Building Citywide Systems for Quality: A Guide and Case Studies for Afterschool Leaders

This guide is intended to help cities strengthen and sustain quality afterschool programs by using an emerging practice known as a quality improvement system (QIS). The guide explains how to start building a QIS or how to further develop existing efforts and features case studies of six communities' QIS

Psychometric Properties of Scores from the Web-Based LibQUAL+ Study of Perceptions of Library Service Quality

published or submitted for publicatio

Effects of Community of Practice and Knowledge Translation Strategies on Nurse Practitioners\u27 Knowledge and Practice Behavior

Background: Emerging evidence suggests that interactive CE activities will have the most effect in terms of knowledge and practice. Using technology to provide interactivity via computer-based applications is as effective an educational strategy as traditional education formats. Methods: A randomized controlled trial was conducted to test the effectiveness and satisfaction of educational activities provided within an online community of practice(CoP) on nurse practitioner (NP) knowledge and practice behavior. The online interactive website combined certified continuing education, professional forum, Ask-the-Experts, national guideline links, patient education tools, and professional resources. A Two-Group Control Group design was used. Study participants were assessed on knowledge and practice behavior prior to and after the six month study. Results: A sample of 66 NPs was randomly assigned to an online education only control group (n=33) or a CoP group (n=33). NPs in both groups had similar pretest knowledge assessment scores: 46% (control) vs. 49% (CoP), and pretest clinical vignette scores: 51%(control) vs. 57% (CoP). After the intervention, there was no significant increase in the posttest scores of the CoP group at 6 months compared with the posttest scores of the control group (knowledge assessment: 67% vs. 60%, p =.17; clinical vignettes: 67% vs. 74%, p =.28). Conclusions: The pilot test did not demonstrate that the intervention (CoP access) had a more positive effect on knowledge or clinical performance than access to online CE activities alone. It did however confirm the effectiveness of online education in improving knowledge

Using geographical information systems for management of back-pain data

This is the post-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2002 MCB UP LtdIn the medical world, statistical visualisation has largely been confined to the realm of relatively simple geographical applications. This remains the case, even though hospitals have been collecting spatial data relating to patients. In particular, hospitals have a wealth of back pain information, which includes pain drawings, usually detailing the spatial distribution and type of pain suffered by back-pain patients. Proposes several technological solutions, which permit data within back-pain datasets to be digitally linked to the pain drawings in order to provide methods of computer-based data management and analysis. In particular, proposes the use of geographical information systems (GIS), up till now a tool used mainly in the geographic and cartographic domains, to provide novel and powerful ways of visualising and managing back-pain data. A comparative evaluation of the proposed solutions shows that, although adding complexity and cost, the GIS-based solution is the one most appropriate for visualisation and analysis of back-pain datasets

A COLLABORATIVE FILTERING APPROACH TO PREDICT WEB PAGES OF INTEREST FROMNAVIGATION PATTERNS OF PAST USERS WITHIN AN ACADEMIC WEBSITE

This dissertation is a simulation study of factors and techniques involved in designing hyperlink recommender systems that recommend to users, web pages that past users with similar navigation behaviors found interesting. The methodology involves identification of pertinent factors or techniques, and for each one, addresses the following questions: (a) room for improvement; (b) better approach, if any; and (c) performance characteristics of the technique in environments that hyperlink recommender systems operate in. The following four problems are addressed:Web Page Classification. A new metric (PageRank × Inverse Links-to-Word count ratio) is proposed for classifying web pages as content or navigation, to help in the discovery of user navigation behaviors from web user access logs. Results of a small user study suggest that this metric leads to desirable results.Data Mining. A new apriori algorithm for mining association rules from large databases is proposed. The new algorithm addresses the problem of scaling of the classical apriori algorithm by eliminating an expensive joinstep, and applying the apriori property to every row of the database. In this study, association rules show the correlation relationships between user navigation behaviors and web pages they find interesting. The new algorithm has better space complexity than the classical one, and better time efficiency under some conditionsand comparable time efficiency under other conditions.Prediction Models for User Interests. We demonstrate that association rules that show the correlation relationships between user navigation patterns and web pages they find interesting can be transformed intocollaborative filtering data. We investigate collaborative filtering prediction models based on two approaches for computing prediction scores: using simple averages and weighted averages. Our findings suggest that theweighted averages scheme more accurately computes predictions of user interests than the simple averages scheme does.Clustering. Clustering techniques are frequently applied in the design of personalization systems. We studied the performance of the CLARANS clustering algorithm in high dimensional space in relation to the PAM and CLARA clustering algorithms. While CLARA had the best time performance, CLARANS resulted in clusterswith the lowest intra-cluster dissimilarities, and so was most effective in this regard

