Adaptive development and maintenance of user-centric software systems

A software system cannot be developed without considering the various facets of its environment. Stakeholders – including the users that play a central role – have their needs, expectations, and perceptions of a system. Organisational and technical aspects of the environment are constantly changing. The ability to adapt a software system and its requirements to its environment throughout its full lifecycle is of paramount importance in a constantly changing environment. The continuous involvement of users is as important as the constant evaluation of the system and the observation of evolving environments. We present a methodology for adaptive software systems development and maintenance. We draw upon a diverse range of accepted methods including participatory design, software architecture, and evolutionary design. Our focus is on user-centred software systems

Advances in Teaching & Learning Day Abstracts 2005

Proceedings of the Advances in Teaching & Learning Day Regional Conference held at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston in 2005

A Survey on Economic-driven Evaluations of Information Technology

The economic-driven evaluation of information technology (IT) has become an important instrument in the management of IT projects. Numerous approaches have been developed to quantify the costs of an IT investment and its assumed profit, to evaluate its impact on business process performance, and to analyze the role of IT regarding the achievement of enterprise objectives. This paper discusses approaches for evaluating IT from an economic-driven perspective. Our comparison is based on a framework distinguishing between classification criteria and evaluation criteria. The former allow for the categorization of evaluation approaches based on their similarities and differences. The latter, by contrast, represent attributes that allow to evaluate the discussed approaches. Finally, we give an example of a typical economic-driven IT evaluation

Impact assessment of food policy research a stocktaking workshop: synthesis report

"This stocktaking workshop provided an opportunity for several groups with active interest in impact assessment relating to agricultural policy research to share experiences and views about what constitutes good practice in this field. The sponsoring organizations have had a long-standing concern for the relevance and effectiveness of agricultural and food policy research in general and at IFPRI in particular. That concern has been addressed in past meetings and the time seemed right for a further stocktaking. The focus of this 2004 meeting was on impact assessment experience at IFPRI. IFPRI has, since the mid-1990s, carried out a variety of activities aimed at assessing the impact of its policy research, capacity strengthening, and policy communications programs. The workshop brought together practitioners of such impact assessment work, users of such information, as well as researchers whose activities have been the subject of impact assessment. The cogency and necessity of such impact accounting work was reaffirmed in general terms. There was constructively critical commentary on the merits of particular approaches and instruments, such as narrative recordings and more quantitative methods of attempting to measure effects of research investments. The perennial issue of challenging counterfactuals was necessarily addressed, and the practicality of experimental and quasi-experimental methods considered. The need for consistency of assessment approaches between ex post studies (which have been the bulk of IFPRI's experience to date) and ex ante assessment efforts that represent an increasing share of the assessment portfolio was also discussed. There has long been a commitment to work towards a strong impact-orientation “culture” within IFPRI; the workshop concluded that, while there has been progress in working toward mainstreaming such a culture, there is still far to go, and efforts must continue in this direction." from Author's AbstractImpact assessment, Agricultural policy, Food policy Research, Capacity strengthening, Research methods,

Youth and Digital Media: From Credibility to Information Quality

Building upon a process-and context-oriented information quality framework, this paper seeks to map and explore what we know about the ways in which young users of age 18 and under search for information online, how they evaluate information, and how their related practices of content creation, levels of new literacies, general digital media usage, and social patterns affect these activities. A review of selected literature at the intersection of digital media, youth, and information quality -- primarily works from library and information science, sociology, education, and selected ethnographic studies -- reveals patterns in youth's information-seeking behavior, but also highlights the importance of contextual and demographic factors both for search and evaluation. Looking at the phenomenon from an information-learning and educational perspective, the literature shows that youth develop competencies for personal goals that sometimes do not transfer to school, and are sometimes not appropriate for school. Thus far, educational initiatives to educate youth about search, evaluation, or creation have depended greatly on the local circumstances for their success or failure

Data mining technology for the evaluation of learning content interaction

Interactivity is central for the success of learning. In e-learning and other educational multimedia environments, the evaluation of interaction and behaviour is particularly crucial. Data mining – a non-intrusive, objective analysis technology – shall be proposed as the central evaluation technology for the analysis of the usage of computer-based educational environments and in particular of the interaction with educational content. Basic mining techniques are reviewed and their application in a Web-based third-level course environment is illustrated. Analytic models capturing interaction aspects from the application domain (learning) and the software infrastructure (interactive multimedia) are required for the meaningful interpretation of mining results

Evaluate Your Business School’s Writings As If Your Strategy Matters

Business school publications are widely criticized for their lack of managerial or teaching relevance. One reason for this criticism is that business school scholarship is typically evaluated purely in terms of one type of work: academic journal articles that are meant to be read by other scholars. However, academics produce multiple types of publications, and business schools serve a wider range of stakeholders. These other stakeholders are often central to the schools’ purposes and may be critical in acquiring resources. These stakeholders probably prefer to see scholarship that is relevant for students or for practitioners. They may prefer scholarship that is ethically relevant or regionally relevant and otherwise different from the model that dominates U.S. journals. Technologies are now available to measure the impact of writings in a much wider range of venues than covered by the Social Sciences Citation Index in the Web of Science. Moreover, a wider range of measures, such as the size of writings’ readership, may be needed. We consider these issues and present some recommendations, arguing that faculty evaluations should follow an intentional strategy and not necessarily conform to the traditional default