Rozprawy doktorskie na temat „Quality assurance”

Thesis (Ph. D.) -- University of Maryland, College Park, 2005.
Thesis research directed by: Computer Science. Title from t.p. of PDF. Includes bibliographical references. Published by UMI Dissertation Services, Ann Arbor, Mich. Also available in paper.

This study discusses the purpose, process and practice of quality assurance in transnational education (TNE) wherein institutions in one country award their degrees to students studying in another. This arrangement raises the issue of how the quality and standards of the degree programmes are assured so that they enable the programmes delivered in one country to be considered as being of a comparable quality and standard to those delivered in another. The study explores how the cross-national implementation of quality assurance is conducted and perceived by those engaged in it and the challenges such activity faces. Using data collected via structured interviews in Sri Lanka and the UK, the study examines the perceptions of participants in TNE collaboration. The analysis is undertaken within a conceptual framework developed from inter-firm relationship and supply chain management theories. The concept of “relational capital”, and its creation through socialisation activity, is proposed as a key factor in understanding TNE. A further body of literature is explored, that of inter-cultural communication and inter-cultural competence. The study contributes to the literature on TNE and internationalisation by identifying a tension between the financial drivers behind TNE and the resource intensive activities required to build relational capital. The findings are developed into a conceptual model for quality assurance in TNE, which can be used in the planning, management and evaluation of TNE and is designed to develop relational capital through the relational and inter-cultural competences of those engaged in such work. Through such a development, it is argued, quality assurance in TNE can move away from a process of enforced compliance with the prevailing quality assurance processes to one driven by a shared quality culture in which capacity building in the partner institutions of TNE can be achieved.

Thesis (MBA)--Stellenbosch University, 2006.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The current skills development legislation was enacted in order to implement structures and processes to transform skills development in South Africa. Major changes to the South African training and education sector have taken place as a result of the implementation of the National Skills development strategy or NSDS (1998). One of the objectives of the National Skills development strategy is the implementation of learnerships, a work-based route for learning and gaining qualifications. The achievement of this objective is based not only on the quantity of learnerships implemented but also on the quality of the learnership implementation. This study project begins with a brief survey of learnerships and their context in vocational education and training in South Africa. A further review is conducted which explores the concept of quality, quality dimensions and quality indicators, in vocational education and training (VET) in South Africa and internationally. The aim is to identify quality dimensions and relevant quality indicators for the quality assurance of learnership implementation. One of the main challenges facing the SETAS is delivering not only the quantity but the quality of learnerships as set by the NSDS objective. The Serviceseta is a typical example of a SETA faced with the task of developing a quality assurance instrument to comprehensively assure the quality of learnership implementation. The Serviceseta Quality Assurance instrument for learnership implementation is examined by comparing the quality indicators to those identified in vocational education and training internationally. The achievement of quality assurance in learnership implementation will contribute to the achievement of the NSDS which will in turn solve the country's skills problems.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die wetgewing vir vaardigheidsontwikkeling is vasgestel om strukture en prosesse te implementeer om vaardigheidsontwikkeling in Suid-Afrika te omskep. Groot veranderinge aan die Suid-Afrikaanse opleidings- en ontwikkelingsektor het plaasgevind as gevolg van die implementering van die Nasionale Vaardigheidsontwikkeling-strategie of NVS (1998). Een van die doelwitte van die Nasionale Vaardigheidsontwikkeling-strategie is die implementering van leerlingskappe, 'n werk-gebaseerde roete om te leer en om kwalifikasies te verwerf. Die sukses van hierdie doelwit is nie alleen gebaseer op die hoeveelheid leerlingskappe wat geimplimenteer word nie maar ook op die kwaliteit van die leerlingskap-implementering. Hierdie studieprojek begin met 'n kort oorsig van leerlingskappe en hul verband in beroepsopvoeding en opleiding in Suid-Afrika. 'n Verdere oorsig is uitgevoer wat die konsep van kwaliteit, kwaliteit dimensies en kwaliteit aanwysers in beroepsopvoeding en opleiding in Suid-Afrika en internasionaal ondersoek. Die doel is om kwaliteit dimensies en toepaslike kwaliteit aanwysers vir die kwaliteitsversekering van leerlingskap-implementering te identifiseer. Een van die hoof uitdagings van die SETAS is om nie net die hoeveelheid maar ook die kwaliteit van leerlingskappe soos deur die NVS doelwit bepaal, te lewer. Die Diens-seta is 'n tipiese voorbeeld van 'n SETA wat die taak in die gesig staar om 'n kwaliteit- versekeringsinstrument te ontwikkel ten einde die kwaliteit van leierskapimplementering omvattend te verseker. Die Diens-seta Kwaliteit-versekeringsinstrument vir die implementering van leierskap word ondersoek deur die kwaliteit aanwysers te vergelyk met dit wat internasionaal in beroepsopvoeding en opleiding geidentifiseer word. Die bereiking van kwaliteitsversekering in die implementering van leerlingskappe sal bydra tot die bereiking van die NVS wat op sy beurt die land se vaardigheidsprobleme sal oplos.

