Principles in Patterns (PiP) : Institutional Approaches to Curriculum Design Institutional Story

The principal outputs of the PiP Project surround the Course and Class Approval (C-CAP) system. This web-based system built on Microsoft SharePoint addresses and resolves many of the issues identified by the project. Generally well received by both academic and support staff, the system provides personalised views, adaptive forms and contextualised support for all phases of the approval process. Although the system deliberately encapsulates and facilitates existing approval processes thus achieving buy-in, it is already achieving significant improvements over the previous processes, not only in reducing the administrative overheads but also in supporting curriculum design and academic quality. The system is now embedded across three faculties and is now considered by the University of Strathclyde to be a "core institutional service". Alongside the C-CAP system the PiP Project also cultivated a suite of approaches: an incremental systems development methodology; a structured and replicable evaluation approach, and; Strathclyde's Lean Approach to Efficiencies in Education Kit (SLEEK) business process improvement methodology Each is based on recognised formal techniques, providing the basis for a rigorous approach. This is contextualised within and adapted to the HE institutional context thus building the foundation not only for the project but ultimately for institution wide process improvement. This "institutional story" report summarises the principal outcomes of the Project

Piloting a Digitized Evidence-Based Assessment System

One of the most difficult challenges facing university-based teacher education programs is to document program effectiveness. Demands for supporting data come from a number of different constituencies including state legislators, hiring officials and parents, and state officials. The American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) survey (Wineburg, 2006) identified that institutions are besieged by the demands for data and frustrated by the time and energy required to collect and retrieve evidence. A primary recommendation emerging from the AASCU findings focused on the proactive development of institutional data systems that guide program progress and demonstrate the achievement of educational outcomes for both teacher quality and student learning. The purpose of our paper is to report on the development of a pilot effort in Pennsylvania to digitize practice-based evidence for documenting teacher candidate and program quality. [excerpt

Supporting the Everyday Work of Scientists: Automating Scientific Workflows

This paper describes an action research project that we undertook with National Research Council Canada (NRC) scientists. Based on discussions about their \ud difficulties in using software to collect data and manage processes, we identified three requirements for increasing research productivity: ease of use for end- \ud users; managing scientific workflows; and facilitating software interoperability. Based on these requirements, we developed a software framework, Sweet, to \ud assist in the automation of scientific workflows. \ud \ud Throughout the iterative development process, and through a series of structured interviews, we evaluated how the framework was used in practice, and identified \ud increases in productivity and effectiveness and their causes. While the framework provides resources for writing application wrappers, it was easier to code the applications’ functionality directly into the framework using OSS components. Ease of use for the end-user and flexible and fully parameterized workflow representations were key elements of the framework’s success. \u

Initiating organizational memories using ontology network analysis

One of the important problems in organizational memories is their initial set-up. It is difficult to choose the right information to include in an organizational memory, and the right information is also a prerequisite for maximizing the uptake and relevance of the memory content. To tackle this problem, most developers adopt heavy-weight solutions and rely on a faithful continuous interaction with users to create and improve its content. In this paper, we explore the use of an automatic, light-weight solution, drawn from the underlying ingredients of an organizational memory: ontologies. We have developed an ontology-based network analysis method which we applied to tackle the problem of identifying communities of practice in an organization. We use ontology-based network analysis as a means to provide content automatically for the initial set up of an organizational memory

A framework for design engineering education in a global context

This paper presents a framework for teaching design engineering in a global context using innovative technologies to enable distributed teams to work together effectively across international and cultural boundaries. The DIDET Framework represents the findings of a 5-year project conducted by the University of Strathclyde, Stanford University and Olin College which enhanced student learning opportunities by enabling them to partake in global, team based design engineering projects, directly experiencing different cultural contexts and accessing a variety of digital information sources via a range of innovative technology. The use of innovative technology enabled the formalization of design knowledge within international student teams as did the methods that were developed for students to store, share and reuse information. Coaching methods were used by teaching staff to support distributed teams and evaluation work on relevant classes was carried out regularly to allow ongoing improvement of learning and teaching and show improvements in student learning. Major findings of the 5 year project include the requirement to overcome technological, pedagogical and cultural issues for successful eLearning implementations. The DIDET Framework encapsulates all the conclusions relating to design engineering in a global context. Each of the principles for effective distributed design learning is shown along with relevant findings and suggested metrics. The findings detailed in the paper were reached through a series of interventions in design engineering education at the collaborating institutions. Evaluation was carried out on an ongoing basis and fed back into project development, both on the pedagogical and the technological approaches

Implementing a resource list management system in an academic library

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review the key components of the introduction of a new resource list management system (RLMS) at Nottingham Trent University (NTU) using the Aspire application from Talis Education. It explains the key service goals; the implementation milestones; the main technical challenges which needed to be addressed; and the dynamic relationship between the rollout of the RLMS and existing selection, acquisition and resource delivery processes

Elastic Business Process Management: State of the Art and Open Challenges for BPM in the Cloud

With the advent of cloud computing, organizations are nowadays able to react rapidly to changing demands for computational resources. Not only individual applications can be hosted on virtual cloud infrastructures, but also complete business processes. This allows the realization of so-called elastic processes, i.e., processes which are carried out using elastic cloud resources. Despite the manifold benefits of elastic processes, there is still a lack of solutions supporting them. In this paper, we identify the state of the art of elastic Business Process Management with a focus on infrastructural challenges. We conceptualize an architecture for an elastic Business Process Management System and discuss existing work on scheduling, resource allocation, monitoring, decentralized coordination, and state management for elastic processes. Furthermore, we present two representative elastic Business Process Management Systems which are intended to counter these challenges. Based on our findings, we identify open issues and outline possible research directions for the realization of elastic processes and elastic Business Process Management.Comment: Please cite as: S. Schulte, C. Janiesch, S. Venugopal, I. Weber, and P. Hoenisch (2015). Elastic Business Process Management: State of the Art and Open Challenges for BPM in the Cloud. Future Generation Computer Systems, Volume NN, Number N, NN-NN., http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2014.09.00