Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Audit lecturer'

This study focused on the differences in the knowledge gained between instructionally designed mediated lecture instruction and traditional lecture instruction. The sample used in this study consisted of 107 new hospital employees required to attend an orientation. The experimental group consisted of 43 subjects and the control group consisted of 64 subjects. Each group was given a pre-, post- and post-delayed knowledge test and an attitude test. The following hypotheses were tested: (H₀1) There will be no differences in post-test scores between groups. (H₂) There will be no differences in post-delayed test scores between groups. (H₃) There will be no differences in attitudes between groups. An analysis of covariance was computed on the data to test hypothesis one and hypothesis two and a one-way analysis of variance to test hypothesis three. The results indicated no significant differences on post-test scores and Hypothesis One was retained. Hypothesis Two was rejected as a significant difference indicated an increase in knowledge retained over time by the experimental group. Hypothesis Three was rejected with the experimental group reacting much more favorably to the mediated lecture. The conclusions reached as a result of this study were that both groups were learning, regardless of the method of instruction. Also knowledge was retained over time much better by the experimental group when the information was presented in the instructionally designed mediated format. Finally, the favorable response by the experimental group to the mediated lecture indicated a preference for this teaching format. Recommendations for additional investigations were discussed.

With the demand for recorded lectures to be made available as soon as possible, the University of Cape Town (UCT) needs to find innovative ways of removing bottlenecks in lecture capture workflow and thereby improving turn-around times from capture to publication. UCT utilises Opencast, which is an open source system to manage all the steps in the lecture-capture process. One of the steps involves manual trimming of unwanted segments from the beginning and end of video before it is published. These segments generally contain student chatter. The trimming step of the lecture-capture process has been identified as a bottleneck due to its dependence on staff availability. In this study, we investigate the potential of audio classification to automate this step. A classification model was trained to detect 2 classes: speech and non-speech. Speech represents a single dominant voice, for example, the lecturer, and non-speech represents student chatter, silence and other environmental sounds. In conjunction with the classification model, the first and last instances of the speech class together with their timestamps are detected. These timestamps are used to predict the start and end trim points for the recorded lecture. The classification model achieved a 97.8% accuracy rate at detecting speech from non-speech. The start trim point predictions were very positive, with an average difference of -11.22s from gold standard data. End trim point predictions showed a much greater deviation, with an average difference of 145.16s from gold standard data. Discussions between the lecturer and students, after the lecture, was predominantly the reason for this discrepancy.

Ce mémoire de thèse de doctorat présente, discute et propose des outils de fouille automatique de mégadonnées dans un contexte de classification supervisée musical.L'application principale concerne la classification automatique des thèmes musicaux afin de générer des listes de lecture thématiques.Le premier chapitre introduit les différents contextes et concepts autour des mégadonnées musicales et de leur consommation.Le deuxième chapitre s'attelle à la description des bases de données musicales existantes dans le cadre d'expériences académiques d'analyse audio.Ce chapitre introduit notamment les problématiques concernant la variété et les proportions inégales des thèmes contenus dans une base, qui demeurent complexes à prendre en compte dans une classification supervisée.Le troisième chapitre explique l'importance de l'extraction et du développement de caractéristiques audio et musicales pertinentes afin de mieux décrire le contenu des éléments contenus dans ces bases de données.Ce chapitre explique plusieurs phénomènes psychoacoustiques et utilise des techniques de traitement du signal sonore afin de calculer des caractéristiques audio.De nouvelles méthodes d'agrégation de caractéristiques audio locales sont