DTheses (Athabasca University)
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A PUBLIC METRICS ANALYSIS OF CANADIAN MOBILE ADOPTION AND ITS TRENDS
Full text linkThis dissertation examines the reliability of Canada’s telecommunications data ecosystem for modeling the structural determinants of mobile adoption between 2014 and 2018. Public data from Statistics Canada and the CRTC were combined with private carrier disclosures to construct an integrated dataset. A modular, Python-based pipeline was developed to harmonize inconsistent schemas, manage missing data, and ensure reproducibility. The analysis employed econometric and spatial methods to test whether population density and income disparities influenced adoption patterns across provinces. While theoretical relationships were consistent with prior technology adoption research, severe data quality limitations—including interpolation, inconsistent definitions, and imputed financial metrics—undermined model stability. The study’s contribution is twofold: it demonstrates the methodological requirements for integrating fragmented public and private datasets, and it provides a critical evaluation of their adequacy for policy-relevant research. Findings underscore the need for standardized, high-resolution, and longitudinal data to support evidence-based telecommunications policy.2025-1
ZERO-SHOT DEEP LEARNING FOR MALICIOUS EVENT DETECTION IN CYBERSECURITY: A NOVEL APPROACH
No full textModern cloud-native systems generate heterogeneous telemetry across microservices, databases, logs, and containerized infrastructure, making traditional anomaly detection brittle and prone to high false-alarm rates. Prior studies show false-positive rates of 50–86% and miss rates of 5–20% in real-world deployments, underscoring the operational burden of noisy detection systems. This thesis presents a zero-shot anomaly detection framework that integrates system-wide telemetry and infers malicious behavior using semantic embeddings derived from domain-specific knowledge graphs. The model adapts its embedding space during inference via transductive learning and employs GAN augmentation with metric-learning enhancements to improve robustness. A Kafka-based pipeline supports real-time operation. Evaluated on real QA telemetry and synthetic attacks, the system achieves 96.4% accuracy, 95.5% macro-F1, and single-digit error rates (~4–5%), substantially outperforming typical enterprise benchmarks. These results demonstrate a scalable, adaptive approach for detecting emerging threats in distributed environments.2025-12-0
UNDERSTANDING HOW AND WHY STARTUPS EMBED HISTORICAL ELEMENTS INTO VISUAL COMMUNICATION ARTIFACTS
Full text linkThis research explores how and why entrepreneurial firms embed historical elements into their visual communication artifacts. New firms seek to attract stakeholders by reducing perceived risk and uncertainty. One way to achieve this is through connecting historical elements into their narratives to create a sense of legitimacy or authenticity. This work explores how historical elements are embedded by firms into their visual communication artifacts by conducting a semiotic analysis on the websites of new ventures found in the Start Alberta database. After analysing by sector, theme findings revealed that that rhetorical strategies of legitimacy of land, authenticity of human connection, reputation and status adoption, and skeuomorphism occur. An exploratory step to understand why entrepreneurs do this was achieved through semi-structured interviews with founders and entrepreneurs. The interviews confirm that in many situations, entrepreneurs are deliberate when embedding historical elements into their work. Analysis also led to a typology of entrepreneur intentionality including Aesthetic Delegation, Personal Symbolism, and Strategic Stakeholder Framing.2026-0
EMBEDDING AIRBORNE INFECTION PREVENTION BEST PRACTICES IN LONG-TERM CARE HOMES: AN IMPLEMENTATION BLUEPRINT
Full text linkDespite deliberate attention and dedicated resources devoted to infection prevention in long-term care (LTC) homes during the COVID-19 pandemic, patient-focused infection-related outcomes in the LTC sector varied significantly. This study sought to devise a set of approaches and recommendations to support more consistent application of infection control procedures among the frontline LTC home workforce in an effort to strengthen patient-focused outcomes.
With a focus on management intentions and implementation practices, this research highlights critical implementation factors most likely to support the uptake of infection prevention behaviours consistent with best practices key to mitigating airborne infections. The research also strives to enable healthcare leaders to be cognizant and attentive to these factors as they go forward with future change management efforts and to provide tools for implementation.
