The purpose of my study was to explain how adult learners in distance education experienced short message service (SMS) technology as a learning support tool. The study focused on a single unit of analysis, namely a SMS for academic purposes that was implemented in the final module, Practical Experience, of the Advanced Certificate in Education: Special Needs Education. This course is one of three in-service teacher training programmes offered by the Unit for Distance Education at the University of Pretoria (UP). The theoretical framework and literature review were operationalised by the development of a questionnaire. A record of the text message response schedules, and telephonic interviews comprised the other two data collection instruments. These data were integrated to provide an explanation of how learners experienced SMS technology as a learning support tool. Participants who were able to utilise and access the SMS said that it seemed to: motivate them, help them focus on their work and set goals. They could check on their progress and found the creation of flexible learning environments an additional benefit. Interactive learning environments that enabled them to construct new knowledge by actively engaging in the learning process benefited the participants. Constructivist principles of teaching and learning are inherent in this. The SMS did not seem to facilitate the development of interactive learning environments characterised by two-way communication channels for all the participants, as it also establishes one-way communication channels focused on delivering course content. Although participants indicated that this was helpful in giving them more information, they also expressed a need for more contact with their lecturers and with other learners for learning support purposes. Barriers to communication included faulty cellular phones, the cost of the SMS, and the lateness of text messages in relation to the due dates for assignments and projects. An overriding barrier was the difficulty participants seemed to have in understanding the instructions in the text messages. Recommendations are therefore made to improve future short message services in order to overcome this. / Dissertation (MEd (Educational Psychology))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Educational Psychology / MEd / unrestricted

The planning and implementation of effective water resources management strategies need an assessment of multiple (physical, environmental, and socio-economic) issues, and often requires new research in which knowledge of diverse disciplines are combined in a unified methodological and operational framework. Such integrative research to link different knowledge domains faces several practical challenges. The complexities are further compounded by multiple actors frequently with conflicting interests and multiple uncertainties about the consequences of potential management decisions. This thesis aims to overcome some of these challenges, and to demonstrate how new modeling approaches can provide successful integrative water resources research. It focuses on the development of new integrated modeling approaches which allow integration of not only physical processes but also socio-economic and environmental issues and uncertainties inherent in water resources systems. To achieve this goal, two new approaches are developed in this thesis. At first, a Bayesian network (BN)-based decision support tool is developed to conceptualize hydrological and socio-economic interaction for supporting management decisions of coupled groundwater-agricultural systems. The method demonstrates the value of combining different commonly used integrated modeling approaches. Coupled component models are applied to simulate the nonlinearity and feedbacks of strongly interacting groundwater-agricultural hydrosystems. Afterwards, a BN is used to integrate the coupled component model results with empirical knowledge and stakeholder inputs. In the second part of this thesis, a fuzzy-stochastic multiple criteria decision analysis tool is developed to systematically quantify both probabilistic and fuzzy uncertainties associated with complex hydrosystems management. It integrates physical process-based models, fuzzy logic, expert involvement and stochastic simulation within a general framework. Subsequently, the proposed new approaches are applied to a water-scarce coastal arid region water management problem in northern Oman, where saltwater intrusion into a coastal aquifer due to excessive groundwater extraction for irrigated agriculture has affected the aquifer sustainability, endangering associated socio-economic conditions as well as traditional social structures. The results show the effectiveness of the proposed methods. The first method can aid in the impact assessment of alternative management interventions on sustainability of aquifer systems while accounting for economic (agriculture) and societal interests (employment in agricultural sector) in the study area. Results from the second method have provided key decision alternatives which can serve as a platform for negotiation and further exploration. In addition, this approach suits to systematically quantify both probabilistic and fuzzy uncertainties associated with the decision problem. The new approaches can be applied to address the complexities and uncertainties inherent in water resource systems to support management decisions, while serving as a platform for stakeholder participation.

This thesis analyses how public decision-makers can rapidly and sustainably decarbonise their regions, considering the challenge that promoting timely decarbonisation represents. The research was divided into three phases and developed using desk studies and interviews with Project Drawdown (PD) experts, Swedish public officials and researchers. In phase one, PD solutions showed a shortcoming in sustainable operationalisation of global decarbonisation solutions. It was found that they alone could not account for sustainability, and that there is dependency on the context of application and on decision-making processes. In phase two, it was found that sustainability could be embedded in decision-making for decarbonisation through decision support. In the Blekinge example case, several challenges were found, for which sustainable decision support was needed. To respond to this challenge, a Decision Support tool (DST) was created, based on multi-criteria decision analysis. This three-step generic tool provides a relevance assessment to prove the suitability of decarbonisation solutions in the given context, a sustainability assessment to address sustainability challenges, and a prioritisation step for strategic decision-making. The tool was validated to be useful by Swedish policymakers and by international experts. This DST has the potential to support policy-making around the world to decarbonise regions rapidly and sustainably.

