see document / Master of Science in Education

No description available.

published_or_final_version / Public Administration / Master / Master of Social Sciences

Thesis (doctoral)--Universiẗat Göttingen, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 323-342) and index.

In this paper, 936 faculty free response reviews of open textbooks from the Open Textbook Library were analyzed for content and themes. The reviews were completed by faculty members at institutions in the United States and Canada. The textbooks were evaluated regarding their comprehensiveness, content accuracy, relevance longevity, clarity, consistency, modularity, organization structure flow, interface, grammatical errors, and cultural relevance. The results of the reviews found that the across 9360 comments regarding the quality of open textbooks, of these comments 97.3% reflected adequate or exceptional reviews of the textbooks. Faculty often compared the texts to traditional textbooks and in all mentions of comparison, the open textbook were regarded to be of equal or superior quality. The results of this study aid in alleviating concerns regarding quality of Open Educational Resources (OER) and provide peer reviews that faculty who consider adopting these textbooks often request. Limitations of the study and further prescriptions for research regarding OER quality and peer review research have been explored in the study.

This paper analyzes the visions, schemas, and vocabularies of prominent rights expression languages, including Creative Commons, METS, ODRL, and MPEG-21. The paper extends Michel Callon’s sociological insight that all forms of human agency are multiple and diverse. Callon argues, in the context of economic sociology, that one must constantly decide between a strategy emphasizing “framing” as the norm with “overflows” treated as leaks, or conversely a strategy accepting “overflows” as the norm with “framing” as inherently imperfect. Callon’s categories are extended, through a modeling exercise, to the classification of current metadata schemes. The analysis suggests that metadata developers should explore what semantic choices and strictures are left out of metadata schemes, as well as those that are included. Such a thought exercise is especially useful in distinguishing areas suited for XML rights markup extensions.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Delaware, 2008. / Principal faculty advisor: Titus O. Awokuse, Dept. of Food & Resource Economics. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S. Ed.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 48). Also available via the Internet.

Networked information technologies and especially the internet, have brought about extensive changes and re-arrangements in cultural production, distribution, commercialisation and consumption of creative content. As an attempt to create a type of copyright licenses better suited for the online environment, the Creative Commons (CC) organisation has launched a license suite that allows creators to openly distribute and share their work under varying levels of restrictions. This thesis aim is to explore the motivations, expectations and understandings of both users and non users of CC licenses within the Independent Filmmaking Community. The research maps out the strategies and diverse business models that users of the licenses develop around their implementation but also the problems and conflicts that arise for both users and non users of the licenses. It therefore sheds light on the processes of adoption, implementation and subsequent fragmentation of the socio-legal innovation that is the CC license suite. While Free and Open Source models of software development (FOSS) have been thoroughly researched, little is known about how other content creators incorporate open licensing strategies within their creative fields. This research aims to address this gap in the literature through the examination of the use of CC licenses by Open Content Filmmakers. Building on theoretical and empirical research in Science and Technology Studies my aim is to analyse the legal innovation of CC licenses by focusing on how they are embedded within the everyday practices of open content filmmakers. By applying the Social Shaping of Technology framework and more specifically the Social Learning perspective, I examine the ways different actors ascribe meaning and conceptualise the role and usefulness of the licenses for their creative practices. Filmmakers negotiate the licenses’ significance through their interactions with diverse actors. These negotiations entail conflicting interpretations as different actors often have different agendas, commitments and resources, resulting in the transformation of both the licenses’ stated goals and of the perceived affordances of digital technologies. Drawing on multi-sited ethnography and rich qualitative data, this thesis captures the processes of learning by doing and learning by interaction, as filmmakers seek to find an appropriate way of applying the licenses, situating them within their localised creative endeavours through trial and error practices. The analysis of empirical evidence reveals how independent filmmakers navigate between ideological imperatives and practical considerations in order to form distinct, heterogeneous configurations that work for them, instead of outright adopting a homogeneous generic vision for how copyright should be applied in the digital environment.

This study examines the implications of, and health interest groups responses to federally developed national standards for physician licensure, contained in the proposed Health Security Act (HSA). The Act was introduced into the United States Congress in 1975 by Senator Kennedy and Congressman Corman. While the legislation was withdrawn from Congressional consideration in 1979, it was unique, offering a comprehensive range of health services to the public with significant implications for changes in the way health care would be delivered and paid for. The Act's physician licensure provisions were a significant attempt to divest states and health interest groups of their control over health manpower (e.g. determination of minimum competency levels, supply levels, and restrictions on services offered by other health professionals.) The study critiques the Act's physician licensure provisions in a number of ways: it reviews the past and current structures and processes for determining physician licensure; analyzes the interplay between medical interest groups in assuring quality medical care; details the Act's physician licensure provisions; surveys health interest groups concerning their perceptions on physician licensure and the Act's proposed licensure provisions; and, concludes with reasons why the Act failed as well as alternative approaches it could have taken. / Medicine, Faculty of / Population and Public Health (SPPH), School of / Graduate