RAMSTRONG: AN EMPLOYEE WELLNESS INITIATIVE

The RAMSTRONG project’s mission is to create a mobile website accessible online and through the VCU Mobile app that provides VCU employees with user-friendly, accessible resources to support their holistic well-being. The RAMSTRONG project seeks to meet three basic needs. First, while VCU and the Greater Richmond area offer a plethora of resources to promote health, information about these resources is not readily accessible, and especially not accessible from one website or mobile app. RAMSTRONG aims to provide an accessible means for employees to learn about and take advantage of these resources. Second, while a growing body of scientific literature indicates employer sponsored health promotion programs increase job satisfaction, productivity, and retention, these programs are only effective if they are utilized. RAMSTRONG aims to increase their utilization by promoting awareness of their availability. Third, our society invests a substantial sum of resources to the care of those suffering from injury and illness and less to promoting our health and well-being. The RAMSTRONG project is motivated by a vision of a society that invests significantly in the promotion of wellness so as to reduce the incidence of injury and illness and to increase the prevalence of personal and social satisfaction at work and in life. Our model for the RAMSTRONG app draws from the public health concept of the Wheel of Wellness, which specifies eight interrelated and interdependent dimensions of health: emotional, environmental, financial, social, spiritual, occupational, physical, and intellectual. When a person can demonstrate strength and well-being in each of these areas, they are more productive and receive greater satisfaction in life. Universities, including Princeton University, that have implemented similar website resources and the National Wellness Institute define wellness as “an active process through which people become aware of, and make choices toward, a more successful existence”. Our RAMSTRONG website and mobile app will provide employees with an efficient, friendly means for becoming aware of campus and community resources and making choices that actively contribute to individual and community well-being in each of the eight dimensions. It is our hope that with the implementation of this project, VCU employees will have the resources to take charge of their wellness in each dimension and become RAMSTRONG

SUM’20: State-based user modelling

Capturing and effectively utilising user states and goals is becoming a timely challenge for successfully leveraging intelligent and usercentric systems in differentweb search and data mining applications. Examples of such systems are conversational agents, intelligent assistants, educational and contextual information retrieval systems, recommender/match-making systems and advertising systems, all of which rely on identifying the user state in order to provide the most relevant information and assist users in achieving their goals. There has been, however, limited work towards building such state-aware intelligent learning mechanisms. Hence, devising information systems that can keep track of the user's state has been listed as one of the grand challenges to be tackled in the next few years [1]. It is thus timely to organize a workshop that re-visits the problem of designing and evaluating state-aware and user-centric systems, ensuring that the community (spanning academic and industrial backgrounds) works together to tackle these challenges

FAKTOR DETERMINAN DALAM PERENCANAAN PROGRAM PNF PADA PUSAT KEGIATAN BELAJAR MASYARAKAT (PKBM) ROTARI CLUB CENTRE (RCC) GARUDA ,YOGYAKARTA

This study aims to describe: (1) How programs planning in PKBM, (2) What are the determinant factors in planning programs in PKBM, (3) What are the supporting factors in PNF program planning at PKBM RCC Garuda and (4) What are the inhibiting factors in the PNF program planning at PKBM RCC Garuda. This research is a descriptive with qualitative approach. The subject of this research is the manager, tutor, and the residents who learn PKBM RCC Garuda. Data collection was performed using method of observation, interviews, and documentation. The researcher is the main instrument in conducting research supported by the observation guidelines, interview guidelines, and documentation guidelines. Techniques used in data analysis are data display, data reduction, and making conclusions. Triangulation conducted to explain the data validity by using the source. The results showed that: (1). Program Planning PKBM RCC Garuda has done through the citizen community data collection process, PKBM situation analysis, problem identification and needs, setting goals, preparing work plans and activity schedule, also designing the implementation program and monitoring and evaluation. (2) The determinant factor in PNF planning program that is the problem identification stage and needs which involving all party at the PKBM RCC Garuda. (3) Supporting factors in the PNF program planning are: (a) positive response and support from the community in support both planning and implementation programs, (b) There is support from the education office, (c) There is a trust of agencies partner. (4) Inhibiting factors from the PNF program planning are: (a) less involvement of citizens in the planning due to education factor, (b) the residents has not yet aware of the meaning of study (c) Funding is still experiencing fluctuations. Keywords: determinant factors, program planning, and PKB

“Hey, those are teenagers and they are doing stuff”: Youth Participation in Community Development

