is to develop an evaluation framework to assist academics in determining which e-assessment tool to adopt, enabling them to make more informed decisions. Such a framework would also support evaluation of existing e-assessment systems. The underlying research design is action research, which supported an iterative series of studies for developing, evaluating, applying, refining, and validating the SEAT (Selecting and Evaluating an e-Assessment Tool) Evaluation Framework and subsequently an interactive electronic version, e-SEAT. Phase 1 of the action research comprised Studies 1 to 3, which established the nature, context and extent of adoption of e-assessment. This set the foundation for development of SEAT in Phase 2. During Studies 4 to 6 in Phase 2, a rigorous sequence of evaluation and application facilitated the transition from the manual SEAT Framework to the electronic evaluation instrument, e-SEAT, and its further evolution. This research resulted in both a theoretical contribution (SEAT) and a practical contribution (e-SEAT). The findings of the action research contributed, along with the literature, to the categories and criteria in the framework, which in turn, contributed to the bodies of knowledge on MCQs and e-assessment. The final e-SEAT version, the ultimate product of this action research, is presented in Appendix J1. For easier reference, the Appendices are included on a CD, attached to the back cover of this Thesis.. / Computing / PhD. (Information Systems)

<div>This study explores the perceptions of critical stakeholders as to the viability of a fully remote apprenticeship delivery system (FRADS), as well as its ability to serve as a functionally equivalent path of inclusion for access-limited populations. One of the first recorded pedagogical models, apprenticeship was also one of the first to be regulated. The effectiveness of the method of training a novice to enter the adult world of work through apprenticeship is undisputed, when it is conducted in a manner approximate to that from which it derived: a process that occurs over time, with continuous interaction between novice and expert. Despite millennia of practice, and a few emerging programs called Virtual Apprenticeships, the critical real-time skills-based mentoring component (on the job instruction/training, or OJI/OJT) of the modern apprenticeship is still only carried out fully in face-to-face programs. With the move to work-from-home (WFH) resulting from the global COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, assessing the viability of a FRADS is timely. This qualitative exploratory study is a first step in the discussion. Bounded by the parameters of the U.S. Certified Apprenticeship Guidelines for Registered Apprenticeships and the constructs of viability and functional equivalence, participants of three critical stakeholder groups—policy makers, service managers, and front-line service workers—offer their pre-pandemic perceptions of the construct of a FRADS. Guided by the work of Jahoda, et al., (1957), Northrop (1949,1959), and Swedberg (2018), this qualitative exploratory methodology identified perceptual data points that are then compared against a framework of viability derived from IEG’s Service Delivery Evaluation Framework (Caceres, et al., 2016). And, because this represents a large systems change (LSC), I included aspects of Weiner’s (2009) Organizational Readiness for Change—valance and efficacy—as additional indicators of potential viability. Stakeholders examined key components of IEG’s evaluative criteria applied to a face-to-face apprenticeship as a functionally equivalent, technology-mediated apprenticeship delivery system. Additional stakeholder perceptions, mid-pandemic, along with a review of scholarly articles, media reports, and Department of Labor statistics concerning the impact of the WFH mandates foreground the gap a purposeful FRADS might fill. Analysis of some of the findings are represented in a preliminary process map. </div>