A Review of the "Digital Turn" in the New Literacy Studies

Digital communication has transformed literacy practices and assumed great importance in the functioning of workplace, recreational, and community contexts. This article reviews a decade of empirical work of the New Literacy Studies, identifying the shift toward research of digital literacy applications. The article engages with the central theoretical, methodological, and pragmatic challenges in the tradition of New Literacy Studies, while highlighting the distinctive trends in the digital strand. It identifies common patterns across new literacy practices through cross-comparisons of ethnographic research in digital media environments. It examines ways in which this research is taking into account power and pedagogy in normative contexts of literacy learning using the new media. Recommendations are given to strengthen the links between New Literacy Studies research and literacy curriculum, assessment, and accountability in the 21st century

Canadian national sport organisations’ use of the web for relationship marketing in promoting sport participation

Sport participation development requires a systematic process which involves knowledge creation, dissemination and interactions between National Sport Organisations, participants, clubs and associations as well as other agencies. Using a relationship marketing approach (Grönroos, 1997, Gummesson, 2002, Olkkonen, 1999), this paper addressed the question ‘How do Canadian NSOs use the Web, in terms of functionality and services offered, to create and maintain relationships with sport participants and their sport delivery partners?’ Ten Canadian NSOs’ websites were examined: functionality was analysed using Burgess and Cooper’s (2000) eMICA model, while NSOs’ utilisation of the Internet to establish and maintain relationships with sport participants was analysed using Wang, Head and Archer’s (2000) relationship-building process model for the Web. It was found that Canadian NSOs were receptive to the use of the Web, but their information-gathering and dissemination activities, which make-up the relationship-building process, appear sparse, and in some cases are lagging behind the voluntary sector in the country

An investigation into the perspectives of providers and learners on MOOC accessibility

An effective open eLearning environment should consider the target learner’s abilities, learning goals, where learning takes place, and which specific device(s) the learner uses. MOOC platforms struggle to take these factors into account and typically are not accessible, inhibiting access to environments that are intended to be open to all. A series of research initiatives are described that are intended to benefit MOOC providers in achieving greater accessibility and disabled learners to improve their lifelong learning and re-skilling. In this paper, we first outline the rationale, the research questions, and the methodology. The research approach includes interviews, online surveys and a MOOC accessibility audit; we also include factors such the risk management of the research programme and ethical considerations when conducting research with vulnerable learners. Preliminary results are presented from interviews with providers and experts and from analysis of surveys of learners. Finally, we outline the future research opportunities. This paper is framed within the context of the Doctoral Consortium organised at the TEEM'17 conference

Geographical Information Systems: the past, present and future

The main challenges of the XXI century are caused by the large amount of geospatial information through a GIS. Throughout time there have been many attempts to define Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Yet there is still no consensus on its definition and to restrict it to one is limited. In the acronym - Geographic Information Systems - geographic refers to the Earth's surface and near-surface, therefore, all human production and activity, as well as non-human are possible to spatialize using GIS.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

An institutional perspective on the diffusion of international management system standards : the case of the Environmental management standard ISO 14001.

This paper analyzes how national institutional factors affect the adoption of the intemational environmental management standard ISO 14001, using a panel of 139 countries from 1996 to 2006. The analysis emphasizes that during the emerging phase of the standard, the potentiallack of consensus within the constituents of the national institutional environment conceming the value of a new standard could send mixed signals to firrns about the standard. The resuIts show that in the early phase of adoption, regulative and norrnative forces within the institutional environment can work against each other. Results also show that regulative or coercive forces playa relatively more important role in the early phase of adoption of the standard than in the subsequent phases of diffusion. In the later phases of diffusion of ISO 14001, norrnative forces, such as the diffusion of other management standards, as well as factors related to trade, playa more important role. Because of the similarities between environmental management standards and corporate social responsibility standards, this study can help identify sorne of the challenges for diffusion of ISO management standards in the area of social responsibility.Environmental management standard; ISO 14001;

Online Information Systems with Alien Species Occurrence Records in Europe: Coverage, Complementarity and Compatibility