proposées afin d'améliorer la classification des morceaux.Le quatrième chapitre décrit l'utilisation des caractéristiques musicales extraites afin de trier les morceaux par thèmes et donc de permettre les recommandations musicales et la génération automatique de listes de lecture thématiques homogènes.Cette partie implique l'utilisation d'algorithmes d'apprentissage automatique afin de réaliser des tâches de classification musicale.Les contributions de ce mémoire sont résumées dans le cinquième chapitre qui propose également des perspectives de recherche dans l'apprentissage automatique et l'extraction de caractéristiques audio multi-échelles<br>This doctoral dissertation presents, discusses and proposes tools for the automatic information retrieval in big musical databases.The main application is the supervised classification of musical themes to generate thematic playlists.The first chapter introduces the different contexts and concepts around big musical databases and their consumption.The second chapter focuses on the description of existing music databases as part of academic experiments in audio analysis.This chapter notably introduces issues concerning the variety and unequal proportions of the themes contained in a database, which remain complex to take into account in supervised classification.The third chapter explains the importance of extracting and developing relevant audio features in order to better describe the content of music tracks in these databases.This chapter explains several psychoacoustic phenomena and uses sound signal processing techniques to compute audio features.New methods of aggregating local audio features are proposed to improve song classification.The fourth chapter describes the use of the extracted audio features in order to sort the songs by themes and thus to allow the musical recommendations and the automatic generation of homogeneous thematic playlists.This part involves the use of machine learning algorithms to perform music classification tasks.The contributions of this dissertation are summarized in the fifth chapter which also proposes research perspectives in machine learning and extraction of multi-scale audio features

[EN] In recent years, on-line multimedia repositories have experiencied a strong growth that have made them consolidated as essential knowledge assets, especially in the area of education, where large repositories of video lectures have been built in order to complement or even replace traditional teaching methods. However, most of these video lectures are neither transcribed nor translated due to a lack of cost-effective solutions to do so in a way that gives accurate enough results. Solutions of this kind are clearly necessary in order to make these lectures accessible to speakers of different languages and to people with hearing disabilities. They would also facilitate lecture searchability and analysis functions, such as classification, recommendation or plagiarism detection, as well as the development of advanced educational functionalities like content summarisation to assist student note-taking. For this reason, the main aim of this thesis is to develop a cost-effective solution capable of transcribing and translating video lectures to a reasonable degree of accuracy. More specifically, we address the integration of state-of-the-art techniques in Automatic Speech Recognition and Machine Translation into large video lecture repositories to generate high-quality multilingual video subtitles without human intervention and at a reduced computational cost. Also, we explore the potential benefits of the exploitation of the information that we know a priori about these repositories, that is, lecture-specific knowledge such as speaker, topic or slides, to create specialised, in-domain transcription and translation systems by means of massive adaptation techniques. The proposed solutions have been tested in real-life scenarios by carrying out several objective and subjective evaluations, obtaining very positive results. The main outcome derived from this thesis, The transLectures-UPV Platform, has been publicly released as an open-source software, and, at the time of writing, it is serving automatic transcriptions and translations for several thousands of video lectures in many Spanish and European universities and institutions.