Delphi Austria - An Example of Tailoring Foresight to the Needs of a Small Country

The world-wide diffusion and recognition of Technology Foresight suggests that it is of value for quite diverse types of economies and societies. Its merit as an important tool of strategic intelligence for policy-making also in small countries and transition economies depends on a careful tailoring to specific needs. Practice of Foresight is rather diverse also among small countries, but approaches tend to be more selective in scope, have more specific goals, and put greater emphasis on demand aspects than in bigger countries. Austria’s first systematic Foresight programme (completed in 1998) is an example of an innovative approach adapted to the needs of a small country. This contribution shows how Delphi Austria was tailored to a small economy which had undergone a successful catch-up process and how the Foresight process as well as its results have been utilised.Technology Foresight, Delphi method, small country, Austria, innovation, technology policy, implementation

Emerging communities of child-healthcare practice in the management of long-term conditions such as chronic kidney disease: Qualitative study of parents' accounts

Background: Parents of children and young people with long-term conditions who need to deliver clinical care to their child at home with remote support from hospital-based professionals, often search the internet for care-giving information. However, there is little evidence that the information available online was developed and evaluated with parents or that it acknowledges the communities of practice that exist as parents and healthcare professionals share responsibility for condition management. Methods. The data reported here are part of a wider study that developed and tested a condition-specific, online parent information and support application with children and young people with chronic-kidney disease, parents and professionals. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 19 fathers and 24 mothers who had recently tested the novel application. Data were analysed using Framework Analysis and the Communities of Practice concept. Results: Evolving communities of child-healthcare practice were identified comprising three components and several sub components: (1) Experiencing (parents making sense of clinical tasks) through Normalising care, Normalising illness, Acceptance & action, Gaining strength from the affected child and Building relationships to formalise a routine; (2) Doing (Parents executing tasks according to their individual skills) illustrated by Developing coping strategies, Importance of parents' efficacy of care and Fear of the child's health failing; and (3) Belonging/Becoming (Parents defining task and group members' worth and creating a personal identity within the community) consisting of Information sharing, Negotiation with health professionals and Achieving expertise in care. Parents also recalled factors affecting the development of their respective communities of healthcare practice; these included Service transition, Poor parent social life, Psycho-social affects, Family chronic illness, Difficulty in learning new procedures, Shielding and avoidance, and Language and cultural barriers. Health care professionals will benefit from using the communities of child-healthcare practice model when they support parents of children with chronic kidney disease. Conclusions: Understanding some of the factors that may influence the development of communities of child-healthcare practice will help professionals to tailor information and support for parents learning to manage their child's healthcare. Our results are potentially transferrable to professionals managing the care of children and young people with other long-term conditions. © 2014 Carolan et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd

The role of the arts in professional education; making the invisible, visible.

'The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls' (Pablo Picasso). This paper will explore the value of using the arts in professional education. We use the term arts to include all the creative arts, such as poetry, drama, music, fiction, film, television and all the visual arts. The general argument in our paper could be applied to education for a wide range of professionals, although we draw on examples from health, teaching, business, and law. Professional education, and particularly professional education which confers a licence to practice, is often tightly regulated and controlled by professional bodies, and curricula are generally employer-led. Students invest heavily in their education in most countries in the world, with a few enlightened and beleaguered countries constituting exceptions. In England, fees in most universities have risen almost threefold for entry in 2012. Globally, students expect a financial return on their investment in the form of a graduate job. Policy spanning decades and cutting across political parties has emphasised the production of employable graduates as the primary role of higher education. Our contention is that this has led to a significant narrowing of the focus of professional education. There is a difference, however, between creating a 'job-ready' graduate, who is able to fulfil a narrow set of immediate vocational requirements, and developing a creative critical thinker, who is able not merely to implement current best practice, but to challenge it, develop it and even overturn it if necessary and who will be able to function at the highest level if circumstances change and new challenges present themselves. Sheridan-Rabideau (2010, p. 56) argues that “there is both room and need for preparing more creative individuals in every discipline”. The paper offers a rationale for widening the curriculum so that it includes opportunities for imaginative and open ended work, via engagement with the arts. It draws on research projects that each of us has conducted and some under development. We will also draw on both theoretical literature and on literature offering examples of good practice in this area. We aim to show how the arts enable people to expand their thinking and feeling so that they can get to those things that are often invisible because they are difficult to express in conventional academic language. We will explore, for example, how the arts may stimulate playful approaches that can bypass inhibition and produce surprising and exceptional ideas, how they encourage the envisioning of alternatives , helping us to overturn thinking trammelled by routine, how they may promote empathy and a deeper understanding of those whom professionals try to help and support and how they might help professionals develop a resistance to hegemonic perspectives. Our argument is that professionals have to be able to get 'beyond the dust of daily life', rise above routines and protocols and think imaginatively and creatively

