Enhancing the Decision Making Process: An Ontology-based Approach

Decision making is a key activity for management in any organization, several decision making methods including Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) have been used to assist this process especially when the decision involves multiple stakeholders and multiple criteria. These methods, which evaluate each alternative by a set of criteria, tend to be subjective in nature. However, although they are subjective it should be ensured that the decisions makers have as much knowledge about the alternatives as is possible. This would include understanding all the consequences of each alternative and all the effects of these consequences. This requires a thorough understanding of the domain within which the decision is being made. We argue that an organizational ontology provides this understanding and propose a method for integrating an ontology into typical multi-criteria decision making techniques. The overall aim of this method is to improve the decision making process. We demonstrate the applicability of this method by applying it to decision making at a university in the Caribbean

Lessons Learned from Introducing a Learning Management System to Support Face to Face and Blended Learning Courses in an MBA Programme

Although there are a number of benefits and recommendations that are common to most educational institutions that adopt a learning management system (LMS), there are also some positives and negatives peculiar to the particular institution under consideration. This study looks at the implementation of a LMS at a leading business school in the Caribbean. This school was chosen because there were some characteristics in terms of the governance structure and organization of the school that brings out some peculiarities that may be found in other business schools. In addition to identifying these peculiarities and the issues that they raise, some recommendations are made for how these can be addressed to ensure that the benefits of the LMS can be maximized. From these experiences a methodology will be posited which can be used by other educational institutions considering adopting a LMS

Towards Developing a Cost-Benefit Model for Learning Management Systems

Although Learning Management Systems (LMS) have become a common place in higher education many stakeholders invest in this technology once the expected benefits align with the strategic goals of the institution and the technology falls within a given budget. However, it is not immediately apparent how stakeholders can determine whether the level of investment associated with implementing the LMS is justified by the benefits obtained. In this paper, a case study will be used to identify the costs and benefits associated with the implementation of a web-based LMS. In the instances where these costs and benefits and indirect, measures will be proposed that can be used to quantify them. The goal is to produce information that stakeholders can use to understand the value of their investments and at the same time, practitioners can use the information to maximize the value of the investment in a LMS

Towards a Scalable Digital Skills Training Architecture for Resource-Constrained Environments: The Case of Ayitic Goes Global in Haiti

In developing countries such as Haiti, which are marked by high unemployment and gender inequality, online education has the potential to change lives. Returns on education are particularly high in Information Communications Technology (ICT)-intensive jobs and IT outsourcing offers opportunities for remote employment, providing alternatives for economic diversification and job creation that are particularly relevant for youth and women. However, the problem faced by many developing countries, is that traditional models, frameworks, architectures and platforms for online learning do not lend themselves well to their context and, therefore, it is important to develop context specific platforms. This need for suitable platforms has motivated the research question that this paper seeks to address, that is, “What is the appropriate architecture that supports learning strategies for delivering scalable digital skills training in a resource-constrained environment?” We propose an architecture that was developed specifically for blended learning in resource-constrained environments and describe how a prototype for this was designed, built, and deployed in Haiti. The initial findings from the application of the architecture have been extremely positive and are reflected not only in the testimonials of the participants but also by the interest of other countries of the region to adopting the proposed architecture

Quality Dimensions for B2C E-Commerce

Organizations have still not realized the full potential of e-commerce. One factor that is likely to influence the further adoption of e-commerce is the quality of the e-commerce system as system quality impacts user satisfaction and hence use of the system. However, in order to improve the quality of any systems, one first needs to identify measures to assess quality. Although other researchers have recognized the need for such measures, they have primarily focused on a single specific aspect of e-commerce systems, typically the user interface. In this paper we identify the key components of e-commerce systems and synthesize existing research related to quality of these components to arrive at a comprehensive list of quality dimensions, which in turn provide measures to assess the quality of e-commerce systems

Market Basket Analysis in the Financial Sector – A Customer Centric Approach

Organizations often struggle with their efforts to implement data mining projects successfully. This is often due to the fact that they are influenced by success stories of others that glamorize the outcome of successful initiatives, while understating the persistent rigour and diligence required. Although process models exist for the knowledge discovery process their focus is often on outlining the activities that must be done and not on describing how they should be done. While there is some research in addressing how to carry out the various tasks in the phases, the data preparation phase is thought to be the most challenging and is often described as an art rather than a science. In this study we apply a multi-phased integrated knowledge discovery and data mining process model (IKDDM) to a data set from the financial sector and a present a new approach to data preparation for Sequential Patterns (SP) that facilitated the identification of customer focused patterns rather than products focussed patterns in the modelling phase

The Role of Ontologies in Disaster Recovery Planning

Disasters have the potential to cripple a country and those countries that are particularly susceptible to disasters must have adequate disaster recovery plans in place to ensure that the country can return to normalcy as soon as possible after the disaster. These plans will involve a number of autonomous entities that need to be able to communicate and coordinate their activities effectively. This paper describes how ontologies can be used to support this effective communication and coordination between entities and how they can help to ensure that the disaster recovery plan (DRP) is effective. The applicability of ontologies to DRPs will be demonstrated using a case study of an electric utility company in Jamaica, a country in the hurricane region

A review: drinking water and wastewater quality assessment in ruminant farms

Water is an essential part in any livestock production and it is more so in ruminant production that is highly water intensive. Water is not only essential as a medium of animal metabolism, but it is also an important cleaning medium. Therefore, it is important that the quality of drinking water is maintained at a certain level so as to lessen the possible adverse effects on the animals. Despite there has being some standards set by the various agencies on the minimal water quality deemed suitable for livestock consumption, they are still vague and this, combined with poor compliance and the water sourcing of dubious sources in ruminant farms makes it hard to regulate the drinking water quality in ruminant farms. This, in turn, might lead to possible adverse effects in livestock production due to water contaminants. At the same time, most ruminant farms in Malaysia do not do proper treatment of their wastewater before releasing them into water bodies such as drains, rivers and lakes which could lead to possible adverse effects to the environment

Change in immune biomarkers of laboratory mice responding to experimental inoculation of different drinking water quality from selected dairy farms

Current knowledge of abnormal physiological responses in livestock due to consumption of substandard water is limited. This study was designed to explore the host cell responses in mice orally inoculated with different drinking water qualities from selected dairy cattle farms. A total of 28 female mice used in this study were divided into Group 1- negative control (treated with sterile deionized distilled water), Group 2 - treated with good quality water sample, Group 3 - treated with moderate quality water sample, and Group 4 - treated with unsatisfactory quality water sample. All the mice were given 0.25 mL of water samples three times daily for 30 days. Blood samples were collected from all mice before euthanasia at 30 days post-inoculation for reproductive hormones and biomarkers analyses. All treatment groups showed significant (p<0.05) weight loss compared to the control group. There was a significant difference in the serum immunoglobulin-G (IgG), , immunoglobulin-M (IgM), interleukin-12 (IL-12), haptoglobin (Hp), and serum amyloid A (SAA) profiles of mice among the different water quality treatments as compared to the control group (p<0.05). In conclusion, the host cell responses exhibited by the mice in the treatment groups indicates a high risk of potential negative effect on the production and health of the livestock due to long-term consumption of drinking water with subpar quality