La terapia de hadrones es actualmente una realidad médica en oncología de radiación y una técnica probada en la lucha contra el cáncer. Hoy en día, el uso de la terapia de hadrones está ampliamente extendido en el tratamiento de pacientes con tumores profundos, no operables o resistentes a la radioterapia, debido a la ventaja de administrar una alta dosis de radiación con respecto al volumen del tumor. De esta forma se obtiene un mejor del control y protección del tejido circundante comparado con la radioterapia tradicional basada en haz de fotones. A pesar de que solo 35 centros médicos están actualmente tratando a pacientes de cáncer, la terapia de hadrones sigue considerada como una técnica medica emergente. Uno de sus retos permanentes consiste en la verificación de la dosis administrada al paciente ya que las propiedades físicas de los hadrones hacen que la terapia sea efectiva solo si se administra con precisión estrictamente al volumen del tumor. El control de calidad se consigue mediante la utilización de novedosas técnicas de diagnóstico por medio de detectores de radicación similares a los desarrollados para experimentos de física de partículas que ya se vienen utilizando en la producción de imágenes médicas. Las radiografías de protones se usan no solo para verificar el estado del paciente previo a los tratamientos de radioterapia, utilizando haces de protones de alta energía y baja intensidad, así como para obtener información necesaria para calcular de forma precisa el nivel de radiación de hadrones en los tejidos del paciente. Los cálculos de nivel de radiación se hacen hoy en día por medio de datos CT de rayos X, que se caracterizan por tener poco precisión. Durante la irradiación con haz terapéutico, la activación de los tejidos del paciente causados por interacciones nucleares con el haz de hadrones se puede visualizar por medio de detectores PET, haciendo posible representar en el momento la dosis administrada solo unos minutos después. En este contexto, esta Tesis presenta un estudio amplio sobre detectores de radiación novedosos que han sido desarrollados para asegurar la calidad en terapia de hadrones clínica. Tres diferentes soluciones se describen a continuación, un aparato de radiografía de protones y dos detectores cuya tecnología se utiliza para saber en el momento la dosis administrada durante el plan de tratamiento. En el caso de la radiografía en el rango de protones (PRR), se ha desarrollado un nuevo instrumento llamado PRR10, que tiene un área activa de 10 x 10 cm2 cubriendo un rango residual de 10 cm de longitud de tramo en equivalente de agua (WEPL). El PRR10 ha sido testeado ampliamente con haz de protones en el Instituto Paul Scherrer (PSI) en Villagen, Suiza y en el Centro Nazionale di Adroterapia Oncologica (CNAO) en Pavia, Italia. Se han tomado medidas con una resolución de rango residual de 1.6 mm WEPL así como una resolución espacial inferior a 1 mm. El PRR10 esta instalado actualmente en el CNAO a la espera de nuevos test mientras un nuevo instrumento, el PRR30 que tiene un área activa de 30 x 30 cm2 está llegando a su última etapa de desarrollo. El PRR30 permitirá imágenes PRR a tamaño completo y está previsto que se empiece a testar con haz de protones en el PSI y el CNAO hacia finales de 2013. Para realizar dosimetría en vivo, se ha procedido al estudio de dos tecnologías PET diferentes. La primera está basada en escintiladores orgánicos (cristales) acoplados a un foto-detector, con muchas similitudes con respecto a aparatos PET convencionales de medicina nuclear. El diseño del detector PET de cristales sigue las tendencias actuales en investigación PET para obtener la medida de la profundidad de interacción (depth-of-interaction, DOI) así como el tiempo de vuelo (time-of-flight TOF) entre protones concurrentes. Ambas técnicas suponen una mayor sensibilidad efectiva y una mejora en la eliminación de ruido y por tanto en la calidad de las imágenes PET. Dos prototipos han sido construidos y testados, usando cristales LYSO de 12 x 60 x 30 cm3 y foto detectores de multi-ánodo y placa multi-canal (MPC). De esta forma se ha demostrado la excelente localización de la interacción de fotones, 1.2 mm en dirección transversal y 15 mm en DOI, con una resolución de energía de 13% FWHM. La resolución de concurrencia de TOF medida es de 810 ps. La segunda tecnología PET estudiada hace uso de las cámaras de placa resistiva multi-hueco (multi-gap Resistive Plate Chambers, MRPCs) que se utilizan raramente en PET debido a su baja eficacia de detección a gammas de 511 KeV. Los módulos compactos MRPC han sido construidos y testados, y tienen una área activa de 7 x 10 cm2 y 12 x 390 cm2. El diseño y el procedimiento de ensamblaje es apto para producción a gran escala, un requerimiento necesario para contrarrestar su baja eficacia. Módulos MRCP de 4 huecos de 7 x 10 cm2 han sido sometidos a test y muestran un eficacia de 0.66 a 0.01 % a gammas de 511 KeV. Además, se han obtenido tiempos entre lecturas de fin de franja en ambos lados del módulo de 38 ps., suficiente para permitir una localización de interacción de 3.5 mm. La resolución del detector simple TOF entre dos RPCs de hueco único y dos MRPCs de 4 huecos es de 310 ps y 370 ps respectivamente, con una poco esperada resolución de coincidencia de 150 ps. Para complementar los resultados experimentales obtenidos, se han efectuado simulaciones Monte-Carlo usando la herramienta GATE en escáneres PET como el LYSO-MCP y MRCP. También han sido incluidos en el estudio dos detectores comerciales como el Gemini de Philips y el HiRez de Siemens. El escáner de anillo completo LYSO-MCP ha demostrado tener un 57 % más de sensibilidad que el Gemini a 70 cm en línea de la fuente, como consecuencia del aumento de profundidad (30 mm) de los cristales LYSO utilizados en su diseño. Un escáner MRPC-PET, después de la optimización de sus parámetros de sensibilidad muestra un factor 2.5 en sensibilidad con respecto al Gemini. Aunque los recursos en términos de desarrollo para construir un escáner MRPC-PET son considerables, la ganancia en sensibilidad con respecto a los escáneres comerciales de hoy en día, unido a las excelentes resoluciones TOF, hacen de esta tecnología una interesante alternativa a los cristales, tanto para control de calidad de terapia de hadrones como para imágenes PET de cuerpo entero.
Hadrontherapy is currently a clinical reality in radiation oncology and a proven technique in the fight against cancer. In the world today, hadrontherapy is being more and more widely employed for treating patients with non-operable deep-seated or radio-resistant tumours because of its advantage in delivering a highly conformal dose to the tumour volume. This offers an increased likelihood of tumor control and a better sparing of healthy surrounding tissue as compared with traditional radiotherapy which use photon beams. Despite the fact that 35 centers are currently treating patients, hadrontherapy is still considered to be an emerging clinical technique. One of the persisting challenges to hadrontherapy is the verification of the dose delivered to the patient since the physical properties of hadrons are only beneficial for therapy if they can be delivered precisely to the tumour volume. Quality assurance can be achieved using novel diagnostic techniques which make use of radiation detectors similar to those developed for high-energy physics experiments and already used in medical imaging. Proton radiography can be used to verify the patient setup prior to irradiation, using a diagnostic proton beam of higher energy and lower intensity, but can also provide directly the information needed for accurately computing the range of hadrons in the patient tissues. Range calculations currently rely on X-ray CT data, and are characterized by a small but non-negligible uncertainty. During irradiation with the therapeutic beam, the activation of the patient tissues caused by nuclear interactions with the hadron beam can be visualized by PET detectors, making it possible to perform in-vivo dosimetry during irradiation and in the minutes immediately following. In this context, this thesis presents an expansive study of novel radiation detectors which have been developed for quality assurance in clinical hadrontherapy. Three distinct detector solutions are described, a proton radiography instrument and two detectors technologies which could be used for performing in-vivo dosimetry of the delivered treatment plan. In the case of proton range radiography (PRR), a novel instrument called the PRR10 has been built having 10x10 cm2 active area and covering a residual range of 10 cm water-equivalent path length (WEPL). The PRR10 has been extensively tested with proton beams at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Villagen, Switzerland and at the Centro Nazionale di Adroterapia Oncologica (CNAO) in Pavia, Italy. A residual range resolution of 1.6 mm WEPL has been measured as well as a spatial resolution better than 1 mm. The PRR10 currently sits at the CNAO center awaiting further testing while a new instrument, the PRR30, which has an active area of 30x30 cm2, is reaching a final stage of completion. The PRR30 will allow full-size PRR images to be made and is scheduled for testing with proton beams at PSI and the CNAO by the end of 2013. To perform in-vivo dosimetry, two different PET technologies have been studied. The first is based on inorganic scintillators (crystals) coupled to a photodetector, having many similarities to conventional PET hardware for nuclear medicine. The design for a unit PET detector based on crystal follows the trends in current PET research allowing for the depth-of-interaction (DOI) to be measured as well as the time-of-flight (TOF) between the coincidence photons. Both techniques result in a higher effective sensitivity and a better rejection of noise, and therefore higher quality PET images. Two prototypes have been assembled and tested, built using 12x60x30 cm3 LYSO crystals and a multi-anode Multi-Channel Plate (MCP) photodetector. An excellent localization of the photon interaction, 1.2 mm in the transverse direction and 15 mm in DOI, have been demonstrated with an energy resolution of 13% FWHM. The coincidence TOF resolution has been measured as 810 ps. The second PET technology we have studied makes use of multi-gap Resistive Plate Chambers (MRPCs), which are highly unusual in PET because of their low detection efficiency to 511 keV gammas. Compact MRPC modules have been built and tested, having 7x10 cm2 and 12x30 cm2 active area. The design and assembly procedure has been shown to be suitable for mass-production, a requirement for overcoming the intrinsic low efficiency. A 4-gap 7x10 cm2 MRPC module has been tested and shown to have an efficiency of (0.66 0.01)% to 511 keV gammas. In addition, the timing between ends of the strip readout at either side of the module has been measured as 3.8 ps, enough to allow an interaction localization of 3.5 mm. The single-detector TOF resolution between two single-gap RPCs and two 4-gap MRPCs has been measured as 310 ps and 370 ps, respectively with a coincidence resolution of 150 ps expected shortly. To compliment the experimental results, Monte-Carlo simulations of both LYSO-MCP and MRPC-based PET scanners have been carried out using the GATE toolkit. Two commercial detectors, the Philips Gemini and Siemens HiRez, have also been included in the study as a benchmark for the results. The full-ring LYSO-MCP scanner has been shown to have a 57% higher sensitivity than the Gemini to a 70 cm long line source, a consequence of the increased depth (30 mm) of the LYSO crystals used in our design. An MRPC-PET scanner, after performing a sensitivity optimization of various parameters, has been shown to be a factor of 2.5 higher than the Gemini. Although considerable development will be required to build such a MRPC-PET scanner, the gains in sensitivity over existing commercial scanners, coupled with their excellent TOF resolutions, make this technology an exciting alternative to crystals, whether for hadrontherapy quality assurance, or whole-body PET imaging.

