Measuring the Impact of Quality Improvement in a Software Company

The quality issue is not only a matter of developing and implementing a quality system. It mandatory this system to function precisely on a long term basis. The evaluation of quality impact as a consequence of its improvement is a scary thing the quality specialists prefer to be apart due to its complexity. That’s the reason why the article emphasize on: the need and justification of quality impact evaluation, particularities of quality in software domain generated by its specificity, what evaluation of economic effects means in the context of a quality improvement particularly in a software company, a proposed method to calculate the impact of quality (on the costs structure), a practical example of how the method should be used and the results interpreted based on two simulated case.quality improvement; quality management; software industry; quality impact evaluation; measure quality.

Teaching of Preschool Education in Private Universities under the Background of Professional Certification Research on Quality Control System—Take Xi’an Fan Yi University as an Example

The certification of normal school majors plays an important role in promoting the reform of college education and teaching. The teaching quality monitoring system should be optimized in accordance with the professional certification standards and follow the concept of professional certification. At present, the internal monitoring system of undergraduate teaching quality in normal education lacks the accuracy of the main teaching quality, the imbalance of quality monitoring, blind area in the monitoring process, lagging information feedback mechanism of teaching quality monitoring, and insufficient continuous improvement. Accordingly, optimization suggestions are proposed from the overall framework, objectives and system, process and evaluation, and continuous improvement: scientific planning, optimizing the overall framework of teaching quality monitoring system; require the certification standards, clarify the quality objectives and improve the monitoring system; improve the teaching quality monitoring process and evaluation; implement continuous improvement to ensure the steady improvement of teaching quality

Accuracy-based scoring for phrase-based statistical machine translation

Although the scoring features of state-of-the-art Phrase-Based Statistical Machine Translation (PB-SMT) models are weighted so as to optimise an objective function measuring translation quality, the estimation of the features themselves does not have any relation to such quality metrics. In this paper, we introduce a translation quality-based feature to PBSMT in a bid to improve the translation quality of the system. Our feature is estimated by averaging the edit-distance between phrase pairs involved in the translation of oracle sentences, chosen by automatic evaluation metrics from the N-best outputs of a baseline system, and phrase pairs occurring in the N-best list. Using our method, we report a statistically significant 2.11% relative improvement in BLEU score for the WMT 2009 Spanish-to-English translation task. We also report that using our method we can achieve statistically significant improvements over the baseline using many other MT evaluation metrics, and a substantial increase in speed and reduction in memory use (due to a reduction in phrase-table size of 87%) while maintaining significant gains in translation quality

Improving the objective function in minimum error rate training

In Minimum Error Rate Training (MERT), the parameters of an SMT system are tuned on a certain evaluation metric to improve translation quality. In this paper, we present empirical results in which parameters tuned on one metric (e.g. BLEU) may not lead to optimal scores on the same metric. The score can be improved significantly by tuning on an entirely different metric (e.g. METEOR, by 0.82 BLEU points or 3.38% relative improvement on WMT08 English–French dataset). We analyse the impact of choice of objective function in MERT and further propose three combination strategies of different metrics to reduce the bias of a single metric, and obtain parameters that receive better scores (0.99 BLEU points or 4.08% relative improvement) on evaluation metrics than those tuned on the standalone metric itself

TOURISM DEVELOPMENT PLANNING IN SELECTED EU COUNTRIES

Tourism development planning is now part of the regional policies of all Member States of the European Union. Strategic plans at national or regional level are specific instruments of regional management, which contain results of the planning process and ensure the development of tourism in the selected region. The paper analyzes the representatives of these plans from Great Britain, Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria. It evaluates their contents and form of processing according to suggested united methodology respecting main principles of current quality management. The paper tests the process of evaluation on a selected sample, compares different approaches to planning and identifies the best transferable practices as the first step of creating the complex system for evaluation and quality improvement of regional planning in tourism.regional management, tourism, strategic documents, evaluation.

