4,438 research outputs found
Mapping Critical Practice In A Transdisciplinary Urban Studio
Architecture and Planning exist to make positive changes to our environment. Future practitioners in these
disciplines will be responsible for how our cities develop and are managed - they will be required to exercise their professional judgement in complex and unpredictable contexts. There is increasing interest in transdisciplinary urbanism, but implementation in academic contexts has to date been relatively limited. This thesis aims to build on these examples, through a detailed account of one academic design studio which operates across architecture and urban planning; in doing so it aims to make the case for transdisciplinary, problem and place-based studio teaching.
The study considers how a transdisciplinary studio environment supported students to develop a critical
approach to practice through collaborative discourse. It looked at studio methods/practices; what it means to practice âcriticallyâ in the context of design; and the role âgoing publicâ by sharing ideas in public fora might play in developing critical positions.
The study was undertaken in collaboration with nine students, a single cohort undertaking the final year of a hybrid masterâs qualification in Architecture with Urban Planning. It adopts socio-material and spatial approaches to follow how the studio environment and the studentsâ emerging interdisciplinary identities shaped both their individual and their shared work. It mapped how their approach to their practice evolved through observations, interviews, and informal conversations, and through their drawings, models and journals. In carrying out these observations, and their analysis, I have returned to drawing methods common in architecture. This allowed me to explore and record aspects of studio practice which might otherwise be missed and revealed the importance of visual and spatial thinking to my own practice. Observations revealed how material spaces, tools and artefacts acted to structure social relations in the studio, and how these relations shaped individual approaches to critical practice
Leveraging social media, big data, and smart technologies for intercultural communication and effective leadership: Empirical study at the Ministry of Digital Economy and Entrepreneurship
The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of social media, big data, and smart technology on intercultural communication and effective leadership inside the Ministry of digital & entrepreneurship. The main objective was to investigate the influence of these technical elements on organizational behavior and the efficacy of leadership within the particular setting of a government ministry dedicated to digital economy and entrepreneurship. In order to accomplish this goal, a thorough empirical inquiry was done, which included gathering data from important individuals involved in the Ministry. The study intentionally selected a sample size of 379 individuals, who represented various responsibilities within the Ministry. The process of data gathering entailed the distribution of surveys and the conduction of interviews to acquire valuable insights and viewpoints from the participants. The utilization of this approach yielded a resilient dataset that is well-suited for thorough investigation. The study explored the complex connection between the use of social media platforms, the implementation of big data analytics, and the incorporation of smart technologies in influencing the dynamics of intercultural communication and leadership inside the Ministry. The results emphasized the substantial influence of social media in promoting intercultural communication and cooperation among personnel within the Ministry. Moreover, the implementation of big data analytics has become a crucial element in improving decision-making processes, impacting several facets of leadership efficacy, strategic planning, and employee involvement. Smart technologies were recognized as crucial elements in establishing efficient communication channels and facilitating effective leadership practices. The study's findings emphasized the beneficial impacts of utilizing social media, big data, and smart technology in the Ministry of digital & entrepreneurship. The research highlighted the significance of government organizations incorporating these technologies in a proactive manner to foster a work environment characterized by improved multicultural communication, well-informed decision-making and efficient leadership. This study makes a substantial contribution to the comprehension of how technological improvements might influence organizational behavior and leadership practices in a government setting. It provides essential insights for policymakers, leaders, and researchers. The findings have broader significance beyond the Ministry, serving as a basis for additional investigation into the use of technology in intercultural communication and leadership effectiveness inside government institutions
"It's not a career": Platform work among young people aged 16-19
In the online gig economy, or platform work as it is sometimes known, work can be organised through websites and smartphone apps. People can drive for Uber or Deliveroo, sell items on eBay or Etsy, or rent their properties on Airbnb.
This research examines the views of young people between the ages of 16 and 19 in the United Kingdom to see whether they knew about the online gig economy, whether they were using it already to earn money, and whether they expected to use it for their careers. It discovers careers professionalsâ levels of knowledge, and their ability (and desire) to include the gig economy in their professional practice.