This thesis is a study of the theory of quality assurance in fire safety engineering. The aims are to examine the implication of the general concepts of quality and quality assurance in the context of fire safety engineering, to investigate the causes and effects of the development of quality assurance in fire safety engineering firms, and to identify the factors that affect the effectiveness of the quality systems in these firms. Research was carried out on four major perspectives: (1) quality definition of fire safety systems in buildings (2) quality assurance in fire safety engineering projects, (3) quality assurance in fire safety engineering firms, (4) the macro quality assurance system in fire protection industry. A model for defining quality of fire safety systems in buildings is described. Features of quality assurance in fire safety engineering are identified. A systematic approach for assuring quality in fire safety engineering projects is proposed, which consists of total system quality planning, sub-system quality planning, and quality management systems in fire safety engineering firms. The investigation found that the driving forces for fire safety engineering firms to adopt quality assurance come from client's need, market competition, development of certification schemes, and the business development strategy of the company. Research data suggests that fire safety engineering firms have gained benefits through the implementation of quality assurance. However, the effectiveness of quality systems is affected by a number of factors both internal and external.

Thesis (PhD (Curriculum Studies))--University of Stellenbosch, 2009.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Organisational culture and external quality assurance in higher education have both drawn significant attention to their promise of greater organisational effectiveness and efficiency and enhanced, improved higher education respectively. In recent years, these constructs have been linked by an assumption that an organisational culture that is amenable to change would be more receptive to the introduction of formal external quality‐assurance structures, systems and instruments, as these are aimed at effective and efficient higher education practices, processes and outcomes. However, this assumption has not been sufficiently tested given that there are significant philosophical, conceptual and methodological controversies and contestations surrounding both constructs. While the organisational culture literature has been littered with a proliferation of paradigms and, albeit, fragmented theories, there has been a paucity of theory building in the corresponding literature on quality in higher education in general and on the impact of external quality assurance on institutions specifically. A qualitative case study was conducted at a newly merged university of technology to investigate two taken‐for‐granted assumptions: first, that organisational cultures are homogenous, unitary and centred around shared values and could therefore easily be manipulated (usually from the top by management), and second, that the introduction of external quality assurance is an unproblematic technology that will be accepted without question by higher education institutions as it was premised upon the laudable aim of improving the quality of those institutions. A conceptual four‐perspective framework was developed to critically evaluate the literature and provide the basis for the threedimensional model used in analysing the findings. The research generated several key conclusions that appear to challenge commonly held and articulated positions with regard to organisational culture and external quality assurance. First, organisational culture should be considered as being more ephemeral than concrete, multidimensional than singular, characterised simultaneously by conflict, consensus and indifference and in a constant state of flux. Second, external quality assurance is not necessarily a value‐free and neutral exercise aimed at improving the quality of teaching and learning, as promised in its early conceptualisation and implementation. Third, multiple cultures may exist simultaneously, interact with and influence each other constantly and of course determine interactions within the organisation and the nature of engagement with externally originated initiatives. Fourth, external quality assurance has purposes that go beyond its often morally just and public‐good motives as it tacitly and overtly acts as an agent of control, empowerment and transformation and simultaneously as an agent of the state, though not necessarily to the same extent.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Organisatoriese kultuur en eksterne gehalteversekering in hoër onderwys het albei die aandag in groot mate gevestig op hulle belofte van groter organisatoriese doeltreffendheid en doelmatigheid en gevorderde, verbeterde hoër onderwys onderskeidelik. In die afgelope paar jaar is hierdie konstrukte byeengebring deur ʼn veronderstelling dat ʼn organisatoriese kultuur wat vatbaar is vir verandering, meer ontvanklik sal wees vir die invoer van formele eksterne strukture, stelsels en instrumente vir gehalteversekering, aangesien dit op doeltreffende en doelmatige praktyke, prosesse en uitkomste vir en van hoër onderwys gerig is. Hierdie aanname is egter nie voldoende getoets nie gegee die feit dat daar aansienlike filosofiese, konseptuele en metodologiese strydvrae en twispunte ten opsigte van albei konstrukte bestaan. Terwyl literatuur oor organisatoriese kultuur deur ʼn magdom paradigmas en weliswaar gefragmenteerde teorieë oorweldig is, was teoriebou in die ooreenstemmende literatuur oor gehalte in hoër onderwys in die algemeen en oor die impak van eksterne gehalteversekering op instellings in die besonder redelik skaars. ʼn Kwalitatiewe gevallestudie is onderneem by ʼn universiteit van tegnologie wat onlangs saamgesmelt het om twee aannames wat as vanselfsprekend aanvaar is, te ondersoek: eerstens, dat organisatoriese kulture homogeen, unitêr en óm gedeelde waardes gesentreer is en dat dit dus maklik gemanipuleer kan word (gewoonlik van bo af deur die bestuur), en tweedens, dat die invoer van eksterne gehalteversekering ʼn onproblematiese tegnologie is wat sonder teenspraak deur hoëronderwysinstellings aanvaar sal word, aangesien dit op die prysenswaardige oogmerk van verbetering van die gehalte van daardie instellings gegrond is. ʼn Konseptuele raamwerk bestaande uit vier perspektiewe is ontwikkel vir die kritiese evaluering van die literatuur en dit verskaf die grondslag vir die driedimensionele model wat vir die analise van die bevindings gebruik is. Die navorsing het verskeie belangrike gevolgtrekkings na vore laat kom wat algemeen geldende en duidelik bepaalde posisies ten opsigte van organisatoriese kultuur en eksterne gehalteversekering blyk uit te daag. Eerstens moet organisatoriese kultuur beskou word as efemeries eerder as konkreet, multidimensioneel eerder as enkelvoudig, terwyl dit gelyktydig deur konflik, konsensus en onverskilligheid gekenmerk word en in ʼn gedurige toestand van wisseling verkeer. Tweedens is eksterne gehalteversekering nie noodwendig, soos in die vroeë konseptualisering en implementering belowe, ʼn waardevrye en neutrale oefening gemik op verbetering van die gehalte van onderrig en leer nie. Derdens kan veelvuldige kulture gelyktydig bestaan, met mekaar in interaksie tree en mekaar voortdurend beïnvloed en natuurlik interaksies binne die organisasie en die aard van betrokkenheid by inisiatiewe wat ekstern ontstaan, bepaal. Vierdens het eksterne gehalteversekering oogmerke wat veel verder strek as die motiewe daarvan wat dikwels moreel geregverdig en vir die openbare beswil is aangesien dit stilswyend en op overte wyse optree as ʼn agent vir beheer, bemagtiging en transformasie en tegelyk as ʼn agent van die regering, alhoewel nie noodwendig tot dieselfde mate nie.

