580 research outputs found
The antecedents of e-learning adoption within Italian corporate universities: A comparative case study
The implementation of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in business education appears to be influenced by a number of organizational issues, such as culture and technological sophistication. However, extant research has had very little to say about the antecedents that shape the adoption and diffusion of ICT across companies. In order to shed light on the phenomenon under investigation, this paper presents a comparative case study between five Italian companies that have instituted a corporate university. By distinguishing companies in typical cases and deviant cases with regard to the extensive use of e-learning technologies, our findings provide some useful insights about the antecedents that make companies more or less prone to employ the new frontiers of technology in their CUs
Self-rehabilitation of acquired brain injury patients including neglect and attention deficit disorder with a tablet game in a clinical setting
We designed and evaluated a whack-a-mole (WAM) style game (see Figure 1) in a clinical randomized controlled trial (RCT) with reminder-assisted but self-initiated use over the period of a month with 43 participants from a post-lesion pool. While game play did not moderate rehabilitative progress indices of standard neuropsychological control tests, it did significantly improve in-game performance when compared to the control group. Its performance indicators and interaction data were highly accurate in predicting neglect and which hand the patients used for input. Patients found playing beneficial to their rehabilitation and attributed gains in the attention training properties of the game. The game showed potential for bedside assessment, insight support, and motivation by providing knowledge about rehabilitative progress
Designing wearable sensing platforms for healthcare in a residential environment
Wearable technologies are valuable tools that can encourage people to monitor their own well-being and facilitate timely health interventions. In this paper, we present SPW-2; a low-profile versatile wearable sensor that employs two ultra low power accelerometers and an optional gyroscope. Designed for minimum maintenance and a long-term operation outside the laboratory, SPW-2 is able to offer a battery lifetime of multiple months. Measurements on its wireless performance in a real residential environment with thick brick walls, demonstrate that SPW-2 can fully cover a room and - in most cases - the adjacent room, as well
Media Usage in Post-Secondary Education and Implications for Teaching and Learning
The Web 2.0 has permeated academic life. The use of online information
services in post-secondary education has led to dramatic changes in faculty
teaching methods as well as in the learning and study behavior of students. At
the same time, traditional information media, such as textbooks and printed
handouts, still form the basic pillars of teaching and learning. This paper
reports the results of a survey about media usage in teaching and learning
conducted with Western University students and instructors, highlighting trends
in the usage of new and traditional media in higher education by instructors
and students. In addition, the survey comprises part of an international
research program in which 20 universities from 10 countries are currently
participating. Further, the study will hopefully become a part of the ongoing
discussion of practices and policies that purport to advance the effective use
of media in teaching and learning
Mobile Data Science: Towards Understanding Data-Driven Intelligent Mobile Applications
Due to the popularity of smart mobile phones and context-aware technology,
various contextual data relevant to users' diverse activities with mobile
phones is available around us. This enables the study on mobile phone data and
context-awareness in computing, for the purpose of building data-driven
intelligent mobile applications, not only on a single device but also in a
distributed environment for the benefit of end users. Based on the availability
of mobile phone data, and the usefulness of data-driven applications, in this
paper, we discuss about mobile data science that involves in collecting the
mobile phone data from various sources and building data-driven models using
machine learning techniques, in order to make dynamic decisions intelligently
in various day-to-day situations of the users. For this, we first discuss the
fundamental concepts and the potentiality of mobile data science to build
intelligent applications. We also highlight the key elements and explain
various key modules involving in the process of mobile data science. This
article is the first in the field to draw a big picture, and thinking about
mobile data science, and it's potentiality in developing various data-driven
intelligent mobile applications. We believe this study will help both the
researchers and application developers for building smart data-driven mobile
applications, to assist the end mobile phone users in their daily activities.Comment: Journal, 11 pages, Double Colum
A Sustainable & Biologically Inspired Prosthetic Hand for Healthcare
There are many persons in the world affected by amputation. Upper limb amputations require high cost prosthetic devices in order to provide significant motor recovery. We propose a sustainable design and control of a new anthropomorphic prosthetic hand: all components are modular and exchangeable and they can be assembled by non-expert users. Phalanges & articulations of the fingers and the palm are manufactured via a 3D printing process in Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) or Polyactic Acid (PLA) materials. The design is optimized in order to provide human-like motion and grasping taxonomy through linear actuators and flexion tendon mechanisms, which are embedded within the palm. HardWare (HW) and Software (SW) open sourced units for ElectroMyography (EMG) input and control can be combined with a user-friendly and intuitive Graphical User Interface (GUI) to enable amputees handling the prosthesis. To reduce the environmental impact of the device lifetime cycle, the material and energy consumption were optimized by adopting: simple design & manufacturing, high dexterity, open source HW and SW, low cost components, anthropomorphic design
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An Ambient Assisted Living Technology Platform for Informal Carers of the Elderly - iCarer
For most families with elderly relatives, care within their own home is by far the most preferred option -both for the elderly and their carers. However, frequently these carers are the partners of the person with long-term care needs, and themselves are elderly and in need of support to cope with the burdens and stress associated with these duties. When it becomes too much for them, they may have to rely on professional care services, or even use residential care for a respite. In order to support the carers as well as the elderly person, an ambient assisted living platform has been developed. The system records information about the activities of daily living using unobtrusive sensors within the home, and allows the carers to record their own wellbeing state. By providing facilities to schedule and monitor the activities of daily care, and providing orientation and advice to improve the care given and their own wellbeing, the system helps to reduce the burden on the informal carers
Reuse of pervasive system architectures
Developers are often confronted with incompatible systems and lack a proper system abstraction that allows easy integration of various hardware and software components. To try solve these shortcomings, building blocks are identified at different levels of detail in today’s pervasive/communication systems and used in a conceptual reasoning framework allowing easy comparison and combination. The generality of the conceptual framework is validated by decomposing a selection of pervasive systems into models of these building blocks and integrating these models to create improved ones. Additionally, the required properties of pervasive systems on scalability, efficiency, degree of pervasiveness, and maintainability are analysed for a number of application areas. The pervasive systems are compared on these properties. Observations are made, and weak points in the analysed pervasive systems are identified. Furthermore, we provide a set of recommendations as a guideline towards flexible architectures that make pervasive systems usable in a variety of applications
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