Recently, the numbers of Higher Education institutions that are using Web 2.0 technologies and social networking sites are increasing dramatically. These sites offer unique and diverse learning opportunities. There is evidence that a sense of community can be created online and that this community is connected with perceived learning. Garrison, Anderson and Archer (2000) introduced and developed the Community of Inquiry framework as a dynamic process model and a comprehensive framework to guide the research and practice of online learning communities, and to describe and measure elements supporting the development of these communities. This framework consists of three elements - social, teaching and cognitive presence - as well as categories and indicators to define each presence and guide the coding of transcripts. The categories of social presence are affective responses, open communication and group cohesion. The categories of teaching presence are instructional design and organisation, facilitating discourse and direct instruction. Previous studies suggest that a positive social climate on an online learning community is important as it can improve learning experience and cognitive presence. This study aims to explore and understand the nature of Community of Inquiry presences, in particular teaching presence and social presence. The aim of the study is to understand the influence of a different teaching presence on students’ development of social presence. This study provides a more comprehensive picture of developing students’ social presence over changing teaching presence in a social network environment in a Kuwaiti higher education context. In order to achieve the purpose of this study, the following research questions are explored: 1- How does a students’ sense of social presence change with a different teaching presence in the social network environment within a Kuwaiti higher education context? a. Does a students’ sense of social presence (affective responses, open communication and group cohesion) change as a result of a different teaching presence (facilitating discourse - direct instruction) in the social network environment in a Kuwaiti higher education context? b. Why do participants maintain or change their social presence level during the course? 2- How does the use of teaching presence promote the development of students’ social presence in a Kuwaiti higher education context within the social network environment? The study was conducted in the second semester of 2010/2011 at The Education Technology Department - The College of Basic Education - The Public Authority for Applied Education and Training (PAAET), within the State of Kuwait. The study was carried out on the Educational Communication module and involved 46 male participants. This study uses the equivalent of mixed methods design to answer research questions. The sequential explanatory strategy is embedded within an applied quasi-experimental approach. Quantitative data is collected and analysed, which is then followed by the collection and analysis of qualitative data. The researcher used a messages analysis and a content analysis approach to reveal the level of social presence in an online community and then develop stimulated recall interview questions. A combination of individual interviews and focus group interviews were used. Garrison et al.’s (2000) social presence coding schemes were developed to make them more suitable in the study context. Quantitative and qualitative data show that there is no significant difference between the effects of facilitating discourse and direct instruction in terms of students’ social presence level. Stimulated recall interviews reveal that most participants cannot distinguish between facilitating discourse and direct instruction. The participants believe that facilitating discourse and direct instruction are similar. The participants’ responses lead the researcher to search for other motives that could promote the development of students’ social presence in the higher education context in the social network environment. The study concludes that there are two factors that could promote the development of students’ social presence. First, instructional design and organisation, such as web design satisfaction, network effect, instructor responsiveness, the nature of the task and awarding degrees. Second, learner-specific matters, such as previous experience, peer influence, friendship, attitude, self-esteem and self-confidence and something I refer to as the Wave Effect.

