Thesis (DTech (Informatics))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2016. / This study is about teachers’ e-Learning practices at school level. The research aims were to explore the patterns that emerge when teachers use and integrate technologies for e-Teaching and e-Learning, and to explain why teachers adopted and used technologies. My original contribution to knowledge is that the adoption and use of technologies is influenced by value propositions. Schools in the Western Cape are acquiring more technology and gaining increasing access to digital products, services and systems at an exponential rate. In spite of the prevalence of technology in the Western Cape, there appears to be an under-utilisation or non-adoption of the available tools and technologies for educational benefits. However the e-Learning practices of teachers are not fully understood by e-Learning policy makers and implementers. This study sought to address the research problem through an exploration of the technologies that teachers used and what they used these technologies for; the patterns in their use and integration of technologies; and the reasons they offered for their decisions to adopt and use technologies. The research was not strictly confined to one particular method, approach or strategy, as the nature of the phenomena under investigation and the dynamics of the situation required adaptations. A sensible selective blend of qualitative and quantitative approaches, explanatory and exploratory enquiry, and inductive and deductive techniques was employed. Existing research does not sufficiently describe or indicate patterns of use, practice and adoption of technologies by teachers. While a range of taxonomies, levels and stages exists, they deal in most instances with singularities. Existing technology adoption theories do not explicitly progress beyond the point of ‘actual use’. Use of technologies could result in some benefits. The findings of this study revealed that teachers used a purposeful selection of technologies for personal, administrative, teaching and learning purposes. Teachers’ practices were found to be incremental and progressive, and aligned to their comfort zones. Teachers adopted and used technologies on account of the value propositions afforded to them. The aggregated patterns of use, practice and adoption could be located on continuums.

Energia eólica pode ser convertida através de turbina de pequeno porte, inclusive em edificações residenciais e pequenos comércios, configurando a “geração distribuída”. Alguns benefícios de gerar a própria energia elétrica ainda não são conhecidos pela maioria das pessoas. No Brasil, o fato de receber créditos de energia ao gerar quantidade maior do que o consumo próprio, não é divulgado adequadamente pelas concessionárias de energia, nem pelos órgãos reguladores. Neste sentido, o presente trabalho apresenta um método para desenvolvimento e a implementação de um sistema de informação para área de energia eólica. O processo de elaboração do sistema foi derivado da metodologia RMM para desenvolvimento de aplicativos. A partir da metodologia proposta, o sistema foi implementado e disponibilizado ao público em geral. O sistema conta com um aplicativo de simulação de geração de energia com turbina eólica de pequeno porte. O aplicativo de simulação está dividido em sete seções onde o usuário poderá saber, por exemplo, quais as dimensões de uma turbina eólica para suprir toda sua demanda por energia elétrica. Além disso, o aplicativo informa características de quatro tipos de turbinas comerciais e quatro não comerciais, o valor de investimento no equipamento, o tempo de retorno deste investimento e o quanto de CO2 – gás do efeito estufa, o usuário deixa de emitir ao usar o sistema de geração simulado. O sistema de informação proposto está sendo avaliado com o uso de duas ferramentas: Google Analytics para se obter informações de acessos e Google Formulários, que possibilitou a obtenção de respostas relacionadas ao uso geral do sistema a partir de um questionário online. Em relação aos dados de acesso ao sistema, foram obtidas 5244 visualizações incluindo 1085 simulações realizadas em 243 dias monitorados. Durante este período, 1505 usuários de 9 países acessaram o sistema. Em relação ao questionário, aproximadamente dois terços responderam que consideram o aplicativo muito intuitivo e quase 85% dos que responderam consideram investir em um sistema de geração própria de energia após interagir com o sistema. / Wind energy can be converted through small turbine, including for use in residential buildings and small trades, creating the distributed generation. Some benefits of generating electricity itself are still not known for most people. In Brazil, the receipt of energy credits for generating amount greater than the actual consumption is not disclosed properly by power utilities, let alone by regulators. Thus, this work presents a method for the development and the implementation of an information system for wind energy area. The system development process was derived from the RMM methodology for application development. From the proposed methodology, the system was implemented and made available to the general public. The system has a simulation application for wind energy generation. The simulation application is divided into seven sections where the user can know, for example, what are the dimensions of a wind turbine to supply its entire demand for electricity. In addition, the application informs features of four types of commercial and four non-commercial turbines, the amount of investment in equipment, return time investment and how much CO2 avoid with use of the simulated turbine. The proposed information system is being evaluated using two tools: Google Analytics to obtain information access to the system and Google Form, which allowed obtaining answers related to the general use of the system from an online evaluation questionnaire. In relation to the system access data, 5244 visualizations were obtained, including 1085 simulations performed in 243 monitored days. During this time, 1505 users from 9 countries accessed the system. Regarding the questionnaire, approximately two-thirds responded that they considered the application very intuitive and almost 72% of respondents consider investing in a system of own power generation after interacting with the system.

