Utah's current educational systems were largely shaped by a transitional era that occurred during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A time when the region itself moved from territorial to state status, the dominant religion in the area, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), likewise changed in its role in Utah society. Previously dominating most aspects of life, the Church was forced to reevaluate its place in society due to greatly increased secular power and context. Educational changes, as harbingers of larger societal shifts, are illustrative of such paradigm changes. During the four decade period stretching from 1888 to 1933, the LDS Church experimented with several private educational endeavors, seeking to maintain its place in the changing Utah society. Originally opposed to public education, these experimental private schools eventually became part of the public system itself as the Church restructured its paradigm. St. George, Utah, like many of the LDS-dominated intermountain communities, experimented with these educational changes during this era. Key to this experimentation was the St. George Stake Academy, founded in 1888 as a religious alternative for the region's youth. Though challenged initially, the privately sponsored Church school grew as did its public counterparts during the early twentieth century. Eventually, this growth included expansion into post-secondary education, as the school became Dixie Normal College, Dixie Junior College, Dixie College, and ultimately Dixie State College. Such growing, however, brought increased financial need. Faced with rising costs and budgetary restraints caused by periods of economic depression, the LDS Church rethought its educational policy. In the 1920s and early 1930s, the Church restructured its educational system, turning over to the state many programs originally intended as religious alternatives to public schools. This study traces the changing nature of education in Utah from 1888 to 1933, illuminating the process of paradigm change within religious organizations. Using St. George as the model, it tracks the roles the state and the LDS Church played in shaping the current educational structure, as both parties sought to understand their place in society.

The following thesis is a study of the founding years of the Mormon supplementary religious education between 1890 and 1930. It examines Mormonism's shift away from private denominational education towards a system of supplementary religious education programs at the elementary, high school, and college levels. Further, this study examines the role that supplementary religious education played in the changes between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. During the 1870s and 1880s, Utah's territorial schools became an important part of the battles over polygamy and the control of Utah. As the Federal Government began to wrest control of the schools from the Mormon community, the Church established a system of private academies. Economic problems during the 1880s and 1890s, however, made it difficult for the Church to maintain many of these schools, necessitating the Mormon patronage of the public schools. As a result, in 1890 the Church established its first supplementary religious education program, known as the Religion Class program. The Religion Class program suffered from a variety of problems and was criticized by both Mormon and non-Mormon officials. Despite the failings of the Religion Class program, the need for supplementary religious education became increasingly important during the first two decades of the twentieth century. In 1912, the Granite Stake established the Church's first high school seminary. Within ten years, the seminary program replaced the majority of the academies and became the Church's preeminent educational program. During the 1920s, the Church began extending supplementary religious education to its students in colleges and universities through the establishment of the institute program and the near-complete abandonment of its private colleges and schools. The successive establishment of these three programs demonstrates a shift in Mormon educational priorities and attitudes throughout this period. Whereas the academies and the Religion Class program emphasized a general fear of Americanization, the seminary and institute programs accepted the public schools and much of the Americanization that accompanied them, while at the same time providing means for the continued inculcation of Mormon values into the lives of Latter-day Saint youth.

This study offers insight into washback processes via interactions between the national test, teachers and students as well as raises questions about contemporary educational politics and standardized testing in EFL classrooms. Washback is a term for the effects a test has on teaching and learning. Standardized tests are given increased weight in Sweden and globally, risking an increase of washback. This development puts various properties of education at risk of being undermined. In Sweden, the national tests in ninth grade can be considered high-stake standardized tests since they should be particularly considered in grading. The oral subtest in English may involve specific issues due to socio-affective aspects and challenges of assessing foreign language speech. Through qualitative interviews with six English teachers in Sweden, this study explored their perceptions of washback effects of the oral subtest of English in the national tests in ninth grade. The results indicate substantial washback on teaching practices and learning behaviors, and that socio-affective aspects play a major role in teachers’ choices. Also, some teachers exhibit ambivalence to the content of the test and whether the test results should impact the grades.

A smart contract is a recently emerging technology which enables agreement to be automatable by computers and enforceable by legal enforcement or tamper-proof execution of code. A majority of smart contracts are run on the blockchain which enables smart contract transactions without a central authority. Smart contract implementation contains several challenges which makes implementation more difficult. The problem is that organisations struggle to implement smart contracts due to the absence of documentation, standardisation, and guidelines making it difficult to know how a smart contract should be implemented. Additionally, it is unclear what capabilities and tools are required for smart contract implementation. Therefore, it is challenging for organisations to assess their own competence of smart contract implementation. This thesis aims to develop a Smart Contract Maturity Model (SCMM). The purpose of the model is to clarify the functionalities and capabilities required to implement a smart contract while also offering organisations the ability to assess the smart contract implementation competency. This improves the adoption of smart contracts. Through the help of the design science framework, the SCMM emerged from the thesis. Applying design science included explicating the problem, defining requirements, designing and developing the artefact, demonstrating and evaluating the artefact. A literature survey was used to explicate the problem and to define requirements for the maturity model. Furthermore, a case study including interviews were used to refine the requirements and to demonstrate and evaluate the SCMM. The SCMM includes maturity levels, generic goals and practices, specific goals, key processing areas and practices, tools, glossaries and smart contract examples. Inspired by the Capability Maturity model Model Integration for Development (CMMI-DEV), the maturity levels of the SCMM consisted of initial, foundation, managed, defined, quantitatively managed and optimising. The identified key processing areas were stakeholder capabilities, resources and tools, platform, contract implementation, standards, laws and terminology and security. Although there were several limitations, the SCMM contributed to the field of smart contracts by closing the gap of previous research and improving the adoption of smart contracts.

