Computer Sciences Commons^™

Measuring The Effect Of E-Learning On Job Performance, Heidi Kramer

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

E-learning is becoming a leading delivery method in workplace-learning settings across organizations of various sectors and of varying sizes. The ultimate goal is to drive business results. Managers need to provide evidence of a positive impact on corporate strategy and investment objectives. If the business goal cannot be identified, there should be a query on why it is there in the first place. Transfer of the knowledge learned in the training session to the work situation is not built into most skills training delivery, especially those provided through e-learning. The outcomes and the effects of training on job performance are …

Painting The Voice: Weblogs And Writing Instruction In The High School Classroom, Marilyn V. Olander

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Writing is a complex cognitive skill, a technology for capturing speech whose forms and conventions began in the dawn of civilization and were in place and stable by the Middle Ages. Writing and reading are the foundation of literacy, fundamental to success in school and in the adult world. No comprehensive theory of composition guides the teaching of writing, although historically two approaches have been favored: writing as a skill acquired through the memorization and recognition of principles of grammar and usage, and more recently, writing as a process of recursive strategies of pi arming, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. …

Measuring Factors That Influence The Success Of E-Government Initiatives, Ronnie Park

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

The success of e-government initiatives is contingent upon its citizens ' willingness to use the services. Citizens are more likely to use e-government services if they believe that they get better value than from the conventional government services. Understanding how citizens value e-government services is critical to the success of these initiatives. This study utilizes two concepts from the field of decision analysis. These are mean-ends chains and value-focused thinking. The research that follows describes the development of a model to identify factors that influence value judgments of citizens.

Based on the data of 21 0 responses from e-government service …

Performance Measurement For The E-Government Initiatives: A Comparative Study, Willy C. Isaac

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

The main objective of performance measurement in public organizations is to support better decision-making by management, leading to improved outcome for the community, and to meet external accountability requirements. There are different performance measurement models to measure the e-Government initiatives and different studies differ in identifying the key factors and measurement indicator. Many measurement instruments take a too simplistic view and focus on measuring what is easy to measure. Much challenge faced by the existing e-Government studies is understanding what citizens, businesses and government agencies wants and how to measure the return on government's Internet investment. Government administrations, international organizations …

Effectiveness Of Asynchronous Reference Services For Distance Learning Students Within Florida's Community College System, Patricia C. Profeta

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

The impact of distance learning on higher education and the need to provide equitable library services to students in the digital environment emerged as critical areas during the 1990s. Library services available to distance learning students included digital reference and instructional services, remote access to online research tools, database and research tutorials, interlibrary loan, and document delivery. Digital reference services appeared to be one of the more significant services proffered by academic libraries although these services were developed often without forethought to goals and assessment. The purpose of this study was to examine the adequacy of asynchronous e-mail reference services …

Using Neural Networks To Develop A New Model To Screen Applicants For Apartment Rentals, Michael T. Furick

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Credit scoring is a mathematical means of summarizing a consumer's credit and financial history into a three-digit number. This number provides an easy means of identifying and sorting consumer behavior into categories based on their financial history. To select applicants for loans and to set interest rates on loans, banks and financial institutions routinely use credit scoring. Auto insurance companies also use scoring to decide which consumers will be offered auto insurance and to set the price for auto insurance. Despite success in these two industries, scoring does not appear to be effective in the apartment rental industry in picking …

Information Policies And Practices Of Knowledge Management(Km) As Related To The Development Of The Global Aviation Information Network(Gain)- An Applied Case Study And Taxonomy Development, Jeffrey S. Forrest

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

The Global Aviation Information Network (GAIN) was initiated in response to U.S. Government policies seeking to reduce airline accidents. GAIN was to disseminate airline or aviation safety information in environments where public disclosure impedes the diffusion of information. Government legislation such as the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and other information policies create risks of public disclosure to those reporting information. Therefore, the problem investigated in this research was to identity and evaluate potential solutions to policy issues in public disclosure that prevent the collection and sharing of aviation safety information.