The radiotherapy clinics in Sweden have been without a functioning national platform consisting of dose data from patients undergoing radiotherapy. A national collaboration between clinics will improve the quality of radiotherapy since clinics will be able to compare dose data from treatment plans between clinics. It will also help and improve future researches in radiotherapy. A new national quality registry for radiotherapy in Sweden is under development and is located on the INCA platform. The aim of this study is to do a quality assurance of the INCA registry. The data stored in the registry are calculated from the treatment plans stored locally at the clinics. The quality assurance of the registry is done by creating a program run by Python code and by using Streamlit as the graphical user interface. The program takes dose and volume data from the dose volume histograms located in treatment plans from the INCA database and compares it with the dose and volume data from the local clinics' treatment planning system. The different treatment planning systems considered in the program are Oncentra(Elekta, Sweden), Eclipse(Varian, U.S.), RayStation(RaySearch Laboratories, Sweden) and Monaco(Electa, Sweden). The compared absorbed doses are the dose to 99% of the structure volume(D99%), D98%, D50%, D2% and D1%. The program generates how much the INCA data differs from the TPS data in percent and is named QARS(Quality Assurance of the Radiotherapy Database in Sweden). A verification of the created program and a preliminary evaluation is done on a limited dataset containing three patient groups(prostate patients, lung patients and head and neck patients) with five patients in each group. The dataset is run through the program with patient data from both Oncentra and Eclipse. The result indicates that all the near-maximum doses, D2% and D1% in INCA are very close to their corresponding TPS dose. There is a more noticeable difference in the near-minimum doses, D99% and D98% but also for some D50% where the difference seems to increase in larger structure volumes with very low doses and in very small structure volumes, smaller than 0.01 cm3. It is compared how well INCA agrees with Oncentra and Eclipse respectively and it is clear that Eclipse has a smaller difference to INCA than Oncentra for structures with very small volumes and larger structures with low doses. To summarise the study, it generates a program for quality assurance of the national quality registry for radiotherapy in Sweden which hopefully can help improve the quality of radiotherapy and help future researches in the field.

Bibliography: leaves 85-86.
This thesis discusses the need for and requirements of quality assurance during development of systems and products. Quality Assurance is necessary during the acquisition programme to verify that the deliverable end products and systems satisfy the requirements of the user or client. No proper guidance is available to the industry on the subject of Quality Assurance during development. The objective of this thesis is thus to develop a Quality Assurance model for use as a guide for quality assurance planning on each project.

Poor software quality leads to lost profits and even loss of life. U.S. organizations lose billions of dollars annually because of poor software quality. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore the strategies that quality assurance (QA) leaders in small software development organizations used for successful software quality assurance (SQA) processes. A case study provided the best research design to allow for the exploration of organizational and managerial processes. The target population group was the QA leaders of 3 small software development organizations who successfully implemented SQA processes, located in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. The conceptual framework that grounded this study was total quality management (TQM) established by Deming in 1980. Face-to-face semistructured interviews with 2 QA leaders from each organization and documentation including process and training materials provided all the data for analysis. NVivo software aided a qualitative analysis of all collected data using a process of disassembling the data into common codes, reassembling the data into themes, interpreting the meaning, and concluding the data. The resulting major themes were Agile practices, documentation, testing, and lost profits. The results were in contrast to the main themes discovered in the literature review, although there was some overlap. The implications for positive social change include the potential to provide QA leaders with the strategies to improve SQA processes, thereby allowing for improved profits, contributing to the organizations' longevity in business, and strengthening the local economy.

Crowdsourcing is the outsourcing of a unit of work to a crowd of people via an open call for contributions. While there are various forms of crowdsourcing, such as open innovation, civic engagement and crowdfunding in this work we specifically focus on microtasking. Microtasking is a branch of crowdsourcing, where a work is presented as a set of identical microtasks, each requiring contributors only several minutes to complete usually in exchange for a reward of less than 1 USD. Labeling images, transcribing documents, analyzing sentiments of short sentences and cleaning datasets are popular examples of work which could be solved as microtasks. Available up to date microtask crowdsourcing platforms, such as CrowdFlower and Amazon Mechanical Turk, allow thousands of microtasks to be solved in parallel by hundreds of contributors available online. To tackle the problem of quality in microtask crowdsourcing, it is necessary to study different quality attributes, to investigate what causes low quality of results and slow task execution in microtask crowdsourcing, to identify effective methods to both assess and assure that these quality attributes are of high level. We conducted the most extensive literature review analysis of quality attributes, assessment and assurance techniques ever done in the area of microtasking and crowdsourcing in general. We further advanced the state of the art in three research tracks: i) Improving accuracy and execution speed (the major track), where we monitor in-page user activity of each individual worker, automatically predict abandoned assignments causing delays and assignments with low quality of results, and relaunch them to other workers using our tool ReLauncher; ii) Crowdsourcing complex processes, where we introduce BPMN-extensions to design business processes of both crowd and machine tasks, and the crowdsourcing platform Crowd Computer to deploy these tasks; and iii) Improving workers user experience, where we identify problems workers face searching for tasks to work on, address these problems in our prototype of the task listing interface and introduce a new mobile crowdsourcing platform, CrowdCafe, designed in a way to optimize task searching time and to motivate workers with tangible rewards, such as a coffee.

