“Are you a Delia or a Chantelle?” Engaging Stakeholders in Branding Exercises

This short paper describes the development and implementation of tools and methods used to consult stakeholders in the development of a brand identity for a software development company, and the further refinement of those tools for use in the redesign and branding of a beauty treatment product and its packaging. A cultural probe approach was used in the form of word and image cards (‘Explorer Cards’) to elicit stakeholders’ opinions, emotions and perceptions regarding the project at hand. This method provided the design team with a pragmatic and rapid approach to the elicitation of information from stakeholders with varying degrees of design literacy

Orientation to mission: Assessing the perceptions of effectiveness of an in-house orientation program focussed on mission, vision and values within a large-scale, not-for-profit, private hospital

St John of God Healthcare (SJGHC), as a large Catholic, not-for-profit, healthcare provider, has explicit statements which reflect the Mission, Vision and Values of the organisation. New employees receive a comprehensive induction and orientation program, part of which includes ensuring new recruits are conversant with the Mission, Vision and Values. This program is deemed as formation, rather than training, to reflect a desire for the input to have a direct and personal impact on new employees, to increase their motivation and engagement with the ideals of the organisation. This research attempted to measure the perceived efficacy of the Mission component of Orientation at one particular SJGHC site, the hospital located in Subiaco, Western Australia, through both participant surveys and interviews. The results of 120 surveys were analysed and 16 semi-structured interviews were used to validate and probe information obtained from the participant surveys. Importantly, the research demonstrated that the session was perceived as valuable by participants and showed an increase in knowledge. This research has led to further ongoing research to determine if the perceptions of patients and their visitors align with staff perceptions of the way Mission is integrated in to the life of this hospital. The latter work will provide an important adjunct to this project since the work of hospital staff is ultimately not measured by individual staff members’ knowledge, attitude or intentions, but by how their work impacts on the patients and their visitors

Abstracts of Invited and Selected Papers and Organized Symposia, WAEA Annual Meetings, San Francisco, California, July 6-8, 2005

Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

Climate change, collaboration and pre-service teachers' emergent professional identity

The study group included 74 graduate, pre-service science teachers who were following the Professional Graduate Diploma of Education Secondary (PGDES) in all science subjects, biology with science, chemistry with science and physics with science. The strong tradition of integrated science in Scotland is reflected (Inspectorate of Schools (Scotland) 1994) in the structure of PGDES programmes (The Scottish Office Education and Industry Department 1998). Scottish School science departments are organised in a variety of ways and a strong collaborative element is often present in providing a common programme of study in science during the early years of secondary schooling. Collaborative coursework on climate change was selected due to its contemporary interest; consultation on the detail of a 'Curriculum for Excellence' (The Curriculum Review Group 2004) and the absence of reported depth of experience in this content area in Scottish school science. Issues associated with climate change conform to all ten qualities of socio-scientific issues (Ratcliffe M. and Grace M. 2003. ) p. 2-3. The purpose was to simulate the collaborative working environment (Watters J.J. and Ginns I.S. 2000); to establish a 'community of practice' as suggested by the (Lave J. and Wenger E. 1991)model of situated learning; involved aspects of problem based learning (Savin-Baden M. and Howell C.M. 2004) as well as authentic assessment (Wiggins G.P. 1993); and to initiate the formation of identities as science teachers rather than 'subject specialists'. The task was based on a constructivist framework. We sought to explore aspects relating to attitudes and knowledge in the context of climate change, to collaboration and the use of ICT. Students were allocated to mixed subject groups and expected to produce reading materials for 12-14 year olds and an associated teachers' guide on a given aspect of climate change over a seven week period. The product and collaborative aspects of the task were assessed using a combination of tutor and peer assessment, including two group debriefing sessions. Students' knowledge and confidence about global warming and information relating to their experiences of collaboration were assessed using a simple pre- and post-task questionnaire developed for this task. We found that the students experienced a number of benefits and frustrations of group work task. Overall, they found the process beneficial and collectively produced a high quality resource which is available as a basis for their own teaching. The resource could be adapted for use by other teachers. The students have become more knowledgeable about aspects of climate change. They may also have considered the challenges in teaching complicated socio-scientific issues in relation to their own professional attitudes and values. A generally positive attitudinal movement took place during the period and some variation was observed between students from different subject areas

"Taking your place at the table": an autoethnographic study of chaplains' participation on an interdisciplinary research team.

