Supporting placement supervision in clinical exercise physiology

The continued engagement of the professional workforce as supervisors is critical for the sustainability and growth of work-integrated learning activities in university degrees. This study investigated factors that influence the willingness and ability of clinicians to continue to supervise clinical exercise physiology work-integrated learning opportunities and makes recommendations for future supervision engagement. Themes identified from a supervisor survey were: staffing and time availability; administrative processes and support; student quality, knowledge and attitudes; student learning experiences; supporting the profession; service benefit; clinical personal benefit; funding; workplace support; staff qualifications and experience; prior positive experiences; future recruitment; facilities and infrastructure; and supporting the university. The responses resulted in five key recommendations for future enhanced and sustainable placement supervision. These were: adoption of efficient supervision structures; development and use of a competency checklist; enhanced recognition of supervision; standardized placement paperwork and assessment tools; and broadening of placement scheduling

Knowledge-based process management – an approach to handling adaptive workflow

In recent years, many organisations have found enterprise modelling, especially business process modelling, to be an effective tool for managing organisational change. The application of business processing modelling has brought benefits to many organisations, but the models developed tend to be used for reference during business operations and re-engineering activities; they rarely play an active role in supporting the day-to-day execution of the processes. While workflow management systems are widely used for the streamlined management of "administrative" business processes, current systems are unable to cope with the more dynamic situations encountered in ad-hoc and collaborative processes [1]. A system that supports complex and dynamically changing processes is required. There is increasing interest in making workflow systems more adaptive [8][20] and using knowledge-based techniques to provide more flexible process management support than is possible Published in Knowledge-based Systems, Vol 16, 2003, pp149-160 Page 2 using current workflow systems [4][21]. This paper describes the results of a collaborative project between Loughborough University and the University of Edinburgh. ICI and Unilever were industrial partners on the project, providing real business requirements in the application domain. The project investigated the use of ontologies, agents and knowledge based planning techniques to provide support for adaptive workflow or flexible workflow management, especially in the area of new product development within the chemical industries

IT governance mechanisms in higher education

Information technology (IT) has become essential in supporting the growth and sustainability of all types of organizations. Higher education institutions are a special type of organization where technological infrastructure consists of a variety of applications, different platforms, academic systems, cloud applications and heterogeneous technologies. All these technologies for supporting the research, teaching and administrative processes require an effective IT governance framework. The framework of IT governance is composed of structures, processes and relational mechanisms. Each one of these mechanisms has a function and when implemented, should affect the organization positively. The process of identifying the right mechanisms to a specific context is a complex endeavor. This paper looks at the IT governance mechanism that higher education institutions have implemented. We did an extensive literature review making use of databases such as Web of Science, IEEE, SCOPUS, or AIS eLibrary for selecting case studies. We discuss these practices in the context of higher education. To continue this research and improve the IT governance body of knowledge for higher education institutions, future works are pointed out.This work was supported by CAPES Foundation, Ministry of Education of Brazil Process n.º10415/13-0 and by FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, project UID/CEC/00319/2013.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Environmental Conflict Resolution: Strategies for Environmental Grantmakers

Outlines the strategies that are employed with the use of ECR to promote collaborative problem solving and manage disputes related to the use and development of natural resources. Includes a description of ten case studies where ECR was used effectively

Contribution of agronomy to land management issues - A Comparison of five interdisciplinary PhD theses

An introductory literature review highlights the growing attention within the processes taking place at farming region and landscape scale beside the classical spatial scales at cultivated/experimental plot level. This recent evolution in agronomy finds its origin in newly emerging land management issues. Meanwhile, geography and other disciplines are stressing the need for a greater integration of multifunctional agricultural activities into the decision-making processes at the various levels of land management, such as provinces, municipalities or watersheds. This requires also that studies on farmland management include explicitly the different environmental and social contexts influencing farming activities. In this paper we aim to analyse how recent agronomic oriented research are facing and supporting various land management issues. We have compared five interdisciplinary PhD theses examining their definitions and methods of analysis for: the farming system, the local land management issues at stake, the spatial scale selected for the study, the stakeholders' involvement and the interaction with other disciplines. Common issues which emerged from this comparison are delivery of agro-environmental services, sustainable land management and landscape conservation. Multiple spatial levels were considered, which included at least one administrative unit of policy decision/implementation. Consequently, the explicit (re)definition of some agronomic concepts and methods was needed. Regarding the interdisciplinary framework, the theses have stressed the interactions among agronomy, geography and ecology. All theses aimed at delivering tools for decision-making support, mainly in the form of cartography. Nevertheless the participation of local stakeholders was generally included as a final step; herewith the settings of stakeholders' involvement were various. In conclusion, we discuss how the produced knowledge has enhanced the land management issues in local planning tools. On these bases, we stress finally the issues at stake to strengthen the roles and contributions of agronomic oriented education and research to agricultural land management and development. (Résumé d'auteur