Crowdsourcing is the outsourcing of a unit of work to a crowd of people via an open call for contributions. While there are various forms of crowdsourcing, such as open innovation, civic engagement and crowdfunding in this work we specifically focus on microtasking. Microtasking is a branch of crowdsourcing, where a work is presented as a set of identical microtasks, each requiring contributors only several minutes to complete usually in exchange for a reward of less than 1 USD. Labeling images, transcribing documents, analyzing sentiments of short sentences and cleaning datasets are popular examples of work which could be solved as microtasks. Available up to date microtask crowdsourcing platforms, such as CrowdFlower and Amazon Mechanical Turk, allow thousands of microtasks to be solved in parallel by hundreds of contributors available online. To tackle the problem of quality in microtask crowdsourcing, it is necessary to study different quality attributes, to investigate what causes low quality of results and slow task execution in microtask crowdsourcing, to identify effective methods to both assess and assure that these quality attributes are of high level. We conducted the most extensive literature review analysis of quality attributes, assessment and assurance techniques ever done in the area of microtasking and crowdsourcing in general. We further advanced the state of the art in three research tracks: i) Improving accuracy and execution speed (the major track), where we monitor in-page user activity of each individual worker, automatically predict abandoned assignments causing delays and assignments with low quality of results, and relaunch them to other workers using our tool ReLauncher; ii) Crowdsourcing complex processes, where we introduce BPMN-extensions to design business processes of both crowd and machine tasks, and the crowdsourcing platform Crowd Computer to deploy these tasks; and iii) Improving workers user experience, where we identify problems workers face searching for tasks to work on, address these problems in our prototype of the task listing interface and introduce a new mobile crowdsourcing platform, CrowdCafe, designed in a way to optimize task searching time and to motivate workers with tangible rewards, such as a coffee.

AIMS:The project examines the perceptions of significant stakeholders in the Catholic Education system concerning the nature, outcomes and effectiveness of the implementation of the Quality Assurance Processes developed by the Catholic Education Office (CEO), in the Archdiocese of Sydney. The study identifies factors that were assisting or hindering the effective implementation of these processes as they existed in 1996. It offers suggestions and recommendations for a future and more effective implementation of these processes. SCOPE This research is qualitative in nature, and uses interview as the main source of data collection. The Catholic schools selected for this study are those that have been involved in the implementation of the first Cycle of the Quality Assurance Processes of the CEO, Sydney. Care was taken to select two schools from each of the three Regions under which the Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Sydney are presently organised. CONCLUSIONS The achievement and maintenance of quality outcomes has always been an integral part of Catholic Education. Through the brief historical background, this study has revealed that leaders in Catholic Education in Sydney have always sought to achieve and maintain quality outcomes since the establishment of the first schools, up until the implementation of the current quality assurance processes. This study found that the current form of Quality Assurance Processes is a most effective means of achieving and maintaining quality outcomes in the present-day Catholic education system. The Processes are professionally articulated in context with current practices, and have the potential to enhance accountability, credibility and development of both the personnel and the schools system. The implementation of the Quality Assurance Processes, to a great degree, has been effective and successful, the present study has shown that, stakeholders are becoming more and more aware of the actual nature and outcomes of these processes. The study also found great optimism among in the key player about the future of the Processes and has concluded that they well received and appreciated across the system. There were a few concerns about the clarity of aims and objectivity, the link between the different processes, and the apparently high and technical terms involved in naming/describing these Processes. The study has, therefore, concluded further that the Processes need streamlining, regular reviews and training programs to strengthen the practice and consolidate the gains and achievement. The implementation of Cycle 2 with appropriate modification is desirable.

AIMS:The project examines the perceptions of significant stakeholders in the Catholic Education system concerning the nature, outcomes and effectiveness of the implementation of the Quality Assurance Processes developed by the Catholic Education Office (CEO), in the Archdiocese of Sydney. The study identifies factors that were assisting or hindering the effective implementation of these processes as they existed in 1996. It offers suggestions and recommendations for a future and more effective implementation of these processes. SCOPE This research is qualitative in nature, and uses interview as the main source of data collection. The Catholic schools selected for this study are those that have been involved in the implementation of the first Cycle of the Quality Assurance Processes of the CEO, Sydney. Care was taken to select two schools from each of the three Regions under which the Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Sydney are presently organised. CONCLUSIONS The achievement and maintenance of quality outcomes has always been an integral part of Catholic Education. Through the brief historical background, this study has revealed that leaders in Catholic Education in Sydney have always sought to achieve and maintain quality outcomes since the establishment of the first schools, up until the implementation of the current quality assurance processes. This study found that the current form of Quality Assurance Processes is a most effective means of achieving and maintaining quality outcomes in the present-day Catholic education system. The Processes are professionally articulated in context with current practices, and have the potential to enhance accountability, credibility and development of both the personnel and the schools system.;The implementation of the Quality Assurance Processes, to a great degree, has been effective and successful, the present study has shown that, stakeholders are becoming more and more aware of the actual nature and outcomes of these processes. The study also found great optimism among in the key player about the future of the Processes and has concluded that they well received and appreciated across the system. There were a few concerns about the clarity of aims and objectivity, the link between the different processes, and the apparently high and technical terms involved in naming/describing these Processes. The study has, therefore, concluded further that the Processes need streamlining, regular reviews and training programs to strengthen the practice and consolidate the gains and achievement. The implementation of Cycle 2 with appropriate modification is desirable.

Abstract The thesis consists of the summary and eight refereed articles presenting the national, regional and institutional levels of strategic planning and quality assurance. National or regional networks may have either general or functional strategies. An organisation may have an overall strategy and its support services may have functional strategies. Quality assurance typically takes constantly smaller steps to develop processes. Strategic planning produces strategic objectives for a better future, while the purpose of a quality assurance system is to safeguard that these objectives can be achieved. This interpretation thus integrates strategic planning into quality assurance in internal processes and information systems. The higher education institutions can and should be managed to attain a better future and ensure high quality, but the management of higher education institutions need a framework. The objective of this study is to provide a common framework of strategic planning and quality assurance for higher education institutions. The framework does not only help management communicate and implement the strategies, but also to plan strategies in the strategy process, evaluate the performance and achievement of desired objectives and provide a structure for quality assurance and management information system. The framework is also rigorously tested in practice. At the national level, the study presents a network strategy of the universities of applied sciences (formerly polytechnics) and the functional strategic plans of their libraries. At the regional level, the study presents a network strategy of higher education institutions and the strategy of the Turku University of Applied Sciences as part of the strategy of the City of Turku. At the institutional level, the study presents competitive strategies, which are applied in continuing education. Finally, the study analysed the importance of various measures in process control to improve the quality of education.