ALT-SURF seminar: ePortfolios and Digital Repositories, 22 and 23 April 2004, Edinburgh UK

ALT (Association for Learning Technology) and SURF (collaborative organisation for IT innovation in Dutch HE) have similar goals and started working together in 1999. In 2001 they signed a Memorandum of Understanding to bring together learning technologists from the UK and the Netherlands in a variety of exchange activities. Sharing experiences and views internationally between peers proved to be an excellent way to learn new things, find inspiration to meet joint challenges and engage in healthy reflection. ALT and SURF organised mutual study visits (50 Dutch learning technologists visited universities in the UK in 2002 and 40 UK colleagues visited Dutch institutes in 2003), joint conferences and seminars, and a expert study trip to Australia (8 UK and 8 Dutch experts visited 14 institutes in 2002). SURF and ALT reported on these in presentations and publications. A new activity is the joint working seminar, where a specific theme can be discussed by experts in the field with the purpose of describing in a so-called ‘briefing paper’ the current state of affairs, the underlying beliefs, hopes and desired situation, and possible ‘next steps’ in joint conceptualisation and/or developing activities. In the process of composing the briefing papers differences between the countries will surface, e.g. organisational, cultural or political. The themes are therefore not isolated topics but seen as developments within a context. The first joint ALT-SURF working seminar took place in April 2004 in Edinburgh, immediately following an ALT spring conference, and addressed two related topics: e-(or Digital) Portfolios and Digital Repositories. The aim was to establish working relationships between experts in both countries through discussion and collaborative writing of briefing papers aimed at experts, researchers, managers and policy makers. The objectives of the working seminar were threefold: • describe the basic belief that leads to so much energy being put into these concepts • outline current thinking in ePortfolios and Digital repositories as a common reference point for deeper understanding • devise a roadmap to meet required conditions to further develop ePortfolios and Digital Repository concepts and use. This report is the result of that seminar, namely a briefing paper on ePortfolios and another on Digital Repositories. In the papers the potential and ultimate goal of using ePortfolios and Digital Repositories for learning and teaching is outlined; the current state of achievements is described, and thirdly the briefing paper concludes with desired next steps to reach the ultimate goals, what conditions need to be in place, what activities need to be set in motion. The papers highlight any apparent differences in approaches between UK and Netherlands as well as opportunities for future collaboration. SURF and ALT will use the conclusions and suggestions as input for joint future development and networking activities

Introducing citizen inquiry

The term ‘citizen inquiry’ was coined to describe ways that members of the public can learn by initiating or joining shared inquiry-led scientific investigations (Sharples et al., 2013). It merges learning through scientific investigation with mass collaborative participation exemplified in citizen science activities, altering the relationship most people have with research from being passive recipients to becoming actively engaged, and the relationship between scholarship and public understanding from dissemination towards cooperation. Through the presentation of empirical studies, this edited volume introduces concepts and practices of citizen inquiry

Proceedings of the International Workshop on EuroPLOT Persuasive Technology for Learning, Education and Teaching (IWEPLET 2013)