Skogen brukas allt intensivare och större och tyngre maskiner vid skogliga operationer innebär förhöjd risk för körskador. En körskada kan innebära stora ekonomiska förluster likväl som allvarlig påverkan på miljö och sociala värden. Den skogliga branschen jobbar kontinuerligt för att utveckla nya mer hållbara metoder. Ett sätt är att använda sig av digitala beslutsstöd vid planeringstillfället. Timbertrail är ett sådant som tar hänsyn till en trakts beskaffenhet för att hitta bästa avlägg och basväg. Studien visade på att beslutsstödet i teorin hänvisar till bättre bärighet och minskad risk för körskador. Den kan vara ett bra hjälpmedel vid planering men att den skogliga operationen till sist är beroende av att alla inblandade också tar ett personligt ansvar för att minimera risken för körskador.

This masters thesis is about how to enhance creativity and investigates the design process of interaction designers, in terms of the creative process, design support tools and especcially through a concept presented in this thesis. The concept is called DSTZ (Design Support Tool Z) and suggests ways in how to support a designer in the creative process. An empirical study was carried out in the thesis that consisted of a survey conducted on 8 "interaction designers" investigating how interaction designers work and if they require or need any design support. A design survey was later conducted on 18 "interaction designers" of which 9 were professionals and 9 were students, to investigate the concept DSTZ and the creativity enhancing aspect. The resuls from the empirical studies show that a design support tool is desired and DSTZ has features that are useful and can enhance creativity. The features consist of 8 palettes and 3 funtions that are manifested in DSTZ. Further investigation is required in order to find data that support the statement that creativity can be enhanced through a design support tool.

BACKGROUND: Contraception is an effective, preference-sensitive intervention that supports quality of life, management of health, and self-determination. Contraception is used by 99% of people assigned female at birth with an average of 3.4 methods used across their lifespan. Providers counsel patients on contraception and patients want to be counselled. Shared decision-making frameworks promote using decision aids (DA) during counseling as best practice. Existing DAs lack transparency in their development methodologies and evaluation results and may not facilitate patient-centered care. AIM: Create a contraception DA and accompanying contraception method information sheets (MIS) that are informed by patients’ values, align with international standards, meet health literacy and accessibility guidelines, and are evaluated by patients and providers to be acceptable, quality, and feasible to use during contraceptive counseling. METHODOLOGY: To create the DA/MIS, (1) literature was reviewed on contraceptive counseling frameworks, DAs, patients’ contraceptive preferences, health literacy, accessibility, user-centered design, and validated patient education material quality measures, (2) results were reviewed from a patient focus group and provider meeting where they defined user requirements, and (3) evidence-based contraceptive information was synthesized. Once created, an exploratory sequential mixed-methods study iteratively refined the DA/MIS after each data collection phase: (1) provider focus groups and survey, (2) patient focus groups and survey, (3) observed patient testing during counseling followed by an interview and survey, (4) expert patient and provider review, and (5) provider field testing in clinic followed by an interview and survey. DA/MIS readability levels were assessed. RESULTS: Quantitatively, the DA/MIS were acceptable, quality, and feasible to use during counseling. Qualitatively, the DA/MIS were preferred to verbal-only counseling and other DA/MIS, centered patients’ preferences, increased knowledge, focused on patient autonomy, challenged bias/coercion, improved counseling satisfaction and quality, offered a novel design, and were appealing, inclusive, and accessible. CONCLUSION: This DA/MIS had positive quantitative and qualitative results, offered a novel design aligned with international standards, and had a transparent, rigorous development process aligned with frameworks and validated tools. Initial results show this DA/MIS can support and improve patient-centered contraceptive counseling. / 2026-08-31T00:00:00Z

Learning to program is recognised nationally and internationally as a complex task that novices find challenging. There exist many endeavours to support the novice in this activity, including software tools that aim to provide a more supportive environment than that provided by standard software facilities, together with schemes that reduce the underlying complexity of programming by providing accessible micro-worlds in which students develop program code. Existing literature recognises that learning to program is difficult because of the need to learn the rules and operation of the language (program formulation), and the concurrent need to interpret problems and recognise the required components for that problem (problem formulation). This thesis describes a new form of learning support that addresses that dual task of program and problem formulation. A review of existing teaching tools that support the novice programmer leads to a set of requirements for a support tool that encompasses the processes of both program and problem formulation. This set of requirements is encapsulated in a conceptual framework for software tool development. The framework demonstrates how the requirements of a support tool can be met by performing a series of automated analyses at different stages in the student's development of a solution. An extended series of observations demonstrates the multi-faceted nature of problems that students encounter whilst they are learning to program and how these problems can be mapped onto the different levels of programs and problem formulation. These observations and the framework were used to inform the development of SNOOPIE, a sample instantiation of the framework for learning Java programming. This software tool has been fully evaluated and demonstrated to have a significant impact on the learning process for novice Java programmers. SNOOPIE is fully integrated into a current introductory programming module and a future programme of work is being established that will see SNOOPIE integrated with other established software tools.