Electron beam welding is used for fabricating critical components for the aerospace and nuclear industries which demand high quality. The cost of materials and associated processes of fabrication is also very high. Therefore, manufacturing processes in these industries are highly controlled. However, it has been found that even minor changes in the electron beam gun itself can produce large variations in beam characteristics, leading to unpredictable welding performance. Hence, it is very important to ensure the beam quality prior to carrying out welds. This requires some kind of device and process to characterise the electron beam to indicate variations. A detailed review of different technologies used to develop devices to characterise electron beams has been carried out. At this time, it is uncommon for beam measurement to be carried out on production EBW equipment. Research carried out for this thesis is focused on development of a novel approach to characterise the electron beams using a slit-probe to maintain the quality of the welds. The challenge lies in deriving relevant features from the acquired probe signal which can effectively differentiate between the beams of different quality. Wavelet transformation, with its advantages over other methods for simultaneous time and frequency localization of signals, has found its application to feature extraction in many pattern based classifications. This technique has been used to analyse probe signals considering that different quality beams will possess unique signal profiles in the form of their distribution of energies with respect to frequency and time. To achieve the aim of the thesis, an experimental approach was used by carrying out melt runs on Ti-6Al-4V plates focusing on aerospace requirements, and varying beam properties and acquiring probe signals for all beam settings. Extracted features from the probe signals have been used in classification of the electron beams to ensure these will produce welds within the tolerance limits specified by aerospace standards for quality assurance. The features vector was compiled following statistical analysis to find the significant beam characteristics. By analysing the performance of classifier for different combination of parameters of the features vector, the optimum classification rate of 89.8% was achieved by using the parameters derived from wavelet coefficients for different decomposition levels. This work showed that the use of wavelet analysis and classification using features vectors enabled identification of beams that would produce welds out-of-tolerance. Keywords: Electron beam welding, probe devices, electron beam characterisation, quality assurance, wavelet transform, features vector, linear discriminant classifier, weld profiles, weld defects.

The objective of the proposed research is to design and evaluate end-to-end solutions to support the Quality of Experience (QoE) for the Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) service. IPTV is a system that integrates voice, video, and data delivery into a single Internet Protocol (IP) framework to enable interactive broadcasting services at the subscribers. It promises significant advantages for both service providers and subscribers. For instance, unlike conventional broadcasting systems, IPTV broadcasts will not be restricted by the limited number of channels in the broadcast/radio spectrum. Furthermore, IPTV will provide its subscribers with the opportunity to access and interact with a wide variety of high-quality on-demand video content over the Internet. However, these advantages come at the expense of stricter quality of service (QoS) requirements than traditional Internet applications. Since IPTV is considered as a real-time broadcast service over the Internet, the success of the IPTV service depends on the QoE perceived by the end-users. The characteristics of the video traffic as well as the high-quality requirements of the IPTV broadcast impose strict requirements on transmission delay. IPTV framework has to provide mechanisms to satisfy the stringent delay, jitter, and packet loss requirements of the IPTV service over lossy transmission channels with varying characteristics. The proposed research focuses on error recovery and channel change latency problems in IPTV networks. Our specific aim is to develop a content delivery framework that integrates content features, IPTV application requirements, and network characteristics in such a way that the network resource utilization can be optimized for the given constraints on the user perceived service quality. To achieve the desired QoE levels, the proposed research focuses on the design of resource optimal server-based and peer-assisted delivery techniques. First, by analyzing the tradeoffs on the use of proactive and reactive repair techniques, a solution that optimizes the error recovery overhead is proposed. Further analysis on the proposed solution is performed by also focusing on the use of multicast error recovery techniques. By investigating the tradeoffs on the use of network-assisted and client-based channel change solutions, distributed content delivery frameworks are proposed to optimize the error recovery performance. Next, bandwidth and latency tradeoffs associated with the use of concurrent delivery streams to support the IPTV channel change are analyzed, and the results are used to develop a resource-optimal channel change framework that greatly improves the latency performance in the network. For both problems studied in this research, scalability concerns for the IPTV service are addressed by properly integrating peer-based delivery techniques into server-based solutions.

73 pp.
Originally developed in Iowa and adapted for Arizona. Arizona Youth Livestock Quality Assurance Member Manual; Arizona Youth Livestock Quality Assurance Activity Guide.
This trainer's reference is for use in implementing the youth livestock quality assurance program. The curriculum is designed to provide youth and adults with a better understanding of the risks involved in the food production industry, better understand the Good Production Practices (GPP's) that can help them produce a safer product and therefore, implement these GPP's in their own livestock production system.

32 pp.
Originally developed in Iowa and adapted for Arizona. Arizona Youth Livestock Quality Assurance Trainer's Reference; Arizona Youth Livestock Quality Assurance Activity Guide.
The youth manual is a reference manual for the youth livestock quality assurance program. The curriculum is designed to provide youth and adults with a better understanding of the risks involved in the food production industry, better understand the good Production Practices (GPP's) that can help them produce a safer product and therefore, implement these GPP's in their own livestock production system.

32 pp.
Originally developed in Iowa and adapted for Arizona. Arizona Youth Livestock Quality Assurance Trainer's Reference; Arizona Youth Livestock Quality Assurance Activity Guide.
The youth manual is a reference manual for the youth livestock quality assurance program. The curriculum is designed to provide youth and adults with a better understanding of the risks involved in the food production industry, better understand the good Production Practices (GPP's) that can help them produce a safer product and therefore, implement these GPP's in their own livestock production system.

Published Article
Higher education institutions find themselves on the brink of a completely transformed educational scene. However higher education institutions are also influenced by international trends in higher education and these influences impact on the roles of the educators and students. In pursuit of quality, academics and students must be continuously engaged in a process of finding opportunities for improving the teaching and learning process, the quality of the learning experience and the way it is delivered and assess. The focus in this paper will be on quality assurance of student learning, but with a special focus, on quality assessments as used in the module Public Human Resource Management III at the Central University of Technology Free State. The purpose of this article is to investigate to what extent a group of 87 third year students according to their own perceptions attach value to the assessment methods (selfassessments, assignment and formal test) associated with the critical outcomes of the Public Human Resource Management III Module.

Published Article
Higher education institutions find themselves on the brink of a completely transformed educational scene. However higher education institutions are also influenced by international trends in higher education and these influences impact on the roles of the educators and students. In pursuit of quality, academics and students must be continuously engaged in a process of finding opportunities for improving the teaching and learning process, the quality of the learning experience and the way it is delivered and assess. The focus in this paper will be on quality assurance of student learning, but with a special focus, on quality assessments as used in the module Public Human Resource Management III at the Central University of Technology Free State. The purpose of this article is to investigate to what extent a group of 87 third year students according to their own perceptions attach value to the assessment methods (selfassessments, assignment and formal test) associated with the critical outcomes of the Public Human Resource Management III Module.

