Responding to the vision of the information society: first steps towards a national virtual university.

Executive Summary 1. There is confusion, both in academic circles and the public more generally, about the definition of a virtual university. Hence in considering such an option, it is worth looking more fundamentally at the contexts for higher education, and the functions of a National Virtual University equipped to meet the needs of the 21st Century. 2. The increase in the use of ICT has caused a radical increase in demand for higher education globally, and increased access to higher education via the use of ICT. New suppliers in the form of private and corporate universities, now compete with universities in their home countries, and increasingly, overseas. 3. Although demands for higher education are growing rapidly, analysis of the new and changing demands on universities at local, national and international levels, within an increasingly global knowledge market, indicates that the role of a National Virtual University will be much broader than that of an existing university. Moreover, a NVU will need to successfully compete in an environment which is growing in competitiveness and complexity as corporate universities start to operate, but will have to do so with greater efficiency and lower funding. 4. The socio-economic environment in Finland is characterised by an internationally high (and growing) involvement with information and communication technologies in all spheres of life. Within this fast developing Information Society, there is a high need for increasing skills levels and retraining, especially with respect to ICT. However, like elsewhere in Europe, the use of technology for collaborative teaching in Universities and for promoting joint research with industry, is comparatively underexploited, although the existing higher education platform, provides a useful structure which could adapt to, and benefit from, the establishment of a National Virtual University. 5. The rationale for incorporating the use of new technologies in higher education by building a National Virtual University is well-established. Such a development would require a quantum leap in the design and development of a new learning method. However, in addition to educational benefits, the NVU would aid the creation of a knowledge based economy, the promotion of social cohesion, the protection of the existing Finnish university system, and the preservation of national language and culture. 6. The experience of previous virtual university ventures in the USA demonstrates that collaborative ventures, based on existing providers and reliant on reengineering of existing teaching and learning practices, are unlikely to be successful, even where they are well financed. A National Virtual University can be constructed with varying degrees of functionality, but where it covers all ranges of university activities (teaching, research and technology transfer), and is well-linked to the local community, the cost of development will be high but the returns on expenditure will be greatest. 7. A project of this size, complexity, cost and importance will only succeed in maximising its potential as a collaborative venture, if it involves all stakeholder groups in discussing its form, as consensus on the form of the NVU will be critical in ensuring the success of its implementation

Wireless Valley, Silicon Wadi and Digital Island - Helsinki, Tel Aviv and Dublin in the ICT Boom

In the context of the global production network (GPN) paradigm, this paper considers the combination of local and global factors which have contributed to the development of the ICT clusters in three small countries. Developments in each country reflect the combination of local advantages in human, knowledge and institutional capital and each nation?s global economic and socio-political linkages. A key focus of the paper is the role of each nation?s capital city ? or more accurately the capital city region ? in the development of the ICT cluster. The consequences for the regional distribution of ICT activity within the three countries are discussed, along with the potential technological and competitive implications of this distribution. Initial sections of the paper focus on the factors which underpinned the massive growth of the ICT sector in each country in the latter half of the 1990s. This leads to an assessment of the global market position of each industry and its prospects in any future upturn. The paper considers different aspects of the role of Tel Aviv, Dublin and Helsinki in attracting and supporting ICT development are considered. Symbolic and image factors are considered in terms of the cities? ability to attract internationally mobile human and financial capital. Institutional (e.g. higher education, thickness of financial institutions) and infrastructural factors are also considered in terms of the cities? ability to support and facilitate ICT companies. The role of entrepreneurship is also considered alongside the availability of venture capital etc.

Community as Canvas: The Power of Culture in the Emergence of Intelligent Communities

Intelligent Communities are cities and regions that use information and communications technologies (ICT) to build prosperous economies, solve social problems and enrich their cultures in the 21st Century. Many people are familiar with the concept of the Smart City, which turns to technology for solutions to problems from traffic congestion to leakage from water mains, public safety to parking tickets. The Intelligent Community is the next evolutionary step. Intelligent Communities turn to technology not just to save money or make things work better: they create high quality employment, increase citizen participation and make themselves great places to live, work, start a business and prosper across generations.Each year, the Forum presents an awards program for Intelligent Communities. The program salutes their achievements in building those inclusive, prosperous economies on a foundation of ICT. In the process, it gathers data for ICF's research programs, which the Forum shares with other communities around the world.The Awards are divided into three phases,and the analysis becomes more detailed andrigorous at each successive stage

Industrial Growth and Development in Northern Finland: The Case of Oulu 1970 – 2002

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Primary school education in the time of covid-19:a literature review

