Towards Design Principles for Data-Driven Decision Making: An Action Design Research Project in the Maritime Industry

Data-driven decision making (DDD) refers to organizational decision-making practices that emphasize the use of data and statistical analysis instead of relying on human judgment only. Various empirical studies provide evidence for the value of DDD, both on individual decision maker level and the organizational level. Yet, the path from data to value is not always an easy one and various organizational and psychological factors mediate and moderate the translation of data-driven insights into better decisions and, subsequently, effective business actions. The current body of academic literature on DDD lacks prescriptive knowledge on how to successfully employ DDD in complex organizational settings. Against this background, this paper reports on an action design research study aimed at designing and implementing IT artifacts for DDD at one of the largest ship engine manufacturers in the world. Our main contribution is a set of design principles highlighting, besides decision quality, the importance of model comprehensibility, domain knowledge, and actionability of results

Involving External Stakeholders in Project Courses

Problem: The involvement of external stakeholders in capstone projects and project courses is desirable due to its potential positive effects on the students. Capstone projects particularly profit from the inclusion of an industrial partner to make the project relevant and help students acquire professional skills. In addition, an increasing push towards education that is aligned with industry and incorporates industrial partners can be observed. However, the involvement of external stakeholders in teaching moments can create friction and could, in the worst case, lead to frustration of all involved parties. Contribution: We developed a model that allows analysing the involvement of external stakeholders in university courses both in a retrospective fashion, to gain insights from past course instances, and in a constructive fashion, to plan the involvement of external stakeholders. Key Concepts: The conceptual model and the accompanying guideline guide the teachers in their analysis of stakeholder involvement. The model is comprised of several activities (define, execute, and evaluate the collaboration). The guideline provides questions that the teachers should answer for each of these activities. In the constructive use, the model allows teachers to define an action plan based on an analysis of potential stakeholders and the pedagogical objectives. In the retrospective use, the model allows teachers to identify issues that appeared during the project and their underlying causes. Drawing from ideas of the reflective practitioner, the model contains an emphasis on reflection and interpretation of the observations made by the teacher and other groups involved in the courses. Key Lessons: Applying the model retrospectively to a total of eight courses shows that it is possible to reveal hitherto implicit risks and assumptions and to gain a better insight into the interaction...Comment: Abstract shortened since arxiv.org limits length of abstracts. See paper/pdf for full abstract. Paper is forthcoming, accepted August 2017. Arxiv version 2 corrects misspelled author nam

Local search: A guide for the information retrieval practitioner

There are a number of combinatorial optimisation problems in information retrieval in which the use of local search methods are worthwhile. The purpose of this paper is to show how local search can be used to solve some well known tasks in information retrieval (IR), how previous research in the field is piecemeal, bereft of a structure and methodologically flawed, and to suggest more rigorous ways of applying local search methods to solve IR problems. We provide a query based taxonomy for analysing the use of local search in IR tasks and an overview of issues such as fitness functions, statistical significance and test collections when conducting experiments on combinatorial optimisation problems. The paper gives a guide on the pitfalls and problems for IR practitioners who wish to use local search to solve their research issues, and gives practical advice on the use of such methods. The query based taxonomy is a novel structure which can be used by the IR practitioner in order to examine the use of local search in IR

Integrating Essential Elements of Person-Centered Transition Planning Practices Into the Development of the Individualized Education Program With All Students with Disabilities

This is the second of two white papers that were developed to look at the potential for integrating a person-centered approach into the design and implementation of transition planning with individuals with disabilities in high school across nine demonstration sites in New York State. While the first paper, Infusing a Person-Centered Approach into Transition Planning for Students with Developmental Disabilities, 2001, looked at the barriers present within and between systems of support, this paper provides a deeper view of the strategies, methods and approaches that proved to be effective in supporting and/or sustaining person-centered practices within the Individualized Education Program (IEP) process. Through an emphasis on the need to utilize post-school outcomes as a basis for transition planning, a real example is provided to highlight the contrast between the use of person-centered practices in the development of an IEP and the use of typical special education programming. A model that overlays person-centered practices into the existing IEP process is suggested along with several suggestions proven effective in leading to seamless transition across the school experience. The paper concludes with a review of the data across the project life (1998-2000) identifying the accomplishments and challenges experienced by project participants, as well as overall recommendations to the field

POWERPLAY: Training an Increasingly General Problem Solver by Continually Searching for the Simplest Still Unsolvable Problem