<br>[ES] Durante estos últimos años, los repositorios multimedia on-line han experimentado un gran crecimiento que les ha hecho establecerse como fuentes fundamentales de conocimiento, especialmente en el área de la educación, donde se han creado grandes repositorios de vídeo charlas educativas para complementar e incluso reemplazar los métodos de enseñanza tradicionales. No obstante, la mayoría de estas charlas no están transcritas ni traducidas debido a la ausencia de soluciones de bajo coste que sean capaces de hacerlo garantizando una calidad mínima aceptable. Soluciones de este tipo son claramente necesarias para hacer que las vídeo charlas sean más accesibles para hablantes de otras lenguas o para personas con discapacidades auditivas. Además, dichas soluciones podrían facilitar la aplicación de funciones de búsqueda y de análisis tales como clasificación, recomendación o detección de plagios, así como el desarrollo de funcionalidades educativas avanzadas, como por ejemplo la generación de resúmenes automáticos de contenidos para ayudar al estudiante a tomar apuntes. Por este motivo, el principal objetivo de esta tesis es desarrollar una solución de bajo coste capaz de transcribir y traducir vídeo charlas con un nivel de calidad razonable. Más específicamente, abordamos la integración de técnicas estado del arte de Reconocimiento del Habla Automático y Traducción Automática en grandes repositorios de vídeo charlas educativas para la generación de subtítulos multilingües de alta calidad sin requerir intervención humana y con un reducido coste computacional. Además, también exploramos los beneficios potenciales que conllevaría la explotación de la información de la que disponemos a priori sobre estos repositorios, es decir, conocimientos específicos sobre las charlas tales como el locutor, la temática o las transparencias, para crear sistemas de transcripción y traducción especializados mediante técnicas de adaptación masiva. Las soluciones propuestas en esta tesis han sido testeadas en escenarios reales llevando a cabo nombrosas evaluaciones objetivas y subjetivas, obteniendo muy buenos resultados. El principal legado de esta tesis, The transLectures-UPV Platform, ha sido liberado públicamente como software de código abierto, y, en el momento de escribir estas líneas, está sirviendo transcripciones y traducciones automáticas para diversos miles de vídeo charlas educativas en nombrosas universidades e instituciones Españolas y Europeas.<br>[CAT] Durant aquests darrers anys, els repositoris multimèdia on-line han experimentat un gran creixement que els ha fet consolidar-se com a fonts fonamentals de coneixement, especialment a l'àrea de l'educació, on s'han creat grans repositoris de vídeo xarrades educatives per tal de complementar o inclús reemplaçar els mètodes d'ensenyament tradicionals. No obstant això, la majoria d'aquestes xarrades no estan transcrites ni traduïdes degut a l'absència de solucions de baix cost capaces de fer-ho garantint una qualitat mínima acceptable. Solucions d'aquest tipus són clarament necessàries per a fer que les vídeo xarres siguen més accessibles per a parlants d'altres llengües o per a persones amb discapacitats auditives. A més, aquestes solucions podrien facilitar l'aplicació de funcions de cerca i d'anàlisi tals com classificació, recomanació o detecció de plagis, així com el desenvolupament de funcionalitats educatives avançades, com per exemple la generació de resums automàtics de continguts per ajudar a l'estudiant a prendre anotacions. Per aquest motiu, el principal objectiu d'aquesta tesi és desenvolupar una solució de baix cost capaç de transcriure i traduir vídeo xarrades amb un nivell de qualitat raonable. Més específicament, abordem la integració de tècniques estat de l'art de Reconeixement de la Parla Automàtic i Traducció Automàtica en grans repositoris de vídeo xarrades educatives per a la generació de subtítols multilingües d'alta qualitat sense requerir intervenció humana i amb un reduït cost computacional. A més, també explorem els beneficis potencials que comportaria l'explotació de la informació de la que disposem a priori sobre aquests repositoris, és a dir, coneixements específics sobre les xarrades tals com el locutor, la temàtica o les transparències, per a crear sistemes de transcripció i traducció especialitzats mitjançant tècniques d'adaptació massiva. Les solucions proposades en aquesta tesi han estat testejades en escenaris reals duent a terme nombroses avaluacions objectives i subjectives, obtenint molt bons resultats. El principal llegat d'aquesta tesi, The transLectures-UPV Platform, ha sigut alliberat públicament com a programari de codi obert, i, en el moment d'escriure aquestes línies, està servint transcripcions i traduccions automàtiques per a diversos milers de vídeo xarrades educatives en nombroses universitats i institucions Espanyoles i Europees.<br>Silvestre Cerdà, JA. (2016). Different Contributions to Cost-Effective Transcription and Translation of Video Lectures [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/62194<br>TESIS

