12,249 research outputs found

    Lower Mekong Portfolio: Interim Evaluation

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    This report summarizes a portfolio evaluation of the MacArthur Foundation's conservation investments in the Lower Mekong region since 2011. It is explicitly a portfolio-level evaluation, focusing on common themes rather than individual grants. The evaluation involved understanding the portfolio context through reviewing relevant documents and speaking with donor partners; gathering data from MacArthur grantees; calibrating initial evaluation findings through consultations with independent regional experts and donor partner grantees; improving future evaluation ability by cooperating with NatureServe to improve the Lower Mekong Dashboard; and presenting results in this evaluation report and to MacArthur directly

    Safety in Numbers: Developing a Shared Analytics Services for Academic Libraries

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    Purpose It is clear that libraries consider the use of data to inform decision making a top priority in the next five years. Jisc’s considerable work on activity data has highlighted the lack of tools and services for libraries to exploit this data. The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of a shared analytics service for UK academic libraries and introduce the Jisc Library Analytics and Metrics Project (LAMP). The project aims to help libraries effectively management collections and services as well as delivering pre-emptive indicators and ‘actionable insights’ to help identify new trends, personalise services and improve efficiencies, economies and effectiveness (student attainment and satisfaction and institutional reputation, for example) . The project builds on the Library Impact Data Project at the University of Huddersfield and the work of the Copac Activity Data and Collections Management tools. The paper will deliver a case study of the project, its progress to date, the challenges of such an approach and the implications the service has for academic libraries. Design, methodology or approach The paper will be a case study of the project and its institutional partners and early adopters work to date and explore both the technical and cultural challenges of the work as well as its implications for the role of the library within the institution and the services it provides. Specifically the case study will comprise of the following aspects: 1. A brief history of the work and the context of library analytics services in the UK (and internationally). A description of the approach adopted by the project, and the vision and goals of the project 2. Exploration of the challenges associated with the project. In particular the challenges around accessing and sharing the data, ‘warehousing’ and data infrastructure considerations and the design challenge of visualising the data sources in a useful and coherent way 3. Outline of the implications of the project and the resultant service. In particular the implications for benchmarking (within the UK and beyond), standards development for library statistics and impact (in particular the development of ISO 16439), service development, the role of the library within the wider institution and skills and expertise of librarians. Findings This paper will report on the initial findings of the project, which will run from January 2013 to October 2013. In particular it will consider the issues surfaced through the close engagement with the academic library community (through the projects community advisory and planning group) and the institutional early-adopters around data gathering and analysis. Practical implications Data accumulated in one context has the potential to inform decisions and interventions elsewhere. While there are a number of recognised and well understood use-cases for library analytics these tend to revolve around usage and collection management. Yet, the potential of a shared analytics service is in uncovering those links and indicators across diverse data sets. The paper will consider a number of practical impacts: Performance: benchmarking, student attainment, research productivity Design: fine tuning services, personalised support Trends: research landscape, student marketplace, utilisation of resources. The case study will explore these practical implications for libraries and what they mean for the future of the library within the academy. Originality and value of the proposal The paper will present a case study of a unique service that currently fills an important gap within the library analytics space. The paper will focus on the services potential to transform both the way the library works and how it is erceived by its users, as well as its role and relationship within the broader institution