"This book contains the proceedings of the International Workshop on EuroPLOT Persuasive Technology for Learning, Education and Teaching (IWEPLET) 2013 which was held on 16.-17.September 2013 in Paphos (Cyprus) in conjunction with the EC-TEL conference. The workshop and hence the proceedings are divided in two parts: on Day 1 the EuroPLOT project and its results are introduced, with papers about the specific case studies and their evaluation. On Day 2, peer-reviewed papers are presented which address specific topics and issues going beyond the EuroPLOT scope. This workshop is one of the deliverables (D 2.6) of the EuroPLOT project, which has been funded from November 2010 – October 2013 by the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) of the European Commission through the Lifelong Learning Programme (LLL) by grant #511633. The purpose of this project was to develop and evaluate Persuasive Learning Objects and Technologies (PLOTS), based on ideas of BJ Fogg. The purpose of this workshop is to summarize the findings obtained during this project and disseminate them to an interested audience. Furthermore, it shall foster discussions about the future of persuasive technology and design in the context of learning, education and teaching. The international community working in this area of research is relatively small. Nevertheless, we have received a number of high-quality submissions which went through a peer-review process before being selected for presentation and publication. We hope that the information found in this book is useful to the reader and that more interest in this novel approach of persuasive design for teaching/education/learning is stimulated. We are very grateful to the organisers of EC-TEL 2013 for allowing to host IWEPLET 2013 within their organisational facilities which helped us a lot in preparing this event. I am also very grateful to everyone in the EuroPLOT team for collaborating so effectively in these three years towards creating excellent outputs, and for being such a nice group with a very positive spirit also beyond work. And finally I would like to thank the EACEA for providing the financial resources for the EuroPLOT project and for being very helpful when needed. This funding made it possible to organise the IWEPLET workshop without charging a fee from the participants.

Skills for sustainable growth: summary of responses to a consultation on the future direction of skills strategy

Skills for Sustainable Growth: a consultation on the future direction of skills strategy ran for twelve weeks, from 22 July to 14 October 2010. It outlined the Government’s principles for the skills system and acknowledged that further education and skills would not be untouched by action to reduce the deficit. It therefore asked for views on how best to deliver the various elements of the strategy in a context of less public money and as a joint-enterprise with individuals, communities and employers

Lactation following bereavement: how can midwives support women to make informed choices?

Perinatal loss, defined as the death of a baby within the neonatal period, stillbirth or late miscarriage (determined for the purpose of this paper as 20 weeks’ gestation), has been identified by multiple agencies and organisations as a focus for increased parental support. However, the lactation needs of mothers are broadly overlooked, which can lead to engorgement, mastitis and psychological harm. The most commonly offered option of pharmacological suppression is controversial due to a lack of efficacy, and concerns about physiological effects (Cole 2012). Women may already have stored frozen expressed breast milk (EBM) within the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), or be discharged home before their milk comes in several days later. In our experience, information and guidance for bereaved mothers about lactation and EBM are often lacking.For preterm neonates, the use of human milk for nutrition has been demonstrated to have significant health benefits compared to artificial formula (Quigley & McGuire 2014). Incidence of infection-related events, such as urinary tract infections, necrotising enterocolitis and sepsis can be reduced, and lengths of stay in the NICU are shortened when human milk is used (Maffei & Schanler 2017). While mother’s-own-milk (MOM) is the optimal form of human milk, the use of donor human milk can act as a bridge whilst a mother establishes her milk production, or in instances where MOM cannot be used. Milk banking has been carried out in the United Kingdom (UK) for over 80 years, based on the voluntary donation of milk from women screened according to national guidelines (NICE 2010). Current research describes a diverse population of milk donors in the UK, for whom key motivators to donate were the encouragement of health professionals alongside the sense of altruism gained from the experience (Thomaz et al 2008). For bereaved parents, with appropriate support, milk donation may aid the grieving process, but previously the evidence had not been examined in a systematic manner. Expressed milk belongs to the mother and its fate after infant loss is her decision. However, bereaved mothers are often overlooked as potential milk donors (Carroll et al 2014). This study aimed to search the literature and examine local practice in order to explore the experience of bereaved mothers; in particular regarding the subject of milk donation following perinatal loss, in order to guide training and inform recommendations for future practice.Peer reviewe

An appetite for learning : increasing employee demand for skills development

Raising the demand for skills amongst individuals in the workforce is critical if the UK is to meet its 2020 Ambition. This edition of Praxis highlights a number of policy interventions that the evidence suggests can work, and proposes a policy framework for describing and understanding these. The paper aims to stimulate wider debate about the policy interventions most likely to address the barriers to learning faced by the UK workforce. To this end the UK Commission welcomes readers' responses to the following questions, prompted by this paper