Cette thèse entend contribuer à l’étude des carrières des associés des firmes professionnelles en s’intéressant en particulier au processus de construction de l’identité d’associé. En nous appuyant sur le concept interactionniste de carrière nous analysons le « devenir associé » dans le contexte des grands cabinets d’audit internationaux (les Big 4). Ce devenir est un processus qui débute quasiment dès le recrutement et qui relève de mécanismes informels et tacites et de manœuvres politiques. Nous caractérisons ces mécanismes par la notion « d’écurie » qui permet à la fois de comprendre le fonctionnement des procédures de cooptation dans sa dimension non-officielle, mais également la hiérarchisation de la partnershipet le déroulement des carrières en son sein, une fois le stade de l’association passé. La conclusion à laquelle nous parvenons est que l’auditeur devient associé bien avant sa cooptation, en se reconnaissant lui-même comme un professionnel. Ce turning point n’est cependant que le premier sur le chemin qui mène à la partnership car c’est seulement au moment où il rejoint cette dernière que l’auditeur devient l’associé qu’il était, en se faisant reconnaître comme tel par ses pairs, achevant ainsi sa conversion identitaire d’auditeur en associé. Par notre travail, nous nous inscrivons dans la lignée des études en sociologie des professions et en théorie des organisations qui ont exploré le champ de la socialisation des professionnels de l’audit et de la construction de leur identité ainsi que le fonctionnement des grands cabinets internationaux<br>This PhD studies the process of becoming a partner in professional services firms, envisaged through the lens of the building of the partner identity. To this end, it implements the concept of « career » developed by interactionist sociology to analyse the making of a partner in the context of the Big 4 international audit firms. Becoming a partner is a process that starts right after recruitment and which is governed by complex and largely informal mechanisms and political manoeuvring. We characterize these mechanisms with the help of the notion of “stable”, whose purpose is to understand procedures of co-option in their unofficial dimension but also to account for the structuration of the partner level in firms and the role played by hierarchies within this level in post-partner career progression. We come to the conclusion that auditors actually become partners much earlier than their official promotion to the rank, from the moment they consider themselves as such. This awakening is yet only the first turning point on the road to partnership. It is only when they are officially co-opted that auditors become the partners they were, by being recognised as such by their peers, completing therefore their identity conversion.This work contributes to the literature in the sociology of professions and organizational theory fields by investigating how professionals are socialized and how their identity is constructed and by grasping more accurately the organization of professional services firms

Pour percevoir la parole, le cerveau humain utilise les informations sensorielles provenant non seulement de la modalité auditive mais également de la modalité visuelle. En effet, de précédentes recherches ont mis en évidence l’importance de la lecture labiale dans la perception de la parole, en montrant sa capacité à améliorer et à modifier celle-ci. C’est ce que l’on appelle l’intégration audio-visuelle de la parole. L’objectif de cette thèse de doctorat était d’étudier la possibilité de faire varier ce processus d’intégration en fonction de différentes variables. Ce travail s’inscrit ainsi au cœur d’un débat régnant depuis plusieurs années, celui opposant l’hypothèse d’une intégration audio-visuelle universelle à l’hypothèse d’une intégration dépendante du contexte. C’est dans ce cadre que nous avons réalisé les cinq études constituant cette thèse, chacune d’elles investiguant l’impact d’une variable bien précise sur l’intégration bimodale :la qualité du signal visuel, l’âge des participants, le fait de porter un implant cochléaire, l’âge au moment de l’implantation cochléaire et le fait d’avoir des troubles spécifiques du langage. <p>Le paradigme expérimental utilisé consistait toujours en une tâche d’identification de syllabes présentées dans trois modalités :auditive seule, visuelle seule et audio-visuelle (congruente et incongruente). Les cinq études avaient également comme point commun la présentation de stimuli visuels dont la qualité était réduite, visant à empêcher une lecture labiale de bonne qualité. Le but de chacune de ces études était non seulement d’examiner si les performances variaient en fonction des variables investiguées mais également de déterminer si les différences provenaient bien du processus d’intégration lui-même et non uniquement de différences au niveau de la perception unimodale. Pour cela, les scores des participants ont été comparés à des scores prédits sur base d’un modèle prenant en compte les variations individuelles des poids auditifs et visuels, le weighted fuzzy-logical model of perception.