Designing a Comprehensive Understanding of Digital Transformation and its Impact

Many researchers, managers, and companies are currently dealing with digital transformation. Yet, there exists a research gap on the exact meaning and scope of this transformation. In this paper, an in-depth literature study was performed and synthesized to inductively construct a conceptual framework that reconciles the distinct definitions and aspects of digital transformation. From the framework, we derived a novel and comprehensive definition of digital transformation which was validated against the literature and shown to be exhaustive. Furthermore, our definition explicitly explains why digital transformation is happening and accelerating. Researchers and practitioners can use the framework to position their work and to gain a better understanding of its wide scope and impacts. This work can be among the first steps towards a unified understanding of digital transformation

Maximizing Competency Education and Blended Learning: Insights from Experts

In May 2014, CompetencyWorks brought together twenty-three technical assistance providers to examine their catalytic role in implementing next generation learning models, share each other's knowledge and expertise about blended learning and competency education, and discuss next steps to move the field forward with a focus on equity and quality. Our strategy maintains that by building the knowledge and networks of technical assistance providers, these groups can play an even more catalytic role in advancing the field. The objective of the convening was to help educate and level set the understanding of competency education and its design elements, as well as to build knowledge about using blended learning modalities within competency-based environments. This paper attempts to draw together the wide-ranging conversations from the convening to provide background knowledge for educators to understand what it will take to transform from traditional to personalized, competency-based systems that take full advantage of blended learning

Mapping and Developing Service Design Research in the UK.

This report is the outcome of the Service Design Research UK (SDR UK) Network with Lancaster University as primary investigator and London College of Communication, UAL as co-investigator. This project was funded as part of an Arts and Humanities Research Council Network grant. Service Design Research UK (SDR UK), funded by an AHRC Network Grant, aims to create a UK research network in an emerging field in Design that is Service Design. This field has a recent history and a growing, but still small and dispersed, research community that strongly needs support and visibility to consolidate its knowledge base and enhance its potential impact. Services represent a significant part of the UK economy and can have a transformational role in our society as they affect the way we organize, move, work, study or take care of our health and family. Design introduces a more human centred and creative approach to service innovation; this is critical to delivering more effective and novel solutions that have the potential to tackle contemporary challenges. Service Design Research UK reviewed and consolidated the emergence of Service Design within the estalished field of Design

Designing a New Model for Clinical Education: An Innovative Approach.

To keep pace with the ever-changing health care delivery system, it is important to transform the way future nurses are educated, both in classroom and in clinical settings, to care for people along the life and care continuum, not only in acute-care settings. The purpose of this article is to describe a new approach to educating baccalaureate nursing students using immersion practicums that expose students to population health, transitions of care, care coordination, and the multiple roles a nurse engages in along the continuum. The curriculum includes 5 immersions, each with a specific life and care continuum focus to develop anticipatory thinkers

General guidelines for designing bilingual low cost digital library services suitable for special library users in developing countries and the Arabic speaking world

The World is witnessing a considerable transformation from print based-formats to elec-tronic-based formats thanks to advanced computing technology, which has a profound impact on the dissemination of nearly all previous formats of publications into digital formats on computer networks. Text, still and moving images, sound tracks, music, and almost all known formats can be stored and retrieved on computer magnetic disk. Over the last two decades, a number of special libraries and information centres in the Arab world have introduced electronic resources into their library services. Very few have implemented automated and integrated systems. Despite the im-portance of designing digital libraries not merely for accessing to or retrieval of information but rather for the provision of electronic services, hardly any special library has started the design of digital library services. Managers of special libraries and information centres in developing countries in general and in the Arab world in particular should start building their local digital libraries, as the benefit of establishing such electronic services is considerably massive and well known for expansion of re-search activities and for delivering services that satisfy the needs of targeted end-users. The aim of this paper is to provide general guideline for design of special low cost digital library providing ser-vices that are most frequently required by various categories of special library users in developing countries. This paper also aims at illustrating strategies and method approaches that can be adopted for building such projects. Seeing the importance of designing an inexpensive digital li-brary as basic principle for the design accordingly, the utilisation of today's ICTs and freely avail-able open sources software is the right path for accomplishing such goal. The paper intends to de-scribe the phases and stages required for building such projects from scratch. It also aims at high-lighting the barriers and obstacles facing Arabic content and how could such problems overcome

A Case for Co-Ops

abstract: Abstract A Case for Co-Ops (AC4CO) is a digital media outreach project that is intended to explore methods for increasing the impact of sustainability solutions, by helping to translate research implications into practical approaches for sustainable business design. The goal for this project is to increase public awareness regarding latent sustainability benefits offered by the proliferation of worker-owned social enterprises. In effort to achieve this goal, AC4CO pulls together a collection of information and resources regarding the design of worker-owned business models that implement social and environmental safeguards. This collated outreach material is hosted on a dedicated website, which decentralizes solutions by making educational material accessible to a diverse audience. Notably, AC4CO features edits from exclusive one-on-one interviews with leading academic scholars from the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability at ASU, who share their expert understanding of various sustainable business practices. Each expert offers insight into an integral piece within the constellation of considerations that are involved in the design of sustainable social enterprise models – from procurement policies to waste reduction strategies. Parallel to these interviews, AC4CO also showcases the design process for an emerging, sustainable worker cooperative, by highlighting the incubation of a local beverage business called Together We Brew. This incubation process was directed by fellow sustainability solutions graduate student, Nick Shivka, in collaboration with his ASU project partners, on behalf of their incubator program’s pilot cohort of worker-owner recruits. Weaving these aspects, AC4CO’s video components synthesize fundamental research-based knowledge of solution strategies into plainly spoken dialogue and augments the discussion with tangibility that is delivered through a visual narrative. This narrative lends plausibility to the task of designing business solution strategies, by providing viewers a look into the process as peers work together to figure out how to structure a cooperative business model that can present viable economic opportunity, while also promoting social equity and environmental protection. By stripping away scientific research jargon and simultaneously presenting a visual rendering of a theory of change, AC4CO’s approach frames the content of the video components in a way that enables an inclusive vision to be shared with a broad working-class audience. This method is intended to foster popular appeal, by distilling complex and varying issues into concise key points, while following a clear and coherent storytelling strategy for sustainability solutions. Functioning as a call to action, these video components serve a critical role in the overall digital media outreach project by piquing the curiosity of viewers and inspiring them to engage with the website to learn more. In doing so, the video components support the website’s central mission of providing a consolidated anthology of educational and resource tools, as a strategy for encouraging workers to join the movement by creating new sustainable and worker-owned social enterprises around the United States