Theoretical model of user acceptance : in the view of measuring success in web personalization

This paper attempts to develop a theoretical acceptance model for measuring Web personalization success. Key factors impacting Web personalization acceptance are identified from a detailed literature review. The final model is then cast in a structural equation modeling (SEM) framework comprising nineteen manifest variables, which are grouped into three focal behaviors of Web users. These variables could provide a framework for better understanding of numerous factors that contribute to the success measures of Web personalization technology. Especially, those concerning the quality of personalized features and how personalized information through personalized Website can be delivered to the user. The interrelationship between success constructs is also explained. Empirical validations of this theoretical model are expected on future research.

Computed success rates of various carrier phase integer estimation solutions and their comparison with statistical success rates

The success rate of carrier phase ambiguity resolution (AR) is the probability that the ambiguities are successfully fixed to their correct integer values. In existing works, an exact success rate formula for integer bootstrapping estimator has been used as a sharp lower bound for the integer least squares (ILS) success rate. Rigorous computation of success rate for the more general ILS solutions has been considered difficult, because of complexity of the ILS ambiguity pull-in region and computational load of the integration of the multivariate probability density function. Contributions of this work are twofold. First, the pull-in region mathematically expressed as the vertices of a polyhedron is represented by a multi-dimensional grid, at which the cumulative probability can be integrated with the multivariate normal cumulative density function (mvncdf) available in Matlab. The bivariate case is studied where the pull-region is usually defined as a hexagon and the probability is easily obtained using mvncdf at all the grid points within the convex polygon. Second, the paper compares the computed integer rounding and integer bootstrapping success rates, lower and upper bounds of the ILS success rates to the actual ILS AR success rates obtained from a 24 h GPS data set for a 21 km baseline. The results demonstrate that the upper bound probability of the ILS AR probability given in the existing literatures agrees with the actual ILS success rate well, although the success rate computed with integer bootstrapping method is a quite sharp approximation to the actual ILS success rate. The results also show that variations or uncertainty of the unit–weight variance estimates from epoch to epoch will affect the computed success rates from different methods significantly, thus deserving more attentions in order to obtain useful success probability predictions.

Changing academic practice to prepare nursing undergraduates for an evidence-based approach

Evidence based practice (EBP) has been accepted as a process to assist health professionals in clinical decision making to improve patient outcomes. It requires applying skills in a prescribed sequence to critique existing practices. Many countries, including Australia, require nurses to demonstrate competencies in EBP skills to be registered. In the last ten years, this has lead to universities incorporating EBP in undergraduate nursing degree courses. The literature reports many challenges including students’ difficulties in critically appraising research evidence, and their need for both simplification of the process and extensive support. The purpose of our study was to investigate the effectiveness of a standalone introductory EBP subject for a diverse group of third-year undergraduates, based on a novel but challenging approach to assessment. Despite many changes made in the second iteration of the subject, most students’ perceptions of the subject’s difficulty remained unchanged. This research aligns with the issues identified in the literature and has wider applicability to the teaching of rapidly changing disciplines, where evidence-driven consumers have easy access to information and expect up-to-date practices.

Re-generating the praxis of academic staff development

Effective academic workforce staff development remains a challenge in higher education. This thesis-by-publication examined the importance of alternative paradigms for academic staff development, focusing specifically on arts-based learning as a non-traditional approach to transformative learning for management and self-development within the business of higher education. The research question asked was whether or not the facilitation of staff development through the practice of arts-based transformational learning supported academic aims in higher education, based on data obtained with the participants of the academic staff development program at one Australian university over a three year period. Over that three year period, eighty academics participated in one large metropolitan Australian university’s arts-based academic development program. The research approach required analysis of the transcribed one-on-one hermeneutic-based conversations with fifteen self-selected academics, five from each year, and with a focus group of twenty other self-selected academics from all three years. The study’s findings provided evidence that supported the need for academic staff development that prepared academics to be engaged and creative and therefore more likely to be responsive to emerging issues and to be innovative in the presence of constraints, including organisational constraints. The qualitative participative conversation transcription data found that arts-based lifelong learning processes provided participant perception of enhanced capabilities for self-creation and clarity of transformational action in academic career management. The study presented a new and innovative Artful Learning Wave Trajectory learning model to engender academic professional artistry. The findings provided developers with support for using a non-traditional strategy of transformational learning.

Integrating a sustainable academic career around scholarly learning and teaching activities

To be scholarly in learning and teaching is rigorous academic work. It demands: currency and command of both discipline subject matter and educational theory; inquiring, methodical, and reflective approaches; the collection, evaluation and documentation of evidence of learning and teaching efficacy; and, optimally, entails participation in and communication among a community of teaching professionals. This chapter examines the author’s own practice in this regard to explicate the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of scholarly and scholarship approaches, as much as the ‘what’ and ‘where’ of that endeavour. In doing so, this meta‐analysis is made ‘community property’, in the same way that Shulman (1993: 6) exhorted we ‘change the status of teaching from private to community property’ so that teaching might be more greatly valued in the academy.

Towards a classification of criterion referenced assessment models in mathematics courses : student and academic perspectives

We present the findings of a study into the implementation of explicitly criterion- referenced assessment in undergraduate courses in mathematics. We discuss students' concepts of criterion referencing and also the various interpretations that this concept has among mathematics educators. Our primary goal was to move towards a classification of criterion referencing models in quantitative courses. A secondary goal was to investigate whether explicitly presenting assessment criteria to students was useful to them and guided them in responding to assessment tasks. The data and feedback from students indicates that while students found the criteria easy to understand and useful in informing them as to how they would be graded, it did not alter the way the actually approached the assessment activity.

