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User interface derivation based on a role-enriched business process model
No full textEmpirical thesis.Bibliography: pages 197-207.1. Introduction -- 2. Literature review -- 3. Role-enriched business process model -- 4. Task abstraction and aggregation -- 5. Data relationship extraction -- 6. User interface derivation -- 7. Implementation -- 8. Conclusion and future work -- References.In recent decades, the boom of information and communication technology has brought countless business process changes in a wide range of organizations and enterprises. A business process (BP) describes a collection of linked tasks to produce a particular product or service. Each task is a logic unit of work performed by human users or applications. Human users participate in a business process through user interfaces (UIs). In a business process, the UI accepts input and provides output for the process users.The implementation of a business process often involves a lot of hard coding work. In particular, the development of the UI of process often constitutes 70% to 80% of the manually written code for the BP implementation. The hard coding for UI development can cause many problems. The realization and maintenance of the UI of a process are often not only costly and effort-consuming but also error-prone due to the nature of hard coding. Moreover, the hard coding leads to a tight coupling between the BPs and their UIs. Any changes of existing UIs/BPs cannot be easily adapted without recoding.To overcome the problems mentioned above, it is highly desirable to develop a UI derivation method based on a business process model. The business process model should support the UI logic with the following features: (1)each participating user role includes a UI logic; (2) each UI logic consists of a set of containers and the execution constraints of these containers; (3) each container includes a set of data items specified with access types (read,write).In this thesis, we propose a UI derivation method based on a role-enriched business process model to derive complex UI logics. The proposed UI derivation method has the following features: A role-enriched business process model is proposed with the capabilities to specify (1) the control ow relations between tasks; (2) the relationships between the participating user roles and individual tasks; (3) the data operation ow inside each task. In the process model, we identify a set of control ow patterns and data operation patterns to build up the rules for UI derivation. The business process is abstracted and aggregated for each user role based on the role-enrich BP model. A set of elementary operations are developed according to the control flow patterns to reserve or abstract tasks for each user role. With the abstracted and aggregated business process (AABP), a customized UI logic is derived for each participating user role. Data relationships are extracted from the AABP for each user role. A set of elementary operations are developed according to the data operations inside individual tasks and the identified control flow patterns in the AABP. The extracted data relationships are the foundation to analyze and derive the UI logic. A set of mandatory and recommended rules are specified. The UI logics are derived from the extracted data relationships based on these specified rules. A UI Derivation Tool (UIDrvTool) is developed as the implementation of our proposed UI derivation approach.In summary, this research sheds new light on the state-of-art of the UI development for business processes.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (xx, 207 pages) diagram
Voluntary greenhouse gas emissions: A framework for analysis
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 69-801. Introduction -- 2. Research background -- 3. Research method -- 4. Interpreting and evaluating the systematic literature review -- 5. Australian evidence provided by the content analysis -- 6. Suggesting a way forward-a comparison with Californian GHG reporting regimes -- 7. Conclusions.Australia's National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act 2007 (NGER Act 2007) establishes a mandatory framework for corporate reporting of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, not all businesses meet the NGER's mandatory reporting threshold. Ninety-five per cent of listed companies are estimated to fall outside the scope of the legislation. This thesis investigates how corporations outside the ambit of the NGER Act 2007 meet their GHG reporting obligations. It examines the extent to which a framework can be developed to achieve a trade-off between its mandatory and voluntary GHG reporting practices. The thesis undertakes a systematic review of 62 peer-reviewed articles from 2008 to 2016 relating to voluntary GHG reporting practice in Australia, and a content analysis of 2013 annual reports, sustainability reports and Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) reports from four Australian listed companies and two local government councils. The analysis reveals that the voluntary GHG reporting practices of entities (corporate and local government) that are not subject to the NGER regime lack consistency, comparability and transparency. California's voluntary GHG reporting regime is then contrasted with Australia's. Under its cap-and-trade regulation, California has developed a robust voluntary GHG reporting program within a framework that requires local governments and organisations to design a consistent assessment mechanism to keep track of their GHG emission allowances. The results make it clear that formal emissions reporting regimes foster a systematic and improved voluntary GHG disclosure culture. The thesis concludes by suggesting that for Australia to achieve verifiable emissions reductions in line with its international commitments, the way forward is to adopt a framework akin to California's voluntary GHG reporting under mandatory legislation.1 online resource (91 pages) illustration
