Measuring and monitoring performance of employees is an integral part of management. The need for an effective appraisal system to manage and monitor the performance of employees is self-evident in this country. The appraisal system for office-based educators is informed by the Education Labour Relations Council (ELRC) Collective Agreement No. 3 of 2002, which was signed on 11 December 2002. This appraisal system was developed with good intensions of enhancing the performance of office-based educators, and the prime aim being to manage and improve service delivery at all levels in the system. The objective of the study is to investigate the perceptions of the office-based educators on the implementation of the appraisal system. Do office-based educators perceive it that way? As implementers and direct beneficiaries, are the good intensions of the policy yielded when its implementation is faced with realities and practicalities of the implementation of the policy? The vehicle I used to achieve the goal of the study was quantitative approach. Self administered questionnaires were completed by respondents. The questionnaire consisted of one open-ended question which gave the respondents sufficient room to voice their opinions without restrictions and the close-ended questions. The sample was the whole population of the office-based educators in the Dr Ruth S. Mompati district office, department of education, North West province. The total number is only 103 and it was manageable. The analysis of data is illustrated in the form of tables, graphs and brief discussions. A written undertaking to guarantee confidentiality to respondents was given and all respondents signed the undertaking to indicate their voluntary participation. The study is significant in that the findings and recommendations might inform policy custodians on the status and improvement of the quality of the implementation of the appraisal system. Copyright / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Education Management and Policy Studies / unrestricted

This study aimed to investigate in what ways a group of Swedish teachers and students of English at upper secondary school can provide and maintain motivation for learning English when required to transfer their teaching from the physical classroom to online mode. Two questionnaires were answered by 46 upper secondary school students and eight English teachers. The questionnaires were supplemented with separate interviews in which six students and two teachers participated. The questionnaires were analysed using Braun and Clarke’s thematic analysis model (2006), while the data resulting from the interviews was analysed through a phenomenological approach inspired by Amedeo Giorgi’s four-phase phenomenological method described in Phenomenology and Psychology Research (1985). The result of the study showed that students are motivated to learn English if they have a functioning relationship with their teacher, if they have friends who motivate them, and if lessons vary in format. However, when transferred to online mode, motivation was difficult to sustain. The students’ primary source of motivation, in the form of physical- and social connections was lost. Both students and teachers experienced online education as time-consuming.

Abstract Cluster analysis has become one of the main tools used in extracting knowledge from data, which is known as data mining. In this area of data analysis, data of large dimensions are often processed, both in the number of objects and in the number of variables, which characterize the objects. Many methods for data clustering have been developed. One of the most widely used is a k-means method, which is suitable for clustering data sets containing large number of objects. It is based on finding the best clustering in relation to the initial distribution of objects into clusters and subsequent step-by-step redistribution of objects belonging to the clusters by the optimization function. The aim of this Ph.D. thesis was a comparison of selected variants of existing k-means methods, detailed characterization of their positive and negative characte- ristics, new alternatives of this method and experimental comparisons with existing approaches. These objectives were met. I focused on modifications of the k-means method for clustering of large number of objects in my work, specifically on the algorithms BIRCH k-means, filtering, k-means++ and two-phases. I watched the time complexity of algorithms, the effect of initialization distribution and outliers, the validity of the resulting clusters. Two real data files and some generated data sets were used. The common and different features of method, which are under investigation, are summarized at the end of the work. The main aim and benefit of the work is to devise my modifications, solving the bottlenecks of the basic procedure and of the existing variants, their programming and verification. Some modifications brought accelerate the processing. The application of the main ideas of algorithm k-means++ brought to other variants of k-means method better results of clustering. The most significant of the proposed changes is a modification of the filtering algorithm, which brings an entirely new feature of the algorithm, which is the detection of outliers. The accompanying CD is enclosed. It includes the source code of programs written in MATLAB development environment. Programs were created specifically for the purpose of this work and are intended for experimental use. The CD also contains the data files used for various experiments.

The thesis is focused on building technology solutions for the construction department store. The front of the main entrance, designed for base personnel has two floors; the rest designed for the sale is single-storey. The building is designed as a reinforced concrete skeleton hall. Roofing is solved by a flat roof consisting of sales of reinforced concrete beams with a slope of 3 %, with the roofing sheet ALKORPLAN. The two-storey part of the roof is again dealt with a flat roof, consisting of ceiling panels and concrete catchment slope of 2 %, the roofing sheet ALKORPLAN. External walls are designed sandwich panels KINGSPAN. Walls and ceilings are dealt with plasterboard. The floors are made of linoleum and ceramic tiles. The building is equipped with aluminum windows, interior doors are made of wood. Outdoor and entrance doors are made from aluminum. This thesis addresses the implementation of technology, organization of construction, time demands, costs to implement the object, control over the implementation – KZP, coordination situation, and instructions for use of the building after its handover to the owner.