Interactions between GAIN, information policy, and knowledge management (KM) …

A Faculty Development Handbook For Quality Online Instruction, Joan Carol Frese

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

The offering of online classes has been growing at an incredible rate. Many institutions coerce their instructors into teaching online classes even if they are not prepared. If teachers are unprepared when they teach, there is a negative effect on the students and can jeopardize the reputation of the institution. In order to teach over the Internet, instructors need to learn new competencies. Students in online classes are usually not traditional students. In addition, there can be miscommunication in online classes, because there are no visual cues. Instructors need to learn new communication strategies as well as teaching strategies for …

Developing A Nisga'a Learning Objects Repository For Use In The Schools, Kim A. Hansen

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

The use of information technologies to develop, manage, access, and to use learning resources and content from a variety of sources has changed the academic and learning environment. There was a need to focus on the identification of tools and the development of skills to manage these resources, particularly in the kindergarten to grade 12 classrooms. For the students and educators of School District 92 (Nisga' a), there was also a need to provide access to important Nisga'a cultural and heritage learning objects as many preserved videos, pictures, historic documents, cultural teaching materials, and various printed matter were not available …

Standards Directory: An Engineering And Technology Standards Digital Library And Information Retrieval System For The Walt Disney Company, Shawn Harrs

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Walt Disney Company (Company) engineers and architects utilize engineering and technology standards in the design, development, and maintenance of its physical infrastructure worldwide. There was a need to improve the methods by which Company standards are organized and retrieved. While the leading commercial information brokers for engineering and technology standards provide standards search engines and online standards catalogs, these search services are poor in supporting standards seekers who have only a general understanding of their information needs because their searches only utilize a standard's document number, title, and keywords as metadata for searching.

In order to provide a tool for …

An Investigation Of The Effects Of The Gerogis Framework For Integrating Technology(In Tech) Training Program On Teachers' Computer Self-Efficacy And Computer Utilization, Ian Johnson

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

National technology standards drafted by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) are incorporated into the technology standards required of American public schools. The state board of education in Georgia instituted the Georgia Framework for Integrating TECHnology (InTech), which is a 50-hour training program that prepares teachers to help their students accomplish technology standards and performance objectives.

The goal of this study was to investigate the effects on teachers' computer self-efficacy, technology integration, current instructional practices, personal computer use and factors relating to use or non-use of computers in the curriculum after completing the Georgia Framework for Integrating TECHnology …

Privacy Policies: A Study Of Their Use Among Online Canadian Pharmacies, Joanne Kuzma

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

The use of online Canadian pharmacies has grown over the past decade due to lower cost medications and ease of use. In order for these firms to gain business and marketing information, they collect a variety of consumer data. This has raised concerns among consumers as to privacy issues of the data collected by these online firms. However, researchers have not effectively examined how online consumers value specific privacy factors when deciding whether to use the sites. Also, studies have not determined if many of these sites have comprehensive privacy policies that indicate if they protect consumers' data for a …

An Improved Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithm With Adaptable Parameters, Khoa Duc Tran

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithms (MOEAs) are not easy to use because they require parameter tunings of three main parameters - population size, crossover probability, and mutation probability - in order to achieve desirable solutions and performance for an arbitrary complex problem. Moreover, the use of fixed parameter settings may lead to slow convergence and sub-optimal solutions. This dissertation develops a MOEA with self-adaptive crossover, self-adaptive mutation, and adaptive population size parameters for automating the process of adjusting appropriate parameter values in order to make the MOEA more efficient, simple to use and available to more users. The MOEA with adaptable parameters …

A Quantitative Analysis Of Performance In A Multi-Protocol Ad Hoc 802.11b-Based Wireless Local Network, Paul Christian Nielsen Jr.

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

The popularity of the Internet and the growing demand for ubiquitous connectivity accelerate the need for viable wireless local area network (WLAN) solutions. As a consequence, increasing number of manufacturers have adopted the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) 802.11a/b/g set of WLAN standards and produced inexpensive wireless products to expand capabilities of existing LANs. IEEE 802.11 b wireless products are widely accepted. Mobile ad hoc networks, a variant of the 802.11 standards, exist without the requirement for a wired infrastructure or host to provide routing, connectivity, and maintenance services. Because of the high variability of environments in which …

Blogging: An Inquiry Into The Efficacy Of A Web-Based Technology For Student Reflection In Community College Computer Science Programs, Jane W. Perschbach

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Reflection in learning is a pedagogical technique used to promote the higher order cognitive skills of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation that constitute the concept of critical thinking. To foster reflection in learning, the Internet technology of online journals known as blogs was employed in a two-semester, four-course investigation of the efficacy of this educational technology for vocational computer science students in a community college. The process involved an instructor-designed and maintained course blog containing suggestions for student reflection as well as hyperlinks to individual student peer blogs. Students were required to read both the course and peer blogs, and to …

Establishing A New Paradigm In Engineering And Technology Education: An Experimental Analysis Of Multiple Learning Methodologies And Examination Of Cognitive Profiles Of Continuing Education Students, James A. Sinclair

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

This study consisted of two inter-related components. The first part compared three instructional methods for delivering a Computer Aided Design (CAD) course for adult Continuing Education (CE) students. The second part established a comprehensive cognitive profile matrix of adult continuing education students entering careers in technology. The first part examined the use of three delivery methods, using three randomly selected groups of students. The three methods were as following:

• Traditional classroom-based training.
• Instructor-facilitated course presented online.
• Independent study, using a CD-ROM tutorial.

