Information Seeking in Context: Teachers' Content Selection during Lesson Planning Using the Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive of Holocaust Survivor Testimony

This study explored the information seeking task of content selection. An integrative conceptual framework used existing models to examine the context and process of information seeking, evaluation, and selection. The conceptual framework incorporated three main elements of the information seeking process: * The information need context, * The information search process, * Relevance criteria. Among teachers' many duties are the creation, implementation, and revision of lesson plans. A subtask of lesson planning is content selection, which occurs when teachers seek outside content, such as readings or audio recordings, to incorporate into lesson plans. Content selection is seen here as a work-task-embedded information seeking process. A qualitative study was implemented within the setting of a week-long professional development workshop, during which eight teachers used a custom software product that combined a lesson-planning module with an information retrieval (IR) system. The IR system provided access to a subset of the Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive. Data types included interviews, fly-on-the-wall transcripts, transaction logs, relevance judgments, and lesson plans. Analysis combined inductive and deductive techniques, including start codes, constant comparison, emergent themes, and matrix analysis. Findings depict associations among each component of the framework. 1. The information need context consists of five layers (Environment, Role, Person, Task, Information Source), each of which influences information search and relevance. 2. The ISP includes two cognitive-behavioral facets: Conceptualizing and Actualizing. 3. Relevance criteria are the situationally-driven embodiment of contextual elements that apply to information seeking. These findings have theoretical and practical implications for information studies and education. For information studies, this study contributes to understanding of the ISP as contextual, cognitive, and interactive. Information need, while unobservable in its native form, can be depicted in enough detail to supply meaningful requirements for the design of information systems and processes. Content selection is a form of exploratory search, and this study's implications suggest that the "traditional" reference interview should be used as an interaction model during exploratory search. For education, this study extends the discourse about consequences of standards-based education for teacher practice and contributes to models of teacher planning as an iterative, cognitive process

Semantic adaptability for the systems interoperability

In the current global and competitive business context, it is essential that enterprises adapt their knowledge resources in order to smoothly interact and collaborate with others. However, due to the existent multiculturalism of people and enterprises, there are different representation views of business processes or products, even inside a same domain. Consequently, one of the main problems found in the interoperability between enterprise systems and applications is related to semantics. The integration and sharing of enterprises knowledge to build a common lexicon, plays an important role to the semantic adaptability of the information systems. The author proposes a framework to support the development of systems to manage dynamic semantic adaptability resolution. It allows different organisations to participate in a common knowledge base building, letting at the same time maintain their own views of the domain, without compromising the integration between them. Thus, systems are able to be aware of new knowledge, and have the capacity to learn from it and to manage its semantic interoperability in a dynamic and adaptable way. The author endorses the vision that in the near future, the semantic adaptability skills of the enterprise systems will be the booster to enterprises collaboration and the appearance of new business opportunities

Adaptive Capacity as antecedent to Climate Change Strategy: A Systematic Literature Review

Within the last decade research on climate change strategies and adaptive capacity emerged as the debate about climate change was intensified with the publishing of the Third Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2001. That companies are facing risks and opportunities is not new and the awareness to address these issues is growing. However, there is still need for research in the field of corporate strategic response to climate change. Recently, research focused on resilience management to address climate change. Resilience management is about being able to experience changes and remain stable getting back into the same situation before the change happen. On the contrary to resilience management adaptive capacity is about the ability to be able to adapt to uncertain and unexpected events on the long term. This includes long-term changes. This work argues that companies should think about their adaptive capacity as climate change induces short and long-term changes. Adding this dimension to the strategic planning companies need to think of how they can improve their adaptive capacity. This work investigates research in both issues adaptive capacity and climate change research and in their relation. Applying a systematic literature review this study conducted 60 references which are examined by a qualitative-quantitative analysis and answers the following questions: What is the current scientific view of adaptive capacity within strategic management literature? What are determinants of adaptive capacity? How can adaptive capacity be linked to climate change strategy and is it even antecedent to climate change strategies? The findings of this research indicate that adaptive capacity and climate change strategies exhibit a link but it cannot be proved whether adaptive capacity is antecedent. Furthermore, the term adaptive capacity is merely discussed within strategic management literature and if it is discussed and examined, several concepts and theories are applied to explain determinants of adaptive capacity. Several concepts such as dynamic capabilities, organizational learning capability, organizational learning, organizational change capacity, flexibility and more could be identified as concepts enhancing adaptive capacity. This works provides an overview of related concepts and theories

The use of images and descriptive words for the development of an image database for product designers

This research aims to understand the role images currently play within the design process, in order to develop a classification of image types and reference keywords to construct an electronic image database for professional use in product design. Images play an important role in the design process, both in defining the context for designs and in informing the creation of individual design. They are also used to communicate with clients, to understand consumers, to assist in expressing the themes of the project, to understand the related environments, or to search for inspiration or functional solutions. Designers usually have their own collections of images, however for each project they still spend a significant amount of time searching images, either looking within their own collection or searching for new images. This study is based on the assumption that there is a structure that can show the relationship between the image itself and the information it conveys and can be used to develop the database. A product-image database will enable designers to consult images more easily and this will also facilitate communication of visual ideas among designers or between designers and their clients, thus augmenting its potential value in the professional design process. Also, the value of an image may be enhanced by applying its linguistic associations through descriptions and keywords which identify and interpret its content. Through a series of interviews, workshops, and understanding relevant issues, such as design method, linguistic theory, perception psychology and so on, a prototype database system was developed. It was developed based on three information divisions: SPECIFICATION, CHARACTERISTIC, and EMOTION. The three divisions construct a model of the information which an image conveys. The database prototype was tested and evaluated by groups of students and professional designers. The results showed that users understand the concept and working of the database and appreciated its value. They also indicated that the CHARACTERISTIC division was most valuable as it allows users to record images through their recollection of feelings

A systematic review of pedagogical approaches that can effectively include children with special educational needs in mainstream classrooms with a particular focus on peer group interactive approaches

The broad background to this review is a long history of concepts of special pupils and special education, and a faith in special pedagogical approaches. The rise of inclusive schools and some important critiques of special pedagogy (e.g. Hart, 1996; Norwich and Lewis, 2001; Thomas and Loxley, 2001) have raised the profile of teaching approaches that ordinary teachers can and do use to include children with special educational needs in mainstream classrooms. Inclusive education itself is increasingly conceived as being about the quality of learning and participation that goes on in inclusive schools rather than simplistic matters of where children are place