PENDEKATAN ACUANPENILAIAN DALAM PENDIDIKAN JASMANI

Evaluation is one of the important components in evety education implementation. Some efforts to improve educaton quality. including physical education, are the improvement of learning quality and the improvement of its evaluation system. Learning quality has an interconnected relation with the quality of evaluation system. Good learning system will produce a good learning quality. This learning quality could be observed from its evaluation results. Furthermore, good evaluation system will urge teacher to construct a better teaching strategy and to motivate participants to learn better. Therefore, in an improvement of education quality. it is needed an upgrading in evaluation system it applied. According to test planning and interpertation of its results, references of evaluation in physical education may be differed into two, those are : Norm Refe"ed Evaluation (NRE/Penilaian Acuan Norma-PAN) and Standard Refe"ed Evaluation (SRE/Penilaian Acuan Patokan-PAP). Evaluation by using NRE assumes that the capability and ability of evety student is different and could be drawn according to normal distribution. Evety student's test results are compared with hislher group scores so that their each position could be observed. Whereas evaluation by using SRE assumes that almost evety student can learn anything but in a different time/period. The consequence of this later evaluation is the presence of remedy program. Interpretation of test results is always compared with a particular pre-determined criteria. In a further development, evaluation in physical education in order to find out the extent of learning activity result success of the students can be taken on using evaluation system that uses letter (for tertiaty educational institution) or using scale between 1 to 10 (for basic education grade up to intermediaty education grade-Base School up to Senior High School). Evaluation by using scale and letter could be aplied through some ways as follows: (1) distribution gap methods, (2) percentage methods, (3) grade or value compilation methods, (4) normal curve methods, (5) contract-based scoring, and (6) portofolio approach

THE EVALUATION OF EDUCATIONAL SERVICES QUALITY BY THE STUDENTS OF THE FACULTY OF ECONOMICAL SCIENCES "DIMITRIE CANTEMIR" CLUJ-NAPOCA

The evaluation of the educational services quality by the students represents an important element of the internal quality monitoring process for the identification of the necessary actions required in the continuous improvement of the offered educational quality, and on the other hand it represents an indicator of the university interest of having access at the student's point of view. Starting from the student needs, together with the staff involved in the evaluation and quality assurance committee of the Faculty of Economic Sciences Cluj-Napoca, "Dimitrie Cantemir" Christian University Bucharest, we elaborated a questionnaire for the evaluation of the educational services quality by the students, concerning: teaching-learning activities, available admission information, tutorial system, class schedule, material base, laboratory, course and seminar rooms equipments, administrative services, student organizations, counselling services offered by the faculty. The conclusions of the study were discussed with the faculty's management, decisions being made to take actions in order to increase the student satisfaction level. By developing and implementing their own strategy to quality policies and procedures, the higher education institution is explicitly committed to develop a quality culture in all its activities.quality, university management, educational services, higher education, the quality circle

NorthStar, a support tool for the design and evaluation of quality improvement interventions in healthcare

Background: The Research-Based Education and Quality Improvement (ReBEQI) European partnership aims to establish a framework and provide practical tools for the selection, implementation, and evaluation of quality improvement (QI) interventions. We describe the development and preliminary evaluation of the software tool NorthStar, a major product of the ReBEQI project. Methods: We focused the content of NorthStar on the design and evaluation of QI interventions. A lead individual from the ReBEQI group drafted each section, and at least two other group members reviewed it. The content is based on published literature, as well as material developed by the ReBEQI group. We developed the software in both a Microsoft Windows HTML help system version and a web-based version. In a preliminary evaluation, we surveyed 33 potential users about the acceptability and perceived utility of NorthStar. Results: NorthStar consists of 18 sections covering the design and evaluation of QI interventions. The major focus of the intervention design sections is on how to identify determinants of practice (factors affecting practice patterns), while the major focus of the intervention evaluation sections is on how to design a cluster randomised trial. The two versions of the software can be transferred by email or CD, and are available for download from the internet. The software offers easy navigation and various functions to access the content. Potential users (55% response rate) reported above-moderate levels of confidence in carrying out QI research related tasks if using NorthStar, particularly when developing a protocol for a cluster randomised trial Conclusion: NorthStar is an integrated, accessible, practical, and acceptable tool to assist developers and evaluators of QI interventions

Educational Program Evaluation System in a Medical School

A systematic educational program evaluation system for continuous quality improvement in undergraduate medical education is essential. Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) are two distinct but complementary processes referred to in an evaluation system that emphasizes formative purpose. Monitoring involves regular data collection for tracking process and results, while evaluation requires periodic judgment for improvement. We have recently completed implementing an educational evaluation using the M&E concept in a medical school. The evaluation system consists of two loops, one at the lesson/course level and the other at the phase/graduation level. We conducted evaluation activities in four stages: planning, monitoring, evaluation, and improvement. In the planning phase, we clarified the purpose of evaluation, formulated a plan to engage stakeholders, determined evaluation criteria and indicators, and developed an evaluation plan. Next, during the monitoring phase, we developed evaluation instruments and methods and then collected data. In the evaluation phase, we analyzed results and evaluated the criteria of the two loops. Finally, we reviewed the evaluation results with stakeholders to make improvements. We have recognized several problems including excessive burden, lack of expertise, insufficient consideration of stakeholders’ evaluation questions, and inefficient data collection. We need to share the value of evaluation and build a system gradually.ope