Method Evaluation

Source and information evaluation is identified as being a critical element of the analytical process and production of intelligence products. However there is concern that in reality evaluation is being carried out in a cursory fashion involving limited intellectual rigour. Poor evaluation is also thought to be a causal factor in the failure of intelligence. This study examined the process

The evaluation of instructional products is widely recognized as an essential activity of any teaching-learning process. Instructional products, such as online courses, training programs, tutorials, instructional modules, course management systems, and web-based study guides, are required to be evaluated during their development, usage or at the end of the learning process. This kind of evaluation is not a simple process. It demands the use of resources, such as people, tools, methods and time, which must be properly planned and controlled to ensure the efficiency and effectiveness of the process. We describe, in this paper, an evaluation method for guiding educators, teachers, and instructional designers to evaluate different types of instructional products. The proposed method intends to solve problems that were identified in the existing evaluation methods, such as the lack of generality, adaptability and manageability. This method is general, complete, technique independent, wel...

The evaluation of instructional products is widely recognized as an essential activity of any teaching-learning process. Instructional products, such as online courses, training programs, tutorials, instructional modules, course management systems, and web-based study guides, are required to be evaluated during their development, usage or at the end of the learning process. This kind of evaluation is not a simple process. It demands the use of resources, such as people, tools, methods and time, which must be properly planned and controlled to ensure the efficiency and effectiveness of the process. We describe, in this paper, an evaluation method for guiding educators, teachers, and instructional designers to evaluate different types of instructional products. The proposed method intends to solve problems that were identified in the existing evaluation methods, such as the lack of generality, adaptability and manageability. This method is general, complete, technique independent, well-structured and adaptable. Its design was based on principles and concepts taken from Method Engineering and Software Engineering. It is composed of a process model, a product model, and a team model. These three components are properly integrated in order to effectively guide an evaluation team during the process of evaluating instructional products. Its main contribution is in providing a general methodological framework that can be easily adapted to evaluate a variety of instructional products.

Several techniques for database replication using group communication have recently been proposed, namely, the Database State Machine, Postgres-R, and the NODO protocol. Although all rely on a totally ordered multicast for consistency, they differ substantially on how multicast is used. This results in different performance trade-offs which are hard to compare as each protocol is presented using a different load scenario and evaluation method. In this paper we evaluate the suitability of such protocols for replication of On-Line Transaction Processing (OLTP) applications in clusters of servers and over wide area networks. This is achieved by implementing them using a common infrastructure and by using a standard workload. The results allows us to select the best protocol regarding performance and scalability in a demanding but realistic usage scenario.

In an attempt to make universal design an integral part of industrial design in general, an experiment was implemented early during the industrial design education. The aim of the experiment was to increase the awareness of the students regarding the fact that products may at the same time be attractive and well-functioning for a broad range of users. Five categories

Health expectancy indices combine the mortality and morbidity experience of a population into a single composite indicator. This paper summarizes and evaluates methods for the calculation of health expectancies and presents trends in the expectation of life with disability and handicap in Australia from 1981 to 1993. Unlike other countries for which recent health expectancy time series are available, Australian results indicate that the expectation of years with disability has increased for both males and females. Possible explanations for this are examined.

The research presented herewith is aimed at supplementing a larger research project to design a competency profile for agricultural extension instructors (AEIs). The subject group chosen consisted of a select group of farmers from 17 different townships in the province of Esfahan, Iran who had attended short-term extension courses in 2004. It was focused on Iranian farmers that primarily comprise a more or less homogenous group of males over the age of 40, married, low educated, smallholders and owners of their farms. The study presents to AEIs the evaluations of their target group, farmers and contributes to the wider debate about the best methods for farmers to receive adequate and practical training. The factors motivating these farmers to attend extension courses were knowledge and skills inquiry, personal interest and socializing with other farmers and extension personnel. It was found that this group was generally positive about extension courses and AEIs who they met in the courses; nevertheless, the survey revealed certain improvements for future courses including the desired competence profile of an AEI. They suggested extension courses to be redesigned in terms of duration, evaluation methods and accessibility to instructional technology during the courses. Additionally, they found that an AEI can enhance his/her competencies in some specific domains such as stimulation skills, implementing proper examination methods, following up skills and using appropriate instructional technology. Respondents believe that a competent AEI should be well-informed, experienced, possess the ability to apply teaching methods and be familiar with farmers' culture, language and problems.