This study is guided by the research question: How are evidence-informed infection prevention best practices for transmissible airborne diseases prospectively implemented by leadership into frontline LTC home workers' practices? Using a thematic analysis of the experiences of LTC home leaders and Infection Prevention and Control Leads (IPAC), I found that key concepts related to the successful implementation of infection control practices in LTC included leadership activation drivers, functional roles and supportive entities, competency development, achieving compliance, dissemination methods, contingency development, alerting worker attention and the power of reflecting and reinforcing best practices. This research also provides the reader with a cadre of promising practices and a blueprint of measures and activities for the implementation of best practices.
Ultimately, this research contributes to best practices intended to restore public confidence in safe institutional LTC home environments for our society’s elderly population. By providing leaders with a knowledge of implementation factors critical to best practice uptake, LTC home infection outcomes should improve, and more residents will be able to live longer with safety and personal dignity.2026-0
EXPERIENCES OF ONLINE FACULTY USING OPEN PEDAGOGY TO SUPPORT SOCIAL JUSTICE
No full textThe COVID-19 pandemic was a pivotal, high impact period in the history of modern education. Seemingly overnight, institutions, programs, and classes around the world moved from being in-person to being online. The amount of individual and collective effort required for this to happen was tremendous. As a result, the pandemic forced both K-12 and post-secondary education systems globally to view the purpose and provision of education, including open education, in different ways. At the same time, social injustices were simultaneously being made visible across all facets of society, including education. It is often assumed that open education, by virtue of improving access to education, de facto supports social justice, but this is not the case. Additionally, online learning is generally thought to improve students’ access to education because of the flexibility in when and where to learn that is possible, but it can, in fact, be a site of social injustice for historically marginalized students. As a result, using open pedagogy in an online course to support social justice requires intentionality on the part of the instructor. For my dissertation, I completed a qualitative, interpretive phenomenological study underpinned by critical theory that sought to answer this central research question: What are the experiences of post-secondary faculty members who teach online using open pedagogy to support social justice? My study was situated within the context of one post-secondary institution located in British Columbia, and faculty who teach online courses using open pedagogy to support social justice were interviewed. The results revealed that faculty members conceptualize social justice in a variety of ways, primarily focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion of identities, as well as removing systemic barriers. They operationalize social justice through using open pedagogy by centring student voices, diverse perspectives, and learner agency. As well, faculty members engage in social justice leadership development by valuing continuous learning; engaging in professional development on a variety of topics and in a variety of ways; and welcoming, valuing, and incorporating student feedback and input. The results also revealed they need to be more direct and explicit in expressing their support of social justice by using open pedagogy. Accordingly, I developed a social justice model of open pedagogy that faculty members could use to help plan how they will engage in open pedagogy to support social justice while avoiding the perpetuation of teaching practices that can be marginalizing. As well, because educational research tends to be under-theorized, my model contributes to the theory development in the intersections of open education and social justice. Despite some limitations of the research stemming from the study design and the cultural context, future research could more deeply explore the risks faculty members face when using open pedagogy in support of social justice.2026-0
FROM MASJID TO MOBILE: MUSLIM WOMEN’S JOURNEYS IN QUR’AN LEARNING ONLINE
Full text linkThis study explores the lived experiences of Muslim women transitioning from face-to-face to online Qur’an study during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a qualitative narrative-ethnographic approach, five participants shared their journeys of adaptation, challenge, and resilience. Analysis revealed six interconnected themes: Learning Environment, Social Connection, Role of Technology, Language and Literacy, Identity and Spirituality, and Female Representation. Findings highlight that Qur’an education is shaped not only by instructional design and technology but also by social bonds, maternal motivation, and spiritual force. While online learning offered flexibility, it disrupted community and teacher–student bonds, introduced linguistic and technological barriers, and exposed the lack of female representation in digital platforms. Participants strongly favored hybrid models that balance accessibility with embodied presence. This research contributes to digital religion and women’s education literature, offering practical implications for teachers, program leaders, and app developers to design inclusive, relational, and spiritually affirming Qur’an learning.June 11, 202
EXPLORING NURSING PRACTICE IN RURAL, REMOTE AND ISOLATED CONTEXTS
