E-portfolio in education. Practices and reflections

The main activities of the digiFolio Project include: Building a common knowledge base supported by research work on the theory of portfolio usage; Paper and online publication of the results of the research work; Establishment of the pedagogical model for the training course; Analysis of the existing technological infrastructures for digital portfolio usage; Adjustment of the best tools and training course setup; Piloting and evidencing of the training course; Monitoring of the trainees' work by using a specific online teachers' support structure; International seminar. Website: http://digifolioseminar.org/?The present publication addresses the use of digital portfolios in educational context and it is one of the latest dissemination activities of the Digifolio project – Digital Portfolio as a strategy for teachers’ professional development, a COMENIUS 2.1 project which was carried out between 2005 and 2008. It involved several universities and teacher training institutions from five different European countries. The project, which main focus was the reflection on the potentialities of portfolios and digital technologies in the perspective of teachers’ professional development, came to its end with an international seminar which aimed at disseminating the work produced in the frame of a previous teachers training course, as well as allowing and welcoming the contribution of other education professionals with their practices and reflections on the above-mentioned thematic.Europeen Comissio

weSPOT: A personal and social approach to inquiry-based learning

weSPOT is a new European initiative proposing a novel approach for personal and social inquiry-based learning in secondary and higher education. weSPOT aims at enabling students to create their mash-ups out of cloud based tools and services in order to perform scientific investigations. Students will also be able to share their inquiry accomplishments in social networks and receive feedback from the learning environment and their peers. This paper presents the research framework of the weSPOT project, as well as the initial inquiry-based learning scenarios that will be piloted by the project in real-life educational settings

Basel II and the German credit crunch?

(Abstract) In the market for German real estate finance at the end of 2001 a phenomenon could be identified that shows significant parallels to the shortening of credit supply in the US market in the early nineties, called the credit crunch. There are two basic reasons that explain the withdrawal of mortgage banks from the current events in real estate debt finance. Both are linked to a lack of risk identification in real estate investment. First, mortgage banks are engaged in a portfolio of bad real estate credits. In the past and today, banks do not receive information to price the true property risks. Especially from their money transfer to eastern Germany they still suffer of high deprecations in these engagements. The high impact of single properties can not be diversified. This is why banks were exposed to higher risks than they calculated in their market risk exposure. On the other hand, the preparation for Basel II indicates how sensitive risk have to be treated according to the new regulatory environment. This causes a split of relationship ties where real estate risks were not priced for decades. The result is a failure of all sorts of real estate finance in Germany. From the survey on institutional real estate investment behavior, it becomes evident that market participants ignore property risks and they do not have the instruments available to price these risks. This is why banks act so cautious in preparation for Basel II. Banks will have to find the instruments to either price these property risks or have intermediaries price them and include diversified securities into their holdings. True intermediaries are not present in German real estate finance. Banks failed in their function to price risk and monitor the quality of investors in debt finance. In addition, a lot of direct finance from households to real estate investors as open-ended or closedended funds takes place. We suggest the introduction of a real estate investment banking function that offers true intermediation services. It monitors the risk pricing of real estate investors and places the securitized and rated risk exposure at banks or in the capital market to provide finance to capital seekers. Future real estate investment would be financed risk-adjusted and financing volumes could increase again.

Proceedings ICPW'07: 2nd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web, 22-23 Oct. 2007, Tilburg: NL

Proceedings ICPW'07: 2nd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web, 22-23 Oct. 2007, Tilburg: N

Numerical and Evolutionary Optimization 2020

This book was established after the 8th International Workshop on Numerical and Evolutionary Optimization (NEO), representing a collection of papers on the intersection of the two research areas covered at this workshop: numerical optimization and evolutionary search techniques. While focusing on the design of fast and reliable methods lying across these two paradigms, the resulting techniques are strongly applicable to a broad class of real-world problems, such as pattern recognition, routing, energy, lines of production, prediction, and modeling, among others. This volume is intended to serve as a useful reference for mathematicians, engineers, and computer scientists to explore current issues and solutions emerging from these mathematical and computational methods and their applications

A new methodology for advanced engineering design: Lessons from experimenting C-K Theory driven tools

International audienceThis research shows that C-K Design Theory provides fruitful connections between New Product Development and Knowledge Management issues. Our purpose is to go a step further on the benefits of C-K Theory-based design tools for managing the upstream phases of innovative design processes. Based on 14 industrial case studies conducted between 2009 and 2011, we find that C-K Theory-based design tools enable practitioners to generate and explore various design paths while converging on the most competitive one

Towards Method Component Contextualization

International audienceMethod Engineering (ME) is a discipline which aims to bring effective solutions to the construction, improvement and modification of the methods used to develop Information Systems (IS). Situational Method Engineering (SME) promotes the idea of retrieving, adapting and tailoring components, rather than complete methodologies, to the specific context. Existing SME approaches use the notion of context for characterizing situations of IS development projects and for guiding the method components selection from a repository. However, in the reviewed literature, there is no proposed approach to specify the specific context of method components. This paper provides a detailed vision of context and a process for contextualizing methods in the IS domain. This proposal is illustrated with three case studies: scenario conceptualization, project portfolio management, and decision-making