    Safety in Numbers: Developing a Shared Analytics Service for Academic Libraries

    Get PDF
    Purpose It is clear that libraries consider the use of data to inform decision making a top priority in the next five years. Jisc’s considerable work on activity data has highlighted the lack of tools and services for libraries to exploit this data. The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of a shared analytics service for UK academic libraries and introduce the Jisc Library Analytics and Metrics Project (LAMP). The project aims to help libraries effectively management collections and services as well as delivering pre-emptive indicators and ‘actionable insights’ to help identify new trends, personalise services and improve efficiencies, economies and effectiveness (student attainment and satisfaction and institutional reputation, for example) . The project builds on the Library Impact Data Project at the University of Huddersfield and the work of the Copac Activity Data and Collections Management tools. The paper will deliver a case study of the project, its progress to date, the challenges of such an approach and the implications the service has for academic libraries. Design, methodology or approach The paper will be a case study of the project and its institutional partners and early adopters work to date and explore both the technical and cultural challenges of the work as well as its implications for the role of the library within the institution and the services it provides. Specifically the case study will comprise of the following aspects: 1. A brief history of the work and the context of library analytics services in the UK (and internationally). A description of the approach adopted by the project, and the vision and goals of the project 2. Exploration of the challenges associated with the project. In particular the challenges around accessing and sharing the data, ‘warehousing’ and data infrastructure considerations and the design challenge of visualising the data sources in a useful and coherent way 3. Outline of the implications of the project and the resultant service. In particular the implications for benchmarking (within the UK and beyond), standards development for library statistics and impact (in particular the development of ISO 16439), service development, the role of the library within the wider institution and skills and expertise of librarians. Findings This paper will report on the initial findings of the project, which will run from January 2013 to October 2013. In particular it will consider the issues surfaced through the close engagement with the academic library community (through the projects community advisory and planning group) and the institutional early-adopters around data gathering and analysis. Practical implications Data accumulated in one context has the potential to inform decisions and interventions elsewhere. While there are a number of recognised and well understood use-cases for library analytics these tend to revolve around usage and collection management. Yet, the potential of a shared analytics service is in uncovering those links and indicators across diverse data sets. The paper will consider a number of practical impacts: Performance: benchmarking, student attainment, research productivity Design: fine tuning services, personalised support Trends: research landscape, student marketplace, utilisation of resources. The case study will explore these practical implications for libraries and what they mean for the future of the library within the academy. Originality and value of the proposal The paper will present a case study of a unique service that currently fills an important gap within the library analytics space. The paper will focus on the services potential to transform both the way the library works and how it is erceived by its users, as well as its role and relationship within the broader institution

    The Emerging Role of Universities in Collective Impact Initiatives for Community Benefit

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    Universities are increasing their efforts to more clearly demonstrate their social value. This article illustrates how higher education administrators can incorporate collective impact partnerships in their community benefit strategies. The article explores two of the more familiar paradigms for community benefit—community engagement and anchor institution. Collective impact principles and practices are then presented. Finally, a case study provides a tangible example of how one university’s role in a collective impact initiative transitioned in response to the community. We end the article with ten takeaways and an invitation for higher education administrators to identify their own learning and action steps that can help shift focus from proving to improving their institution’s value to the community

    CloudHealth: A Model-Driven Approach to Watch the Health of Cloud Services

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    Cloud systems are complex and large systems where services provided by different operators must coexist and eventually cooperate. In such a complex environment, controlling the health of both the whole environment and the individual services is extremely important to timely and effectively react to misbehaviours, unexpected events, and failures. Although there are solutions to monitor cloud systems at different granularity levels, how to relate the many KPIs that can be collected about the health of the system and how health information can be properly reported to operators are open questions. This paper reports the early results we achieved in the challenge of monitoring the health of cloud systems. In particular we present CloudHealth, a model-based health monitoring approach that can be used by operators to watch specific quality attributes. The CloudHealth Monitoring Model describes how to operationalize high level monitoring goals by dividing them into subgoals, deriving metrics for the subgoals, and using probes to collect the metrics. We use the CloudHealth Monitoring Model to control the probes that must be deployed on the target system, the KPIs that are dynamically collected, and the visualization of the data in dashboards.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, 1 tabl

    Revealing the Vicious Circle of Disengaged User Acceptance: A SaaS Provider's Perspective

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    User acceptance tests (UAT) are an integral part of many different software engineering methodologies. In this paper, we examine the influence of UATs on the relationship between users and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications, which are continuously delivered rather than rolled out during a one-off signoff process. Based on an exploratory qualitative field study at a multinational SaaS provider in Denmark, we show that UATs often address the wrong problem in that positive user acceptance may actually indicate a negative user experience. Hence, SaaS providers should be careful not to rest on what we term disengaged user acceptance. Instead, we outline an approach that purposefully queries users for ambivalent emotions that evoke constructive criticism, in order to facilitate a discourse that favors the continuous innovation of a SaaS system. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of our approach for the study of user engagement in testing SaaS applications
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