Models for online, open, flexible and technology enhanced higher education across the globe – a comparative analysis

Digital technology has become near ubiquitous in many countries today or is on a path to reach this state in the near future. Across the globe the share of internet users, for instance, has jumped in the last ten years. In Europe most countries have a share of internet users near to or above 90% in 2016 (last year available for international comparisons), in China the current share is 53%, but this has grown from just 16% in 2007, even in Ethiopia the share has grown from 0.4% to 15.4% in the same period (data from ITU). At the same time expectations of widespread adoption of digital solutions in higher education have been rising. In 2017 the New Media Consortium’s Horizon Report predicted that adaptive learning would take less than a year to be widely adopted (Adams Becker et al., 2017). And projects such as ‘Virtually Inspired’ are showcasing creative examples of how new technologies are already being harnessed to improve the quality of teaching and learning. Furthermore, discussion of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals emphasise the key potentials that digital technology holds for achieving the goals for education in 2030 (UNESCO, 2017). These developments lead university and college leadership to the question of how they should position their institution. What type of digitalisation initiatives can be found practice beyond best practices and future potentials? This is the question that this study attempts to answer. It sets out to analyse how higher education providers from across the world are harnessing digitalisation to improve teaching and learning and learner support and to identify emerging types of practice. For this, it focuses on the dimensions of flexibility of provision (in terms of time, place and pace) and openness of provision (in terms of who has access to learning and support and who is involved in the design of learning provision), as both of these dimensions can significantly benefit from integration of digital solutions. The method of information collation used by the study was a global survey of higher education institutions (HEIs) covering all world continents, more than thirty countries and 69 cases. The survey found that nearly three-quarters of all HEIs have at least one strategic focus and typologies were developed based on this analysis to group HEIs with similar strategic focuses. Overall, the findings suggest that most higher education providers are just at the beginning of developing comprehensive strategies for harnessing digitalisation. For this reason, the authors of this study believe that providers can benefit from the outcomes of this study’s research, as it can be used by university and college leadership for benchmarking similarities and differences and for cooperative peer learning between institutions. The database of cases and the guidelines for reviewing current strategies, which accompany this study, aim to facilitate this learning and evaluation process

Information scraps: how and why information eludes our personal information management tools

In this paper we describe information scraps -- a class of personal information whose content is scribbled on Post-it notes, scrawled on corners of random sheets of paper, buried inside the bodies of e-mail messages sent to ourselves, or typed haphazardly into text files. Information scraps hold our great ideas, sketches, notes, reminders, driving directions, and even our poetry. We define information scraps to be the body of personal information that is held outside of its natural or We have much still to learn about these loose forms of information capture. Why are they so often held outside of our traditional PIM locations and instead on Post-its or in text files? Why must we sometimes go around our traditional PIM applications to hold on to our scraps, such as by e-mailing ourselves? What are information scraps' role in the larger space of personal information management, and what do they uniquely offer that we find so appealing? If these unorganized bits truly indicate the failure of our PIM tools, how might we begin to build better tools? We have pursued these questions by undertaking a study of 27 knowledge workers. In our findings we describe information scraps from several angles: their content, their location, and the factors that lead to their use, which we identify as ease of capture, flexibility of content and organization, and avilability at the time of need. We also consider the personal emotive responses around scrap management. We present a set of design considerations that we have derived from the analysis of our study results. We present our work on an application platform, jourknow, to test some of these design and usability findings

Will SDN be part of 5G?

For many, this is no longer a valid question and the case is considered settled with SDN/NFV (Software Defined Networking/Network Function Virtualization) providing the inevitable innovation enablers solving many outstanding management issues regarding 5G. However, given the monumental task of softwarization of radio access network (RAN) while 5G is just around the corner and some companies have started unveiling their 5G equipment already, the concern is very realistic that we may only see some point solutions involving SDN technology instead of a fully SDN-enabled RAN. This survey paper identifies all important obstacles in the way and looks at the state of the art of the relevant solutions. This survey is different from the previous surveys on SDN-based RAN as it focuses on the salient problems and discusses solutions proposed within and outside SDN literature. Our main focus is on fronthaul, backward compatibility, supposedly disruptive nature of SDN deployment, business cases and monetization of SDN related upgrades, latency of general purpose processors (GPP), and additional security vulnerabilities, softwarization brings along to the RAN. We have also provided a summary of the architectural developments in SDN-based RAN landscape as not all work can be covered under the focused issues. This paper provides a comprehensive survey on the state of the art of SDN-based RAN and clearly points out the gaps in the technology.Comment: 33 pages, 10 figure