Ett av projekten som drivs av Försvarets Materielverk (FMV) går ut på att kvalitetssäkra de surrogatminor som används för att utvärdera minskyddet hos stridsfordon. Surrogatminorna gjuts i TNT av företaget Nammo LIAB och används sedan enligt en testprocess som är reglerad av standarden STANAG 4569 (Edition 2) Protection Levels for Occupants of Armoured Vehicles och AEP55 Procedures for evaluating the protection level of armoured vehicles. Testprocessen är väldigt dyr och det är därför av stor vikt att minimera osäkerheter i minornas verkan. Ingen standard för minornas kvalité finns idag. Arbetet med denna standard uppnås i två steg genom att först tillse att spårbarhet finns i tillverkningen och standardisera variationer i den samma. Steg två är att verifiera kvalitéten med en metod där stickprov ur leveranser kan provsprängas för att säkerställa kvalitén. Syftet med denna rapport är att ta fram en metod för steg två: att verifiera laddningarna. Efter att bakgrundsstudien avhandlat grunderna i sprängverkan så skapades en QFD-matris där kraven på metoden ställdes mot olika tekniska egenskaper varvid riktvärden erhölls för fortsatt idé-generering. En brainstorming-process genererade sedan fyra koncept som sedan ställdes mot varandra i en Pugh-matris. Det vinnande konceptet blev efter ett antal designantaganden sedan modellerat i FEM-programmet ANSYS där ett antal design-parameterar undersöktes med hänsyn till både spänningar, deformationer och svängningar. Säkerhetsfaktorn för materialdimensionering av komponenterna erhölls med hjälp av Pugsleys metod. Svagheter i designen identifierades och nödvändiga modifikationer för att konceptet ska kunna realiseras presenteras.
The Swedish defense administration (FMV) is working on a project with the goal of a quality assurance method for surrogate-mines used in evaluating the mine protection level of armoured vehicles on the behalf of customers. The mines are molded in TNT by Nammo LIAB and are tested according to the standard STANAG 4569 (Edition 2) Protection Levels for Occupants of Armoured Vehicles and related document AEP55 Procedures for evaluating the protection level of armoured vehicles. This is an expensive process that needs to produce repeatable results, something that could be achieved in two steps. The first is to obtain traceability in the manufacturing process and to standardize allowed variations in it. Step two is to be able to employ a verification method in which samples out of delivery batches can be tested to quality assure the batch. The purpose of this thesis is to develop and evaluate a method for step two. After a background study where the fundamentals of the explosive process was examined, a QFD-matrix was created where the demands from FMV was put against various technical properties of the method. The QFD generated some design guidelines that aided in a brain-storming process where four different concepts were generated. These concepts were then put against each other in a Pugh-matrix. The winning concept was then modeled in the FEM-program ANSYS where a number of design parameters was examined with respect to both stresses, deformations and vibrations. The safety factor for dimensioning the material of the components was obtained with the help of Pugsleys method. Weaknesses in the design was identified and necessary modifications needed for the concept to be realized was presented.

This study was undertaken to address the need of professionals responsible for assuring the quality of hospital care for a framework for understanding and evaluating quality assurance mechanisms and their impact on hospital quality of care. Primary data were collected from 70 Virginia short term acute care general hospitals on the design and resources of their quality assurance programs in 1986. Adverse outcome data for 1986 were collected from the Medical Society of Virginia Review Organization. Hospital structural data were obtained from the American Hospital Association computer data base and the Federal Register. The intermediate outcome variables are: rate of unexpected return to the operating room, rate of treatment/medication problems, rate of in-hospital trauma, rate of medical instability at discharge, and rate of unexpected deaths. Exploratory analyses of hospital size and specialization demonstrate that size positively affects the numbers of RNs in quality assurance, the number of quality assurance professionals with academic degrees above the associate level, and negatively affect the ratio of quality assurance personnel full-time equivalents (FTEs) — both total and professional — to total hospital FTEs. Hospital specialization negatively affects the ratio of quality assurance personnel FTEs — both total and professional — to total hospital FTEs. Structural equation models, causally relating the adequacy of quality assurance design and resources to adverse outcomes of hospitalization, were used to test the causal relationships. The model supports the work of Donabedian and of Deming. The model demonstrates the effects of quality assurance constructs on perceived organizational commitment to quality assurance and commitments effect on process-related outcomes. Process-related outcomes are strongly and positively related to the terminal measure of unexpected deaths. When size and specialization are controlled, some changes are noted in the model. The R2 increases, the Chi-square/df ratio increases and the adjusted goodness of fit ratio decreases. This change was not unexpected due to the statistical significance of the percent of board certified physicians (BRDCERT) on the outcome variable unexpected death (DEDPROBR).

The work presented in this thesis was a step forward in applying statistics to the important problem of monitoring machine performance and quantifying optimal treatment quality assurance in radiotherapy. This research investigated the use of an analytical decision making tool known as Statistical Process Control (SPC) that employs statistical means to measure, monitor and identify random and systematic errors in a process based on observed behaviour. In this research, several treatment machine and planning system parameters were investigated and a method of calculating SPC based tolerances to achieve optimal treatment goals was highlighted in this study.

The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file. Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on October 13, 2009). Thesis advisor: Dr. Glenn Washer. Includes bibliographical references.

The estimated value of the U.S. transportation infrastructure is over $7.0 trillion. The challenge is preserving the quality of the investment. State and federal departments of transportation have methods and procedures for best quality, but vary significantly. With the variations comes opportunity to assess the cost-effectiveness of different strategies and make recommendation on practices that are most successful. A survey was created and sent to all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The survey was aimed to capture information on construction finished product testing methods, optimized/reduced sampling techniques, innovative QA practices that measure multiple performance criteria and QA processes that are rapid and cost effective. There are many testing methods and procedures being used throughout the U.S. This thesis will allow state and federal transportation agencies to look at the findings and possibly implement them into their own agency with hopes of saving time and money for future projects.

Thesis (B.S.)--California Polytechnic State University, 2010.
Project advisor: Heather Smith. Title from PDF title page; viewed on Apr. 20, 2010. Includes bibliographical references. Also available on microfiche.

A business process is a defined collection of linked structured tasks, activities, and decisions performed together to produce a desired set of results in order to achieve business goals on behalf of the organization. Companies are increasingly moving their business processes online using Business Process Management (BPM) tools and technologies. With BPM, online business processes are defined by an explicit business process model that flexibly combines and orchestrates forms delivered through a web browser to integrate tasks performed by people, and web services accessible through Internet protocols to integrate tasks performed by software. Often the approach to quality assurance for online business processes is similar to what would be done with any other web application. This is insufficient since it only provides rudimentary verification of single user behavior whereas the orchestration of tasks across many users and software systems can be quite complex. As well, a simple web application testing approach does not leverage the defined model for a business process to ensure consistency, completeness and enable automation. Nor will such an approach validate that a business process is contributing towards the achievement of business goals. A more systematic approach is required. This thesis proposes a quality assurance framework to provide a repeatable, systematic, cost-efficient approach to quality assurance for BPM. A prototype framework was implemented and evaluated using two case studies, including one case study that was developed in collaboration with a local hospital to support a business process for cancer care assessment.

Quality assurance activities, in software development, are the backbone of whole project. These activities are not only responsible of product quality, but also for process quality. In conventional software development QA is a separate group of QA experts. As the trends of software development moved towards agile development, QA activities also got changed. In agile development most of these activities are performed by developers. Close people collaboration, onsite customer and Test Driven Development are the approaches in agile development to achieve better product quality. In this thesis we have presented the philosophical as well as practical angle QA in agile development. Mindset of agile development revolves around product quality but there is much work to be done to impart quality of process in agile development to get it standardized and more organized. QA activities remain centric and focused to testing. Practices like SPI and following some standards are lacking in agile methodologies. In this thesis we have proposed to inject an extra layer of QA in agile projects. Purpose of injecting and extra layer, is to use the knowledge of QA experts to achieve quality in development process that will result in higher level of product quality.