Warfare of the most dreadful description: a comparative study of settler colonial violence in Connecticut and Tasmania
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 76-82.Introduction -- Chapter 1. Cause -- Chapter 2. Progression -- Chapter 3. Aftermath -- Conclusion.The Pequot War in seventeenth-century Connecticut and the Black War in nineteenth-century Tasmania were key moments in American and Australian history, respectively. Separated by two hundred years and 17,000 kilometers, they nonetheless followed remarkably similar trajectories; relative peace followed by aggressive settler expansion, the clash of two radically different military cultures, and the physical removal of the remaining indigenous survivors. Using the innovative field of settler colonial studies, this thesis will comparatively examine settler colonial violence in Connecticut and Tasmania. As a burgeoning number of works in the field have shown, settler colonial studies lends itself well to global and comparative approaches, as well as trans temporal ones. However, to date, there have been very few studies of the latter. This project will analyse the structural attributes of settler colonial violence comparatively and trans temporally to identify the ways in which they manifest in different cultural contexts and temporal frameworks. More broadly, it will seek to provide a detailed analysis of how the operative logic of settler colonialism can inform and shape seemingly unrelated events, and further the understanding of this distinctive and pervasive process.1 online resource (iii, 82 pages
Competitiveness vis-à-vis service quality as drivers of customer loyalty mediated by perceptions of regulation and stability in steady and volatile markets
No full textThe purpose of this research is to investigate predictors of customer loyalty in order to identify alternatives to customer satisfaction with service quality, which has been traditionally accepted as the primary predictor of customer loyalty, particularly for services. A stratified sample of bank customers was surveyed to collect information on customer perceptions and behaviors in relation to satisfaction with service quality, competitiveness, risk, regulation, stability and loyalty. Partial least squares path modelling (PLSPM) was applied to develop loyalty models for a steady market (Australia) and a volatile market (Greece). This study's empirical findings support theoretical arguments for the inclusion of customer perceptions of competitiveness in loyalty modelling. Perceptions of regulation and stability intervene in the relationship between drivers of loyalty and loyalty itself. For bankers, the study emphasizes the need to move away from customer satisfaction with service quality to explain customer loyalty, towards focusing efforts on achieving relative superiority in competitiveness, namely competitive productivity and products. Profiling customers based on their perceptions of a bank's competitiveness can provide additional explanatory power beyond traditional satisfaction based loyalty models. Services marketing has focused on the service components, and there is no doubt about its crucial role. But given this focus, other factors, such as the actual product component, have been somewhat overlooked in services research. The study makes a unique contribution to understanding and modelling customer loyalty by demonstrating the importance of the inclusion of customer perceptions of other factors as appropriate to market conditions.13 page(s
Retinal vascular and structural changes are associated with amyloid burden in the elderly : ophthalmic biomarkers of preclinical Alzheimer's disease
No full textBackground: Retinal imaging may serve as an alternative approach to monitor brain pathology in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). In this study, we investigated the association between retinal vascular and structural changes and cerebral amyloid-β (Aβ) plaque load in an elderly cohort. Methods: We studied a total of 101 participants, including 73 elderly subjects (79 ± 5 years, 22 male) with no clinical diagnosis of AD but reporting some subjective memory change and an additional 28 subjects (70 ± 9 years, 16 male) with clinically established AD. Following a complete dilated ocular examination, the amplitude of retinal vascular pulsations and dynamic response, retinal nerve fibre layer thickness and retinal ganglion cell layer (RGCL) thickness were determined in all patients. Systemic blood pressure and carotid-to-femoral pulse wave velocity were measured. The elderly cohort also underwent magnetic resonance imaging and ¹⁸F-florbetaben (FBB)-positron emission tomographic amyloid imaging to measure neocortical Aβ standardised uptake value ratio (SUVR), and this was used to characterise a ‘preclinical’ group (SUVR >1.4). Results: The mean FBB neocortical SUVR was 1.35 ± 0.3. The amplitude of retinal venous pulsations correlated negatively with the neocortical Aβ scores (p < 0.001), whereas the amplitude of retinal arterial pulsations correlated positively with neocortical Aβ scores (p < 0.01). RGCL thickness was significantly lower in the clinical AD group (p < 0.05). Conclusions: The correlation between retinal vascular changes and Aβ plaque load supports the possibility of a vascular component to AD. Dynamic retinal vascular parameters may provide an additional inexpensive tool to aid in the preclinical assessment of AD.9 page(s
Are atheists implicit theists?