The experimental design consisted of three randomly selected sample groups’ of20 students. The independent variable in the study …

Scholarly Communication And Knowledge Management In American Zoos, Julia Innes

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

The researcher investigated whether frontline, tacit knowledge about zoo animals was captured by zookeepers, curators, researchers, veterinarians, and outside researchers and, if so, whether and how it was transmitted into the scholarly literature. A bibliometric analysis was done of a representative sample of peer-reviewed zoo research articles published between 1973 and 200 I. This was extended to grey literature and acknowledgements statements from the same period to obtain a more global picture.

Research participants were evaluated in terms of their contributions (journal articles, conference papers, or acknowledged research assistance). Changes were mapped chronologically and by profess ion. The participation of …

Predicting Software Size And Development Effort: Models Based On Stepwise Refinement, David P. Voorhees

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

This study designed a Software Size Model and an Effort Prediction Model, then performed an empirical analysis of these two models. Each model design began with identifying its objectives, which led to describing the concept to be measured and the meta-model. The numerical assignment rules were then developed, providing a basis for size measurement and effort prediction across software engineering projects. The Software Size Model was designed to test the hypothesis that a software size measure represents the amount of knowledge acquired and stored in software artifacts, and the amount of time it took to acquire and store this knowledge. …

Evaluating Particle Swarm Intelligence Techniques For Solving University Examination Timetabling Problems, Daniel R. Fealko

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the suitability and effectiveness of the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) technique when applied to the University Examination Timetabling problem. We accomplished this by analyzing experimentally the performance profile-the quality of the solution as a function of the execution time-of the standard form of the PSO algorithm when brought to bear against the University Examination Timetabling problem. This study systematically investigated the impact of problem and algorithm factors in solving this particular timetabling problem and determined the algorithm's performance profile under the specified test environment. Keys factors studied included problem size (i.e., number …

Establishing An Online Community Of Practice For Instructors Of English As A Foreign Language, Christopher M. Johnson

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Communities of practice are entities that emerge for the purposes of learning and advancement of knowledge in a particular area. They emerge under all circumstances, even adverse situations. Because they can spawn great innovation and knowledge advancement, organizations need to cultivate and establish environments that allow them to develop. Currently, communities of practice have moved into the online world, in which their members use computer mediated communication to collaborate with each other.

In January, 2002, a virtual community was formed to enable teachers of English as a Foreign Language to collaborate on learning and applying various computing technologies in language …

A Self-Adaptive Evolutionary Negative Selection Approach For Anomaly Detection, Luis J. Gonzalez

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Forrest et al. (1994; 1997) proposed a negative selection algorithm, also termed the exhaustive detector generating algorithm, for various anomaly detection problems. The negative selection algorithm was inspired by the thymic negative selection process that is intrinsic to natural immune systems, consisting of screening and deleting self-reactive T-cells, i.e., those T-cells that recognize self-cells.

The negative selection algorithm takes considerable time (exponential to the size of the self-data) and produces redundant detectors. This time/size limitation motivated the development of different approaches to generate the set of candidate detectors.

A reasonable way to find suitable parameter settings is to let an …

A Study Of The Relationships Between End-User Information Systems Problems And Helpdesk Critical Success Factors In Higher Education, Richard Dale Parrott

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

In the last fifteen years, information technology (IT) customer support has increased in importance within higher education. The pervasiveness of computers and technology on the campus has allowed students, staff, and faculty to perform a multitude of tasks by controlling their own environments and setting their own priorities. Qualified professional system and user support services have lagged demand. The problem investigated in this study was end-users' satisfaction levels of the higher education helpdesk and how end-users' satisfaction levels affected a helpdesk manager's critical success factors performance and goals. In this study, the first goal was to identify the critical success …

Computer-Supported Rehabilitation Management A Case Study Of Using Virtual Reality Technology In Ambulatory Training For Post-Acute Stroke Patients, Felix O. Akinladejo