This research contributes to discussions about what constitutes decent work, and whether it can be found within the online gig economy. The results point to ways in which careers practice could include platform work as a means of extending young peopleâs knowledge about alternative forms of work. This study also makes a theoretical contribution to literature, bringing together elements of careership, cognitive schema theory, and motivational theory and psychology of working theory, in a novel combination, to explain how young people were thinking about platform work in the context of their careers
Conversations on Empathy
In the aftermath of a global pandemic, amidst new and ongoing wars, genocide, inequality, and staggering ecological collapse, some in the public and political arena have argued that we are in desperate need of greater empathy â be this with our neighbours, refugees, war victims, the vulnerable or disappearing animal and plant species. This interdisciplinary volume asks the crucial questions: How does a better understanding of empathy contribute, if at all, to our understanding of others? How is it implicated in the ways we perceive, understand and constitute others as subjects? Conversations on Empathy examines how empathy might be enacted and experienced either as a way to highlight forms of otherness or, instead, to overcome what might otherwise appear to be irreducible differences. It explores the ways in which empathy enables us to understand, imagine and create sameness and otherness in our everyday intersubjective encounters focusing on a varied range of "radical others" â others who are perceived as being dramatically different from oneself. With a focus on the importance of empathy to understand difference, the book contends that the role of empathy is critical, now more than ever, for thinking about local and global challenges of interconnectedness, care and justice
Semantics, Ontology and Explanation
The terms 'semantics' and 'ontology' are increasingly appearing together with
'explanation', not only in the scientific literature, but also in
organizational communication. However, all of these terms are also being
significantly overloaded. In this paper, we discuss their strong relation under
particular interpretations. Specifically, we discuss a notion of explanation
termed ontological unpacking, which aims at explaining symbolic domain
descriptions (conceptual models, knowledge graphs, logical specifications) by
revealing their ontological commitment in terms of their assumed truthmakers,
i.e., the entities in one's ontology that make the propositions in those
descriptions true. To illustrate this idea, we employ an ontological theory of
relations to explain (by revealing the hidden semantics of) a very simple
symbolic model encoded in the standard modeling language UML. We also discuss
the essential role played by ontology-driven conceptual models (resulting from
this form of explanation processes) in properly supporting semantic
interoperability tasks. Finally, we discuss the relation between ontological
unpacking and other forms of explanation in philosophy and science, as well as
in the area of Artificial Intelligence
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Understanding the Impact of Covid-19 on Ethnic Minority Students: a Case Study of Open University Level 1 Computing Modules
As reported in [1] âOf the disparities that exist within higher education, the gap between the likelihood of White students and students from Black, Asian or minority ethnic backgrounds getting a first- or upper-second-class degree is among the starkestâ. In the Open University (OU) for example, a recent research [2] found students from ethnic minorities to be at least 20% less likely to achieve excellent grades and to spend 4-12% more of study time to achieve the same performance as white students. Moreover, with the advent of COVID-19, a growing body of research suggested that students from these groups of the population, suffer disproportionally from the impacts of the pandemic [3], which inevitably impacts on their study experiences. However, recent research in the OU found that some COVID-19 arrangements such as the change of examination mode and change in work-life patterns have impacted students from ethnic minority backgrounds differently. In this paper we present findings from a project aiming to understand the impact of COVID-19 on ethnic minority studentsâ study experiences and performance. By means of a combination of qualitative and quantitative data analytics we first analysed the study performance and the patterns of progression, then by conducting focus groups with the teaching staff we assessed the impact of COVID-19 on the lived experiences of the students.
[1] Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Student Attainment at UK Universities (2022). Available at: https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk.
[2] Nguyen Q., Rienties B. Richardson J.T.E. (2020) Learning analytics to uncover inequality in behavioural engagement and academic attainment in a distance learning setting, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 45:4, 594-606.
[3] Arday, J. and Jones, C. (2022) âSame storm, different boats: The impact of covid-19 on black students and academic staff in UK and US higher education,â Higher Education. Available at:
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-022-00939-0
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