Train passengers often read newspapers while traveling. Vibration is one of the key factors that may occasionally inhibit this activity. An experimental study was, therefore, conducted to investigate the extent of interference perceived in reading task by seated subjects in two postures under random vibration. 30 healthy male subjects were exposed to vibration magnitudes of 0.4, 0.8 and 1.2 m/s 2 in mono, dual and multi axis in the low frequency range 1e20 Hz. The task required subjects to read a given paragraph of Hindi national newspaper, in two seated postures (lap posture with backrest support and table posture with leaning over the table). The reading performance was evaluated by both degradation in performance in terms of time required to complete the task and subjective rating using Borg CR10 scale. Both the methods of reading performance evaluation exhibit progressive increase with an increase in vibration magnitude for both the subject postures in all the direction of vibration and are found to be higher in lateral and vertical direction among mono axes. The effects of multi axis vibration on perceived difficulty have been found to be similar to dual axes vibration and greater than mono axes vibration; however degradation in reading performance in multi axis vibration was also found to be similar to that for lateral direction. A comparison of the effect of postures by both evaluation methods revealed that the reading performance was adversely affected for table posture in all direction of vibration, however for lap posture, only the X-axis vibration effect was more severe. Relevance to industry: Available ride comfort standards for vehicles do not include the effects of vibrations on passenger activities. Assessment of activity discomfort would be useful for vehicle design optimization to facilitate activity comfort.

ABSTRACT: Current approaches in seismic vulnerability evaluation methods follow three main stages: walk-down, preliminary and final evaluations. All these stages require time and financial sources. In order to optimize time and other sources for detailed procedures, this ...

It is not known to what extent the outcome of studies assessing the environmental impacts of agricultural systems depends on the characteristics of the evaluation method used. The study reported here investigated five well-documented evaluation methods (DIALECTE, Ecological Footprint, Environmental Management for Agriculture, FarmSmart, Life Cycle Assessment) by applying them to a case study of three pig farm scenarios. These methods differ with respect to their global objective (evaluation of impact versus evaluation of adherence to good practice), the number and type of environmental issues they consider, the way they define the system to be analysed, the mode of expression of results (for the farm as a whole, per unit area or per unit product) and the type of indicators used (pressure, state or impact indicators). The pig farm scenarios compared were conventional good agricultural practice (GAP), a quality label scenario called red label (RL) and organic agriculture (OA). We used the methods to rank the three scenarios according to their environmental impacts. The relative ranking of the three scenarios varied considerably depending on characteristics of the evaluation method used and on the mode of expression of results. We recommend the use of evaluation methods that express results both per unit area and per unit product. Environmental evaluation methods should be used with great caution, users should carefully consider which method is most appropriate given their particular needs, taking into consideration the method's characteristics.

A new generation of public programs emerges, which specifically addresses complex societal problems we witness today. Programs for these types of complex issues—in this article, we consider more closely the challenge of sustainable development—are characterized by emergent design, learning processes between diverse actors, and adaptive management. Managers of these kinds of programs have new demands for evaluation and evaluators. This article describes prevailing evaluation methods for sustainable development (progress assessment, goal-oriented program evaluation, and program theory evaluation) and the challenges they meet when confronted with the complexity of designing and conducting systemic intervention programs for sustainable development. The evaluation framework that we propose offers guiding principles to assist evaluators in evaluating complex programs.