This report assesses the coverage of thirty existing on-line national, regional and global databases from which alien species occurrence records within the territory of the European Union can be retrieved. In addition, it quantifies their degree of complementarity, and as such the added value of an integrated information system. Finally, it includes a qualitative evaluation of the feasibility of combining alien species information from existing databases at EU level. Our comparative analysis of occurrence data across 30 online databases with alien species records uncovers a high degree of complementarity of information. The most comprehensive resource for country level alien species occurrences in Europe (DAISIE) fails to report about one out of every four species known to be alien to one or more countries within the EU27 + Norway territory. When accessing only a single database, a minimum of 10,000 species by country records stay unaccounted for at European level. The distributed and largely independent nature of existing alien species information systems has multiple consequences: (i) In the absence of an overarching data exploration system, it complicates the retrieval of information, and the identification of knowledge gaps; (ii) It allows systems to diverge and as such become less compatible; (iii) It potentially makes inefficient use of existing financial and intellectual resources. The efficiency and accuracy of existing databases could be improved if communication between systems was enhanced. Expert knowledge could be shared and harmonization of the information would facilitate the retrieval of information, for example through a common network of interoperable web services. Integrated alien species databases currently report occurrences at country level, with limited value for scientists and managers. A shift towards georeferenced occurrences could be achieved in a cost-effective way by link linking to biodiversity databases and digitized archives of relevant journals.JRC.DDG.H.5-Rural, water and ecosystem resource

What Works in Community Profiling? Initial reflections from the WWS Project in West Dunbartonshire

This paper discusses the experience of WWS, Glasgow Centre for Population Health and the West Dunbartonshire Community Planning Team in developing community profiles for the purposes of place-based working. The key learning points from this paper are: With new legislation in Scotland driving a renewed emphasis on place-based working, both Community Planning Partnerships and Health & Social Care Partnerships will need to be able to work more flexibly with data at a range of small area geographies, and in response to different thematic areas of public service reform. A lack of capacity to work in this way could be a barrier to collaboration between services and partnerships and to the potential for turning evidence into action. For some CPPs, community profiling - a process that involves bringing local data together in a concise, accessible, presentation style- will require investment in a new technological infrastructure; in-house training for staff with some level of analytical ability and/or recruitment of staff with specialist analytic skills; and specialist support to develop the capacity of staff to interpret and make sense of local data so that it is more accessible and meaningful to local partners and communities. In the context of the Community Empowerment Act 2015, community profiling could be used to promote greater openness and transparency between service providers and communities, to highlight differences – and often inequalities - and to provoke discussion and responses

Performance assessment of urban precinct design: a scoping study

Executive Summary: Significant advances have been made over the past decade in the development of scientifically and industry accepted tools for the performance assessment of buildings in terms of energy, carbon, water, indoor environment quality etc. For resilient, sustainable low carbon urban development to be realised in the 21st century, however, will require several radical transitions in design performance beyond the scale of individual buildings. One of these involves the creation and application of leading edge tools (not widely available to built environment professions and practitioners) capable of being applied to an assessment of performance across all stages of development at a precinct scale (neighbourhood, community and district) in either greenfield, brownfield or greyfield settings. A core aspect here is the development of a new way of modelling precincts, referred to as Precinct Information Modelling (PIM) that provides for transparent sharing and linking of precinct object information across the development life cycle together with consistent, accurate and reliable access to reference data, including that associated with the urban context of the precinct. Neighbourhoods are the ‘building blocks’ of our cities and represent the scale at which urban design needs to make its contribution to city performance: as productive, liveable, environmentally sustainable and socially inclusive places (COAG 2009). Neighbourhood design constitutes a major area for innovation as part of an urban design protocol established by the federal government (Department of Infrastructure and Transport 2011, see Figure 1). The ability to efficiently and effectively assess urban design performance at a neighbourhood level is in its infancy. This study was undertaken by Swinburne University of Technology, University of New South Wales, CSIRO and buildingSMART Australasia on behalf of the CRC for Low Carbon Living