High dimensionality carrierless amplitude phase modulation technique for radio over fiber system

Advanced modulation formats such as carrierless amplitude phase (CAP) modulation technique is one of the solutions to increase flexibility and high bit rates to support multi-level and multi-dimensional modulations with the absence of sinusoidal carrier. Recent work are focussing on the 2D CAP-64 QAM Radio-over-Fiber (RoF) system but no extension of higher dimensions is reported. This thesis expands the area of CAP modulation technique and RoF system. The work described in this thesis is devoted to the investigation of 1.25 GSa/s sampling rate for multi-level and multi-dimensional CAP in point-to-point (P2P) and RoF system at 3 km single-mode fiber (SMF). Another advanced modulation format which is known as discrete multitone (DMT) is compared with CAP modulation in order to observe the performance in different modulation schemes. The 4QAM-DMT and 16QAM-DMT at different number of subcarriers are carried out in this propagation. Based on the results, the transmission performance in terms of BER and received optical power for RoF transmission are degraded to almost 3 dB when comparing to 3 km SMF transmission. These are caused by the wireless power loss and impairment effects. The bit rate and spectral efficiency can be increased with the increasing number of levels, and may decreased once the number of dimensions is increased due to the higher up-sampling factor. However, the additional dimensions can be used to support multiple service applications. Therefore, it can be concluded that CAP has better performance as compared to DMT in terms of higher spectral efficiency and data rate. To conclude, the results presented in this thesis exhibit high feasibility of CAP modulation in the increasing number of dimensions and levels. Thus, CAP has the potential to be utilized in multiple service allocations for different number of users

Report of the 6th Tanzania Joint Annual Health Sector Review 4th-6th April 2005 Kunduchi Beach Hotel,Dar es Salaam

The 6th Annual Joint Health Sector Review was concluded successfully at Kunduchi Beach hotel,between 4th and 6th April 2005. It was preceded by a Technical preparatory meeting, held at Belinda Hotel. This year’s was the largest review yet, with over 200 participants. As well as government and donor representatives, the meeting was attended by a variety of civil society and NGO representatives. The Honourable Minister of Health opened the meeting. Judged by the milestones, performance over the last year has been mixed. The advent of the Joint Rehabilitation Fund, the successful integration of Health into MKUKUTA, the scaling up of AIDS Care and Treatment and a steep budget increase (FY2004/5) were all registered as achievements. However, little if any progress was achieved in tackling the Human Resources crisis. The meeting resolved to address the issue with renewed commitment and urgency. A good deal of quantitative data was presented at the meeting, including the State of Health report, the updated health sector performance profile, and the ten-district study. In most respects these reports point to improvement in health service delivery between 2000 and 2003. The major areas of concern were maternal health services and child malnutrition – neither of which seem to have made any improvement over the last 2 decades. Weaknesses in the routine information system mean that data for 2004 is still patchy. Public Private Partnership was the theme of the technical review this year. The clearest message emerging in plenary was the need to replace the current government subsidy to faith-based providers by a service agreement, linked to outputs. Another resonating theme was the need to expand the opportunity for NGOs (including FBOs) to participate in health planning and management at district level. More generally, there was a commitment by both public and private stakeholders to deepen their collaboration. The recommendations of the Technical Review extended well beyond these two themes. However, lack of time in plenary precluded reaching consensus on most of the recommendations in the report. A good start has been made with the rehabilitation of district health infrastructure. This is expected to accelerate in the year ahead. Participants called for a holistic approach towards prioritisation and effective monitoring of implementation. The Honourable Minister called for a new approach and renewed urgency in tackling the human resources crisis. The challenges and the priorities are clear enough. But the shared commitment of MOF, PO-PSM, PORALG and MOH will be needed in order to move forward. A cabinet paper was seen as one way to secure this joint commitment. The financing situation for Health has improved markedly. The PER demonstrates a 33% nominal rise in health budget between 2003/4 and this budget year. FY2005/6 will witness a further steep increase. This good news is tempered by the fact that payroll expenditure is not keeping up with “other charges”, and central government expenditure is expanding much faster than local government. Even these increases are not sufficient to cover the requirements of the health sector. A 167 billion resource gap was documented by the MOH. New financial commitments continue to come on stream, often initiated by short-term donor funding. Moreover, a substantial portion of new money coming into the sector is tightly earmarked. Flexible, discretionary resources remain highly constrained and tough choices on resource allocation will have to be made. Detailed discussion of health financing in general, and user charges / CHF in particular, was deferred to the Health Financing Workshop due in early May.\u

Special Libraries, April 1959

Volume 50, Issue 4https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_sl_1959/1003/thumbnail.jp