Do Shared Digital Workspaces Boost Integration? The Case of One Early Intervention Initiative for Vulnerable Children in Norway

Introduction: The paper discusses the implementation of a digital workspace to facilitate collaboration in health and social services for vulnerable children and adolescents in eight Norwegian municipalities. The purpose of the workspace is to enhance collaboration independent of space and time. Collaborating services are schools, kindergartens, school health services, educational services and child welfare services. Methods: The data analysed are from semi-structured interviews with project leaders in primary care, responses of primary care professionals to open questions in a survey, and results from two questions in three subsequent surveys. Results: Project leaders held great expectations of increased collaboration. Variations were found regarding how far the implementation of a new workspace precluded previous methods of collaboration and whether retaining a familiar workspace necessitated strengthening resources to negotiate using the workspace. Organisational and professional cultures hindered the implementation of the workspace. Discussion: Interrelated barriers to collaboration were found at the professional, organisational and systemic levels. Some professionals could adapt the workspace to their existing tasks while others could not. Primary care providers need to strengthen their organisations while implementing the workspace. Conclusion: Concerted action at national and municipal level is needed to successfully implement digital tools.publishedVersio

Leveraging Public Knowledge Project\u27s Open Conference Systems for Digital Scholarship

The Media History Exchange (MHX) is an archive, social network, conference management tool, and collaborative workspace for the international, interdisciplinary community of researchers studying the history of journalism and communication. It opens a new scholarly space between the academic conference and the peer-reviewed journal by archiving “born digital” conference papers and abstracts that frequently have not been saved previously. In the spring of 2017, MHX migrated to the Public Knowledge Project’s Open Conference Systems. If your library is interested in expanding its digital scholarship offerings to include conference support, or offers its own library-focused conference, this technology might be exactly what you need. Co-author: Elliot King, Ph.D. (Loyola University Maryland

Connecting workspace and health : a case study

The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of the physical workspace and work health on workplace connectivity (level and type of interactions). It summarises the first stage of research being undertaken by an interdisciplinary team of researchers on a university engineering research department that is relocating into temporary office accommodation. The research incorporates the measurement of spatial and social connectivity, as well as work health on two occasions: prior to the relocation from traditional cellular office accommodation and following the relocation into an open plan workspace. On completion of both stages, comparisons will be made to assess for changes that could be attributed to the change in workspace. The measurements taken before the move to temporary accommodation showed a limited level of physical connectivity in the traditional cellular office space. There were a number of individuals in the research department that had a much greater level of social connectivity but no pattern emerged in terms of their physical location in the workspace. However a pattern did emerge with regard to work health and social connectivity, where those with a high level of connectivity also had a high level of work stress. The practical implications of the research are to demonstrate a methodology for assessing social connectivity with workspace and health that can be applied to other organisations. It makes a contribution to the fields of work psychology, facilities management and environmental psychology that has not before considered spatiality and social connectivity with work health.</p

Predictive analytics in facilities management: A pilot study for exploring environmental comfort using wireless sensors

Purpose: Advancements in wireless sensor technology and building modelling techniques have enabled facilities managers to understand the environmental performance of the workplace in more depth than ever before. However, it is unclear to what extent this data can be used to predict subjective environmental comfort. Thus, the aim of this study was to pilot test a methodological framework for integrating real-time environmental data with subjective ratings of environmental comfort. Design/Methodology/Approach: An open-plan office was fitted with environmental sensors to measure key indoor environmental quality parameters (carbon dioxide, temperature, humidity, illumination, and sound pressure level). Additionally, building modelling techniques were used to calculate two spatial metrics (‘workspace integration’ and workspace density) for each workspace within the study area. 15 employees were repeatedly sampled across an 11-day study period, providing 78 momentary assessments of environmental comfort. Multilevel models were used to explore the extent to which the objective environmental data predicted subjective environmental comfort. Findings: Higher carbon dioxide levels were associated with more negative ratings of air quality, higher ‘workspace integration’ was associated with higher levels of distractions, and higher workspace density was associated with lower levels of social interactions. Originality/Value: To our knowledge, this is the first field study to directly explore the relationship between physical environment data collected using wireless sensors and subjective ratings of environmental comfort. The study provides proof-of-concept for a methodological framework for the integration of building analytics and human analytics

A New Role for Human Resource Managers: Social Engineering Defense

[Excerpt] The general risk of social engineering attacks to organizations has increased with the rise of digital computing and communications, while for an attacker the risk has decreased. In order to counter the increased risk, organizations should recognize that human resources (HR) professionals have just as much responsibility and capability in preventing this risk as information technology (IT) professionals. Part I of this paper begins by defining social engineering in context and with a brief history pre-digital age attacks. It concludes by showing the intersection of HR and IT through examples of operational attack vectors. In part II, the discussion moves to a series of measures that can be taken to help prevent social engineering attacks

Historical awareness support and its evaluation in collaborative software engineering

The types of awareness relevant to collaborative soft- ware engineering are identified and an additional type, "historical awareness" is proposed. This new type of awareness is the knowledge of how software artefacts re- sulting from collaboration have evolved in the course of their development. The types of awareness that different software engineer- ing environment architectures can support are discussed. A way to add awareness support to our existing OSCAR sys- tem, a component of the GENESIS software engineering platform, is proposed. Finally ways of instrumenting and evaluating the awareness support offered by the modified system are outlined

Using Shared Workspaces in Higher Education

We evaluate the use of BSCW shared workspaces in higher education by means of a comparison of seven courses in which this environment was used. We identify a number of different functions for which the BSCW environment has been used and discuss the relative success of these functions across the cases. In addition, we evaluate the cases with the 4E model of Collis et al. (2000) which predicts the chances of acceptance of ICT in an educational setting. Effectiveness for the given task appears to be a prime success factor for using ICT. But an effective tool may fail due to other factors like ease of use and organisational, socialcultural or technological obstacles. The particular strength of a shared workspace, for which BSCW is most effective and efficient, is providing a repository for objects of collaborative work. Other types of usage showed mixed results. In the future we expect that learning takes place in an integrated, open ICT environment in which different kinds of tools are available for different purposes and users can switch between tools as appropriate. We could observe this in several of the case studies, where non-use of BSCW did not mean that a particular task was not performed, but, on the contrary, a more efficient solution for the same function was available. Shared workspaces have proven to be highly useful, but it seems advisable that their purpose be limited to what they were originally designed for

The case for new academic workspaces

Executive summary: This report draws upon the combined efforts of a number of estates professionals, architects, academics, designers, and senior managers involved in the planning of new university buildings for the 21st century. Across these perspectives, all would agree – although perhaps for different reasons - that this planning is difficult and that a number of particular considerations apply in the design of academic workspaces. Despite these difficulties, they will also agree that when this planning goes well, ‘good’ buildings are truly transformational – for both the university as a whole and the people who work and study in them. The value of well-designed buildings goes far beyond their material costs, and endures long after those costs have been forgotten ..