Service Design in the Delivery of Non-academic Services in Higher Education

The discipline of service design is increasingly used in public sector organizations but to date has rarely been used in the delivery of non-academic services in institutes of higher education. Though organizational culture has been identified as a barrier to operationalization in past studies, the intersection between organizational culture and service design methods has not received dedicated attention in past research. This study used an interpretative phenomenological analysis approach to better describe the perceptions and experiences of staff members in a higher education setting regarding a service design project of which they were a part. Though the research was conducted in a university setting, the results will be of value to service design practitioners in other organizations that are either internally focused, as defined by Cameron and Quinn’s (2006) competitive values framework, or loosely coupled (Weick, 1976). After synthesizing the research data from this study, the relevant literature, and three conceptual frameworks, the researcher found that staff in such institutions place more value in collaborative and culture building activities than service improvement. The implication of this and related findings is that service design methods are best applied and presented as tools to bring staff together. The nature of change, methods of decision making, and organizational culture all come together to create novel applications for service design activity while also explaining why previous design efforts failed to operationalize. The researcher recommended that service design activities in the future could be used to: reframe students as community members; focus on incremental and local change; support policy and budget development; support organizational change processes; strengthen informal networks; and support long term change by changing the locus of service design activity from the point of enactment of a service to instead the selection and retention segments of the sensemaking process within the organization. The dominant organizational culture of the site studied did indeed influence the perceptions of staff members when reflecting on a service design project. By exploring those perceptions and underlying beliefs and values of participants, this study can assist service design practitioners and educational leadership in future design and change management processes

Drivers and barriers to educational success : evidence from the longitudinal study of young people in England

This study examined why young people from poor families have lower attainment in school, are more likely to become NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training) after compulsory education, and are more likely to participate in a range of risky behaviours whilst teenagers. The Longitudinal Study of Young People in England is combined with school and neighbourhood information to document the links between lower socio-economic position and poorer outcomes: identifying the key factors amongst parental education and material resources; school and neighbourhood peer groups; and the attitudes and beliefs of young people and their parents that help sustain those links

Method Use in Behavioural Design: What, How, and Why?

Behavioural design is an important area of research and practice key to addressing behavioural and societal challenges. Behavioural design reflects a synthesis of design and behavioural science, which draws together aspects of abductive, inductive, and deductive reasoning to frame, develop, and deliver behaviour change through purposefully designed interventions. However, this synthesis creates major questions as to how methods are selected, adapted, and used during behavioural design. To take a step toward answering these questions we conducted fifteen interviews with globally recognised experts. Based on these interviews we deliver three main contributions. First, we provide an overview of the methods used in all phases of the behavioural design process. Second, we identify behavioural uncertainty as a key driver of method use in behavioural design. Third, we explain how this creates a tension between design and scientific concerns— related to interactions between abductive, inductive, and deductive reasoning—which must be managed across the behavioural design process. We bring these insights together in a basic conceptual framework explaining how and why methods are used in behavioural design. Together these findings take a step towards closing critical gaps in behavioural design theory and practice. They also highlight several directions for further research on method use and uncertainty as well as behavioural design expertise and professional identity

Training for success: A guide for peer trainers

[Excerpt] Training for Success: A Guide for Peer Trainers is a guide to help villagers, like you, teach others to operate a business like the one you operate. It was developed as part of the ILO project Alleviating Poverty through Peer Training (APPT). The project was designed to reduce poverty among people with disabilities in Cambodia by using village-based peer trainers to teach others. The purpose of this guide is to teach you, a possible peer trainer, how to teach others to replicate your business! The APPT project helped more than 950 people, mostly with disabilities, start businesses over a fi ve-year period. More than 200 peer trainers were involved. Many of the peer trainers also had disabilities. And, since the project paid special attention to women, most of the trainers and trainees were women, some with disabilities, some without. This guide was developed to help train peer trainers and is based on years of ILO experience. It was field-tested as part of a series of workshops for peer trainers conducted by the APPT project in the provinces of Siem Reap, Kompong Thom and Pursat in 2007. Training for Success: A Guide for Peer Trainers will be used by people like yourself who are already peer trainers or who want to start training others. Ideally, it should be used as part of a workshop that teaches you how to be a peer trainer

Universality caused: the case of renormalization group explanation

Recently, many have argued that there are certain kinds of abstract mathematical explanations that are noncausal. In particular, the irrelevancy approach suggests that abstracting away irrelevant causal details can leave us with a noncausal explanation. In this paper, I argue that the common example of Renormalization Group explanations of universality used to motivate the irrelevancy approach deserves more critical attention. I argue that the reasons given by those who hold up RG as noncausal do not stand up to critical scrutiny. As a result, the irrelevancy approach and the line between casual and noncausal explanation deserves more scrutiny

Explanation of Qualia and Self-Awareness Using Elastic Membrane Concept

In this work we show that our self-awareness and perception may be successfully explained using two dimensional holistic structures with closed topology embedded into our brains - elastic membranes. These membranes are able to preserve their structure during conscious processes. Their elastic oscillations may be associated with our perceptions, where the frequency of the oscillations is responsible for the perception of different colors, sounds and other stimuli, while the amplitude of the oscillations is responsible for the feeling of a distance. According to the model the squeezed regions of a membrane correspond to the brain zones involved into awareness and attention. The model may be useful for prediction, explanation and interpretation of various conscious phenomena

Risk evaluations and condom use decisions of homeless youth: a multi-level qualitative investigation.

BackgroundHomeless youth are at higher risk for sexually transmitted infections and unwanted pregnancy than non-homeless youth. However, little is known about how they evaluate risk within the context of their sexual relationships. It is important to understand homeless youths' condom use decisions in light of their sexual relationships because condom use decisions are influenced by relationship dynamics in addition to individual attitudes and event circumstances. It is also important to understand how relationship level factors, sexual event circumstances, and individual characteristics compare and intersect.MethodsTo explore these issues, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 37 homeless youth in Los Angeles County in 2011 concerning their recent sexual relationships and analyzed the data using systematic methods of team-based qualitative data analysis.ResultsWe identified themes of risk-related evaluations and decisions at the relationship/partner, event, and individual level. We also identified three different risk profiles that emerged from analyzing how different levels of risk intersected across individual respondents. The three profiles included 1) Risk Takers, who consistently engage in risk and have low concern about consequences of risk behavior, 2) Risk Avoiders, who consistently show high concern about protection and consistently avoid risk, and 3) Risk Reactors, those who are inconsistent in their concerns about risk and protection and mainly take risks in reaction to relationship and event circumstances.ConclusionsInterventions targeting homeless youth should reflect multiple levels of risk behavior and evaluation in order to address the diversity of risk profiles. Relationship/partner-, event-, and individual-level factors are all important but have different levels of importance for different homeless youth. Interventions should be tailored to address the most important factor contributing to homeless youth reproductive needs