The aim of this Thesis is to describe the practical implementation of process management in terms of Configuration Management process and subsequent implementation support tool, configuration and management database, focusing on describing and identifying particular steps needed for the definition and implementation process and the subsequent selection and implementation support tools. As an initial base of this Thesis I have used the practical experience of projects focusing on the definition and implementation of process management and subsequent implementation support tools, in which I acted in the role of the Configuration Manager. It means I assisted at course of entire projects. The Thesis focuses mainly on my run and defined Configuration Management process and describes the process and importance of various activities leading to the successful establishment of a process into practice, including identified problems and some of their solutions. The result of this Thesis should approach introducing one of the process of family ITIL v. 2 to practice and subsequent leading to the selection and implementation of the configuration and management database, as a major output of this process.

Le développement des aires urbaines induit une amplification des enjeux environnementaux (e.g. qualité de l’air, îlot de chaleur urbain, inondation). Pour apporter une réponse à ces défis, la fabrique urbaine intègre progressivement les fonctions assurées par les écosystèmes urbains. Cependant, cette considération semble négliger les services écosystémiques rendus par la composante « sol » des aires urbaines. À ce titre, l’objectif du doctorat est d’appréhender les apports d’une prise en compte avancée des potentialités des sols urbains dans la planification territoriale et l’urbanisme opérationnel. Une enquête nationale auprès d’acteurs de la planification territoriale et des entretiens individuels avec des professionnels de l’urbanisme opérationnel ont été menés. Il en ressort que ces acteurs ont commencé à développer une considération systémique des sols urbains, dépassant leur vision initiale du sol comme simple surface foncière. Afin de formaliser la manière de prendre en compte les potentialités des sols urbains, des campagnes d’échantillonnage de sols ont été réalisées sur 10 sites de projets localisés au sein de trois aires urbaines aux contextes pédoclimatiques différents (Métropole du Grand Nancy, Métropole d’Aix-Marseille Provence, Nantes Métropole). Une description de profils de sols et leur caractérisation physico-chimique ont permis d’appréhender leur état et de mener une étude comparative de leur qualité. Il s’avère que près de la moitié des sols urbains étudiés n’étaient pas des sols fortement anthropisés (e.g. Anthrosols, Technosols) et étaient analogues à des sols agricoles voisins. Ils présentaient une très grande hétérogénéité de leurs propriétés, rendant complexe leur appréhension par les acteurs de la fabrique urbaine. Les données pédologiques ont alors été intégrées dans un outil d’aide à la décision, afin de les traduire en capacité des sols à assurer des fonctions et rendre des services écosystémiques. Il s’est avéré que les sols fortement anthropisés pouvaient présenter des niveaux de services écosystémiques équivalents, voire supérieurs, à ceux fournis par certains sols agricoles, pouvant répondre aux enjeux environnementaux, sociaux voire économiques des aires urbaines. L’intégration de ces informations lors de différentes étapes de mise en œuvre d’un projet urbain peut contribuer à améliorer la durabilité des aires urbaines, en optimisant l’usage des sols urbains et en préservant les plus multifonctionnels d’entre eux / Urban areas, in addition to global environmental issues, concentrate major local environmental concerns such as air quality, urban heat island and flood mitigation. To tackle those issues, every land surface should be considered as a potential supplier of ecosystem services. However, the urban soils contribution remains poorly assessed up to now. As a result, there is a strong lack of consideration by urban planning of the services that urban soils could provide. So, the main goal of this PhD is to propose a methodology that facilitates an advanced integration of urban soils potentials in urban planning. A national survey and some individual interviews with actors of urban planning were conducted. These actors have progressively developed a systemic consideration of urban soils, and do not yet consider them only as land surfaces. Then, soil sampling campaigns were carried out on 10 urban projects, located in three urban areas with contrasted pedoclimatic contexts (Métropole du Grand Nancy, Métropole Aix-Marseille Provence, Nantes Métropole). The description of the pedological pits and the physico-chemical characterization of soil samples led us to conduct a comparative study of their quality. It appears that 49% of the studied soils were not highly anthropized soils (e.g. Anthrosols, Technosols) and presented bio-physico-chemical properties which were similar to surrounding agricultural soils. The results also showed that the highly anthropized soils presented a high variation of their properties. The results of the physico-chemical characterization had been feed into a decision support tool. This DSS could evaluate the capacity of an urban soil to provide some fonctions and ecosystem services. It appears that the highly anthropized soils were able to provide levels of ecosystem services that were equivalent to, or even higher, than those provided by agricultural soils. In result, it has been demonstrated that urban soils could provide some ecosystem services in order to answer to environmental, social and economic challenges. So, the consideration of the potential of soils in an urban project could contribute to improve sustainability of cities, by optimizing the uses of urban soils and preserving the most multifunctional

