The Metadata Education and Research Information Commons (MERIC): A Collaborative Teaching and Research Initiative

Article dicsussing the Metadata Education and Research Information Commons (MERIC), a collaborative teaching and research initiative

The Metadata Education and Research Information Commons (MERIC): A Collaborative Teaching and Research Initiative

The networked environment forced a sea change in Library and Information Science (LIS) education. Most LIS programs offer a mixed-mode of instruction that integrates online learning materials with more traditional classroom pedagogical methods and faculty are now responsible for developing content and digital learning objects. The teaching commons in a networked environment is one way to share, modify and repurpose learning objects while reducing the costs to educational institutions of developing course materials totally inhouse. It also provides a venue for sharing ideas, practices, and expertise in order to provide the best learning experience for students. Because metadata education has been impacted by rapid changes and metadata research is interdisciplinary and diffuse, the Metadata Education and Research Information Commons (MERIC) initiative aims to provide a virtual environment for sharing and collaboration within the extensive metadata community. This paper describes the development of MERIC from its origin as a simple clearinghouse proof-of-concept project to a service-oriented teaching and research commons prototype. The problems of enablers and barriers to participation and collaboration are discussed and the need for specific community building research is cited as critical for the success of MERIC within a broad metadata community

The Human Side of Digital Technology: Supporting the Inclusion of Refugees in Higher Education Through Blockchain-backed EQPR

The spectrum of digital technologies that impact Higher Education (HE) is broad. This study explores the potential of Blockchain (BC) technology in the personalized learning path creation and data exchange in the learning processes. The flexibilization of education and digitizing student data through Blockchain may contribute to a more inclusive and sustainable HE system. According to the EU, the Blockchain supports sustainability in four main aspects: cybersecurity, accountability, transparency, and traceability. These aspects are also a driver of social impact and a higher capacity to include disadvantaged groups, such as refugees. Therefore, it is essential to start a debate between scholars and professionals about how the actors in the HE system engage in a collective meaning-making effort to sustain the adoption, diffusion, and use of BC for HE. The paper focuses on the experience of CIMEA DiploMe and EQPR for the recognition of refugees' qualifications. Through a collective consensus-making and awareness-raising effort, the blockchain-backed EQPR could be perceived as a critical tool to foster inclusion within the HEIs and enhance their social outreach

Credibility of Health Information and Digital Media: New Perspectives and Implications for Youth

Part of the Volume on Digital Media, Youth, and Credibility. This chapter considers the role of Web technologies on the availability and consumption of health information. It argues that young people are largely unfamiliar with trusted health sources online, making credibility particularly germane when considering this type of information. The author suggests that networked digital media allow for humans and technologies act as "apomediaries" that can be used to steer consumers to high quality health information, thereby empowering health information seekers of all ages

A Time and Place for Agency

If places indeed matter, as economic geographers believe, then it must matter most to the people who live their everyday lives in these places and experience the world materially and socially through it. When a crisis hits and uncertainty ensues, it affects people who call these places home the most. So much so, that some of them might be willing to stake a claim on its recovery, and development through purposeful actions. Some of these actors and these actions have helped places overcome wicked developmental challenges, while other places continue to be beset with protracted economic decline where local actors find progress in development continually elusive. This raises the main research question of this dissertation: how and why do responses of local actors to economic crises vary across time and place? In answering this question, this dissertation seeks to examine and understand the role of human actors in the transformation of places undergoing local economic adversity. In order to do so, it explores and joins together the conversations on resilience, agency, and place leadership to find missing puzzle pieces in explaining why and how actors act and engage in transforming places. Empirically, it conducts a comparative case study on the closures of two large R&D facility in Lund and Södertälje as well as uses 56 cases of place leadership and policy engagements from metadata in order to apply the novel method of QCA. This dissertation has found that responses of local actors vary because different actors face varied sets of contexts that underpin their reflexivity, decision-making, and strategies for action. These contexts also matter in shaping the constraints and available opportunities to collectivize with other actors for launching policy actions.Furthermore, across the three articles, this dissertation finds that actors can have profound influence on the processes of transformation in places that matter to them. They can take up roles and positions that push for local economic development policies that reflect their aspirations for themselves and for the places in which they live. These roles give actors access to resources to mobilize and the impetus to launch collective action in order to actualize policy initiatives in response to economic adversities like plant closures. In order to manage inter-temporal changes to their access to resources, they engage in activities that attempt institutional changes. Some of these actions and policies succeed and some are less successful. Actors need to navigate the contexts in which they find themselves because actions are enabled or constrained by structures with which they interact. This is what makes the process of agency contingent and why the responses of local actors to economic crises so varied.This dissertation has contributed to understanding the role of actors in local economic transformations and the context that constrain and enable their actions by interrogating how actors respond to place specific economic adversities as well as their involvement within place-based policy processes. Moreover, this dissertation has also engaged in further conceptualizing institutions in the agency perspective by looking at micro-level institutions that directly link actors with structures. These links allowed this dissertation to explicate generative processes on how micro-level institutions affect and enable the decisions of actors in policy intervention and resource mobilization, and how actors maneuver these institutions when collaborating with other actors

Front-Line Physicians' Satisfaction with Information Systems in Hospitals

Day-to-day operations management in hospital units is difficult due to continuously varying situations, several actors involved and a vast number of information systems in use. The aim of this study was to describe front-line physicians' satisfaction with existing information systems needed to support the day-to-day operations management in hospitals. A cross-sectional survey was used and data chosen with stratified random sampling were collected in nine hospitals. Data were analyzed with descriptive and inferential statistical methods. The response rate was 65 % (n = 111). The physicians reported that information systems support their decision making to some extent, but they do not improve access to information nor are they tailored for physicians. The respondents also reported that they need to use several information systems to support decision making and that they would prefer one information system to access important information. Improved information access would better support physicians' decision making and has the potential to improve the quality of decisions and speed up the decision making process.Peer reviewe

Digital Media and Textuality: From Creation to Archiving

Due to computers' ability to combine different semiotic modes, texts are no longer exclusively comprised of static images and mute words. How have digital media changed the way we write and read? What methods of textual and data analysis have emerged? How do we rescue digital artifacts from obsolescence? And how can digital media be used or taught inside classrooms? These and other questions are addressed in this volume that assembles contributions by artists, writers, scholars and editors. They offer a multiperspectival view on the way digital media have changed our notion of textuality