'First Portal in a Storm': A Virtual Space for Transition Students

The lives of millennial students are epitomised by ubiquitous information, merged technologies, blurred social-study-work boundaries, multitasking and hyperlinked online interactions (Oblinger & Oblinger, 2005). These characteristics have implications for the design of online spaces that aim to provide virtual access to course materials, administrative processes and support information, all of which is required by students to steer a course through the storm of their transition university experience. Previously we summarised the challenges facing first year students (Kift & Nelson, 2005) and investigated their current online engagement patterns, which revealed three issues for consideration when designing virtual spaces (Nelson, Kift & Harper, 2005). In this paper we continue our examination of students’ interactions with online spaces by considering the perceptions and use of technology by millennial students as well as projections for managing the virtual learning environments of the future. The findings from this analysis are informed by our previous work to conceptualise and describe the architecture of a transition portal

Differentiating KMS Strategy from Business Strategy, KM Strategy and IS/IT Strategy

The era of the new millennium has witnessed a wide range of the revolutionized technology that affects our lives and the way an organization is conducted. The contemporary business sectors start to recognize the potential use of knowledge management in the new organizational processes. As a result, increasing numbers of organizations pay attention to the creative value of leveraging knowledge as one of their potential assets. Therefore, organizations start to focus on knowledge as one of the important elements in competitive advantage that needs to be utilized efficiently and effectively. They have shown a great attention of knowledge management in their business strategy incorporated with technology. The role of technological tools and applications is essential in supporting and enhancing knowledge management strategy. There has been a transition from traditional information system to new a concept of knowledge management system employed by organization to sustain competitive advantage in dynamic and unstable environment. Further, to shift the paradigm of knowledge management systems concept from business sectors, this study focused on the KMS applications and tools particularly in Institutions of Higher Education (IHE) environment. The purpose of this study is to (a) identify the relationship of business strategy, knowledge management (KM) Strategy, knowledge management systems (KMS) strategy, information system (IS) strategy and information technology (IT) strategy, particularly in the context of IHE, (b) describe those strategies and their relationship based on the context of IHE. This will provide guidance and effective methods for formulating the KMS strategy with the aim to align it with business strategies and ensuring success of its implementation

Service-oriented coordination platform for technology-enhanced learning

It is currently difficult to coordinate learning processes, not only because multiple stakeholders are involved (such as students, teachers, administrative staff, technical staff), but also because these processes are driven by sophisticated rules (such as rules on how to provide learning material, rules on how to assess students’ progress, rules on how to share educational responsibilities). This is one of the reasons for the slow progress in technology-enhanced learning. Consequently, there is a clear demand for technological facilitation of the coordination of learning processes. In this work, we suggest some solution directions that are based on SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture). In particular, we propose a coordination service pattern consistent with SOA and based on requirements that follow from an analysis of both learning processes and potentially useful support technologies. We present the service pattern considering both functional and non-functional issues, and we address policy enforcement as well. Finally, we complement our proposed architecture-level solution directions with an example. The example illustrates our ideas and is also used to identify: (i) a short list of educational IT services; (ii) related non-functional concerns; they will be considered in future work

A participatory design approach for the development of support environments in eGovernment services to citizens

The introduction of eGovernment services and applications leads to major changes in the structure and operation of public administrations. In this paper we describe the work in progress in an Italian project called “SPO.T.” aimed at the analysis, development, deployment and evaluation of tools and environments to support the people who plan, deliver, use and evaluate user-centred provision of One-Stop-Shop services to citizens. The “SPO.T.” project has focused on two requirements: 1. the support tools and environments must facilitate the active involvement of all stakeholders in the definition and evolution of eGovernment applications and services, and it is argued that through participatory design changes of structure, process and culture can be delivered effectively; 2. they must embody a set of architecturally coherent resources which reflect the new roles and relationships of public administration and which are sufficiently generic to be relevant to a wide range of local contexts across the community