<p>L’ensemble des résultats, discuté dans la dernière partie de ce travail, fait pencher la balance en faveur de l’hypothèse d’une intégration dépendante du contexte. Nous proposons alors une nouvelle architecture de fusion bimodale, prenant en compte ces dernières données. Enfin, les implications sont aussi d’ordre pratique, suggérant la nécessité d’incorporer des évaluations et rééducations à la fois auditives et visuelles dans le cadre des programmes de revalidation de personnes âgées, dysphasiques ou avec implant cochléaire./During face-to-face conversation, perception of auditory speech is influenced by the visual speech cues contained in lip movements. Indeed, previous research has highlighted the ability of lip-reading to enhance and even modify speech perception. This phenomenon is known as audio-visual integration. The aim of this doctoral thesis is to study the possibility of modifying this audio-visual integration according to several variables. This work lies into the scope of an important debate between invariant versus subject-dependent audio-visual integration in speech processing. Each study of this dissertation investigates the impact of a specific variable on bimodal integration: the quality of the visual input, age of participants, the use of a cochlear implant, age at cochlear implantation and the presence of specific language impairments. <p>The paradigm used always consisted of a syllable identification task, where syllables were presented in three modalities: auditory only, visual only and audio-visual (congruent and incongruent). There was also a condition where the quality of the visual input was reduced, in order to prevent a lip-reading of good quality. The aim of each of the five studies was not only to examine whether performances were modified according to the variable under study but also to ascertain that differences were indeed issued from the integration process itself. Thereby, our results were analyzed in the framework of model predictive of audio-visual speech performance (weighted fuzzy-logical model of perception) in order to disentangle unisensory effects from audio-visual integration effects. <p>Taken together, our data suggest that speech integration is not automatic but rather depends on the context. We propose a new architecture of bimodal fusions, taking these considerations into account. Finally, there are also practical implications suggesting the need to incorporate not only auditory but also visual exercise in the rehabilitation programs of older adults and children with cochlear implants or with specific language impairements. <p><br>Doctorat en Sciences Psychologiques et de l'éducation<br>info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

In the last decades, there has been an increased interest in decoding speech exclusively using visual cues, i.e. mimicking the human capability to perform lip-reading, leading to Automatic Lip-Reading (ALR) systems. However, it is well known that the access to speech through the visual channel is subject to many limitations when compared to the audio channel, i.e. it has been argued that humans can actually read around 30% of the information from the lips, and the rest is filled-in from the context. Thus, one of the main challenges in ALR resides in the visual ambiguities that arise at the word level, highlighting that not all sounds that we hear can be easily distinguished by observing the lips. In the literature, early ALR systems addressed simple recognition tasks such as alphabet or digit recognition but progressively shifted to more complex and realistic settings leading to several recent systems that target continuous lip-reading. To a large extent, these advances have been possible thanks to the construction of powerful systems based on deep learning architectures that have quickly started to replace traditional systems. Despite the recognition rates for continuous lip-reading may appear modest in comparison to those achieved by audio-based systems, the field has undeniably made a step