Intelligent student engagement management : applying business intelligence in higher education

Advances in emerging ICT have enabled organisations to develop innovative ways to intelligently collect data that may not be possible before. However, this leads to the explosion of data and unprecedented challenges in making strategic and effective use of available data. This research-in-progress paper presents an action research focusing on applying business intelligence (BI) in a UK higher education institution that has developed a student engagement tracking system (SES) for student engagement management. The current system serves merely as a data collection and processing system, which needs significant enhancement for better decision support. This action research aims to enhance the current SETS with BI solutions and explore its strategic use. The research attempts to follow socio-technical approach in its effort to make the BI application a success. Progress and experience so far has revealed interesting findings on advancing our understanding and research in organisation-wide BI for better decision-making

Big data in higher education: an action research on managing student engagement with business intelligence

This research aims to explore the value of Big Data in student engagement management. It presents an action research on applying BI in a UK higher education institution that has developed and implemented a student engagement tracking system (SES) for better student engagement management. The SES collects data from various sources, including RFID tracking devices across many locations in the campus and student online activities. This public funded research project has enhanced the current SES with BI solutions and raised awareness on the value of the Big Data in improving student experience. The action research concerns with the organizational wide development and deployment of Intelligent Student Engagement System involving a diverse range of stakeholders. The activities undertaken to date have revealed interesting findings and implications for advancing our understanding and research in leveraging the benefit of the Big Data in Higher Education from a socio-technical perspective

Sociolinguistic Conditioning of Phonetic Category Realisation in Non-Native Speech

The realisation of phonetic categories reflects a complex relationship between individual phonetic parameters and both linguistic and extra-linguistic conditioning of language usage. The present paper investigates the effect of selected socio-linguistic variables, such as the age, the amount of language use and cultural/social distance in English used by Polish immigrants to the U.S. Individual parameters used in the realisation of the category ‘voice’ have been found to vary in their sensitivity to extra-linguistic factors: while the production of target-like values of all parameters is related to the age, it is the closure duration that is most stable in the correspondence to the age and level of language proficiency. The VOT and vowel duration, on the other hand, prove to be more sensitive to the amount of language use and attitudinal factors

Organization, Evolution, Cognition and Dynamic Capabilities

Using insights from ‘embodied cognition’ and a resulting ‘cognitive theory of the firm’, I aim to contribute to the further development of evolutionary theory of organizations, in the specification of organizations as ‘interactors’ that carry organizational competencies as ‘replicators’, within industries as ‘populations’. Especially, I analyze how, if at all, ‘dynamic capabilities’ can be fitted into evolutionary theory. I propose that the prime purpose of an organization is to serve as a cognitive ‘focusing device’. Here, cognition has a wide meaning, including perception, interpretation, sense making, and value judgements. I analyse how this yields organizations as cohesive wholes, and differences within and between industries. I propose the following sources of variation: replication in communication, novel combinations of existing knowledge, and a path of discovery by which exploitation leads to exploration. These yield a proposal for dynamic capabilities. I discuss in what sense, and to what extent these sources of variation are ‘blind’, as postulated in evolutionary theory.evolutionary economics;organization;cognition;dynamic capabilities

Organization, Evolution, Cognition and Dynamic Capabilities

Using insights from 'embodied cognition' and a resulting 'cognitive theory of the firm', I aim to contribute to the further development of evolutionary theory of organizations, in the specification of organizations as 'interactors' that carry organizational competencies as 'replicators', within industries as 'populations'.Especially, I analyze how, if at all, 'dynamic capabilities' can be fitted into evolutionary theory.I propose that the prime purpose of an organization is to serve as a cognitive 'focusing device'.Here, cognition has a wide meaning, including perception, interpretation, sense making, and value judgements.I analyse how this yields organizations as cohesive wholes, and differences within and between industries.I propose the following sources of variation: replication in communication, novel combinations of existing knowledge, and a path of discovery by which exploitation leads to exploration. These yield a proposal for dynamic capabilities.I discuss in what sense, and to what extent these sources of variation are 'blind' , as postulated in evolutionary theory.organization;evolution;cognition;dynamic capabilities;learning;invention