Nascent entrepreneurship and the developing individual : early entrepreneurial competence in adolescence and venture creation success during the career

What predicts a person's venture creation success over the course of the career, such as making progress in the venture creation process and multiple successful venture creations? Applying a life span approach of human development, this study examined the effect of early entrepreneurial competence in adolescence, which was gathered retrospectively by means of the Life History Calendar method. Human and social capitals during the founding process were investigated as mediators between adolescent competence and performance. Findings were derived from regression analyses on the basis of prospective and retrospective data from two independent samples (N = 88 nascent founders; N = 148 founders). We found that early entrepreneurial competence in adolescence had a positive effect on making progress in the venture creation process. Nascent founders' current human and social capital also had a direct effect, but it did not mediate the effect of early competences. Finally, the data revealed that early entrepreneurial competence in adolescence positively predicted habitual entrepreneurship (multiple successful venture creations) exhibited over a longer period of the individual career (specifically, 18 years). In line with the results from prospective longitudinal studies on early precursors of entrepreneurship, our findings underscore the long neglected importance of adolescent development in the explanation of entrepreneurial performance during the subsequent working life.

Conceptualising use for information systems (IS) success

This thesis conceptualises Use for IS (Information Systems) success. While Use in this study describes the extent to which an IS is incorporated into the user’s processes or tasks, success of an IS is the measure of the degree to which the person using the system is better off. For IS success, the conceptualisation of Use offers new perspectives on describing and measuring Use. We test the philosophies of the conceptualisation using empirical evidence in an Enterprise Systems (ES) context. Results from the empirical analysis contribute insights to the existing body of knowledge on the role of Use and demonstrate Use as an important factor and measure of IS success. System Use is a central theme in IS research. For instance, Use is regarded as an important dimension of IS success. Despite its recognition, the Use dimension of IS success reportedly suffers from an all too simplistic definition, misconception, poor specification of its complex nature, and an inadequacy of measurement approaches (Bokhari 2005; DeLone and McLean 2003; Zigurs 1993). Given the above, Burton-Jones and Straub (2006) urge scholars to revisit the concept of system Use, consider a stronger theoretical treatment, and submit the construct to further validation in its intended nomological net. On those considerations, this study re-conceptualises Use for IS success. The new conceptualisation adopts a work-process system-centric lens and draws upon the characteristics of modern system types, key user groups and their information needs, and the incorporation of IS in work processes. With these characteristics, the definition of Use and how it may be measured is systematically established. Use is conceptualised as a second-order measurement construct determined by three sub-dimensions: attitude of its users, depth, and amount of Use. The construct is positioned in a modified IS success research model, in an attempt to demonstrate its central role in determining IS success in an ES setting. A two-stage mixed-methods research design—incorporating a sequential explanatory strategy—was adopted to collect empirical data and to test the research model. The first empirical investigation involved an experiment and a survey of ES end users at a leading tertiary education institute in Australia. The second, a qualitative investigation, involved a series of interviews with real-world operational managers in large Indian private-sector companies to canvass their day-to-day experiences with ES. The research strategy adopted has a stronger quantitative leaning. The survey analysis results demonstrate the aptness of Use as an antecedent and a consequence of IS success, and furthermore, as a mediator between the quality of IS and the impacts of IS on individuals. Qualitative data analysis on the other hand, is used to derive a framework for classifying the diversity of ES Use behaviour. The qualitative results establish that workers Use IS in their context to orientate, negotiate, or innovate. The implications are twofold. For research, this study contributes to cumulative IS success knowledge an approach for defining, contextualising, measuring, and validating Use. For practice, research findings not only provide insights for educators when incorporating ES for higher education, but also demonstrate how operational managers incorporate ES into their work practices. Research findings leave the way open for future, larger-scale research into how industry practitioners interact with an ES to complete their work in varied organisational environments.

Pedagogy of feedback on student academic writing : research supervisor practices for the end of the research degree candidature

All academic writing is advanced with the benefit of feedback about the writing. In the case of the academic writing genres of the research proposal and the dissertation, feedback is usually provided by the research supervisor. Given that academic writing development is a process, and in the case of the research proposal and dissertation, writing which develops over time, it seems likely that the nature of feedback on drafts written early in the candidature may be different from feedback provided by the research supervisor later in a student’s candidature. ----- ----- When a research supervisor has been reading a student’s writing over a period of time, their own familiarity with the writing generates a risk to their ability to provide critical and objective feedback. Particularly by the end of a student’s candidature, the research supervisor’s familiarity with the work may cause them to miss elements of writing improvement. ----- ----- The author, as a research supervisor, has developed a feedback grid to facilitate feedback on the final drafts of a dissertation. This feedback grid is generated by the embedded promises in the early sections of the dissertation, which are then used to audit the content of the final sections of the dissertation to ascertain whether promises made have been fulfilled. This provides a strategy for the research supervisor to step back from the work and read the dissertation with the agenda of a dissertation examiner. ----- ----- The grid is one strategy within a broader pedagogy of providing feedback on writing samples.

Developing a social justice framework to ensure good practice in higher education

As higher education institutions respond to government targets to widen participation, their student populations will become increasingly diverse, and the mechanisms in place to support student success and retention will be more closely scrutinised.

Stages of knowledge management systems in policing financial crime

A stage model for knowledge management systems in policing financial crime is developed in this paper. Stages of growth models enable identification of organizational maturity and direction. Information technology to support knowledge work of police officers is improving. For example, new information systems supporting police investigations are evolving. Police investigation is an information-rich and knowledge-intensive practice. Its success depends on turning information into evidence. This paper presents an organizing framework for knowledge management systems in policing financial crime. Future case studies will empirically have to illustrate and validate the stage hypothesis developed in this paper.