forward. Interestingly, an analogous effect can be observed when humans try to decode speech: given sufficiently clean signals, most people can effortlessly decode the audio channel but would struggle to perform lip-reading, since the ambiguity of the visual cues makes it necessary the use of further context to decode the message. In this thesis, we explore the appropriate modeling of visual representations with the aim to improve continuous lip-reading. To this end, we present different data-driven mechanisms to handle the main challenges in lip-reading related to the ambiguities or the speaker dependency of visual cues. Our results highlight the benefits of a proper encoding of the visual channel, for which the most useful features are those that encode corresponding lip positions in a similar way, independently of the speaker. This fact opens the door to i) lip-reading in many different languages without requiring large-scale datasets, and ii) increasing the contribution of the visual channel in audio-visual speech systems. On the other hand, our experiments identify a tendency to focus on the modeling of temporal context as the key to advance the field, where there is a need for ALR models that are trained on datasets comprising large speech variability at several context levels. In this thesis, we show that both proper modeling of visual representations and the ability to retain context at several levels are necessary conditions to build successful lip-reading systems.<br>En les darreres dècades, hi ha hagut un interès creixent en la descodificació de la parla utilitzant exclusivament senyals visuals, es a dir, imitant la capacitat humana de llegir els llavis, donant lloc a sistemes de lectura automàtica de llavis (ALR). No obstant això, se sap que l’accès a la parla a través del canal visual està subjecte a moltes limitacions en comparació amb el senyal acústic, es a dir, s’ha argumentat que els humans poden llegir al voltant del 30% de la informació dels llavis, i la resta es completa fent servir el context. Així, un dels principals reptes de l’ALR resideix en les ambigüitats visuals que sorgeixen a escala de paraula, destacant que no tots els sons que escoltem es poden distingir fàcilment observant els llavis. A la literatura, els primers sistemes ALR van abordar tasques de reconeixement senzilles, com ara el reconeixement de l’alfabet o els dígits, però progressivament van passar a entorns mes complexos i realistes que han conduït a diversos sistemes recents dirigits a la lectura continua dels llavis. En gran manera, aquests avenços han estat possibles gracies a la construcció de sistemes potents basats en arquitectures d’aprenentatge profund que han començat a substituir ràpidament els sistemes tradicionals. Tot i que les taxes de reconeixement de la lectura continua dels llavis poden semblar modestes en comparació amb les assolides pels sistemes basats en audio, és evident que el camp ha fet un pas endavant. Curiosament, es pot observar un efecte anàleg quan els humans intenten descodificar la parla: donats senyals sense soroll, la majoria de la gent pot descodificar el canal d’àudio sense esforç¸, però tindria dificultats per llegir els llavis, ja que l’ambigüitat dels senyals visuals fa necessari l’ús de context addicional per descodificar el missatge. En aquesta tesi explorem el modelatge adequat de representacions visuals amb l’objectiu de millorar la lectura contínua dels llavis. Amb aquest objectiu, presentem diferents mecanismes basats en dades per fer front als principals reptes de la lectura de llavis relacionats amb les ambigüitats o la dependència dels parlants dels senyals visuals. Els nostres resultats destaquen els avantatges d’una correcta codificació del canal visual, per a la qual les característiques més útils són aquelles que codifiquen les posicions corresponents dels llavis d’una manera similar, independentment de l’orador. Aquest fet obre la porta a i) la lectura de llavis en molts idiomes diferents sense necessitat de conjunts de dades a gran escala, i ii) a l’augment de la contribució del canal visual en sistemes de parla audiovisuals.´ D’altra banda, els nostres experiments identifiquen una tendència a centrar-se en iii la modelització del context temporal com la clau per avançar en el camp, on hi ha la necessitat de models d’ALR que s’entrenin en conjunts de dades que incloguin una gran variabilitat de la parla a diversos nivells de context. En aquesta tesi, demostrem que tant el modelatge adequat de les representacions visuals com la capacitat de retenir el context a diversos nivells són condicions necessàries per construir sistemes de lectura de llavis amb èxit.