In recent years, advanced machine learning (ML) models have revolutionized industries ranging from the healthcare sector to retail and E-commerce. However, these models have become increasingly complex, making it difficult for even domain experts to understand and retrace the model's decision-making process. To address this challenge, several frameworks for explainable AI have been proposed and developed. This thesis focuses on counterfactual explanations (CFEs), which provide actionable insights by informing users how to modify inputs to achieve desired outputs. However, computing CFEs for a general black-box ML model is computationally expensive since it hinges on solving a challenging optimization problem. To efficiently solve this optimization problem, we propose using Bayesian optimization (BO), and introduce the novel algorithm Separated Bayesian Optimization (SBO). SBO exploits the formulation of the counterfactual function as a composite function. Additionally, we propose warm-starting SBO, which addresses the computational challenges associated with computing multiple CFEs. By decoupling the generation of a surrogate model for the black-box model and the computation of specific CFEs, warm-starting SBO allows us to reuse previous data and computations, resulting in computational discounts and improved efficiency for large-scale applications. Through numerical experiments, we demonstrate that BO is a viable optimization scheme for computing CFEs for black-box ML models. BO achieves computational efficiency while maintaining good accuracy. SBO improves upon this by requiring fewer evaluations while achieving accuracies comparable to the best conventional optimizer tested. Both BO and SBO exhibit improved capabilities in handling various classes of ML decision models compared to the tested baseline optimizers. Finally, Warm-starting SBO significantly enhances the performance of SBO, reducing function evaluations and errors when computing multiple sequential CFEs. The results indicate a strong potential for large-scale industry applications. / Avancerade maskininlärningsmodeller (ML-modeller) har på senaste åren haft stora framgångar inom flera delar av näringslivet, med allt ifrån hälso- och sjukvårdssektorn till detaljhandel och e-handel. I jämn takt med denna utveckling har det dock även kommit en ökad komplexitet av dessa ML-modeller vilket nu lett till att även domänexperter har svårigheter med att förstå och tolka modellernas beslutsprocesser. För att bemöta detta problem har flertalet förklarbar AI ramverk utvecklats. Denna avhandling fokuserar på kontrafaktuella förklaringar (CFEs). Detta är en förklaringstyp som anger för användaren hur denne bör modifiera sin indata för att uppnå ett visst modellbeslut. För en generell svarta-låda ML-modell är dock beräkningsmässigt kostsamt att beräkna CFEs då det krävs att man löser ett utmanande optimeringsproblem. För att lösa optimeringsproblemet föreslår vi användningen av Bayesiansk Optimering (BO), samt presenterar den nya algoritmen Separated Bayesian Optimization (SBO). SBO utnyttjar kompositionsformuleringen av den kontrafaktuella funktionen. Vidare, utforskar vi beräkningen av flera sekventiella CFEs för vilket vi presenterar varm-startad SBO. Varm-startad SBO lyckas återanvända data samt beräkningar från tidigare CFEs tack vare en separation av surrogat-modellen för svarta-låda ML-modellen och beräkningen av enskilda CFEs. Denna egenskap leder till en minskad beräkningskostnad samt ökad effektivitet för storskaliga tillämpningar.  I de genomförda experimenten visar vi att BO är en lämplig optimeringsmetod för att beräkna CFEs för svarta-låda ML-modeller tack vare en god beräknings effektivitet kombinerat med hög noggrannhet. SBO presterade ännu bättre med i snitt färre funktionsutvärderingar och med fel nivåer jämförbara med den bästa testade konventionella optimeringsmetoden. Både BO och SBO visade på bättre kapacitet att hantera olika klasser av ML-modeller än de andra testade metoderna. Slutligen observerade vi att varm-startad SBO gav ytterligare prestandaökningar med både minskade funktionsutvärderingar och fel när flera CFEs beräknades. Dessa resultat pekar på stor potential för storskaliga tillämpningar inom näringslivet.

本研究透過針對台東縣都蘭社群建造傳統竹筏所記載的民族誌，探索該社群在政府授權的美麗灣民間興建營運後轉移模式(BOT)發展案中的角色與互動。研究內容包括了(1)對民間興建營運後轉移之模式的總體回顧，以及美麗灣此個案的評估。(2)在地阿美族社群對發展計畫反對的詳細論述。(3)在替代發展方案上的建議。我的田野調查包含了在社群集會與示威抗議活動上的參與觀察，但調查的重心則立基於一條阿美竹筏建造與出海的過程。本文的結論提供了一套能夠兼顧在地居民互動及外來廠商利益的發展方案，旨在透過融合相關各方的觀點以圖能夠減少衝突並促進共同利益。 / This research explores the dimensions and interactions of the Amis community under the Miramar Resort (MR) Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) development project authorized by the local county government through an ethnographic approach on the construction of a traditional bamboo raft in the township of Dulan, Taitung, Taiwan. The content of this study includes (1) A status review of the BOT policy in general and the MR development project in particular, (2) A detailed account of the local Amis community’s opposition to the project, and (3) Suggestion on alternative methods of land management. My fieldwork includes participant observation in the context of seminar meetings and activist demonstrations. However the centerpiece of the research at Dulan revolves around my personal participation in the construction of an Amis traditional bamboo raft and its launching into the ocean. Conclusions offer alternative ways for the development of an area that is interactive with indigenous peoples and outside commercial interests. The perspective taken is aimed at alleviating conflict through incorporating the views of stakeholders in the best interests of all parties involved.