This study investigated how and to what extent the development and use of the OV-5a operational architecture decomposition tree (OADT) from the Department of Defense (DoD) Architecture Framework (DoDAF) affects requirements analysis with respect to complete performance metrics for performance-based services acquisition of ICT under rigid…

Software Effort Estimation is one of the most challenging aspects in the software development life cycle. Recent empirical studies in the area of software development estimation indicate the presence of two models for effort estimation: (i) Formal, and (ii) Expert Based (Informal). The IT sector in Palestine is one of the most promising and…

The connection between evaluation practice and its ultimate goal--social betterment--is indirect. With little or no direct control over social programs and policies, many evaluators rely on the actions of stakeholders to bridge the gap between evaluation practice and its purpose. Consequently, communicating with influence becomes key. The present…

Purpose: This study evaluates the impact of an outsourced extension service delivered by Lima Rural Development Foundation (Lima) in the Umzimkhulu district of South Africa. The evaluation is conducted at both the household and program levels. Design/methodology/approach: Household impacts were estimated using two-stage regression with…

We explore how crowdworkers can be trained to tackle complex crowdsourcing tasks. We are particularly interested in training novice workers to perform well on solving tasks in situations where the space of strategies is large and workers need to discover and try different strategies to be successful. In a first experiment, we perform a comparison…

The outsourcing of education services has been widely adopted across international contexts as a 'tested solution' or panacea to meet various educational problems including school management, curriculum design, teaching and student discipline. Contracting third-party providers, it is argued, enhances organisational goals such as efficiency,…

Why has the rise of the Internet--which drastically reduces the cost of distributing information--coincided with drastic increases in the prices that academic libraries pay for access to scholarly journals? This study argues that libraries are trapped in a collective action dilemma as defined by economist Mancur Olson in "The Logic of…

Forming the second of two articles, this dialogue revisits and explores the educational value of physical education as a means to stimulate further discussion about what physical education is, or as Kirk states within this interview, what do "we want physical education to be". Although the theme of the second interview relates to the…

Contract cheating is the process whereby students auction off the opportunity for others to complete assignments for them. It is an apparently widespread yet under-researched problem. One suggested strategy to prevent contract cheating is to shorten the turnaround time between the release of assignment details and the submission date, thus making…

There are many thousands of education researchers in the world, thousands of higher education institutions, and hundreds of relevant research journals. But the EWA has chosen to rely almost exclusively on an infinitesimal proportion of it for expertise. Ironically, the tiny group on which they depend comprises some of the world's most poorly read…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report on an exploratory study designed to illuminate the complexity of outsourcing extra-curricular activities (ECAs) in primary schools in a time of neoliberal influence and to examine the views of teaching professionals on the reasons, issues and considerations of outsourcing ECAs such as the dynamic…

Fifty-three percent of Grade 4 learners cannot read for meaning in low- and middle-income countries despite an investment of between 33-49% of education expenditure on primary education. Teaching children to read in the early grades is fundamental to building resilient education systems, as the ability to read early in life is a great predictor…

This qualitative study explored the perceptions and experiences of IT Managers in publicly traded companies within the San Antonio, Texas area about outsourced data centers. Narrative data was collected using open-ended questions and face-to-face interviews within semi-structured environments. The research questions guided the study: (1)…

Public school districts are government entities, but they rely on the private sector to support their function of delivering educational services to students. Private contractors, for example, construct district buildings, write textbooks and manufacture the supplies necessary to keep the district operational, among other things. And over the past…

Saudi Arabian Petrochemical Company (SAPCO), a petrochemicals manufacturer, has decided to make some major internal changes to gain increased market share and continue its success. It has been easy going for some time now, and business has been very good, but in order to take that next step, SAPCO needs to attain the Responsible Care…