A group learning management method for intelligent tutoring systems

In this paper we propose a group management specification and execution method that seeks a compromise between simple course design and complex adaptive group interaction. This is achieved through an authoring method that proposes predefined scenarios to the author. These scenarios already include complex learning interaction protocols in which student and group models use and update are automatically included. The method adopts ontologies to represent domain and student models, and object Petri nets to specify the group interaction protocols. During execution, the method is supported by a multi-agent architecture

Aging, Job Satisfaction, and Job Performance

The national trend to earlier retirement is surprising in light of conventional wisdom holding that older workers are healthy, satisfied and productive employees -- sometimes even more so than their younger counterparts. This paper examines whether conventional wisdom is wrong by reviewing existing studies and noting some of their most important shortcomings. New empirical evidence is provided on the links between aging, job satisfaction, and job performance using data from a nationally representative survey of workers

Study and evaluation of correlation techniques for automotive sensor data

openI sistemi di guida completamente autonomi sono dotati di avanzati sensori in grado di rilevare e riconoscere rapidamente oggetti nell'ambiente circostante. Tuttavia, la generazione di enormi volumi di dati da parte di questi sensori può rappresentare una sfida considerevole per le tecnologie di comunicazione standard. In questa tesi, ci proponiamo di esaminare e convalidare diversi metodi per valutare la correlazione dei dati automobilistici utilizzando un dataset sintetico, al fine di determinare il modo più efficace per trasmettere tali dati. La nostra ricerca esplora vari metodi di correlazione, tra cui il coefficiente di correlazione di Pearson, la Chamfer Distance, l'algoritmo Iterative Closest Point (ICP) e la Normal Distribution Transform (NDT). Inoltre, sviluppiamo una nuova funzione di punteggio che combina la Chamfer Distance e la correlazione al fine di individuare cambiamenti significativi nei dati automobilistici. La nostra indagine si basa su un dataset sintetico e considera contesti sia statici che dinamici. I nostri risultati mettono in evidenza l'importante interazione tra correlazione e Chamfer Distance in ambienti dinamici e dimostrano che i dati automobilistici sono intrinsecamente correlati, pur richiedendo una certa ridondanza per garantire l'accuratezza, specialmente nelle aree critiche in cui sono essenziali i requisiti di sicurezza.Fully autonomous driving systems are equipped with sensors able to guarantee fast detection and recognition of sensitive objects in the environment. However, the resulting huge volumes of data generated from those sensors may be challenging to handle for standard communication technologies. Along these lines, in this thesis we test and validate different methods to evaluate correlation of automotive data on a synthetic dataset, to decide the most convenient way of transmitting data. The study investigates correlation methods such as Pearson’s correlation coefficient, the Chamfer Distance, the Iterative Closest Point (ICP), and the Normal Distribution Transform (NDT) algorithms. We also develop a new score function combining Chamfer Distance and correlation to detect significant changes in the automotive data. The research utilizes a synthetic dataset and examines both static and dynamic contexts. Our findings highlight the interplay between correlation and Chamfer Distance in dynamic environments, and demonstrate that automotive data are highly correlated, even though redundancy is needed to guarantee accuracy, especially in critical areas where safety requirements are particularly critical

The Outlook for Canada’s Public Sector Employee Pensions

This chapter examines the context and features of occupational pension plans in the Canadian public sector and compares these with their private sector counterparts. Relative to the declining importance of registered pension plans in the private sector, pension coverage rates of public sector employees remain high and their pension plans retain traditional characteristics. Yet funding considerations have brought considerable change to public sector employee pensions. These and other challenges are discussed

The Future of Pensions in Canada

Canada’s multi-pillar retirement income system includes a public pension pillar with both a poverty reduction program for the elderly funded out of general tax revenues, and a pay-as-you-go earnings-related income replacement program. Reforms implemented to partially fund the latter have probably increased the financial sustainability of Canada’s public pension scheme, at least for the medium term. A second, relatively large, pillar of the nation’s retirement income system consists of voluntarily provided employersponsored pensions. As employers adapted to the changing context of the last decade or so, two tendencies gradually became discernable: a slow decline in registered pension plan coverage, and a complementary shift from defined benefit to defined contribution pension arrangements, many of which allow employees to make investment decisions. Recent large unfunded pension liabilities among the former, coupled with the inherent riskiness of savings arrangements of the latter type, suggest growing retirement income insecurity for working Canadians

From aseptic distance to passionate engagement: reflections about the place and value of participatory inquiry

In 2004, I published a book chapter that marked a first moment in my qualitative research journey. The methodological piece was a result of a challenge imposed by my doctoral committee for my thesis proposal defense two years prior, who invited me to ‘rigorously’ sustain the quality of a qualitative research project conducted under the premises of critical-interpretivism. This challenge indeed was a gift, as it provided me an opportunity, very early in my academic career, to deeply reflect about the meaning of doing qualitative research. Now, around fifteen years later, the invitation to write a thinkbox again represents a timely opportunity, as I found myself again reflecting … not on the dilemmas of doing non-mainstream qualitative research, but on the researcher's role itself. More precisely, I am seriously thinking about the role of distance and engagement to the value of the knowledge we produce with our academic work. In this essay, I redraw this entire journey—from 2004 to 2018—with the intent to nourish the dialog with my peers about the engagement of the academic community with transforming society for the better, and to provide some guidelines to doctoral students seeking to truly engage with transformational research

Combining a Structuration Approach with a Behavioral-Based Model to Investigate ERP Usage

Enterprise resources planning systems (ERP), commercial software packages also known as integrated enterprise computing systems, can be viewed as currently one of the most challenging issues surrounding practitioners and researchers in the IS field. The ERP implementation is characterized by a long-term and complex process with high degree of interdependencies and a mandatory context for its users. Its consequences depend largely on the intensity and nature of its actual usage. This process can be analyzed under a structuration perspective, where the ongoing interaction between ERP and its users shape organizational changes and consequences over time. A synergy was sought combining in a single study the contribution of two distinct streams of thinking: the struturaction theory and the behavioral-based theories. The main objective of this paper is to provide a tool to investigate relevant factors affecting the ERP actual usage in organizations

Demystifying the Rhetorical Closure of ERP Packages

Understanding how information technology (IT) transforms individual, organizational, and societal ways of being is becoming increasingly complex and discourses on IT present opportunity and risk as two inseparable sides of the same phenomenon. Among the themes that extend throughout practitioner literature, and have emerged gradually in the academic literature as well, ERP projects are illustrative of the opportunities and risks IT presents. In this essay, I propose a discussion centered on the ERP phenomenon as an exemplary illustration of a major question: why does rhetorical closure dominate some discourses about IT when, in fact, all technologies are social constructions, always open to change? Dealing with ideas borrowed from structurational and social constructivist streams of thinking, I identify occasions of ERP package negotiation and change at three levelsósegment, organization and individualódemystifying the rhetorical closure that seems to dominate public debate