Development of a Simplified Sustainable Facilities Guide

The Air Force has adopted the United States Green Building Council\u27s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED™) Green Building Rating System as the preferred self-assessment metric for sustainable development. LEED™ is designed for new construction and major renovations, and, within the Air Force, is most applicable for Military Construction (MILCON) projects. The Air Force Center for Environmental Excellence developed the Air Force Sustainable Facilities Guide to provide guidance and strategies to meet LEED™ requirements. The Air Force has not adopted a sustainable development guide or rating system that is most applicable for construction projects that are relatively low (compared to MILCON projects) in cost or complexity. This research developed a Simplified Sustainable Facilities Guide that can identify and assess sustainable development opportunities in all facility and infrastructure projects. This guide, modeled after the Air Force Sustainable Facilities Guide, simplifies most LEED™ requirements to reduce the time, cost, and expertise level required to incorporate sustainable development concepts while preserving the intent of LEED™. This guide is designed to quickly identify opportunities in projects that are relatively low in cost and complexity; where using the more robust LEED™. Requirements may not be justified. The Simplified Sustainable Facilities Guide, in conjunction with existing Air Force guidance, provides a means to address sustainable development issues in all facility and construction projects regardless of cost or complexity

A Web Content Management and Personalization Model Using One-to-One Strategy for Higher Educational Institutions

This research explored a Web content management and personalization model for higher educational institutions. Through a review of literature and data collected from users, it formulated a conceptual model for Web content management and personalization. The study used the Web site of School of Technology at Eastern Illinois University as a typical case from which to develop the model for higher educational institutions. Understanding the factors influencing user attitudes about the adoption of new Web technologies is extremely important. Such an understanding can help Web developers develop a theoretical framework for a Web model as well as identify its components. Cognizant of user-centered design principles, the study surveyed School of Technology students to assess their attitudes and expectations about applying one-to-one marketing strategy to the School\u27s Web site and to identify the content of the site. Based on the survey results, it formulated design guidelines that helped ascertain the one-to-one Web marketing strategy for the model. Finally, the study formulated a conceptual Web content management and personalization model in Unified Modeling Language formats

Implementation and analysis of a direct multidisplay repository

When several information items are presented simultaneously, the potential exists for users to interact with information in a rich and rewarding way. The MultiBrowser system supports such interaction via an information foraging style of hypermedia browsing. Multiple windows, colored bars that provide visual cues, and automatically inserted hyperlinks among the paragraphs in a document set contribute to the structure of repositories created by MultiBrowser. These repositories are browsable over the Web using an ordinary Web browser.;Using these repositories as a platform, we investigate hypertext repositories with automatically generated hyperlinks among paragraphs. The algorithms that generate the links yield results with significant common characteristics despite large differences among the algorithms. Furthermore, different repositories generated from the return lists of different search engines show significant common characteristics. Finally, repositories generated for different domains also have common characteristics. This suggests that these characteristics are pervasive properties of judiciously retrieved document sets. The common characteristics revolve around a tendency for some documents (called the kernel) to be destinations of a disproportionately high fraction of the hyperlinks in the repository. An emergent property of such repositories with practical significance is that browsing activities will have a tendency to trap users within the kernel, perhaps without them realizing it. To enable users to choose to avoid being trapped, we propose a ring structure for hypertext repositories. This structure is exposed to the user by annotations to the hyperlinks

The contribution of data mining to information science

The information explosion is a serious challenge for current information institutions. On the other hand, data mining, which is the search for valuable information in large volumes of data, is one of the solutions to face this challenge. In the past several years, data mining has made a significant contribution to the field of information science. This paper examines the impact of data mining by reviewing existing applications, including personalized environments, electronic commerce, and search engines. For these three types of application, how data mining can enhance their functions is discussed. The reader of this paper is expected to get an overview of the state of the art research associated with these applications. Furthermore, we identify the limitations of current work and raise several directions for future research