Mobile transitions : exploring synergies for urban sustainability research

Urban sustainability approaches focusing on a wide range of topics such as infrastructure and mobility, green construction and neighbourhood planning, or urban nature and green amenities have attracted scholarly interest for over three decades. Recent debates on the role of cities in climate change mitigation have triggered new attempts to conceptually and methodologically grasp the cross-sectorial and cross-level interplay of enrolled actors. Within these debates, urban and economic geographers have increasingly adopted co-evolutionary approaches such as the social studies of technology (SST or ‘transition studies’). Their plea for more spatial sensitivity of the transition approach has led to promising proposals to adapt geographic perspectives to case studies on urban sustainability. This paper advocates engagement with recent work in urban studies, specifically policy mobility, to explore conceptual and methodological synergies. It emphasises four strengths of an integrated approach: (1) a broadened understanding of innovations that emphasises not only processes of knowledge generation but also of knowledge transfer through (2) processes of learning, adaptation and mutation, (3) a relational understanding of the origin and dissemination of innovations focused on the complex nature of cities and (4) the importance of individual actors as agents of change and analytical scale that highlights social processes of innovation. The notion of urban assemblages further allows the operationalisation of both the relational embeddedness of local policies as well as their cross-sectoral actor constellations

Exploring the Impact of Socio-Technical Core-Periphery Structures in Open Source Software Development

In this paper we apply the social network concept of core-periphery structure to the sociotechnical structure of a software development team. We propose a socio-technical pattern that can be used to locate emerging coordination problems in Open Source projects. With the help of our tool and method called TESNA, we demonstrate a method to monitor the socio-technical core-periphery movement in Open Source projects. We then study the impact of different core-periphery movements on Open Source projects. We conclude that a steady core-periphery shift towards the core is beneficial to the project, whereas shifts away from the core are clearly not good. Furthermore, oscillatory shifts towards and away from the core can be considered as an indication of the instability of the project. Such an analysis can provide developers with a good insight into the health of an Open Source project. Researchers can gain from the pattern theory, and from the method we use to study the core-periphery movements

We're on a road to nowhere... new forms of work organization and national cultures

The main objective of this paper is to discuss how far the cultural environment is related to the potential that new forms of work organization, namely autonomy and teamwork, have for success. To accomplish this objective two main approaches will be used: on the one hand, the Socio-Technical Systems(STS) approach, as the main theoretical background for new forms of work organization; and on the other hand, Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions as the theoretical model to frame the concept of national cultures. The study was developed using data from 23 EU countries. The study showed that the correlation between national cultures and new forms of work organization are significant, yet moderate. Moreover, differences in the impact of cultural dimensions on work design practices were found. The use of autonomy and teamwork can be insufficient to represent the wide variety of work design practices in STS. The same is also valid for cultural dimensions. An understanding of the cultural constraints on work design practices in EU countries can help improve organization models, furthering competitiveness.culture; work organization; autonomy; teamwork; Europe; Hofstede

Understanding the effect of IS change: A social capital perspective

This paper argues that by adopting a social capital perspective of the effects of Information Systems (IS) implementation we are able to provide insights into both human and technological aspects of change interventions. This theoretical paper is firmly embedded within socio-technical approaches and aims to conceptualise and address concerns relating to organisational issues of systems and technology management. IS implementation inevitably impacts upon the existing work and social relationships within organisations where there is the potential experience of reduced system effectiveness through a periodic lack of coordination and control. It is evident, in this respect, that the adoption of IS produces challenges to human collaboration which clearly add a social dimension to systems management. The paper broadly outlines how a social capital perspective may determine the areas of focus from IS-driven organisational change and provide indications about potential ways to improve system and technology adoption. This may support more appropriate designs for change interventions that enable organisations to accrue more value from IS

Reconceptualising outdoor adventure education: Activity in search of an appropriate theory.

Experiential approaches to learning underpin teaching and learning strategies in outdoor adventure education (OAE). Recent critiques of experiential learning have problematised the individualistic and overly cognitive focus of this approach which creates binaries between experience-reflection and the learner-situation. This paper summarises these critiques and investigates the possibilities made available by understanding OAE from a socio-cultural perspective. Consideration of OAE students as participants in a highly orchestrated community of practice places learning, and observable change, within a socio-cultural frame rather than as primarily a function of cognitive processes within the individual. This position takes seriously the claims made by practitioners of ‘seeing evidence of change’ and researchers who raise questions about the validity of ‘generalised claims’ by placing greater emphasis on the situated nature of learning and acting. Moving beyond conceptions of the learner as an autonomous ‘processor’ of experiences, who is capable of generating context free knowledge, has implications for existing OAE theory and practice