abstract: School bullying is a serious problem for children and adolescents, associated with a multitude of psychological and behavioral problems. Interventions at the individual level have primarily been social skills training for victims of bullying. However, investigators have had mixed results; finding little change in victimization rates. It has been suggested victims of school bullying have the social skills necessary to be effective in a bullying situation; however they experience intense emotional arousal and negative thoughts leading to an inability to use social skills. One intervention that has been getting increasing acknowledgement for its utility in the intervention literature in psychology is mindfulness. However, there has been no research conducted examining the effects of mindfulness meditation on victims of bullying. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to develop an online intervention for victims of bullying that utilizes the cutting-edge technique of mindfulness and to determine the efficacy of this intervention in the context of bullying victimization. Participants were 32 adolescents ages 11 to 14 identified by their school facilitators as victims of bullying. Repeated measures ANOVAs were used to assess the efficacy of the NMT program versus a treatment as usual (TAU) social skills program. Results revealed significant decreases in victimization and increases in mindfulness among both treatment groups from pre-test to follow-up and post-test to follow-up assessments. There were no differences found between the two treatment groups for mean victimization or mindfulness scores. Overall, the NMT program appears to be a promising online intervention for bullied teens. Directions for future research and limitations of this study were also discussed. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Counseling Psychology 2013

mLearn4web is a web-based framework aiming to support the creation of mobile applications within the field of mobile learning. The framework consists of three main parts; an authoring tool, automatically deployed mobile applications and a visualization tool. The visualization tool was implemented as part of this thesis’ work. The focus of this thesis was to identify visual representations for data collected in mLearn4web activities and to implement these representations in a new visualization tool. The work has had a design-based research approach and was conducted together with teachers as a part of an iterative design process. The work was initiated by a literature review and a study of previous mLearn4web use. A questionnaire was then sent to teachers, where they were asked to rate different visual representations. This was the basis for the development of the visualization tool. Three workshops involving teachers were conducted throughout the process, finally resulting in a functional visualization tool and a set of visual representations that were found appropriate by teachers. Evaluations with experienced teachers show that the visual representations proposed and implemented can be appropriate in an educational setting. To further validate them the tool and its visual representations need to be tested in real-life settings, and should ideally also include students. / mLearn4web

Business Intelligence is becoming more and more an essential element for a company’s planning, development and consistency. A company usually aims to predict and optimize the outcome of different decisions. In order to do that, it requires a tool that can perform scenario analysis or “what if” – analysis. These analyses can be performed with spreadsheets and today with the tools within business analysis being web-based, the purpose of the project is to combine a web-based spreadsheet with an analysis from a BI server. The BI server provides sample data. Should a combination be possible then a continuing goal would be to connect the BI server with a database and in that way provide the spreadsheet with data to perform “what if” – analysis. The results indicated that a combination between the web-based spreadsheet and the BI server was possible. However, a few alterations of the spreadsheet are still necessary in order for the combination to work as desired. Further developments of the product involve managing to adapt it to smartphones and tablets.