Abstract. The impact of the COVID-19 global pandemic which originated in Wuhan in 2019 has had an unprecedented impact on everyday life over the past year. This is especially true for both students and teachers across the globe, with UNESCO (2020) estimating that school closures had affected over one and a half billion students across the globe at the end of 2020. Due to the pandemic teachers were suddenly forced with little warning, or training to adapt their teaching and pedagogical approaches from face-to-face teaching to distance and hybrid teaching. This thesis examines, via means of a literature review, how well primary school teachers were prepared for this shift, the role of technology in their teaching and the evolution of teaching practises during this shift to distant education. Additionally, support mechanisms available for teachers during this shift to distance teaching were also examined. The theoretical background of the thesis first explores two educational trends, providing a definition, brief history, and different models available. The first educational theory is Computer-Based Education, a framework in which technology serves as a learning tool, facilitating learning through different practices, apps, and multimedia content; the second is distance education, which can simply be defined as “any form of providing education to students who are separated by distance (i.e., who are not physically present in the same space) and in which the pedagogical material is planned and prepared by an educational institution ranging from the first examples of correspondence courses arriving to today’s technology-based synchronous and asynchronous courses. The first research question shows how, despite a very limited number of exceptions, the literature available and the surveys conducted in different areas of the world report a certain degree of insecurity among teachers in switching from face-to-face to distance education for different reasons, such as lack of training, confidence or appliances. The thesis follows with the exploration of the role of technology in distance education and how the teaching practices evolved during social distancing, highlighting how tools such as videoconferencing became widespread in the teaching practices. Concerning changes in teacher education according to the standards of distance education, some pre pandemic frameworks are provided in order to prepare teachers better for ‘emergency remote teaching’ despite the literature on the topic is still limited. In addition to examining the issues facing teachers, several support mechanisms and educational technology solutions were also identified at the regional, national and community level. The private and public sectors have also provided a multitude of Educational technology solutions which teachers have also had the opportunity to utilise in the shift to online teaching

Introduction to the AIS THCI Special Issue on Design Research in Human-Computer Interaction

Design Research (DR) creates, builds, and evaluates innovative artifacts such as constructs, models, methods, and instantiations as well as operational information systems. It also investigates approaches, methods, behaviors, and processes related to design. Although the design research paradigm as an engineering approach in Information Systems (IS) research has been actively discussed in recent years (Hevner et al., 2004), comparatively little design related research has made its way into the IS community by means of widely recognized and outstanding publications. Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Research is concerned with the ways humans interact with information, technologies, and tasks; especially in business, managerial, organizational, and cultural contexts (Zhang et al., 2002). Despite the realization that it is important for HCI research to focus on all issues that occur along the lifecycles of any information and communication technology (ICT) artifacts, IS scholars have traditionally put less effort into the design and development stage and more effort into the use and impact stage (Zhang and Li, 2005; Zhang et al., 2009)

Conducting Information Systems Research the Old-Fashioned Way

This research career retrospective summarizes the intellectual contributions of the author’s academic career, covering 35 years from the early 1980’s onwards. It also attends to various incidents and conditions that shaped his research career, as well as his research strategy choices that allowed him to overcome some of the challenges imposed by these conditions. These strategic choices comprised to do small research rather than big research and to privilege international collaboration over local collaboration

Women in STEM in Higher Education

This open access book addresses challenges related to women in STEM in higher education, presenting research, experiences, studies, and good practices associated with the engagement, access, and retention of women in the STEM disciplines. It also discusses strategies implemented by universities and policymakers to reduce the existing gender gap in these areas. The chapters provide an overview of implementations in different regions of the world and provide numerous examples that can be transferred to other higher education institutions

Designing a Repeatable Collaboration Method for Setting Up Emerging Value Systems for New Technology Fields

Nowadays, even large multinational enterprises must collaborate with other companies when creating and mobilizing new technology applications. They might not possess all the capabilities needed or they might even find it economically unfeasible to internally master all the relevant value activities in a traditional value chain. Thus, new technology business fields are increasingly being formed by networked value systems. However, there are no established management practices on how to instigate and nurture emerging value systems. In this design science research, we will develop and test a repeatable collaboration method for setting up an emerging value system in a new technology field. We will apply collaboration engineering as the design approach and group support systems as a technique when developing our process artefact. The agenda setting is performed collaboratively by finding out the major barriers facing the birth of a new field, and the actions needed to overcome those barriers. We will apply our method to mobile marketing. We found that the use of a carefully designed ICT-enabled collaboration method can facilitate the stakeholders in an emerging field to work together and provide initiatives towards the creation of a new value system. The developed collaboration method is also repeatable and easily transferable to emerging technology-based businesses other than mobile marketing