The global water crisis has often been presented as a crisis of governance and attributed to various factors, including the slowness of institutional adjustments to rapid structural challenges such as demographic growth, resource degradation and economic difficulties (UNU-INWEH, 2012). Despite the rapid growth of cities around the world and a fast increase in the use of desalination for freshwater supply (WHO, 2011), the dynamics of institutional change in desalinated urban water governance have never been researched. This thesis investigates the drivers, barriers and counter-forces to a major institutional change - privatisation - in the desalinated water governance of the coastal cities of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region. Through the cases of public private partnerships (PPPs) in Abu Dhabi and Doha and the failed attempt to implement similar PPPs in Kuwait City, this research investigates the diverse forces that have led to the implementation of this new institutional arrangement in order to question - both empirically and theoretically - the literature’s general assumption that privatisation reforms in urban water services in the South arise from structural issues, e.g. a water crisis, an economic crisis and/or a governance crisis. The three main schools of comparative studies are used systematically to test hypotheses about causal relationships between selected variables. The structural approach is applied to examine the influences of the redistributive rentier state, oil price fluctuations and regional energy integration over the privatisation process. Adopting a Post-colonial perspective, the political culture approach is used to examine critically the contemporary influences of traditional cultural features, key local institutions and foreign cultural influences over the fluctuating roles of both the State and the markets in the local urban water supply since the late 19^th century. Finally, the rational agency theory is used to examine the role in the recent privatisation process of key political figures from the ruling families. This research demonstrates that the privatisation process of desalination units in Abu Dhabi and Doha was not driven by structural factors during the 2000s, a period of high oil prices, but was initiated in the 1990s and driven the following decade by the agency of a reforming elite wanting to privatize the water sector as part of a broader dynamic of construction of a neoliberal post-rentier economy – i.e. an intermediary political economic paradigm that aims to mediate the transition from rentierism to a fully liberalized economy. The political culture approach shows that these privatisations were facilitated by a gradual shift from pure rentierism towards a post-rentier form of neoliberalism in the political philosophy of liberal water technocrats on the one hand, and towards a regional trend of ‘pious neoliberalism’ (Atia, 2011) among practicing Sunni Muslims. Nevertheless, the enduring rentier mentality has constituted a strong counter-force to privatisation dynamics. The PPPs were implemented in Abu Dhabi and Doha because the local ruling elites situated the political bargaining within the tribal institutional milieus that they mastered completely through the control of the rent and related benefits. In Kuwait however, negotiations between the ruling elites and the leading political forces, the tribes and the opposition, were situated in a parliamentary institutional milieu that the ruling elite could not control and where the opposition and tribal MPs have opposed all reforms of the rentier ruling bargain. These findings illustrate that institutional changes in desalinated water governance are not neutrally driven by uncontrollable structural forces, but are the product of political bargaining between and among various rational political actors and their coalitions. This thesis also shows that in non-democratic or semi-democratic settings, the choice of a specific institutional milieu by the authorities is critical to the successful bargaining of institutional reforms, since it determines whether some key actors - along with structural factors (e.g. rent) and cultural factors (e.g. tribal influence) - will support the process or will be able to act against it.

L’enseignement du français est tenu de s’adapter aux contextes et publics. Ainsi, la faculté de droit du Koweït a proposé à ses étudiants, à la fin des années 1980, un enseignement-apprentissage de la lecture des textes juridiques français. Notre travail se propose, dans un premier temps, de passer en perspective le contexte du Koweït dans ses différentes déclinaisons géographique, économique, linguistique, ainsi que la place du français langue étrangère dans cet émirat.Dans un second temps, l’analyse de cette expérience particulière aboutit à une évaluation à la lumière des critères retenus en la matière. Partant de là, nous formulerons quelques propositions d’ordre général sur l’enseignement-apprentissage du français juridique au Koweït. / As it’s important for the teaching French language to adapt with surrounding society, at the end of 1980, the faculty of law college in Kuwait university proposed a new course to help the student to learn how to read French law texts. First, our work proposes to move into perspective the context of Kuwait in its geographic, economic and linguistic variations and the placeof French language in this emirate. In the second step, the analysis of this particular experience lead to an evaluation set according to the criteria. From that point, we formulate some suggestions on teaching and learning French law in Kuwait.