Mit der Verbreitung des Web begann auch die Entwicklung web-basierter Fragebogen, die es Wissenschaftlern ermöglichen, auf effiziente Weise große Datenmengen zu erheben. Da zunehmend Smartphones für Online-Anwendungen genutzt werden, bietet es sich an, Personen für die Teilnahme an webbasierten Studien über mobile Geräte zu erreichen. Doch wie sind diese Studien speziell für Smartphones zu gestalten? [... aus der Einleitung]

O presente trabalho consistiu na proposta, desenvolvimento e teste de um ambiente computacional hierárquico que vise facilitar a criação, organização e gerenciamento de cursos para serem disponibilizados via Internet, inserido nos projetos de Educação a Distância conduzidos pelo CDCC (Centro de Divulgação Científica e Cultural da USP- São Carlos), tendo como objetivo inicial o treinamento e reciclagem de professores da rede pública, nas disciplinas de física e ciências. O ambiente possui um sistema especialista para o tratamento das dúvidas dos usuários, o Sistema Gerenciador de Dúvidas Online (SGDO) que se tornou uma ferramenta autônoma e hoje faz parte do Plantão de Dúvidas Online do CDCC/USP. O SGDO utiliza o conceito de Education Intelligence, através do uso de data mining, possibilitando ao instrutor selecionar dados, analisar informações, identificar tendência e tomar decisões no decorrer de um curso a distância. A ferramenta WebCourse é um ambiente hierárquico baseado na Web consistindo de quatro módulos: WebCourse Instrutor, WebCourse Monitor, WebCourse Aluno e WebCourse Administrador. Cada módulo possui ferramentas específicas, desenvolvidas para as necessidades dos agentes participantes do ambiente (instrutores, monitores, alunos e administradores). O ambiente é dito hierárquico porque algumas de suas ferramentas somente podem ser usadas por certos módulos. Cada módulo está altamente conectado aos outros e todas as ferramentas são baseadas em templates HTML, usando a linguagem script Lite, do banco de dados mSQL, para a geração de arquivos HTML dinâmicos. Todo o sistema é gerenciado através de um banco de dados mSQL, localizado num servidor web, onde os dados são armazenados e recuperados sob demanda. / The present work consisted on the proposal, development and test of a hierarchical computational environment to facilitate the creation, organization and management of courses to be available over the Internet, inserted on the projects of Distance Education conducted by CDCC (Center for Scientifical and Cultural Dissemination at the University of São Paulo at São Carlos). Its initial objective was training public school teachers of Physics and Sciences. The environment has a specialist system for the treatment of online doubts called Online Doubt Managing System (ODMS), which became an autonomous tool inside the Online Doubt Helping Center at CDCC/USP. ODMS utilizes the concept of Education Intelligence through the use of data mining, making it possible for instructors to select data, analyze informations, identify trends and take decisions during a course carried via Web. WebCourse is a hierarchical web-based tool for the creation and management of web-based courses which consists of four modules: WebCourse Instrutor (Instructor Module), WebCourse Monitor (Teacher Assistant Module), WebCourse Aluno (Student Module) and WebCourse Administrador (Administrator Module). Every module has a set of specific tools, developed to meet the necessities of the environment\'s participant agents (instructors, teacher assistants, students and administrators). The tool is said to be hierarchical since some of its tools can only be used by certain modules. Each module is highly connected to the others and every tool is template-based, using the mSQL database\'s Lite scripting facility in order to generate HTML files on-the-fly. All the system is managed through a mSQL database, located on a web server, where data is stored and recovered on demand.

M.Inf. / This research investigated the role played by Web-based interfacing in improving online searching. A comparative analysis was undertaken to investigate end-user searching in both conventional online systems and Web-based services. The results of the analysis necessitated further improvements in Web interfacing. In fact, this study identified areas in which online searching poses problems and finally suggested features which need to be incorporated into further developments of Web interfaces to online systems.