Com a rápida evolução tecnológica e o crescimento da aplicação de novas tecnologias digitais na educação - em especial em cursos a distância - o mais importante tem sido a criação de novos ambientes de aprendizagem que estimulam a interatividade, desenvolvem a capacidade de formular, de resolver questões e, acima de tudo, possibilitam a participação de forma colaborativa, embora estando fisicamente distante. A idéia de uma escola \"expandida\" visa atender a diversas áreas de ensino, entre elas a necessidade de treinamentos no setor corporativo para os profissionais que já estão no mercado de trabalho, a formação escolar para jovens e adultos que enfrentam dificuldades pela distância ou indisponibilidade de horário, ou mesmo a qualificação docente em grande demanda por aperfeiçoamento. Para atingir um nível bom de participação em encontros virtuais, faz-se necessário contar com tecnologias de comunicação e informação que medeiam a interação entre os envolvidos no processo de ensino. Afinal, a aprendizagem, que não é apenas individual mas coletiva, se baseia na convivência entre os participantes, na troca de informações entre eles. Quando um conteúdo é ministrado a distância, por meio da Internet, em videoconferência, permite-se criar um espaço ideal para uma colaboração distribuída. Por conta dessa necessidade, este trabalho apresenta um ambiente que oferece a comunicação por vídeo, voz e texto, para aulas ao vivo entre vários participantes, cuja participação é controlada pelo moderador, ao mesmo tempo em que conta com um sistema de registro de atividades para interação assíncrona. Além do ambiente desenvolvido, o trabalho introduz um breve estudo de conceitos envolvidos na videoconferência, as tecnologias disponíveis, bem como as utilizadas para o desenvolvimento deste projeto. Alguns resultados foram obtidos após realização de testes e utilização do ambiente, tal como a análise de desempenho a partir dos recursos disponíveis na rede.<br>With the fast technological evolution and the growth of the new digital technologies application in the education, in special in long-distance education courses is observed that the majority of these courses has favored great parcel of people. The most important it has been the creation of new learning environment that stimulates the participation, developing the capacity to formulate, to decide questions and all above of everything participating in a collaborative way. The idea of a expanded school aims at to take care of diverse areas of education, between them the necessity of training in the corporative sector for the professionals who already are in the work market, the formation pertaining to school for young and adult that faces difficulties for the distance or non-availability of schedule or the teaching qualification in great demand for perfectioning. A learning that is not only individual, but collective, is basead on the relationship between the participants, in the exchange of information between them. Therefore, in the long-distance education makes necessary the communication technologies and information that measured the interaction between the involved education process. When a content is given in the distance, by means of the Internet, video conferencing and video lessons, is allowed to create an ideal space for the distributed contribution. For this necessity, this work show an environment for lessons live between some participants, that offers the communication by video, voice and text. The participation is controlled by moderator, being able to be a professor or the person that give a lecture. Contains also a system of register of activities for asynchronous interaction. Beyond the developed environment, the work introduces a briefing study of involved concepts in the video conferencing, the available technologies, as well as the used ones for the development of this project. Some results had been gotten after accomplishment of tests, allowing to verify different performances depending on the available resources in the net.

Accounting education, and specifically audit education, has been calling for change in the teaching methodology applied by audit lecturers in higher education since the 1950s. This call for change is evident in current literature, which indicates that the approach followed in audit education has been creating a knowledge-to-application barrier. Despite the vigorous research on how to change the way audit students are taught at universities and other higher education institutions, consensus has yet to be reached on the teaching methodology that would produce competent and self-efficient young professionals entering practice after graduation. The literature review performed in this thesis indicated a gap between research and practice in accounting education and research, first, because the research seems too technical for practitioners to understand and, secondly, too many research objectives seem unrelated to the realities of practice. Based on these findings, this thesis provides the novice researcher in accounting education with some guidelines on the research methodologies that could be applied in this field. It also highlights some best practices that should be followed when conducting research in this field. It was noted from the literature that all the variables in the audit teaching-learning environment need consideration when attempting to bring change to this environment, because each variable would have an impact on transforming the current approach followed in audit pedagogy. These variables were identified as: • The audit lecturer; • The audit student; • The subject content of the audit teaching-learning environment; and Summary • The milieu of the audit teaching-learning environment. In an attempt to answer the call for change in audit education, this thesis sought to develop an audit simulation as an educational tool which takes into account all the variables in the audit teaching-learning environment and can be applied at universities and other audit training institutions around the globe. A framework for simulation design