No full textThe Cognitive Science of Religion commonly advances the view that religious beliefs emerge naturally via specific cognitive biases without cultural influence. From this perspective comes the claim that self-proclaimed atheists harbour traces of supernatural thinking. By exploring the potential influence of the cultural learning mechanism Credibility Enhancing Displays (CREDs), which affirms beliefs, current disparities between studies involved in priming the implicit theism of atheists, might be reconciled. Eighty-eight university students were randomly assigned to either a religious or control prime condition. A dictator game was completed to obtain an indication of pro-social behaviour (PSB). Lifetime theists reported significantly higher religious CREDs exposure levels than lifetime atheists, though not convert atheists. Conversely, lifetime atheists reported significantly lower CREDs exposure scores than convert atheists. Convert atheists in the prime condition were significantly more pro-social than lifetime atheists. Additionally, higher scores on the CREDs exposure measure equated to higher PSB in the religious condition than the control condition. The results are consistent with the view that supernatural belief formation is an interactive process between both context and content biases, and that in order to accurately test for implicit theism, past personal differences in exposure to religious CREDs should be considered.24 page(s
Merdeka down under
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 67-68.Introduction -- Chapter 1. The Royal Netherlands forces and extraterritorial rights in Australia -- Chapter 2. Dutch courts martial in Australia during the war -- Chapter 3. Australia and the NEI’s disagreement on Indonesian prisoners after the Pacific War -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Archives and web sites.This thesis takes up current public debates in the Netherlands on the role played by the Dutch in the years following the 1945 Indonesian Proclamation. This research is done with special attention paid to the Dutch Indies military personnel who were withdrawn or escaped to Australia, a gap in the many debates and historical publications. The research conducted for this thesis made use of quantitative analysis and extensive qualitative analyses of archival materials from the Netherlands as well as from Australia, where the outcomes are described using a narrative-based approach. The key argument this thesis asserts is that the NEI High Command in Australia used their military justice system for the political repression of Indonesians, and this conflicted with Australia’s views regarding the legality of the Indonesians’ internment. The NEI Army high command incarcerated Indonesians to prevent them from returning to the Indonesian Republic to fight on the side of the independence movement. Although this political motivation was not widely proclaimed by the NEI Government-in-Exile and the Military High Command, it was often pronounced by Australians after the Asia-Pacific war.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (68 pages
The effects of hearing loss on preferences for shared decision making in residential aged care: a mixed methods approach
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 81-92.Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. Narrative literature review -- Chapter 3. Methods -- Chapter 4. Findings: RQ1 medical care - preferences for information and decision making -- Chapter 5. Findings: RQ2 everyday care - preferences for information and decision making -- Chapter 6. Discussion and conclusion.Hearing loss is associated with communication breakdown in residential aged care. A review of the literature found that the effects of hearing loss on residents’ preferences for shared decision making remain unknown. The aim of the thesis is to assess how hearing loss affects residents’ preferences for receiving information, and making decisions, in terms of their medical and everyday care. An exploratory mixed methods study was conducted, involving interviews and surveys, with 26 residents. Interviews covered five parts: demographic details; self-perceived hearing loss; and, preferences for receiving information and decision making about medical and everyday care. Statistical analysis, thematic analysis using the Framework Method, and inductive content analysis, were employed to analyse data. Participants demonstrated strong preferences for receiving information and involvement in decision making, in both medical and everyday contexts. Despite strong preferences for receiving information, some participants, including three with hearing loss, expressed dissatisfaction with the communication they received. Participants’ with hearing loss reinforced the importance of family involvement in decision making processes. The findings offer direction for future research by emphasising the need to better understand the communication strategies employed by residents with hearing loss, and the role that family members play in shared decision making.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (xv, 113 pages
Learning in a MOOC: how people of differing backgrounds regulate their learning in a MOOC
