Collaborative multidisciplinary learning : quantity surveying students’ perspectives

The construction industry is highly fragmented and is known for its adversarial culture, culminating in poor quality projects not completed on time or within budget. The aim of this study is thus to guide the design of QS programme curricula in order to help students develop the requisite knowledge and skills to work more collaboratively in their multi-disciplinary future workplaces. A qualitative approach was considered appropriate as the authors were concerned with gathering an initial understanding of what students think of multi-disciplinary learning. The data collection method used was a questionnaire which was developed by the Behaviours4Collaboration (B4C) team. Knowledge gaps were still found across all the key areas where a future QS practitioner needs to be collaborative (either as a project contributor or as a project leader) despite the need for change instigated by the multi-disciplinary (BIM) education revolution. The study concludes that universities will need to be selective in teaching, and innovative in reorienting, QS education so that a collaborative BIM education can be effected in stages, increasing in complexity as the students’ technical knowledge grows. This will help students to build the competencies needed to make them future leaders. It will also support programme currency and delivery

Exploring the Characteristics of Adults’ Online Learning Activities: a Case Study of EdX Online Institute

Online learning has become a prevailing trend among adult learners. Therefore, this study investigated the learning time preference and the relationship between the course completion and learning activities among adult learners based on data from one online learning platform. Results indicate that a periodical fluctuation of participating online course study exists among adult learners. Additionally, the activity of posting on the discussion board is a main learning activity factor that influences their online course completion. It is expected that this study would help online learning system designers, education administrators and instructors to better understand the characteristics of adult learners and their learning activities to provide better accessibility and flexibility in online learning environments for them

Improvements of Decision Support Systems for Public Administrations via a Mechanism of Co-creation of Value

This paper focuses on a possible improvement of knowledge-based decision support systems for human resource management within Public Administrations, using a co-creation of value's mechanism, according to the Service-Dominant Logic (SDL) paradigm. In particular, it applies ontology-driven data entry procedures to trigger the cooperation between the Public Administration itself and its employees. Advantages in such sense are evident: constraining the data entry process by means of the term definition ontology improves the quality of gathered data, thus reducing potential mismatching problems and allowing a suitable skill gap analysis among real and ideal workers competence profiles. The procedure foresees the following steps: analyzing organograms and job descriptions; modelling Knowledge, Skills and Attitudes (KSA) for job descriptions; transforming KSAs of job descriptions into a standard-based model with integrations of other characteristics; extracting information from Curricula Vitae according to the selected model; comparing profiles and roles played by the employees. The 'a priori' ontology-driven approach adequately supports the operations that involve both the Public Administration and employees, as for the data storage of job descriptions and curricula vitae. The comparison step is useful to understand if employees perform roles that are coherent with their own professional profiles. The proposed approach has been experimented on a small test case and the results show that its objective evaluation represents an improvement for a decision support system for the re-organization of Italian Public Administrations where, unfortunately often, people are engaged in activities that are not so close to their competences

Imparting digital skills to people aged 55 years and over in the UK

This research has been conducted by The Open University, UK and has been inspired by the authors’ association with Age UK Milton Keynes. Our aim has been to present a case for imparting digital skills to people aged over 55 years of age, and to present strategies, which partnerships of academic institutions, businesses, and organisations in the voluntary sector (e.g. Age UK, Carers UK) could take forward. Some of our recommendations include: •the need for more robust evidence for the efficiency and effectiveness of digital inclusion initiatives for their sustainability, cost-effectiveness, and their impact; •design of evidence-based training initiatives for digital inclusion of older people; •highlighting the significance of digital skills training of the ageing workforce; •aiming for digital competence in training initiatives so that people develop skills along with knowledge and attitudes – so that they can apply what they have learned to other emerging technologies, contexts, devices and platforms; •inter-generational digital inclusion initiatives; •improving and extending partnership working with the voluntary sector such as Age UK and Carers UK; •Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programme(s) for senior managers on provding support to the older workforce (including carers and disabled people); •online learning programmes and/or certification for designers/content developers - training them on the accessible (inclusive) design of online services (including websites, smart phones or mobile interfaces) and smart spaces for an ageing society

Quantity surveying education and the benchmarking of future needs

The education and development needs of architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) students has received a great deal of attention in recent years. The dynamic nature of the construction industry coupled with the ever-changing needs of clients has put sustained pressure on the AEC curricula of higher education institutions (HEIs). This is exacerbated by the complexities of modern-day buildings/infrastructures and project teams. The education and development needs of AEC professionals have never been more important. As a vocational subject, the quantity surveying (QS) undergraduate courses delivered in HEIs are designed to prepare students for the world of practice and to deal with emerging challenges (or at least with those intentions). The extent to which graduates from these programmes fulfil this expectation is open to debate and interpretation and continues to generate considerable interest and investigation. The thesis draws upon the wide-ranging perspectives in the field and beyond as the publications were explored from a wider theoretical background and the findings compared with several other important studies.The main finding associated with vocational QS education is that there is general dissatisfaction with graduate attainments due to a tripartite pull on their training needs. As with APC requirements, defining the levels of attainment of each RICS competency and the extent of training required to cope with the critical challenges and emerging roles in a dynamic industry should inform the development of an adaptable curriculum.The principal conclusion relating to education for sustainability is that a lack of definition and common agreement on what sustainable development entails is causing different interpretations by HEIs and hindering the development of a structured QS curriculum. A minimum standard which aligns the views of major stakeholders should produce graduates with the required level of knowledge and skills in sustainability.Regarding BIM education, the critical barriers include the trio of high cost, human factors and inconsistent standards. Despite multi-disciplinary learning, knowledge gaps were found in the collaborative behaviours of QS students. This thesis, thus, concludes that still more needs to be done to move away from the speciality and insularity of the typical BE discipline to the more pluralist and collaborative multi-disciplinary curricula of the future

Proceedings of the Association for Library and Information Science Education Annual Conference: ALISE 2018

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Actas de las V Jornadas ScienCity 2022. Fomento de la Cultura Científica, Tecnológica y de Innovación en Ciudades Inteligentes

ScienCity es una actividad que viene siendo continuada desde 2018 con el objetivo de dar a conocer los conocimientos y tecnologías emergentes siendo investigados en las universidades, informar de experiencias, servicios e iniciativas puestas ya en marcha por instituciones y empresas, llegar hasta decisores políticos que podrían crear sinergias, incentivar la creación de ideas y posibilidades de desarrollo conjuntas, implicar y provocar la participación ciudadana, así como gestar una red internacional multidisciplinar de investigadores que garantice la continuación de futuras ediciones. En 2022 se recibieron un total de 48 trabajos repartidos en 25 ponencias y 24 pósteres pertenecientes a 98 autores de 14 instituciones distintas de España, Portugal, Polonia y Países Bajos.Fundación Española para la Ciencia y la Tecnología-Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades; Consejería de la Presidencia, Administración Pública e Interior de la Junta de Andalucía; Estrategia de Política de Investigación y Transferencia de la Universidad de Huelva; Cátedra de Innovación Social de Aguas de Huelva; Cátedra de la Provincia; Grupo de investigación TEP-192 de Control y Robótica; Centro de Investigación en Tecnología, Energía y Sostenibilidad (CITES