was developed based on the findings of the literature review and informed the development of the audit simulation. The simulation was, subsequently, applied and evaluated at a university accredited by the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants. The newly developed audit simulation was evaluated by applying a mixed methodology research design, which had been proven to be a resourceful and trusted design in accounting education research in the past. Pre-test and post-test questionnaires were administered to the respondents as part of a quasi-experimental design. The quantitative findings from these tests were supported by qualitative findings from focus group discussions. The empirical findings from the pre-test questionnaire confirmed the call for change and the room for improvement in the current teaching methodology in the audit classroom. Participants indicated lower levels in some competencies relative to other competencies, which also did not particularly score satisfactory when the competence levels were evaluated. The competencies that showed the lowest level of achievement due to the current teaching methodology, as perceived by the participants, included executing the work plan, evaluating the evidence and drawing conclusions, and drafting the report upon completion of the engagement. It was also established that the call for change was not confined to only one university in South Africa, which broadened the generalisability of the research findings, conclusions and recommendations of this study. The results of both the quantitative and qualitative analysis support the view that the newly developed audit simulation is able to assist in bringing change to audit education. The simulation had a positive effect on the audit students’ perceived competence levels in the competencies of auditing and assurance, and the various generic and pervasive skills tested in this study. Furthermore, it was established that the audit simulation had a greater effect on the audit students’ perceived broad competence levels (i.e. auditing and assurance, and generic and pervasive skills) and their understanding of the audit process as a whole, in relation to just attending normal lectures. The qualitative findings from the focus group discussions informed the quantitative findings by indicating that the audit simulation proved to be an instrument that, among other things: Summary • Gave students the opportunity to obtain a holistic view of the audit process; • Assisted students in visualising how the audit theory is applied in practice; • Actively involved the students in the learning process; and • Replicated audit practice. Finally, it was confirmed that the newly developed audit simulation takes into account the variables in the audit teaching-learning environment which need consideration if transformation is to take place in the way the audit subject is currently being taught at higher education level. Recommendations on the way forward in audit education, based on the findings in this thesis, were also provided. This study provides audit lecturers and other audit educators around the world with a newly developed, empirically evaluated audit simulation which can be applied in the audit classroom as well as assist in answering the current call for change to audit education.<br>PhD (Accountancy), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

碩士<br>國立臺灣師範大學<br>資訊工程研究所<br>100<br>Most of the classrooms come with blackboards, and blackboards are widely used as a teaching prop in lecture video recordings. However, there are very few discussions about lecture video recordings that use blackboard as teaching prop concerning its multimedia semantics analysis. The article used a visual and optical based research method to explore speaker’s body languages and tone of speech in the blackboard lecture recordings, and how the amount of attention to pay in different segments of lecture recordings to enhance students’ learning. The visual analysis focused on semantics implied in speaker’s postures. The optical analysis focused on the variations of speaker’s speech emotions in his flow of teaching. The article proposed a speech emotion recognition model that divides speech emotions into five categories of happy, angry, bored, sad, and normal. The results of the analysis showed semantic intensity of the speaker and the importance of speakers teaching in different segments, and how students can learn more effectively with their variations in amount of attention according to the importance of speakers’ teaching throughout lecture video recordings.

博士<br>國立暨南國際大學<br>資訊工程學系<br>98<br>This thesis presents a framework for authoring, storing, retrieving, and presenting music lectures on the Web. For a synchronized presentation between score and recorded performance audio, we propose a dynamic programming algorithm for Score-to-Wave alignment to explore the relations between positions on music score images and the time of corresponding performance recording. We propose a pitch extraction technique to transcribe performance audio into the symbolic domain. Transcription errors, however, are inevitable, especially for polyphonic music or multi-instruments music because of the complex harmonics of different instruments. We also developed a score image recognition engine to extract music notes from score images. After the audio and image are transcribed to notes, the proposed alignment algorithm is applied on them even if both of them contain errors. The aligned music score images and performance recordings can be attached to many kinds of teaching materials. With a synchronized presentation, learners can read music scores and get instructional information when listening to certain sections of music pieces. An evaluation was made to obtain user feedback based on their subjective experience when using our system. The percentage of bars which were considered as aligned perfectly or within acceptable limits was 95.63%. The questionnaire in the evaluation system also reported positive opinions from both engineers and musicians.