No full textThesis by publication.Bibliography: pages 305-323.Chapter One. Background -- Chapter Two. Theoretical framework & literature review -- Chapter Three. Methodology -- Chapter Four. Paper 1. Who enrols in MOOCs? -- Chapter Five. Paper 2. Learning and achievement in a MOOC -- Chapter Six. Paper3. Topic experience and learning in a MOOC -- Chapter Seven. Paper 4. Help-seeking in a MOOC -- Chapter Eight. Conclusion -- Consolidated list of references -- Appendices.The massive open online course, or MOOC, is a recent innovation in online learning. This new type of course has enabled millions of people worldwide to access content for free that had usually been restricted to fee-paying university students. Though there has been considerable research about the demographics of MOOC enrolees, their reasons for enrolling and their patterns of engagement, relatively little is known about how people actually learn in these environments. As MOOCs are predicted to continue to be a significant force for lifelong learning, it is important to understand how people learn in these environments, so MOOCs can better meet their needs. Also, understanding how people learn independently in online environments is growing in importance as universities increasingly require it of their students. Only through a detailed and nuanced understanding of how students learn online on their own can educators help them develop the necessary skills to succeed in their studies.This study aimed to fill this research gap by using a social cognitive theoretical framework, which conceptualises human behaviour as the product of interlinked and reciprocally determining personal, behavioural and environmental factors, to investigate how people learned in a MOOC. Within this framework, the theoretical lens of self-regulation was used to study the internal and external factors that influenced learning. Two social cognitive constructs were also used to study aspects of motivation that are key influencers of learning: self-efficacy, which relates to a person’s confidence in their own ability to perform a task in a specific domain, and achievement goals, which describe how people orientate their learning goals in achievement contexts. Within this approach, this study aimed to provide detailed accounts of how people learned in their own contexts.The research context for this investigation was Introduction to Biomedical Imaging, a 10-week MOOC provided by an Australian university. The research adopted a mixed-methods sequential-explanatory design, in which data was collected in separate quantitative and qualitative phases. Phase 1 involved the collection of data through an online survey; Phase 2, which was assigned priority in the design, was a multiple-case study with 10 case participants purposively sampled from volunteers who had completed the Phase 1 survey. Findings from both phases were then integrated to generate contextual accounts of how participants learned. Data was collected from multiple sources such as interviews, experience sampling, surveys and digital artefacts that related to each participant’s learning in the MOOC. The data was analysed following a six-step procedure that accommodated quantitative and qualitative approaches and the mixing of findings.Research findings are presented in the form of four manuscripts prepared for submission to academic journals. The first reports the findings of a statistical analysis of survey data, which aimed to determine the demographics and motivations of those who enrolled in the MOOC. The following three papers report the findings of the multiple-case study, which investigated how these individuals learned in the MOOC and what their outcomes were.Results from an analysis of survey data (n=3,172, response rate: 22.3%) found that the majority of survey respondents were highly educated and from developed countries, which is consistent with the literature. Experience of the MOOC topic, however, was found to play a significant role in the respondents’ motivational mindsets. Those who had formal experience of the MOOC topic (for example, from their professional work or formal studies) were found to be more confident about their general academic ability and more motivated to achieve than those whose experience came from informal sources, such as through a general interest in the topic. This finding was supported by the subsequent multiple-case study (n = 10), which found that participants who had professional experience of the MOOC topic were more effective at regulating their learning and achieved higher overall grades than others in this study. How participants used their MOOC study time was perhaps the most important determinant of effective learning. The results suggest that the most effective learners used strategies such as proximal goal setting, and rewards to make best use of the time they spent in the MOOC. Another key finding was that participants sought very little help from others in this MOOC. In the case of this MOOC, a combination of personal factors, such as prior knowledge of the topic, and environmental factors, such as the pedagogical approach of the MOOC, were found to be key influencers on how these participants learned.This study contributes knowledge about how people learn on their own in online environments. In the context of lifelong learning, this may assist in improving the quality of MOOCs that better meet the needs of different learners, which may in turn help to promote lifelong learning to new audiences. The findings from this study also have implications for higher education, as students are increasingly required to study independently using online environments.Several ideas for future research are suggested. A limitation of this study was that the research participants were relatively highly educated. An investigation into how people without any experience of university study use MOOCs may aid understanding of the challenges these learners face in MOOCs, and of the design of MOOCs that develop and support learners’ abilities to take control of their learning. Another gap in the literature is an examination of the influence of instructional design on learning in MOOCs. As the literature suggests that the instructional quality of MOOCs is quite poor, this kind or research is much needed if MOOCs are to become more effective instruments for lifelong learning.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (xvi, 395 pages) diagrams, table