Full text linkRegistered Nurses (RNs) work autonomously in an expanded scope of practice to provide primary care in rural, remote and isolated (RRI) areas. The mechanisms that regulate this expanded scope of practice have been largely unexplored. This research explores the expanded scope skills performed by RNs in RRI areas of British Columbia (BC) and the Yukon, the regulatory mechanisms governing these expanded scope skills, and provides a foundation for future research and policy development aimed at addressing the challenges faced by RNs in these settings. The findings suggest that nurses working within these contexts are knowledgeable and experienced in advanced skills that enable them to meet the broad range of health needs within their communities. However, both BC and Yukon cases revealed potential regulatory ambiguities. Yukon is currently undergoing health system and policy reform, which presents an opportunity for changes that could positively impact the professional regulation of nurses.2026-0
SUPPORTING GLOBAL EDUCATIONAL LEADERS’ PURSUIT OF AI-ENABLED LIFELONG LEARNING FOR ALL
Full text linkSupporting Educational leaders’ Pursuit of Lifelong Learning Enabled by AI
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Abstract
Central to the growing use of AI in K-20 education, is the arrival of a global educational agenda focused on lifelong learning for all. It almost always falls to the leader to implement innovative change without overwhelming and demotivating teachers or faculty. In short, no matter how astonishing the technological innovation is, no matter how grand and worthwhile the agenda, nor how challenging the context in which they take place, change does not become part of public education without the hard work of educational leaders. It follows then that potentially the most significant educational innovation of all time, the design, development, and implementation of AI to enable more equitable lifelong learning for all, is the leader’s responsibility.
The response that educational leadership will make locally to this watershed moment in education may very well depend on how they perceive the benefits and opportunities, strengths and weaknesses of AI. Will specific supports help leaders engage more actively in the pursuit of this global agenda for change? This mixed methods research study sets out to answer these questions by working to uncover the practices and perspectives of 65 educational leaders globally who work at different levels of K-20 education in publicly funded systems. Seven key findings were discovered.
AI has made itself at home in the schoolhouse. The way educational leaders in K-20, respond, or fail to respond, will define their roles moving forward. Currently, it is unclear if principals and presidents of K-20 publicly funded educational institutions understand what is meant by a new global agenda for education focused on the realization of lifelong learning for all, whether they see themselves as responsible for co-designing the use of AI in education to help realize that mandate or whether they see how
Supporting Educational leaders’ Pursuit of Lifelong Learning Enabled by AI
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they might use their positions of soft power and influence to shape such changes. It is unclear if educational leaders are preparing themselves thoroughly enough for the global educational AI revolution that has only just begun. What might AI have to offer in this challenging educational context and how might educational leadership be supported locally to realize the potential for good? This study seeks to find that out.2026-0
IDENTITY AS BARRIER TO AND FACILITATOR OF CHANGE A CANADIAN PUBLIC SECTOR CASE STUDY
Full text linkIncreasing disruptions due to technological advancement, regulatory changes, and global
competition imply that organizational change is likely to increase in both volume and velocity.
This dissertation answers questions and provides insight for organizational leaders tasked with
managing change. The proposed research takes a balanced perspective about two views on
organizational identity; one that argues organizational identity is defined as that which is
enduring, and a second one that says organizational identity is alterable, fluid and can be
constructed, deconstructed, reconstructed, and maintained. A case study approach is used to
research identity change at Shared Services Canada from the perspective of those that have lived
through that change as internal members and as external clients. My goal is to examine the role
of legacy identity in a public sector/government organization’s transition to a shared services
business model. It addresses the question how does legacy identity help with a public
sector/government organization’s transition and/or impair transition to a hybrid organizational
form?2025-1
TOWARDS A PERSONALISED STUDY GUIDE BASED ON BEHAVIOUR ANALYTICS
Full text linkPersonalized learning may help students achieve better learning outcomes. To provide personalization, the student preferences must be known. Learning styles determine learning preferences and detecting learning style automatically rather than using a questionnaire is the topic of much research. This research proposes another technique to non-invasively elicit learning styles. The proposed technique will construct a network graph from the learning objects in a course, where each node in the graph represents a learning object. The nodes will be positioned using the similarity between learning object contents as the distance between nodes. Then, student behaviour in the form of log traces will be added as links to the graph, producing a visualization of student behaviour, named Learning Object Graph (LOG). Each student will have their behaviour compressed into a centroid point for clustering. The resulting student groups will be classified according to their learning style so that study guide personalization can be done in accordance with the correspondent learning style.2025-0