Women who Study: Balancing the Dual Roles of Postgraduate Student and Mother

Although the value of educating mothers has been established in the previous research, little is known about the experiences of mothers who participate in higher education. What is known supports a largely negative portrayal of the experience; it seems that it is a difficult journey, filled with tension. This thesis reports on an exploration of the experiences of mothers who are postgraduate students in Australia. The research comprised of two phases: the first phase was a narrative study of the experiences of 14 Australian postgraduate student mothers. The second phase comprised of a Q-method study of 75 postgraduate student mothers, where Q-method is a technique that incorporates both qualitative and quantitative components. In addition, there was a precursor study was undertaken to ensure variety in the Q-statements, as well as a follow-up study which checked for confirmability of the Q-study interpretation. The findings showed that studying impacted on almost every facet of a woman’s life. Postgraduate student mothers juggled childcare and timetabling issues and, for some, their main challenge was a lack of support. They overcame these difficulties with highly developed organisation and time-management skills, oftentimes with partner support, and by sacrificing sleep and recreation time. The women were strongly motivated by the desire for personal achievement, and the opportunity to create a better future for their children. Postgraduate education rewarded student mothers with a sense of freedom, growth, pride and achievement, as well as developing their professional identity. The results of this research program demonstrated that postgraduate education provided women with a major opportunity to grow and develop their personal abilities while raising their children. This fresh perspective offers an alternative, and more positive snapshot of life as a student mother, and contrasts with the previously reported experience in the literature

Scheduling Problems

Scheduling is defined as the process of assigning operations to resources over time to optimize a criterion. Problems with scheduling comprise both a set of resources and a set of a consumers. As such, managing scheduling problems involves managing the use of resources by several consumers. This book presents some new applications and trends related to task and data scheduling. In particular, chapters focus on data science, big data, high-performance computing, and Cloud computing environments. In addition, this book presents novel algorithms and literature reviews that will guide current and new researchers who work with load balancing, scheduling, and allocation problems

Operational Research: Methods and Applications

Throughout its history, Operational Research has evolved to include a variety of methods, models and algorithms that have been applied to a diverse and wide range of contexts. This encyclopedic article consists of two main sections: methods and applications. The first aims to summarise the up-to-date knowledge and provide an overview of the state-of-the-art methods and key developments in the various subdomains of the field. The second offers a wide-ranging list of areas where Operational Research has been applied. The article is meant to be read in a nonlinear fashion. It should be used as a point of reference or first-port-of-call for a diverse pool of readers: academics, researchers, students, and practitioners. The entries within the methods and applications sections are presented in alphabetical order

What we know, what we do and what we could do: Creating an understanding of the delivery of health education in lower secondary government schools in Western Australia

Australian health data indicates that childhood is a significant time for young Australians to develop health and well-being issues. Concurrently, health advocates herald in-school delivery of skills-based participatory health education as making significant contributions to developing behaviour change and supporting health enhancing dispositions in children and young people. In Western Australia (WA), skillsbased participatory health education is characterised by linking knowledge and understandings of what it means to be safer, healthier and more physically active to skills that action these states. Skills-based is a preferred approach to teaching and learning in the Health and Physical Education Learning Area (HPE LA), and at the time of this research was supported through education legislated in The Curriculum Framework (Western Australia Curriculum Council, 1998). The focus of this research was to investigate the representation and delivery of health education as a separately timetabled, discipline-based subject belonging to the HPE LA, specifically in lower secondary government schools in WA. The literature identified quantity and quality as criteria for health education to develop healthy living; therefore, this research sought to identify the factors that affect the delivery of skills-based, participatory health education in these schools. The aim of this research was to identify whether the current delivery of health education in lower secondary government schools supports the capacity of the HPE LA to promote healthy citizenry in young Western Australians. A mixed methods methodology was selected. Quantitative data was collected from 75 teachers who participated in an online and paper survey, and qualitative data from nine teachers who participated in semi-structured interviews. Analysis of quantitative data aimed to determine the extent to which government schools in WA were timetabling lower secondary health education as a separate subject. Additionally, this analysis aimed to identify the qualifications and main learning area of the teachers delivering health education. Analysis of the qualitative data aimed to determine the opinions of the teachers regarding delivery. Representation and delivery were determined by the amount of HPE LA curriculum time allocated to health education, the qualifications and training of the teachers delivering the subject and the preferred pedagogical approach used to deliver health education content. This research found that curriculum time attributed to health education in the government schools studied has decreased since 1995. Significantly, curriculum time allowed for health education varied across schools. However, for most schools, health education was delivered for approximately one hour per timetable cycle. This represented only one third of the HPE LA curriculum time. Additionally, half of the teachers who participated in this research and were timetabled to deliver health education were untrained in health education pedagogy. Significantly, one in three of the qualified HPE LA teachers who participated in this research and who delivered health education were untrained in health education pedagogy, although this learning area was mandated in 1998. The qualitative data demonstrated that participating teachers considered untrained teachers delivering health education as concerning. Specifically, participants were most concerned about teachers whose main learning area was not the HPE LA delivering health education, and teachers who were HPE LA teachers but also untrained. The participants were concerned that these teachers were not delivering health education using the preferred pedagogical approach, so consequently overlooked skills development as a critical component of health citizenry. This research developed four suggestions for lower secondary government schools, with the aim of supporting the capacity of the curriculum space of the HPE LA in WA to effect safer, healthier and more active citizenry. This research developed two considerations for the universities in WA that prepare pre-service teachers. These considerations aim to prepare pre-service teachers with understandings of skills-based participatory health education and the significance of its contributions to developing health citizenry in WA. This research is significant, as it found the current representation and delivery of the HPE LA in lower secondary government schools does not support the curriculum’s capacity to promote healthy citizenry in young Western Australians

