Knowledge Transfer Needs and Methods

INE/AUTC 12.3

Pioneers, subcultures and cooperatives: The grassroots augmentation of urban places

About the book: There have been numerous possible scenarios depicted on the impact of the internet on urban spaces. Considering ubiquitous/pervasive computing, mobile, wireless connectivity and the acceptance of the Internet as a non extraordinary part of our everyday lives mean that physical urban space is augmented, and digital in itself. This poses new problems as well as opportunities to those who have to deal with it. This book explores the intersection and articulation of physical and digital environments and the ways they can extend and reshape a spirit of place. It considers this from three main perspectives: the implications for the public sphere and urban public or semi-public spaces; the implications for community regeneration and empowerment; and the dilemmas and challenges which the augmentation of space implies for urbanists. Grounded with international real -life case studies, this is an up-to-date, interdisciplinary and holistic overview of the relationships between cities, communities and high technologies

Improving the Yields in Higher Education: Findings from Lumina Foundation's State-Based Efforts to Increase Productivity in U.S. Higher Education

In 2008, Lumina asked SPEC Associates (SPEC) to evaluate the foundation's grant making aimed at improving the productivity of higher education through statewide policy and program change. The initiative was initially known as Making Opportunity Affordable and later became known more broadly as Lumina's higher education productivity initiative. Eleven states received planning grants in 2008 and a year later seven of these states received multi-year grants to implement their productivity plans. In 2009, Lumina published Four Steps to Finishing First in Higher Education to frame the content of its productivity work. In 2010, the foundation, working with HCM Strategists, launched the Strategy Labs Network to deliver just-in-time technical assistance, engagement, informationsharing and convenings to states. Lumina engaged SPEC to evaluate these productivity investments in the seven states through exploring this over-arching question: What public will building, advocacy, public policy changes, and system or statewide practices are likely to impact higher education productivity for whom and in what circumstances, and which of these are likely to be sustainable, transferable, and/or scalable

CoP working in Greenport Venlo (NL) to develop sustainable regional development : from conflict to common interest

This paper addresses the changing of organisations, the emergence of new partnerships, new ways of working and the new perspectives, creativeness, knowledge and meaning these changes generate. The authors use the case of the project Greenport Venlo in the Netherlands to illustrate the occurrence of a totally different way to develop innovative and sustainable goals in regional development by new partnerships

Continuous Planning and Execution with Timelines

Planning systems need to be endowed with some additional features to cope effectively with execution: e.g., the ability to keep the plan database updated with respect to the actual feedbacks provided by the controlled system, to mention but one. In this paper, we identify a set of noteworthy planning and execution open issues relatively to the timeline-based planning approach. We address those issues presenting a domain independent deliberative system, implemented on top of the APSI-TRF, the A PSI Timeline-based Representation Framework, extended with timeline dispatching and execution-supervision capabilities so as to allow continuous planning and closed-loop re-planning activities. Some ongoing research directions are also briefly introduced

Organisation of the decision process in public enterprises in Kenya: an approach to improve their internal performance

Efficiency of public enterprises can be influenced in a high degree by the decision making of its management. This paper deals with an approach to analyse their decision making process. Taking into account the specific constraints and structure of public enterprises it points out how the knowledge about organisation and participation is applicable to improve the decision making process at various management levels of the organisation

Increasing Subjective Client Agency for Psychotherapy at a Veterans Administration Hospital: A Process-Outcome Study

Subjective client agency, defined as client expectations for actively influencing therapy process and outcome, is hypothesized to contribute to psychotherapy process and outcome. Previous work has linked higher degrees of subjective client agency to more positive client ratings of the therapeutic working alliance, while results for outcome studies are mostly non-significant. The current project extended the limited body of research in this area by (a) examining associations for subjective client agency at the outset of group therapy with ratings of group process, therapeutic alliance and treatment outcome for 84 clients at a Veterans Administration outpatient clinic, and (b) attempting to manipulate subjective client agency via a pre-therapy orientation. Internal locus of control for therapy was associated with positive group process ratings. Expectations for taking verbal initiative were associated with greater client-rated agreement on therapeutic goals. However, neither of these operational definitions of SCA was significantly related to therapist-rated alliance or to symptom change in the first eight weeks of group therapy. Moreover, two distinct versions of the pre-therapy orientation failedto alter veterans\u27 expectations for taking an active role in treatment. Implications for further research are discussed