BackgroundThere are many potential benefits to chaplaincy in transforming into a "research-informed" profession. However little is known or has been documented about the roles of chaplains on research teams and as researchers or about the effects of research engagement on chaplains themselves. This report describes the experience and impact of three chaplains, as well as tensions and challenges that arose, on one particular interdisciplinary team researching a spiritual assessment model in palliative care. Transcripts of our research team meetings, which included the three active chaplain researchers, as well as reflections of all the members of the research team provide the data for this descriptive, qualitative, autoethnographic analysis.MethodsThis autoethnographic project evolved from the parent study, entitled "Spiritual Assessment Intervention Model (AIM) in Outpatient Palliative Care Patients with Advanced Cancer." This project focused on the use of a well-developed model of spiritual care, the Spiritual Assessment and Intervention Model (Spiritual AIM). Transcripts of nine weekly team meetings for the parent study were reviewed. These parent study team meetings were attended by various disciplines and included open dialogue and intensive questions from non-chaplain team members to chaplains about their practices and Spiritual AIM. Individual notes (from reflexive memoing) and other reflections of team members were also reviewed for this report. The primary methodological framework for this paper, autoethnography, was not only used to describe the work of chaplains as researchers, but also to reflect on the process of researcher identity formation and offer personal insights regarding the challenges accompanying this process.ResultsThree major themes emerged from the autoethnographic analytic process: 1) chaplains' unique contributions to the research team; 2) the interplay between the chaplains' active research role and their work identities; and 3) tensions and challenges in being part of an interdisciplinary research team.ConclusionsDescribing the contributions and challenges of one interdisciplinary research team that included chaplains may help inform chaplains about the experience of participating in research. As an autoethnographic study, this work is not meant to offer generalizable results about all chaplains' experiences on research teams. Research teams that are interdisciplinary may mirror the richness and efficacy of clinical interdisciplinary teams. Further work is needed to better characterize both the promise and pitfalls of chaplains' participation on research teams

A cooperative cellular and broadcast conditional access system for Pay-TV systems

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2009 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.The lack of interoperability between Pay-TV service providers and a horizontally integrated business transaction model have compromised the competition in the Pay-TV market. In addition, the lack of interactivity with customers has resulted in high churn rate and improper security measures have contributed into considerable business loss. These issues are the main cause of high operational costs and subscription fees in the Pay-TV systems. As a result, this paper presents the Mobile Conditional Access System (MICAS) as an end-to-end access control solution for Pay-TV systems. It incorporates the mobile and broadcasting systems and provides a platform whereby service providers can effectively interact with their customers, personalize their services and adopt appropriate security measurements. This would result in the decrease of operating expenses and increase of customers' satisfaction in the system. The paper provides an overview of state-of-the-art conditional access solutions followed by detailed description of design, reference model implementation and analysis of possible MICAS security architectures.Strategy & Technology (S&T) Lt

Community Connections: Summer 1992 v. 1, no. 2

Monthly newsletter with information of interest to the Boston University Medical Center and residents of the South End

Do Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI) matter for innovation and value creation in knowledge-based business? Aims, forms and practice of collaboration in Italy

Purpose: This paper provides the first results of a scoping study exploring in detail how Cultural and Creative Industries(CCI) can represent a source and resource of critical and creative thinking as well as a set of processes to be deployed in order to foster and support innovation. Scope: Focusing on a sample of Italian companies, the aims, the forms and the specific practices of collaborations between CCI and knowledge-based and traditional businesses are identified and discussed. Method: In order to derive and test theories, trace causal pathways, explore hypotheses, researchers have designed and implemented qualitative research methods and conducted investigation mainly based on web-available data, archives and interview-based information. Results: The case examples of relevant Italian companies effectively provide evidences of the impact and modalities of adopting initiatives to develop innovation capacity. Recommendations and conclusions: The investigation of a sample of Italian companies suggests that most of the attention is focused on collaborations aimed to reinforce company image and reputation, to develop corporate social responsibility and to improve brand recognition

Participatory, Visible and Sustainable. Designing a Community Website for a Minority Group

This paper tackles three aspects of community-based technological initiatives aimed to support minority groups’ public expression and communication: participation, visibility and sustainability. Participation requires\ud the active involvement of the community members in various project phases (from design to evaluation), sharing decisional power with project leaders. Visibility\ud refers to the capacity of community messages to reach a relevant audience outside the boundaries of the community itself. Sustainability indicates the capacity of a project to continue, under the control and management of the local community, beyond its “supported” lifetime. The mutual influence of these three dimensions is examined in general and also in the light of a specific case study: an initiative involving a Romani community in rural Romania, having as main outcome the development of a community website (www.romanivoices.com/podoleni)