Most of computer science focuses on automatically solving given computational problems. I focus on automatically inventing or discovering problems in a way inspired by the playful behavior of animals and humans, to train a more and more general problem solver from scratch in an unsupervised fashion. Consider the infinite set of all computable descriptions of tasks with possibly computable solutions. The novel algorithmic framework POWERPLAY (2011) continually searches the space of possible pairs of new tasks and modifications of the current problem solver, until it finds a more powerful problem solver that provably solves all previously learned tasks plus the new one, while the unmodified predecessor does not. Wow-effects are achieved by continually making previously learned skills more efficient such that they require less time and space. New skills may (partially) re-use previously learned skills. POWERPLAY's search orders candidate pairs of tasks and solver modifications by their conditional computational (time & space) complexity, given the stored experience so far. The new task and its corresponding task-solving skill are those first found and validated. The computational costs of validating new tasks need not grow with task repertoire size. POWERPLAY's ongoing search for novelty keeps breaking the generalization abilities of its present solver. This is related to Goedel's sequence of increasingly powerful formal theories based on adding formerly unprovable statements to the axioms without affecting previously provable theorems. The continually increasing repertoire of problem solving procedures can be exploited by a parallel search for solutions to additional externally posed tasks. POWERPLAY may be viewed as a greedy but practical implementation of basic principles of creativity. A first experimental analysis can be found in separate papers [53,54].Comment: 21 pages, additional connections to previous work, references to first experiments with POWERPLA

Use of nonintrusive sensor-based information and communication technology for real-world evidence for clinical trials in dementia

Cognitive function is an important end point of treatments in dementia clinical trials. Measuring cognitive function by standardized tests, however, is biased toward highly constrained environments (such as hospitals) in selected samples. Patient-powered real-world evidence using information and communication technology devices, including environmental and wearable sensors, may help to overcome these limitations. This position paper describes current and novel information and communication technology devices and algorithms to monitor behavior and function in people with prodromal and manifest stages of dementia continuously, and discusses clinical, technological, ethical, regulatory, and user-centered requirements for collecting real-world evidence in future randomized controlled trials. Challenges of data safety, quality, and privacy and regulatory requirements need to be addressed by future smart sensor technologies. When these requirements are satisfied, these technologies will provide access to truly user relevant outcomes and broader cohorts of participants than currently sampled in clinical trials

Developing the scales on evaluation beliefs of student teachers

The purpose of the study reported in this paper was to investigate the validity and the reliability of a newly developed questionnaire named ‘Teacher Evaluation Beliefs’ (TEB). The framework for developing items was provided by the two models. The first model focuses on Student-Centered and Teacher-Centered beliefs about evaluation while the other centers on five dimensions (what/ who/ when/ why/ how). The validity and reliability of the new instrument was investigated using both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis study (n=446). Overall results indicate that the two-factor structure is more reasonable than the five-factor one. Further research needs additional items about the latent dimensions “what” ”who” ”when” ”why” “how” for each existing factor based on Student-centered and Teacher-centered approaches

Developing a model of the behavioural intentions of older adults towards internet service providers : a UK perspective

Copyright and all rights therein are retained by the authors. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and conditions invoked by each author's copyright. These works may not be re-posted without the explicit permission of the copyright holdersCountries around the globe have an ageing population that faces problems such as cognition, memory and visual difficulties. Mobile devices and products are part of daily life and to utilise them the role of internet service providers is essential. This research-in-progress paper aims to identify and evaluate factors that influence the older population’s (over 50 years) selection of an internet service provider (ISP) as well as their continuous intention and behaviour to remain with the ISP. The outcomes of this research study are aimed at policymakers, academia and industryFinal Published versio

Proceedings of the International Workshop on EuroPLOT Persuasive Technology for Learning, Education and Teaching (IWEPLET 2013)

"This book contains the proceedings of the International Workshop on EuroPLOT Persuasive Technology for Learning, Education and Teaching (IWEPLET) 2013 which was held on 16.-17.September 2013 in Paphos (Cyprus) in conjunction with the EC-TEL conference. The workshop and hence the proceedings are divided in two parts: on Day 1 the EuroPLOT project and its results are introduced, with papers about the specific case studies and their evaluation. On Day 2, peer-reviewed papers are presented which address specific topics and issues going beyond the EuroPLOT scope. This workshop is one of the deliverables (D 2.6) of the EuroPLOT project, which has been funded from November 2010 – October 2013 by the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) of the European Commission through the Lifelong Learning Programme (LLL) by grant #511633. The purpose of this project was to develop and evaluate Persuasive Learning Objects and Technologies (PLOTS), based on ideas of BJ Fogg. The purpose of this workshop is to summarize the findings obtained during this project and disseminate them to an interested audience. Furthermore, it shall foster discussions about the future of persuasive technology and design in the context of learning, education and teaching. The international community working in this area of research is relatively small. Nevertheless, we have received a number of high-quality submissions which went through a peer-review process before being selected for presentation and publication. We hope that the information found in this book is useful to the reader and that more interest in this novel approach of persuasive design for teaching/education/learning is stimulated. We are very grateful to the organisers of EC-TEL 2013 for allowing to host IWEPLET 2013 within their organisational facilities which helped us a lot in preparing this event. I am also very grateful to everyone in the EuroPLOT team for collaborating so effectively in these three years towards creating excellent outputs, and for being such a nice group with a very positive spirit also beyond work. And finally I would like to thank the EACEA for providing the financial resources for the EuroPLOT project and for being very helpful when needed. This funding made it possible to organise the IWEPLET workshop without charging a fee from the participants.