Background. Consumer facing Transparency is a function of communication that has become essential for the fashion business ecosystem and to have the reputations of legitimacy and credibility. As a contemporary subject, it is surrounded with ambiguity and heterogeneity in definitions, different Fashion brands/fashion brands/retailers/Fashion brands/retailers try to have their own definition and approach towards transparency. The communication strategy and disclosure of information therefore varies within these companies. With the increase in ecommerce, corporate Websites are currently the largest medium of sustainability communication. Fashion brands/fashion brands/retailers/Fashion brands/retailers use a combination of visual communication, data, text, reports and design to communicate the sustainability of their supply chain. There is however, a need to be able to measure the level of transparency of such communication against a standardized model. A model that Fashionbrands/fashion brands/retailers/Fashion brands/retailers can adopt to assess the transparency in their communication. Theory. Consumer facing transparency is an interdisciplinary subject where media, social accountability, information accessibility and quality, openness and effective design interplay to create what can be called “Perceived Transparency”. Purpose. The purpose of this study is to build and test a model tool to assess transparency in website based communication. Research Question. What informational, communication design and behavioral attributes constitute the perceived transparency, create legitimacy and credibility? Method. The study is divided into two parts. Part I: Conceptual literature review for Model Development Part II: Testing the model on a real-life Fashion Brand/Retailer website using Applied Discourse Analysis Contribution: - The model provides a multifocal approach to assess web design and communication strategy to improve transparency in sustainability communication by focusing on factors such Coherence, comprehensibility, navigability, attestation, engagement and correspondence Limitations: - The model is still a prototype and therefore there is room for improvement. It needs to be tested further on a larger scale involving multiple cases. Although the applied discourse analysis method focuses on empirical evidence, the analysis can be objective depending upon the user.

Ipendo Systems AB är ett företag som tillhandahåller en webbaserad tjänst, Ipendo Platform, för administration av immateriella rättigheter. De lagar och regler som reglerar hur immateriella rättigheterna hanteras skiljer sig från varje land och tjänsten måste då innehålla information om alla dessa. Dessa lagar eller regler, hädanefter regler, hålls uppdaterade utanför tjänsten i ett Exceldokument, därefter importeras de till Ipendo Platform manuellt. Innan det görs måste de valideras enligt förutbestämda restriktioner, detta för att de dels ska vara i rätt format för Ipendo Platform eller någonting annat som måste vara i rätt format. Syftet och motivationen till detta examensarbete är att man vill ersätta denna process med ett enklare webbaserat adminstrationsverktyg som låter back-office hantera och uppdatera reglerna och sedan själva utföra validering och importering. Detta gör att tid sparas och de personer som jobbar med att uppdatera regler får feedback direkt från valideringen istället för att man ska vänta på att en annan avdelning gör valideringen. Min uppgift var att undersöka hur man skulle kunna utveckla ett sådant här verktyg och framställa en prototyp som visar på hur det skulle kunna se ut och fungera. I prototypen ville man ha möjlighet för användaren att redigera reglerna i ett rutnät, i stort sett på samma sätt som i Excel, men även automatisk validering och versionshantering av regler, man skulle alltså kunna ha flera temporära versioner av samma regler. Redan från början visste man att det fanns ett utvecklingsverktyg som hade de grundläggande förutsättningarna att kunna utveckla ett sådant verktyg, det var Visual Studio LightSwitch. Det är ett ramverk till Visual Studio som förenklar utveckling av dataintensiva affärsapplikationer för webben samt som en vanlig skrivbordsapplikation. Examensarbetets syfte skulle sedan bli att utveckla en prototyp för administrationsverktyget med hjälp av LightSwitch, utvärdera den och sedan dra en slutsats om huruvida man borde vidareutveckla prototypen eller se sig om efter en annan utvecklingsmetod. Slutsatsen som kunde dras i slutet av examensarbetet var att prototypen utvecklad i LightSwitch fungerar bra och är användarvänlig, men det finns vissa begränsningar i utvecklingsmetoden som man bör ta ställning till om de går att förbise eller lösa. Om de inte går att lösa eller förbise bör LightSwitch eventuellt inte användas som utvecklingsmetod till den slutgiltiga utvecklingen av administrationsverktyget.