We present a new evaluation methodology to better evaluate video processing performance. Recent evaluation methods [10], [9], [11] depend heavily on the benchmark dataset. The result may be different if we change the testing video sequences. The difference is mainly due to the video sequence content which usually includes many video processing problems (illumination changes, weak contrast etc.) at different difficulty levels. Hence it is difficult to extrapolate the evaluation result on new sequences.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether low-intensity pulsed ultrasound (LIPUS) could enhance the regeneration of myofibers and shorten the healing time in injured muscle. NIH C2C12 cells, a wellknown myoblastic cell line, are subclones derived from the mouse myoblast cell line established from normal adult C3H mouse leg muscle. The cells differentiate rapidly and produce extensive contracting myotubes expressing characteristic muscle proteins. We exposed C2C12 cells to LIPUS therapy using the EXOGEN 20001 system ultrasound apparatus (Exogen Inc., Piscataway, NJ, USA) with a total treatment of 20 min every 24 h. At intervals of 2, 4, 6 and 8 days, cell growth was measured by the increase in cell number and western blot analysis of myogenin and actin. Forty mice (C57BL10J1/1) were divided into five groups of eight animals each and used in the published laceration injury model. The gastrocnemius muscle of the left leg was lacerated in all the animals. The control group (sham ultrasound) did not undergo LIPUS therapy. The ultrasound 7-, 14-, 21-and 28-day groups (only changing the number of days during which the ultrasound was applied to the injured muscle) were treated with LIPUS (20 min/day) for 7, 14, 21 and 28 consecutive days, respectively. All animals were sacrificed at 4 weeks after the injury. Evaluation methods included muscle regeneration and muscle contractile properties. LIPUS therapy produced a significantly higher proliferative rate and cell number at days 6 and 8 (p , 0.05). Densitometric evaluation revealed an increase in myogenin and actin proteins in cells treated with LIPUS in the 4-, 6-and 8-day groups. The regeneration of myofibers, fast-twitch and tetanus of LIPUS-treated muscles (21 and 28 days) was significantly greater relative to control muscles. There was no major strength difference between the normal noninjured muscle and the group treated with LIPUS for 28 days. In conclusion, this was the first experimental study to show that LIPUS therapy is able to enhance the regeneration of myofibers with better physiologic performance in injured mice muscles after laceration, especially prior to postoperative week 4. Findings of this study demonstrate a scientific basis for future clinical trials and establish an indication for LIPUS in enhancing muscle healing after laceration injury. (

Summary Purpose of this paper is to shortly present the general principles of sustainable development, the problems arising from island status, the definition of aquaculture and its role to global food production. Our research's main goal is to examine if aquaculture actually contributes to sustainable development of island regions and to propose a simple and easy to use tool for choosing the best available aquaculture type for each island. The islands in spite of their wide diversity, are all confronted to a greater or lesser extent with similar problems: isolation and remoteness, limited natural and human resources, difficulties in terms of competitiveness and economic development, and fragile environments. Work in island regions involves consideration of potentials and constraints in various aspects of development, e.g. in Mediterranean, tourism is the largest industry, but its thoughtless use of nature and uncontrolled development has taken a toll of this region's resour...

The subject of this paper is a study of the influence of the inertial sensors errors on the position, speed and attitude of a bidimensional strap-down inertial navigation system in a horizontal plane. The MATLAB/SIMULINK models used for the acceleration and rotation sensors are based on the sensors data sheets and on the IEEE equivalent models for the inertial sensors. The models can be used in the numerical simulation of the strap-down inertial navigation system, close by real conditions from the point of view of the distortions suffered by the useful acceleration and rotation signals at the passing through any type of accelerometers or gyros desired to be implemented in the navigator. These models have the advantage to work independent from each of the sensors' errors and thus to study their influence on the inertial navigator.

As valuable software systems get old, reverse engineering becomes more and more important to the companies that have to maintain the code. Clustering is a key activity in reverse engineering to discover a better design of the systems or to extract signi cant concepts from the code.

We introduce a framework for evaluating human detectors that considers the practical application of a detector on a full image using multi-size sliding window scanning. We produce DET (Detection Error Tradeoff) curves relating miss detection rate and false alarm rate computed by deploying the detector on cropped windows as well as whole images, using in the later either image resize or feature resize. Plots for cascade classifiers are generated based on confidence scores instead of varying the number of layers. To assess a method's overall performance on a given test, we use the ALMR (Average Log Miss Rate) as an aggregate performance score. To analyze the significance of the obtained results, we conduct 10-fold cross validation experiments. We applied our evaluation framework to two state of the art cascade-based detectors on the standard INRIA Person dataset, as well as a local dataset of near infrared images. We used our evaluation framework to study the differences between the two detectors on the two datasets with different evaluation methods. Our results show the utility of our framework. They also suggest that the descriptors used to represent features and the training window size are more important in predicting the detection performance than the nature of the imaging process, and that the choice between resizing images of features can have serious consequences.