A review and analysis of the management of retention at an institute of further and higher education in Northern Ireland

This research is a case study concerning retention in Further and Higher Education (FHE) generally and an Institute of Further and Higher Education in particular. This college will be fictitiously referred to as Lough Neagh Institute (LNIFHE). Retention is becoming increasingly important in education as it affects achievement with implications for any value added which could be gained and the overall provision of quality given to the learner. Poor retention generally results in a depleted range of skills acquired by the student. A policy on the management of retention has not yet been formally constructed, despite overall retention within LNIFHE developing a distinctive downward trend in some courses. Initially a review of the literature indicated that the most pertinent areas to investigate in the management of retention were; - factors involved in early withdrawal, - support and guidance processes, - quality systems as well as, - strategies that were employed to optimise retention at LNIFHE. The four aims of the study were built around these areas. To test opinion on some of these themes a sample of the three stakeholders most directly involved, the staff, students and senior management at LNIFHE during the years 2004-2005 was surveyed and collated. The methodology involved the techniques of questionnaires, semi-structured and open-ended interviews, contemporaneous comments recorded in the diary and desk analysis. The investigation also studied the strategy employed to optimise retention by management at LNIFHE by examining some retention related policies from within the College Development Plan. The school improvement model of Creemers was analysed and found to be a useful tool, which could be adapted for use in LNIFHE. A variant of the model was proposed in the final chapter. Retention research so far has been of an a-theoretical nature and generally does not account for the cumulative and interrelating effects of the external and internal factors which are known to be influential on students. The most important dimension which emerged in this study was the importance of motivation for students and how this is positively influence by better support provision. Within LNIFHE, there are differences in the perspectives of the three main stakeholders notably in the area of quality provision and partially as a result of this, implementation gaps between policy and practice exist with consequent negative implications for student retention. There is no procedure in LNIFHE for the identification of students who are at risk of withdrawing. Some structural and organisational changes such as the construction of a retention policy the creation of the post of retention manager along with recommendation for improved monitoring, support and the maintenance of quality at all levels were suggested. It was proposed that better communication between the 3 stakeholders at LNIFHE will improve motivation of staff and students which will have a beneficial effect on retention

Intelligent maintenance management in a reconfigurable manufacturing environment using multi-agent systems

Thesis (M. Tech.) -- Central University of Technology, Free State, 2010Traditional corrective maintenance is both costly and ineffective. In some situations it is more cost effective to replace a device than to maintain it; however it is far more likely that the cost of the device far outweighs the cost of performing routine maintenance. These device related costs coupled with the profit loss due to reduced production levels, makes this reactive maintenance approach unacceptably inefficient in many situations. Blind predictive maintenance without considering the actual physical state of the hardware is an improvement, but is still far from ideal. Simply maintaining devices on a schedule without taking into account the operational hours and workload can be a costly mistake. The inefficiencies associated with these approaches have contributed to the development of proactive maintenance strategies. These approaches take the device health state into account. For this reason, proactive maintenance strategies are inherently more efficient compared to the aforementioned traditional approaches. Predicting the health degradation of devices allows for easier anticipation of the required maintenance resources and costs. Maintenance can also be scheduled to accommodate production needs. This work represents the design and simulation of an intelligent maintenance management system that incorporates device health prognosis with maintenance schedule generation. The simulation scenario provided prognostic data to be used to schedule devices for maintenance. A production rule engine was provided with a feasible starting schedule. This schedule was then improved and the process was determined by adhering to a set of criteria. Benchmarks were conducted to show the benefit of optimising the starting schedule and the results were presented as proof. Improving on existing maintenance approaches will result in several benefits for an organisation. Eliminating the need to address unexpected failures or perform maintenance prematurely will ensure that the relevant resources are available when they are required. This will in turn reduce the expenditure related to wasted maintenance resources without compromising the health of devices or systems in the organisation

A comparative study of university administrative systems

Student administrative systems swing between being decentralised or centralised with a number of benefits being put forward for each scenario, including economy, consistency, customer service and control. This study makes a comparison of these systems in English universities, particularly looking at the factors which influence the centralisation or decentralisation of student administration in order to identify the factors involved, so that informed decisions can be made by university management. The research was undertaken in two main phases: firstly a questionnaire survey of university registrars (the macro study) was carried out in order to identify the current structures and systems in place for student administration; secondly case studies of four universities were undertaken. The latter mainly involved questionnaire surveys of academic and administrative staff at each institution, together with semi-structured interviews to chart the different student administrative systems and structures in place and obtain qualitative and quantitative data to assess them. From the results of the first survey, it was possible to assess the degree of the centralisation or decentralisation of the student administrative functions and cross-reference the data to examine whether certain factors were influencing the design of these structures. The results of this analysis are documented in Chapter 4, and it was noticeable that the majority of the respondents favoured the “midway” structure for student administration. Four universities were identified from the macro study to form the focus of more detailed case studies: one with a centralised student administration, one with a decentralised system, and two with hybrid systems. Key administrative functions were examined closely to determine the effectiveness, efficiency and motivational influences involved for each case study university. The research concludes that a blanket centralisation or decentralisation of student administration does not maximise the resources and gain the optimum efficiency. By being selective in which processes are centralised or decentralised, the university can gain in economy and also ensure a supportive infrastructure to enhance the student experience.University of Derby/University of Nottingha