Yogyakarta (Indonesia) EFL teachers' conceptualizations of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) as represented in their structural curriculum design and practice
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 237-256.Part One. Background to the study. Chapter 1. Introduction to the study ; Chapter 2. Review of the related literature ; Chapter 3. Research approach and procedures -- Part Two. Instructional curriculum design and practice : Indonesian teachers' conceptualizations of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). Chapter 4. Conceptualization of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) in instructional curriculum design ; Chapter 5. Discussion of conceptualization of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) in instructional curriculum design ; Chapter 6. Conceptualization of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) in instructional curriculum practice -- Part Three. Conclusion. Chapter 7. Conclusions, implications, limitations, recommendations, and suggestions for future research -- References -- Appendices.Curriculum changes in Indonesian schools have assigned a central role to Indonesian EFL teachers to act as effective instructional curriculum practitioners and adapters. The present study examined Indonesian EFL teachers’ conceptualizations of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) (Shulman, 1987) as represented in their instructional (Wette, 2009) curriculum design and practice. Combining Shulman’s (1987) PCK with Graves’s (2000) framework of course development processes, the first part of the inquiry examined Yogyakarta (Indonesia) EFL teachers’ conceptualizations of PCK in terms of forms, strategies, and pedagogical concerns, as reflected in their instructional curriculum design. In the second part of the inquiry, Andrews’s (2007) modified model of PCK was applied to the framework of L2 reading instruction (Irvine-Niakaris & Kiely, 2014) to explore EFL teachers’ conceptualizations of knowledge about texts (KAT) and knowledge about reading instruction (KARI). Graves’s (2008) model of a dynamic system of curriculum development,which elucidates the role of socio-educational context in curriculum development, is adopted to examine the influence of socio-educational context on teachers’ conceptualizations of PCK in their instructional curriculum design and practice. A qualitative multiple-case study involving purposive within- and cross-case sampling techniques (Miles, Huberman, &Saldana, 2014; Stake, 2006; Yin, 2014) was employed to select six EFL teachers; three experienced and three inexperienced teachers, of public junior high schools in the Special Province of Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Multiple sources of data, including instructional curriculum design assessments, pre-lesson semi-structured interviews, stimulated-recall interviews, classroom observations, and teaching transcripts, were collected.The findings highlight the macro and micro patterns of the teachers’ conceptualizations of PCK in five processes of instructional curriculum design, and those of the teachers’ conceptualizations of KAT and KARI. The macro landscape of the teachers’ conceptualizations of PCK in their instructional curriculum design and practice was shaped by the extent to which the teachers engaged with the influence of the National Examination (NE), a high-stakes examination applied nationwide within the Indonesian education system. In the case of the experienced teachers, the macro landscape of their conceptualizations showed the teachers’ high commitment to the demands of the NE. In contrast, the inexperienced teachers’ macro construction of their conceptualizations reflected a certain degree of detachment from the NE. The teachers’ polar different macro conceptualizations of PCK were realized in their micro constructions of conceptualization in their instructional curriculum design and practice. In terms of instructional curriculum design, the experienced teachers’ micro patterns of conceptualization within the five processes of instructional curriculum design were guided in favour of the NE. On the other hand, the inexperienced teachers’ micro patterns of conceptualization in designing their instructional curriculum formed more non-NE-based instruction. As related to the conceptualization of PCK in instructional curriculum practice, the teachers’ KAT showed their insufficient understanding of how to properly explore texts for meaning making as required by text-based teaching characterizing the applied curriculum, namely the 2006 School-based Curriculum, in the Indonesian EFL context. Meanwhile, the teachers’ KARI for organizing reading instruction demonstrated the teachers’ insufficient knowledge about organizing instruction within the organizing principles they adopted. Finally, their KARI about reading instruction revealed instructional reading strategies for fostering the students’ reading comprehension, by giving clues in the students’ native language and applying a testing-oriented strategy, and for raising the students’ awareness of reading skills. Implications of the study address the need, with reference to the findings of the study, to accommodate follow-up actions to improve teachers’ transformation process for designing and enacting their instructional curriculum in pre- and in-service teacher training programs.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (xvi, 396 pages) colour illustration