Youth have long been a marginalized, disenfranchised and powerless population. Youth of color living in poverty have an even greater likelihood, due to persistent racism and classism in our society, of being in the margins. These youth are often viewed as destructors of community, despite evidence of structural disinvestment, and are rarely given opportunities to participate in their communities. This dissertation utilizes a community-based participatory approach to collaborate with a group of youth of color residing in an impoverished community who are actively engaged in community development efforts. Focus group discussions and individual interviews, along with observations, reveal that youth have strong interests in participating in their community. When given opportunities to participate, they want to be involved in making changes to improve the neighborhood. Youth expressed having passion for their community, being acutely aware of neighborhood needs, and having creative solutions to community problems. In order to become assets to their community, youth need adults and institutions to operate in ways that promote their strengths and embrace youth as both resources and leaders in the community. As community development often occurs through programs, this dissertation proposes a conceptual model to guide youth programs in providing young people with an atmosphere where they can develop. Young people need these programs to create physically and emotionally safe spaces, to integrate youth into the community, to take a holistic approach in working with youth, to reframe traditional frameworks for prevention, and to offer youth meaningful and productive experiences where they are making decisions and designing interventions. When youth are supported, they develop empowered self-perception, self-esteem, self-efficacy, agency, capacity, role modeling behavior, team work, expanded social networks, intergenerational connections, economic stability, skills to make long-term impacts and a sense of ownership of the community

Managing risk in open source software adoption

By 2016 an estimated 95% of all commercial software packages will include Open Source Software (OSS). This extended adoption is yet not avoiding failure rates in OSS projects to be as high as 50%. Inadequate risk management has been identified among the top mistakes to avoid when implementing OSS-based solutions. Understanding, managing and mitigating OSS adoption risks is therefore crucial to avoid potentially significant adverse impact on the business. In this position paper we portray a short report of work in progress on risk management in OSS adoption processes. We present a risk-aware technical decision-making management platform integrated in a business-oriented decision-making framework, which together support placing technical OSS adoption decisions into organizational, business strategy as well as the broader OSS community context. The platform will be validated against a collection of use cases coming from different types of organizations: big companies, SMEs, public administration, consolidated OSS communities and emergent small OSS products.Postprint (published version

Hong Kong chapter report

Yiu-ming Cheung from Hong Kong Baptist University, China, and Michael Chau from The University of Hong Kong, China, has discussed significant facts of the IEEE (Hong Kong) Computational Intelligence Chapter report. The Hong Kong Chapter, founded in 2003, is aimed at coordinating and supporting work and stimulating the public's interests in the field of Computational Intelligence in the city. They have organized many activities that can be classified in four categories, such as conference co-organization and sponsorship, academic seminars, industry visits, and student project/paper competition, to meet their goal. The Chapter organized several academic seminars on topics regarding computational intelligence for enabling the members and the local community a communication channel to share their expertise and intelligence. The Chapter also organized several industry visits for making the members aware of the latest development of computational intelligence technologies in the industry.published_or_final_versio

Bringing Video Communication to the Community: Opportunities and Challenges

The rise of online social networks, the wide availability of video communication technology and the deployment of high-speed broadband networks together provide the opportunity for video to become a medium for mass social communication among communities. However, current solutions provide poor support for ad hoc social interactions among multiple groups of participants. This position paper summarises the results of more than 5 years’ research to make communication and engagement easier between groups of people separated in space. It shows how communication can be effectively combined with different shared activities, and how the technical capabilities of Communication Orchestration and Dynamic Composition work together to improve the quality of human interactions. The paper also describes ongoing work to develop the Service-Aware Network as a means of optimising the quality of a user’s communication experience while making most efficient use of network resources. We believe these developments could enable video-mediated communication to become an effective and accepted enabler for social communication within community groups globall

Meaningful Experiences of Community-Based Support Workers for Individuals with Acquired Brain Injury

Support workers hold a variety of roles and responsibilities when supporting individuals with Acquired Brain Injuries (ABI), yet research on the experience and meaning of being a support worker for individuals with ABI in the community setting is scarce. The present study explored the first-hand accounts of community-based support workers and their meaningful experiences of providing support for individuals with ABI. The guiding research question was: What is the experience of support workers who support youth and young adults with ABI in the community setting? Five female support workers, ranging in age from 21 to 28 years, participated in individual semi-structured interviews. The data were transcribed and analyzed using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (Smith, Flowers & Larkin, 2009), revealing five themes: (i) forming the relationship; (ii) personalizing support; (iii) making a difference; (iv) growing personally; and (v) becoming politically and socially aware. The present study provided a valuable contribution to the limited literature on support workers’ experiences supporting youth and young adults with ABI in the community setting by illuminating the many roles of a support worker and by providing insight into the qualities that give support work meaning. Implications for practice and suggestions for future research are discussed