O Programa de Pós-Graduação em Relações Internacionais é instituído em parceria com a Unesp/Unicamp/PUC-SP, em projeto subsidiado pela CAPES, intitulado "Programa San Tiago Dantas". / Orientador: Luís Fernando Ayerbe / Banca: Sebastião Velasco e Cruz / Banca: Rafael Duarte Villa / Resumo: O trabalho investiga os vínculos entre, de um lado, a crescente presença militar dos EUA e seu envolvimento em conflitos no Golfo Pérsico e, do outro, o aumento da importância econômica e estratégica das reservas de petróleo dessa região. O trabalho busca as raízes históricas dos conflitos da atualidade. Para isso, focaliza a atuação internacional das grandes empresas petrolíferas e a evolução da estratégia norte-americana no Golfo Pérsico desde a II Guerra Mundial. Esse estudo utiliza como referência as sucessivas doutrinas de política externa aplicadas pelos EUA no Golfo Pérsico, com destaque para a Doutrina Carter, que declara o acesso norte-americano ao petróleo da região como um interesse "vital", a ser defendido pela força, se necessário. O trabalho constata que as intervenções militares norte-americanas no Oriente Médio se tornaram mais intensas e freqüentes depois do fim da Guerra Fria. Esse fenômeno é explicado pela dependência crescente dos EUA e da economia mundial em relação às reservas petrolíferas da região, cuja importância estratégica aumenta na medida em que o petróleo se torna mais escasso no resto do mundo. A partir da análise de documentos oficiais, o presente trabalho constata que os EUA adotaram, no governo de George W. Bush, uma política de energia cujo ponto central é convencer os países produtores a extrair petróleo de acordo com a máxima capacidade possível, a fim de enfrentar a escassez e de manter os preços em patamares compatíveis com os interesses norte-americanos. Essa política, que encara o acesso à energia como uma questão de segurança e tem como instrumento fundamental a força militar, tende a acirrar a resistência nacionalista nos países produtores mais importantes, agravando os conflitos já existentes no Golfo Pérsico. / Mestre

Provisioning Internet services remains an area of concern for Internet service providers. Despite investments to improve resources and technology, the understanding of sociotechnical factors that influence the service-provisioning life cycle remains limited. The purpose of this case study was to evaluate the influence of sociotechnical factors associated with telecom service provisioning and to explore the critical success and failure factors, specifically in the telecommunication industry of Kuwait. Guided by sociotechnical systems theory, this qualitative exploratory case study approach examined a purposeful sample of 19 participants comprising of managers, engineers, and technicians who had the knowledge and experience of the service-provisioning life cycle. Semistructured interviews, project logs, and a self-created follow-up questionnaire were the primary sources of data. Thematic analysis techniques assisted in coding the data and developing themes, which resulted in a set of critical success and failure factors that influence the service-provisioning life cycle. Cross-functional communication, risk management practices, infrastructure availability, and employee skill development were among the emergent factors that influenced the service implementation. Internet service providers may use the results from this study to improve the service-provisioning life cycle. Successful implementations will promote an environment of positive social change that will increase employee motivation, productivity, and employee morale.

The use of banned toxic weapons in Iraq during Gulf War 1991 started new debates. The increase in cancer cases was the main focus of these issues. The gap in literature motivated this study to find out the correlation between use of DU weapons and its effects on human health. The different probable causes of increase in cancer cases, in Iraq after Gulf War 1991, have been discussed in this study. Three causes; DU, brick kilns smoke near Basra and Kuwait oil fire smoke have been selected. The major emphasis of this study is on use of Depleted Uranium (DU). Different statistical data sets have been used and displayed in the form of maps and graphs using GIS methodologies. It’s hard to say after this GIS based study that the fired Depleted Uranium is the sole cause of increase in cancer incidences in Iraq, while some trends and risk factors at least can be observed where increase in cancer cases in different Governorates in Iraq is clearly visible after Gulf War 1991. After analyzing satellite images of different dates, the second part of this study concludes that Kuwait oil wells smoke is not responsible for increase in cancer incidences in Iraq. A small debate has been initiated regarding smoke in brick kilns near Basra. No study has been found in this regard which can provide evidences that brick kilns smoke is the cause of increase in cancer incidences in southern Iraq. It’s not easy to carry out a full fledge GIS based study to prove DU as cause of increase in cancer cases. The main limitation in this regard is unavailability of required data. Therefore a new GIS based methodology has been devised which can be used to prove relationship between exposure to DU and increase in cancer cases in Iraq. This new methodology is also dependent on specific data sets. Hence this methodology also recommends the collection of specific data sets required for this study. At the end, a detailed study, with honesty, has been suggested to fill up the gaps found in literature whether use of Depleted Uranium in weapons is harmful for human health or not.

