BIM Research in Irish Academic Institutions 2015-19

The use of BIM in the Irish construction industry has become pervasive in the last decade and it is an essential element in improving productivity in the market. The developments in BIM education and training in supporting the increase in Ireland’s BIM maturity has been well documented in recent years, principally through the proceedings of the BIM Gatherings and the BIM in Ireland 2017 and 2019 reviews. Similarly, the public and private sectors have been surveyed to establish their readiness for digital transformation on their BIM journey. However, BIM research undertaken by Irish academics, while individually strong, has not been strategic at national level nor has it yet met all the needs of industry. This paper will review the learned publications of all research-active academics on this island in the various aspects of the field of BIM-related research in the last 5 years. It will categorise and analyse their achievements, acting as a national reference source for all parties in this industry. It will also suggest areas where further research opportunities exist in support of the continuing fast-paced evolution of this digital technology in the construction industry, nationally and internationally

Industry Partnerships Learning Models For Surveying And Mapping Of Vocational High Schools

This study aims to identify a learning involving the world of work, to formulate the learning model, and to evaluate the learning model. This study used a qualitative approach for design and development research, consisting of the development and validation steps. The study concludes as follows. (1) the learning through partnerships having been conducted in all vocational high schools were industrial practice and vocational practice examination. (2) the constraints of learning through partnerships were mainly the far distance and the industry schedules that did not always match with the school\u27s. (3) the model development could be done by improving the learning quality by industrial practices in the private companies and with adding the learning model by industry visits, guest teaching, and up-to-date technology training. (4) the implementation of the developed model showed the feasibility and the effectiveness to prepare the students with the competencies required by the world of work. (5) the learning models through partnerships that could be practiced were guest teaching, orientation for industrial practice, industrial practices, students\u27 industry visits, up-to-date technology training, and vocational practice examination

Toward a Library Renaissance

For centuries, librarians have tried to safeguard information, sometimes in the face of destruction. Think of the great Library of Alexandria, the burning of which symbolizes the irretrievable loss of knowledge. Think also of Umberto Eco\u27s novel, The Name of the Rose, and the (fictitious) 14th-century story about the search for a lost volume of Aristotle that no one is allowed to read—but yet must be preserved—because it might reveal that Jesus could and did laugh, contrary to the death-obsessed zeitgeist of the time. Fast-forward to the age of the internet, when some fear libraries are again being destroyed and many ask: Who wants libraries when you have Google? This is not an easy question to address but one need not yield to pessimism. This paper argues that identifiable trends direct to a promising future: in light of these, one should be able to circumscribe plausible scenarios. Approaches to strategic planning that count on ownership should make a big difference and point to desirable skills for librarians. If they also invest in resilience and give unequivocal attention to branding, libraries can enjoy a renaissance

Comparative Analysis of Satisfaction with Course of Study among Students of Environmental Faculty/School in Nigerian Universities

This study assessed the variation in the level of course of study satisfaction among the undergraduate students of the Environmental Faculty/School in some selected Nigerian tertiary institutions. The study sourced and utilised data from online survey among the participating students from the various departments under the Faculty of Environmental Technology. Survey questionnaire was designed using the Survey Menu in DATAtab statistical software and shared to students in 25 Federal, State and Private institutions across Nigeria. Responses from 1471 respondents were analysed using frequency and crosstabulations accompanied with Chi-square tests. In performing the Chi-square tests, the contributions of each Department's response were obtained to know which Department contributed most to total Chi-Square value, hence identifying the largest contributor(s) to the differences in the data. More than 80% of the students in Architecture, Building, Estate Management and Quantity Surveying were satisfied with their course, compared to around 70% of students in Urban and Regional Planning as well as Surveying and Geoinformatics. A Chi2 test carried out showed a statistically significant difference in study satisfaction among the students in the six departments (χ² (10) = 47.54, p = 0.000). URP students were the most dissatisfied. Out of the 293 dissatisfied students, 41.3% felt that their course would not provide them with good employment opportunities, while about 29% rated their course inferior to other built environment courses. It is recommended that courses in Environmental Faculty/School should be made more multi-disciplinary and injected with many cross-cutting subjects. Students should be regularly updated about the latest technology in their courses and educated about other consultancy services they can render as graduates of Built Environment.&nbsp

Reaching out with OER: the new role of public-facing open scholar

Open educational resources (OER) and, more recently, open educational practices (OEP) have been widely promoted as a means of increasing openness in higher education (HE). Thus far, such openness has been limited by OER provision typically being supplier-driven and contained within the boundaries of HE. Seeking to explore ways in which OEP might become more needs-led we conceptualised a new ‘public-facing open scholar’ role involving academics working with online communities to source and develop OER to meet their needs. To explore the scope for this role we focused on the voluntary sector, which we felt might particularly benefit from such collaboration. We evaluated four representative communities for evidence of their being self-educating (thereby offering the potential for academics to contribute) and for any existing learning dimension. We found that all four communities were self-educating and each included learning infrastructure elements, for example provision for web chats with ‘experts’, together with evidence of receptiveness to academic collaboration. This indicated that there was scope for the role of public-facing open scholar. We therefore developed detailed guidelines for performing the role, which has the potential to be applied beyond the voluntary sector and to greatly extend the beneficial impact of existing OER, prompting institutions to release new OER in response to the needs of people outside HE

The Acceptance of Cryptocurrency for Zakat Transactions: Experts’ view on its issues readiness