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated the use of virtual reality (VR) technology in ambulatory training for post-acute stroke patients, and sought to determine whether skills gained in virtual environments transfer to real-world conditions. Patients with stroke typically suffer dysfunctions that impair the complex set of motions involved in walking. The limited amount of therapy and resources offered by the current health care system does not provide the frequency and intensity of training needed for functional recovery of the walking skills in patients following stroke assaults. This study, therefore, developed and investigated an alternative intervention technique capable of providing the frequency and intensity …

The Effects Of Computerized Smell Of Memory, Brandon Spencer

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

It has long been recognized that there is a major correlation between smell and memory. Until recently, commercialized multi-sensory experiences involving olfaction were limited to non-computerized mediums. Companies that manufacture computerized scent technologies tout the educational benefits of their product, yet prior to this study, there appeared to be no scholarly research in regard to the efficacy of computerized scent producing peripherals in educational environments. The aim of this research was to determine the odor memory enhancement benefits of incorporating olfactory, computerized peripherals into computerized multimedia-learning environments, from both a context dependent and context independent stand point. Specifically, within a …

Using Autonomous Robots To Integrate Middle School Academic Standards, Technology Standards, And 21st Century Workplace Skills, Barbara M. Burckart

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

The amount of knowledge that students are required to master continues to grow. Teachers struggle to find age appropriate ways to integrate state academic standards, technology standards, and 21st century workplace skills. Improved problem solving skills are deemed important to these standards as well as in the workplace. This dissertation utilized a robot design project to examine the changes in problem solving skills of seventh grade science students. In the process, 21st century workplace skills, technology standards, and South Carolina middle school science and math standards were identified and integrated into the learning process.

To test the validity of the …

A Use-Case Model For A Knowledge Management System To Facilitate Disaster Relief Operations, Eileen Eudy

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

There are numerous disaster relief agencies poised to respond to disasters; however, coordinating the activities of these diverse and dispersed entities and capitalizing on their knowledge assets can be a challenge. All of these agencies are dedicated to serving survivors of disasters, but they at times lack the coordination necessary to respond efficiently. The Virginia Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (VOAD) is an umbrella organization of existing agencies dedicated to working closely with other organizations to improve service and minimize duplication during disaster operations. To better cope with disasters, the Virginia VOAD needs to develop knowledge management strategies to coordinate …

The Education Of Information Security Professionals: An Analysis Of Industry Needs Vs Academic Curriculum In The 21st Century, Albert L. Fundaburk

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

This research compared the employment of the skills and attributes needed by information systems security professionals in an information systems security work environment with those taught in NSA Centers of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education. Using two surveys the goal of this research was to determine if the skills and attributes identified in the CISSP were employed in an information systems work environment and if these skills were taught in colleges and universities designated as NSA Centers of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education.

The skills and attributes within the10 domains of the CISSP were identified by 23 questions …

The Impact Of Distance Learning On Faculty Contracts And Policies In Florida Community Colleges, M. Kate Legrand

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Distance Learning is state of the art and is fast becoming a primary instructional delivery method in Florida community colleges. However, the present laws and policies that govern Florida's community college educational system are created based on traditional methods for delivering educational services. The potential change in faculty roles and responsibilities brought about by distance learning has raised questions about the impact distance learning will have on overall labor conditions for American faculty. In some instances, the use of alternative methods of delivering educational services has resulted in inconsistent policies. As more faculty become involved in teaching online courses, there …

Implementation Of An Individual Professional Development System Using A Web-Accessible Database, Edward R. Lovitt

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Higher education is looking for ways to encourage new careers in education and retain current faculty working in the field. A successful working relationship between supervisors and faculty is crucial to continued attractiveness of a career in education. These shared relationships exist in "learning organization" models, which are used in professional development offerings that stress the importance of learning by individuals, as a way to benefit the entire institution.

This developmental study focused on building partnerships with supervisors and faculty. These partnerships require contracts or individual development plans that can be reviewed for progress and modified for future needs. The …

Applying Security Risk Management To Internet Connectivity In K-12 Schools And School Districts, Carol C. Woody

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Internet connectivity has been added to the classrooms of United States (U.S .) K-12 schools, but recognition of the security risks and related management responsibilities to address increased risk exposure is not apparent. Providing a sufficient level of access for K-12 students to learn through exploration and experimentation needs to be balanced with sufficient limitations to minimize the risk of technically proficient participants inflicting harm through school resources. Problems of inappropriate use such as adjusting grades, tampering with work of other students, and defacing Web sites by K-12 students are already appearing in U.S. newspapers. In addition, the growing level …