This study explores the “push-pull” dynamics of Shia migration from southwestern Iran (Fars, Khuzestan and the Persian Gulf coast) to Kuwait during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although nowadays Shias constitute thirty five percent of the Kuwaiti population and their historical role in building the state of Kuwait have been substantial, no individual study has delved into the causes of Shia migration from Iran to Kuwait. By analyzing the internal political, economic, and social conditions of both regions in the context of the Gulf sheikhdoms, the British and Ottoman empires, and other great powers interested in dominating the Gulf region, my thesis examines why Shia migrants, such as merchants, artisans and laborers left southwestern Iran and chose Kuwait as their final destination to settle. The two-way trade between southwest Iran and Kuwait provided a pathway for the Shia migrants and settlers into Kuwait. Moreover, by highlighting the economic roles of the Shia community in Kuwait, my thesis enhances our understanding of the foundation and contributions of the Shia community in Kuwait. Thus it fills a significant gap in Kuwaiti historiography. The research for this thesis draws from a variety of primary sources, including British government documents, the writing of western travelers, the Almatrook business archive, and oral-history interviews with descendants of Shia immigrants to Kuwait.

This study explores the “push-pull” dynamics of Shia migration from southwestern Iran (Fars, Khuzestan and the Persian Gulf coast) to Kuwait during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although nowadays Shias constitute thirty five percent of the Kuwaiti population and their historical role in building the state of Kuwait have been substantial, no individual study has delved into the causes of Shia migration from Iran to Kuwait. By analyzing the internal political, economic, and social conditions of both regions in the context of the Gulf sheikhdoms, the British and Ottoman empires, and other great powers interested in dominating the Gulf region, my thesis examines why Shia migrants, such as merchants, artisans and laborers left southwestern Iran and chose Kuwait as their final destination to settle. The two-way trade between southwest Iran and Kuwait provided a pathway for the Shia migrants and settlers into Kuwait. Moreover, by highlighting the economic roles of the Shia community in Kuwait, my thesis enhances our understanding of the foundation and contributions of the Shia community in Kuwait. Thus it fills a significant gap in Kuwaiti historiography. The research for this thesis draws from a variety of primary sources, including British government documents, the writing of western travelers, the Almatrook business archive, and oral-history interviews with descendants of Shia immigrants to Kuwait.

Überarb. Diss. Univ. Edinburgh, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references and index.

The Health Sector at the state of Kuwait is facing many challenges. One of which is public expectations in health are high, and thus, the Ministry of Health (MOH) in Kuwait has amplified the health expenditure by 86% since 2007. And since the medicine budget represents half of the total MOH budget, it is proposed that the development in health policy might be a suitable tool to control the inflation within the health budget. This thesis examines the opportunities and challenges of introducing an EML in Kuwait and the factors influencing its effectiveness. A mixed-methodology approach has been used to enhance and validate the data, in the form of interviews, comparative studies and questionnaires. One major limitation to the research was the lack of previous data relating to this work, and the information should be gathered in person in the form of hard copies, and later, the data was analysed using qualitative and quantitative approaches. It has been attained that, the EML might be a valuable tool if adopted and implemented appropriately, EML adjustment to country health situation is crucial for successful utilisation and fulfilling the concept objectives. Standard Treatment Guidelines are fundamental part of EM selection process, in Kuwait there were lack in the uniformity of the local STG, but fortunately, there is an eagerness to innovate, and the medicine situation might benefit from a type of organisation, overall, if the EML implemented efficiently in Kuwait, it might help in improving the general health and control the inflation in MOH budget.