Digital communities: context for leading learning into the future?

In 2011, a robust, on-campus, three-element Community of Practice model consisting of growing community, sharing of practice and building domain knowledge was piloted in a digital learning environment. An interim evaluation of the pilot study revealed that the three-element framework, when used in a digital environment, required a fourth element. This element, which appears to happen incidentally in the face-to-face context, is that of reflecting, reporting and revising. This paper outlines the extension of the pilot study to the national tertiary education context in order to explore the implications for the design, leadership roles, and selection of appropriate technologies to support and sustain digital communities using the four-element model

Simulation Game Concept For AI-Enhanced Teaching Of Advanced Value Stream Analysis and Design

Value stream analysis and design is employed globally by improvement teams within industrial settings to maximize value creation and eliminate waste. For ending methodical time-centricity, research expanded the methodology to incorporate diverse facets like material flow cost accounting, information logistics, and external influence factors. These enhancements, along with increasing data volumes, are prompting a re-evaluation of how professional improvement teams should think and operate. Consequently, a transformation of the pedagogical approach used for educating students and professionals necessitates novel solutions. Conventional teaching methods such as expository lectures are widely considered inadequate in promoting knowledge retention and engagement. So far, existing research has not yet resulted in a solution that can effectively impart the methodological complexity of advanced value stream analysis and design in a motivating and vivid fashion. To address this gap, this paper applies a tailored CRISP gamification framework to develop a simulation game concept. These concept enables AI-enhanced teaching of advanced value stream analysis and design focusing on identification of multi-stage resource-efficient optimization strategies. Through integration of game-based learning with AI a trained reinforcement learning agent can act either competitively or cooperatively, creating a unique form of teaching accounting the aspects personalization, adaptive feedback, content creation, and analysis and assessment

Developing successful intelligence : a curriculum for employability in changing markets for graduate labour

A key pedagogical challenge for undergraduate educators in integrating work and learning in the curriculum, is the identification of appropriate conceptual constructs to facilitate student learning and development. State and employer organisations have articulated a discourse of 'key skills' which has been adopted by universities, and yoked to innovations in pedagogy for employability. We propose the construct 'successful intelligence' to enhance pedagogy for employability. We show how it might be introduced to the undergraduate business curriculum, using a case study of the evolution of an undergraduate management development programme to ground our thinking in practice. We also use student perceptions of teaching, learning, and career planning to distinguish what students regard as real and relevant in their studies, contributing to employability

A work integrated learning (WIL) framework to develop graduate skills and attributes in a university's accounting and business courses

For many years, emphasis has been placed on the production of 'work ready' graduates competent in their disciplinary field and able to cope in a changing work environment. Universities are being placed under increasing pressure to produce employable graduates with governments making public funding for universities contingent upon demonstrable graduate outcomes. This has resulted in universities offering their undergraduate students in commerce and business the opportunity to gain good business acumen and real world experience by undertaking Work Integrated Learning (WIL) as part of their learning. This paper proposes a three stage model to effectively embed WIL into undergraduate accounting and business programs. Through careful planning, implementation and assessments in three accounting/business courses in the WIL framework, students are encouraged to build essential knowledge and skills. They learn that to be successful in the working environment, they will need to be equipped with not only technical skills but transferable generic skills like communication, teamwork, problem-solving and the ability to network in a variety of workplace situations. This program seeks to narrow the expectations gap between industry and academia and students and supports the development of graduates who can respond to changing economic circumstances and are employable, adaptable and positive contributors in the workplace

ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks: a literature review

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation is a complex and vibrant process, one that involves a combination of technological and organizational interactions. Often an ERP implementation project is the single largest IT project that an organization has ever launched and requires a mutual fit of system and organization. Also the concept of an ERP implementation supporting business processes across many different departments is not a generic, rigid and uniform concept and depends on variety of factors. As a result, the issues addressing the ERP implementation process have been one of the major concerns in industry. Therefore ERP implementation receives attention from practitioners and scholars and both, business as well as academic literature is abundant and not always very conclusive or coherent. However, research on ERP systems so far has been mainly focused on diffusion, use and impact issues. Less attention has been given to the methods used during the configuration and the implementation of ERP systems, even though they are commonly used in practice, they still remain largely unexplored and undocumented in Information Systems research. So, the academic relevance of this research is the contribution to the existing body of scientific knowledge. An annotated brief literature review is done in order to evaluate the current state of the existing academic literature. The purpose is to present a systematic overview of relevant ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks as a desire for achieving a better taxonomy of ERP implementation methodologies. This paper is useful to researchers who are interested in ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Results will serve as an input for a classification of the existing ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Also, this paper aims also at the professional ERP community involved in the process of ERP implementation by promoting a better understanding of ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks, its variety and history

Critical review of strategic planning research in hospitality and tourism

Strategic planning remains one of the most popular management tools, but theoretical and empirical developments in the academic literature have been a slow burn. This paper addresses this gap and provides an up-to-date review of hospitality and tourism strategic planning research. We review strategic planning research from 1995 to 2013 in seven leading tourism academic journals, and adopt a modern and broad conceptualization of strategic planning. While there is some awareness of effective tourism strategic planning processes, academic research has not kept pace with practice. To stimulate a resurgence of research interest, we provide future research directions. We observe a methodological introspection and present some new research methodologies, which are critically important in researching the turbulent, chaotic and nonlinear tourism environment

Sensitivity analysis in a scoping review on police accountability : assessing the feasibility of reporting criteria in mixed studies reviews

In this paper, we report on the findings of a sensitivity analysis that was carried out within a previously conducted scoping review, hoping to contribute to the ongoing debate about how to assess the quality of research in mixed methods reviews. Previous sensitivity analyses mainly concluded that the exclusion of inadequately reported or lower quality studies did not have a significant effect on the results of the synthesis. In this study, we conducted a sensitivity analysis on the basis of reporting criteria with the aims of analysing its impact on the synthesis results and assessing its feasibility. Contrary to some previous studies, our analysis showed that the exclusion of inadequately reported studies had an impact on the results of the thematic synthesis. Initially, we also sought to propose a refinement of reporting criteria based on the literature and our own experiences. In this way, we aimed to facilitate the assessment of reporting criteria and enhance its consistency. However, based on the results of our sensitivity analysis, we opted not to make such a refinement since many publications included in this analysis did not sufficiently report on the methodology. As such, a refinement would not be useful considering that researchers would be unable to assess these (sub-)criteria

Attitudes of Students and Practitioners Regarding Ethical Acceptability of Accounting Transactions

This study reports the findings of a study assessing the acceptability differences in decisions made by Certified Public Accounting practitioners (CPA) and students studying to become CPAs. The study responds to researchers’ call for additional research on topics related to accounting decision ethics. Modified managerial and accounting recognition scenarios were used to collect the acceptability of ethical judgments. The analysis employs factor analysis to affirm whether the scenarios are mana­gerial or accounting recognition decisions. The analyses further divides the managerial decisions into either revenue or expense related. The accounting recognition decisions are further divided into those involving an accounting manipulation or inventory related. Students’ acceptability of the accounting transactions was far harsher than the practitioners. However, both students and practitioners considered the accounting scenarios to be unethical. Both students and practitioners judged the managerial revenue scenarios to be ethical but the managerial expense scenarios to be moderately unethical. In addition to the ethical acceptability of accounting transaction, student and practitioner demographic data including age, work experience and academic credentials are investigated to explain the differences