Leveraging Emerging Web Technologies for Community Engagement Project Success in Higher Education

The widespread availability of Web 2.0 technologies such as Facebook and Twitter has led to the adoption in a number of community engagement projects. Unfortunately, the breath and depth of these web technologies leads to a disjointed and incoherent adoption. In light of the above, there is a need for a model to structure its planning and execution. In this article, we present a model to assist community engagement projects. The model comprises of four crucial dimensions: functional quality, degree of psychological attachment, hedonic attitude of members and amount of social relationships. We discuss how each dimension can leverage on Web 2.0 technology capabilities in the context of uniS—the Information and Communications Faculty in a leading Australian University. The emphasis on community engagement follows for one, strategic recommendations proposed through Australian Universities Quality Agency (AUQA) reviews. Given this, we discuss two specific initiatives currently in place at UniS that attempts to improve community engagement. The implications of this article are twofold. For educators, it recommends a set of considerations for establishing and designing community engagement programs and initiatives for higher education. For managers, it proposes a tool for systematically evaluating engagement success of initiatives within a community of practice

Design Principles (DPs) for Building Social Media Enabled Collaborative Learning Environments (SMECLEs)

Healthcare service systems require care follow-up procedures using clinical practice guidelines targeting specific patient groups. Studies have introduced various methods for providing patient care, but system design for follow-up support remains limited to a few specific types of disease management. A general need is identified in a climate of increased demand on fewer doctors, for which mobile systems can provide solutions. In this paper, we present a post-treatment follow-up Decision Support framework for use by patients and physicians. The proposed care support is cloud-based and offers online and asynchronous Patient-Physician interaction, with a ratings system designed to ensure continuing improvement in outcomes. Using a design science research process the solution framework has been prototyped and evaluated with representative physicians and users. Our framework provides a model for extending care service systems to inform better follow-up decision-making

Social media enabled collaborative learning environments: a design science research approach

Collaborative technologies such as Group Decision Support Systems were proclaimed to be able to impact the learning environments of educational institutions twenty years ago, where the Information Systems discipline was interested in determining whether they were capable of transforming the traditional methods of teaching. It was understood that these technologies were effective at transforming learning environments from a traditional approach to a collaborative one, where the learner is part of the learning process, but little has actually changed in this time. However, new generations of these collaborative technologies often emerge, and the platforms of social media are one such technology. In a similar fashion to previous collaborative technologies, social media have been proclaimed as impacting the learning environments of educational institutions through better communication and collaboration, in new and exciting ways. However, a problem that has been identified is there is a lack of understanding on whether the platforms that are enabled by social media are effective at enabling collaborative learning. This study helps improve this understanding. A design science research (DSR) approach was adopted to build an evaluation framework to be able to evaluate the effectiveness of social media enabled collaborative learning environments (SMECLEs). The evaluation framework was developed during a five year DSR study, over six design cycles. These incorporated insights from existing literature on DSR, social media, and collaborative learning, using 272 journal and conference articles. Further, data was gathered from six SMECLEs, which consisted of 857 tweets, 1439 blog posts, and 3376 blog comments. The resulting framework was then used to evaluate the six SMECLEs, where a number of trends were identified, which suggests that the tool is effective for its intended purpose. Thus, the primary contribution of this study, to both practice and the knowledge base, is the evaluation framework for social media enabled collaborative learning environments (SMECLEs)