203,007 research outputs found
An evaluation of the Department of Healthâs Health and Social Care Volunteering Fund
The Health and Social Care Volunteering Fund (HSCVF) is an innovative programme that was established in 2009 by the Department of Health (DH) to build organisational and community capacity for volunteering through a national and local grant scheme. The HSCVF has offered both funds and tailored support to health and social care projects delivered by Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) organisations. The HSCVF is managed by a partnership led by Ecorys and with expertise from leading national voluntary sector organisations: Attend, Community Service Volunteers (CSV) and Primetimers. To date the HSCVF has funded a total of 157 local and national projects, of which 114 are currently live. This report presents findings from an evaluation of the HSCVF with a specific focus on the 2010/2011 national and local projects, conducted by a team from the Institute for Health & Wellbeing at Leeds Metropolitan University. It presents evidence on the extent to which, how and in what ways the HSCVF programme has built organisational and community capacity across the national and local HSCVF projects, as well as on the health and social outcomes that resulted
Against the ânetworked information economyâ: rethinking decentralization, community, and free software development
No description supplie
Wikipedia and the politics of mass collaboration
Working together to produce socio-technological objects, based on emergent platforms
of economic production, is of great importance in the task of political transformation and the
creation of new subjectivities. Increasingly, âcollaborationâ has become a veritable buzzword
used to describe the human associations that create such new media objects. In the language
of âWeb 2.0â, âparticipatory cultureâ, âuser-generated contentâ, âpeer productionâ and
the âproduserâ, first and foremost we are all collaborators. In this paper I investigate recent
literature that stresses the collaborative nature of Web 2.0, and in particular, works that
address the nascent processes of peer production. I contend that this material positions such
projects as what Chantal Mouffe has described as the âpost-politicalâ; a fictitious space far
divorced from the clamour of the everyday. I analyse one Wikipedia entry to demonstrate the
distance between this post-political discourse of collaboration and the realities it describes,
and finish by arguing for a more politicised notion of collaboration
The quality of sustainability and the nature of open source software
The aim is to categorise Open Source Software as a commons based production process and resource. The definition of the commons is always accompanied by the doubt about its sustainability, the so-called "tragedy of the commons." Therefore it is worth to have a closer look on Open Source and why a "tragedy" does not appear
Social media: a guide for researchers
This guide has been produced by the International Centre for Guidance Studies, and aims to provide the information needed to make an informed decision about using social media and select from the vast range of tools that are available. One of the most important things that researchers do is to ïŹnd, use and disseminate information, and social media offers a range of tools which can facilitate this. The guide discusses the use of social media for research and academic purposes and will not be examining the many other uses that social media is put to across society. Social media can change the way in which you undertake research, and can also open up new forms of communication and dissemination. It has the power to enable researchers to engage in a wide range of dissemination in a highly efïŹcient way.Research Information Networ
CHORUS Deliverable 2.1: State of the Art on Multimedia Search Engines
Based on the information provided by European projects and national initiatives related to multimedia search as well as domains experts that participated in the CHORUS Think-thanks and workshops, this document reports on the state of the art related to multimedia content search from, a technical, and socio-economic perspective.
The technical perspective includes an up to date view on content based indexing and retrieval technologies, multimedia search in the context of mobile devices and peer-to-peer networks, and an overview of current evaluation and benchmark inititiatives to measure the performance of multimedia search engines.
From a socio-economic perspective we inventorize the impact and legal consequences of these technical advances and point out future directions of research
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Collaborative yet independent: Information practices in the physical sciences
In many ways, the physical sciences are at the forefront of using digital tools and methods to work with information and data. However, the fields and disciplines that make up the physical sciences are by no means uniform, and physical scientists find, use, and disseminate information in a variety of ways. This report examines information practices in the physical sciences across seven cases, and demonstrates the richly varied ways in which physical scientists work, collaborate, and share information and data.
This report details seven case studies in the physical sciences. For each case, qualitative interviews and focus groups were used to understand the domain. Quantitative data gathered from a survey of participants highlights different information strategies employed across the cases, and identifies important software used for research.
Finally, conclusions from across the cases are drawn, and recommendations are made. This report is the third in a series commissioned by the Research Information Network (RIN), each looking at information practices in a specific domain (life sciences, humanities, and physical sciences). The aim is to understand how researchers within a range of disciplines find and use information, and in particular how that has changed with the introduction of new technologies
Silver Dreams Fund Learning and Evaluation Contract: Final report June 2014
This is a summary of the Final Report which presents the findings of the evaluation of the Big Lottery Fund's Silver Dreams Fund conducted by Ecorys.The Silver Dreams Fund was a ÂŁ10 million programme which sought to address the gaps in provision by challenging organisations to come up with an innovative idea for a project that would "pioneer ways to help vulnerable older people deal more effectively with life-changing events".Our approach involved both formative and summative elements and was based upon a robust and evidence-based outcome evaluation framework. In addition, we have also undertaken an evaluation of the new programme management processes employed by the Big Lottery Fund which has been reported separately.In summary, the evaluation involved:- development of an evaluation framework and common indicators to measure outcomes;- provision of a package of self-evaluation support to projects;- programme level work to provide independent primary qualitative research and to validate findings from self-evaluations;- a range of learning activities; and- analysis and reporting
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