This study discussed themes that can be used as guidelines for Islamic financial institutions (I.F.I.s) to get themselves equipped once legally accepted globally. Even though there are currently over 2,000 cryptocurrencies on the market, Bitcoin is still the most well-known and was the first cryptocurrency coin to go mainstream. Ten experts actively involved as academicians and industry participated in a semi-structured interview session. The study's findings discovered five themes, namely Knowledge, Security, Economics, Improvement, and Technology, successfully explored to the saturation point and are used as a guideline for the readiness to accept cryptocurrency in zakat transactions. Keywords: Issues of Cryptocurrency; zakat; Shariah; Readiness eISSN: 2398-4287 © 2022. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., U.K. This is an open access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians/Africans/Arabians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v7i20.341

Digital Construction and BIM Research in Ireland 2016-2020

As the construction industry opens up post pandemic, new and significant challenges will demand considerable expertise, not least in financial viability, solving the housing crisis and facing the very significant climate change pressures to make the industry less wasteful and less carbon intensive. This presents an excellent opportunity to further inculcate aspects of lean construction, particularly BIM into many aspects of construction not traditionally associated with digital construction, provided the necessary expertise is available and known to exist. Following a well-received recent conference paper summarising BIM-related research published by academics in Ireland’s higher education institutions in 2020, this paper will review and identify noteworthy publications in digital technologies, including BIM, by academics of this island’s third level institutions in the last five years. Areas of expertise of individuals will be identified to act as a useful directory for both industry and fellow researchers as well as providing a valuable national resource to identify research gaps which need funding if the ambitions of the national plan for the digitisation of the industry are to be realised. Using an already proven methodology, a survey of the 16 academic institutions in Ireland will be conducted through identified representatives in each institution, seeking all conference and journal papers published in the 2016-2020 period. The assembled database will be categorised, sorted and analysed to identify academic individuals in the workforce with extant research strengths in the various themes to establish the available expertise and areas for growth in the next five years

An Exploratory Sequential Mixed Methods Approach to Understanding Researchers’ Data Management Practices at UVM: Findings from the Qualitative Phase

The objective of this article is to report on the first qualitative phase of an exploratory sequential mixed methods research design focused on researcher data management practices and related institutional research data services. The aim of this study is to understand data management behaviors of faculty at the University of Vermont (UVM), a higher-research activity Research University, in order to guide the development of campus research data management services. The population of study was all faculty who received National Science Foundation (NSF) grants between 2011 and 2014 who were required to submit a data management plan (DMP); qualitative data was collected in two forms: (1) semi-structured interviews and (2) document analysis of data management plans. From a population of 47 researchers, six were included in the interview sample, representing a broad range of disciplines and NSF Directorates, and 35 data management plans were analyzed. Three major themes were identified through triangulation of qualitative data sources: data management activities, including data dissemination and data sharing; institutional research support and infrastructure barriers; and perceptions of data management plans and attitudes towards data management planning. The themes articulated in this article will be used to design a survey for the second quantitative phase of the study, which will aim to more broadly generalize data management activities at UVM across all disciplines

Quality in MOOCs: Surveying the Terrain

The purpose of this review is to identify quality measures and to highlight some of the tensions surrounding notions of quality, as well as the need for new ways of thinking about and approaching quality in MOOCs. It draws on the literature on both MOOCs and quality in education more generally in order to provide a framework for thinking about quality and the different variables and questions that must be considered when conceptualising quality in MOOCs. The review adopts a relativist approach, positioning quality as a measure for a specific purpose. The review draws upon Biggs’s (1993) 3P model to explore notions and dimensions of quality in relation to MOOCs — presage, process and product variables — which correspond to an input–environment–output model. The review brings together literature examining how quality should be interpreted and assessed in MOOCs at a more general and theoretical level, as well as empirical research studies that explore how these ideas about quality can be operationalised, including the measures and instruments that can be employed. What emerges from the literature are the complexities involved in interpreting and measuring quality in MOOCs and the importance of both context and perspective to discussions of quality

An Exploratory Sequential Mixed Methods Approach to Understanding Researchers’ Data Management Practices at UVM: Findings from the Quantitative Phase

This article reports on the second quantitative phase of an exploratory sequential mixed methods research design focused on researcher data management practices and related institutional support and services. The study aims to understand data management activities and challenges of faculty at the University of Vermont (UVM), a higher research activity Research University, in order to develop appropriate research data services (RDS). Data was collected via a survey, built on themes from the initial qualitative data analysis from the first phase of this study. The survey was distributed to a nonrandom census sample of full-time UVM faculty and researchers (P=1,190); from this population, a total of 319 participants completed the survey for a 26.8% response rate. The survey collected information on five dimensions of data management: data management activities; data management plans; data management challenges; data management support; and attitudes and behaviors towards data management planning. Frequencies, cross tabulations, and chi-square tests of independence were calculated using demographic variables including gender, rank, college, and discipline. Results from the analysis provide a snapshot of research data management activities at UVM, including types of data collected, use of metadata, short- and long-term storage of data, and data sharing practices. The survey identified key challenges to data management, including data description (metadata) and sharing data with others; this latter challenge is particular impacted by confidentiality issues and lack of time, personnel, and infrastructure to make data available. Faculty also provided insight to RDS that they think UVM should support, as well as RDS they were personally interested in. Data from this study will be integrated with data from the first qualitative phase of the research project and analyzed for meta-inferences to help determine future research data services at UVM