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-29T14:23:34Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Emerson Leandro Goya.pdf: 3206658 bytes, checksum: 1d8938862ea359faa4c8e7c623ace749 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-02-05 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / FALCOM and learning environments: An interactive tool to potentiate educational storytelling is the title of this dissertation that has as its main objective the improvement the use of the OCC-RDD technique, creating an instrumental support that increases the educational experiences in face to face meetings. This technique encourages the use of script characters to establish interaction and dialogue between the professor and the student, which are favored by learning of software s development. The problem in the research originates from the idea to create a support tool to be used in the classroom, under the name of Mechanic Master ─ MM, combining with interactive computer graphics techniques, like Augmented Reality and the Virtual Reality. Resulting in an audacious and instrumental project that was abdicated in function of theoretical and methodological foundations of interdisciplinary practice: Information Technology and Education. As hypothesis is formulated, the idea that the use of a support tool to assist the professor of higher education in the narration on educational stories, then its use becomes relevant in improving the effectiveness of the narration in stages OCC and RDD. Therefore, the main contribution of this research is the improvement of the technique of scripting OCC-RDD for the professor over using the support tool in order to train and interact with the student. The methodology used follows four procedures, the first is for exploratory research that seek similar references to a support tool that allows the narration of educational stories; the second procedure, has the intention of mapping the intellectual production of technical narrative OCC-RDD; the third procedure deals witch the learning environment; and the fourth, is the use of technology for the development of its own support tool. The dissertation is structured in five chapters: the first covers the contextualization of the theme under discussion; in the second, the fundamentals that form the base of the research; the third refers to the theoretical and methodological contribution of the research, and the procedures for the development of the support tool; the fourth, covers to result and the conclusion of the research; and, finally, the fifth chapter seeks to indicate the projection in future research / FALCOM e ambientes de aprendizagem: Uma ferramenta interativa para potencializar a narração de histórias educacionais é o título desta dissertação que tem como objetivo principal aperfeiçoar o uso da técnica de roteirização OCC-RDD, criando um instrumental de apoio que potencialize as experiências educacionais em encontros presenciais. Tal técnica de roteirização favorece o protagonismo e o diálogo tanto do professor quanto do aluno, que se veem favorecidos pela aprendizagem no desenvolvimento de softwares. A problematização da pesquisa se deu a partir da ideia original de criar uma ferramenta de apoio educacional sob o nome de Mestre Mecânico ─ MM , que combinava técnicas interativas de computação gráfica, Realidade Aumentada e Realidade Virtual, resultando em um projeto audacioso e instrumental do qual se abdicou em razão da complexibilidade dos fundamentos teóricos e metodológicos da prática multidisciplinar: Tecnologia da Informação e da Educação. Como hipótese é formulada a ideia de que ao se utilizar uma ferramenta de apoio para auxiliar o professor de nível superior a narrar histórias educacionais, o seu uso torna-se relevante para melhorar a eficácia da narração nas fases OCC e nas fases RDD. Portanto, a principal contribuição desta pesquisa está no aperfeiçoamento da técnica de roteirização OCC-RDD para que o professor por meio da ferramenta de apoio possa treinar e interagir com o estudante. A metodologia adotada segue quatro procedimentos: o primeiro destina-se à pesquisa exploratória que busca por referências similares a uma ferramenta de apoio que narre histórias educacionais; o segundo tem a intenção de mapear a produção intelectual da técnica narrativa OCC-RDD; o terceiro se refere ao ambiente de aprendizagem; e o quarto procedimento aborda o uso da tecnologia para o desenvolvimento da própria ferramenta de apoio. A dissertação se estrutura em cinco capítulos, são eles: o primeiro compreende a contextualização do tema em discussão; o segundo trata dos fundamentos que embasam a pesquisa; o terceiro se refere à contribuição teórica e metodológica da pesquisa, aos procedimentos para o desenvolvimento da construção da ferramenta de apoio; o quarto destina-se ao resultado e à conclusão da pesquisa; e, por fim, o quinto capítulo busca indicar os possíveis desdobramentos em pesquisas futuras