Context: Due to the increasing size and complexity of software today, the amount of effort for software quality assurance (QA) is growing and getting more and more expensive. There are many techniques lead to the improvement in software QA. Static analysis can obtain very good coverage while analyze program without execution, but it has the weakness of imprecision by false errors. In contrast, dynamic analysis can obtain only partial coverage due to a large number of possible test cases, but the reported errors are more precise. Static and dynamic analyses can complement each other by providing valuable information that would be missed by using isolated analysis technique. Although many studies investigate the QA approaches that combine static and dynamic QA techniques, it is unclear what we have learned from these studies, because no systematic synthesis exists to date. Method: This thesis is intended to provide basic key concepts for combined QA approaches. A major part of this thesis presents the systematic review that brings details discussion about state of the art on the approaches that combine static and dynamic QA techniques. The systematic review is aimed at the identification of the existed combined QA approaches, how to classify them, their purposes and input as well as introduce which combination is available. Result: The results show that, there are two relations in the combination of static and dynamic techniques such as integration and separation. Besides, the objectives of combined QA approaches were introduced according to QA process quality and product quality. The most common inputs for combined approaches were also discussed. Moreover, we identified which combination of static and dynamic techniques should or should not be used as well as the potential combination for further research.

Agile methods change the software processes. Agile processes such as Scrum, ExtremeProgramming (XP), Open Unified Process (OpenUP) etc. have techniques that improve softwarequality. No doubt that the purpose of these techniques is to inject quality assurance into theproject under development. This thesis presents quality assurance techniques in Open UnifiedProcess (OpenUP) along with comparative study to extreme programming (XP) for agilesoftware development. OpenUP is an agile and unified process that contains the minimal set ofpractices that help teams to be more effective in developing software. It assists to achieve qualityby an iterative and incremental approach with artifacts, checklists, guidelines, disciplines androles. On the other side XP emphasizes on values such as communication, feedback, respect,and courage. In addition, XP prescribes a collection of techniques, which aim to improvesoftware quality. Both these processes have the same purpose, to develop software that meets the stakeholder’sneeds and expectations, however they uses different approaches to achieve their goals. Thisthesis compares both processes in four different points of view, by comparing their qualitytechniques, focus in time, and cost of usage and social perspective. We have proposed an extrarole of the quality coordinator (QC) in OpenUP/XP. QC can support and coordinate project inall quality assurance activities. The objective of an extra role is to use the knowledge of QC toachieve highest possible product quality in software development process.Keywords: Agile Development, Quality assurance (QA), Open unified process (OpenUP),extreme programming (XP), Quality coordinator (QC)

Wines after packaging may undergo microbial spoilage, especially by yeasts. The risk of such spoilage can be minimized by preventing microbial contamination during packaging operations. This thesis describes wine packaging operations and the quality management initiatives required to control microbial contamination during packaging. Control of microbiological quality during packaging needs to be implemented without compromising overall wine quality and its appeal to consumers. The need for rapid, convenient methods to examine yeasts in packaged wine and to assess the hygiene status of wine packaging equipment was identified. The commercially available MicroFoss assay, based on optical measurement of metabolic activity, was evaluated as a rapid method for detecting spoilage yeasts in packaged wine. The method was optimised to enable detection of low levels of yeasts (1 cfu/200 ml of wine), and eliminate interference from wine acidity. More than three hundred wine samples taken immediately after packaging in a large commercial winery were examined for yeasts by the optimized MicroFoss assay and the standard membrane plate culture method. The samples represented red and white wines taken over 15 months and exhibited yeast counts of 0-1 000cfu/200ml. The semi-automated Micro Foss assay reliably detected the presence of yeasts in the samples (correlation coefficient 0.89 with standard method) and gave data within 40 hours. Studies using wines inoculated with pure cultures of specific spoilage yeasts (eg. Zygosaccharomyces bailii) revealed a limitation of MicroFoss in detecting slow growing yeasts. The Biotrace ATP-bioluminescence assay was evaluated as a rapid, convenient method to asses the efficacy of cleaning and sanitation of wine packaging equipment. Approximately 900 samples were examined and met pre-determined assay units as a measure of hygiene status. Data on surface cleanliness were obtained within two minutes. In some samples, residues of biocidal cleaning agents interfered with the assay, giving false positive data.

Lifelong learning became a must skill in Europe and all over the World that are affected by rapid social, technological and economical changes in nowadays. Qualitative training and learning process is influenced by many factors that should be carefully examined during the curriculum design phases, as well as during the learning/ teaching process. Distance learning and teaching is the efficient means to implement strategic aims of the system of education: to create learning possibilities for all society members, to contribute to designing effective learning/ teaching process, as well as to ensure more flexile organization of learning activities. While new distance learning/ teaching forms are getting more and more popular, they should be reviewed regularly applying a consistent quality evaluation methodology based on quality criteria and indicators, and distance learning/ teaching curriculum quality should be examined before each learning/ teaching process. There are some examples of quality assessment methodology prepared for distance learning/ teaching curriculum assessment in Lithuania on practical level allowing assessing distance learning/ teaching curriculum quality before accreditation procedure, however, such factors as analysis of other existing resources for realisation of curriculum online, effectiveness of chosen curriculum design and factors, influencing learning/ teaching process having the current design options, are not assessed at all. Quality assessment... [to full text]
Sparčių socialinių, technologinių ir ekonominių pokyčių veikiamoje Europoje mokymasis visą gyvenimą tapo būtinybe. Nuotolinis mokymas(-is) (NM) puikiai sprendžia strateginių švietimo sistemos siekių įgyvendinimą, sukuriant mokymosi galimybes ir efektyvesnį mokymo(-si) procesą, užtikrinant lankstesnį mokymo(-si) veiklos organizavimą. Naujai atsirandančioms NM formoms turi būti taikoma kokybės kriterijų bei rodiklių sistema, o NM turinio kokybė turi būti įvertinama prieš kiekvieną mokymo(-si) organizavimą. Lietuvoje parengtos NM turinio kokybės vertinimo metodikos leidžia įvertinti jo kokybę prieš jo akreditaciją, tačiau pasirinktų NM turinio realizavimo formų ir NM turinio projektavimo strategijos efektyvumas ir poveikis mokymo(-si) organizavimo procesui lieka neįvertinti. Mokymo(-si) turinio kokybės vertinimo proceso metu neužtikrinama konstruktyvaus mokymo(-si) samprata, nes nėra įvertinama, ar NM turinys leis mokymo(-si) organizatoriams savarankiškai veikti individualiose, nenumatytose situacijose mokymo(-si) organizavimo metu. Tačiau kokybės vertinimo metodika negali būti parengta kol nėra nustatyti ir apibendrinti veiksniai, įtakojantys NM turinio kokybę Disertacijoje projektuojamas NM turinio kokybės reflektyvus vertinimo modelis sujungia NM turinio projektavimo ir mokymo(-si) organizavimo procesus. Tyrime nagrinėjamos NM turinio projektavimo teorijos, identifikuojamos turinio kokybės vertinimo dimensijos, operacionalizuojami kokybės vertinimo veiksniai, kurių... [toliau žr. visą tekstą]