Extension Stakeholder Engagement: Adapting to the Twenty-First Century

Over the past 100 years, a number of societal trends have influenced how Cooperative Extension engages public audiences in its outreach and education efforts. These trends include rapid evolution in communication technology, greater specialization of Land-Grant University faculty, and diversification of funding sources. In response, Extension organizations have adapted their engagement approach, incorporated new technologies, modified their organizational structures, and even expanded the notion of public stakeholders to include funders, program nonparticipants, and others. This article explores the implications for future Extension efforts using two case studies—one which explores how a community visioning program incorporated new ways of engaging local audiences, and another which explores how an Extension business retention program used participatory action research and educational organizing approaches to strengthen participation in a research-based program

DeWitt Wallace Library Annual Report 2013-2014

Summary of library and media services activities for 2013-201

Future visioning system for designing and developing new product concepts in the consumer electronics industries

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.This thesis discusses development of a future visioning system model that can be adopted to create new product concepts for consumer electronics companies operating in a highly competitive business environment. The research work investigates consumer electronic product companies and their market environment to identify problematic issues and indicates that a proactive new product strategy which opens new markets through developing concept-led products is a strategic priority, thus the concept development stage in new product development process is in need of improvement. An evaluation of existing concept development tools for the purpose of proactive product strategy is presented and concludes that future visioning procedure is the most appropriate tool. To develop a future visioning system model as a concept development tool, the theoretical future visioning system models are analysed and mapped to extract essential structure and contents of future visioning procedure. The consequent future visioning system model is then revised according to the findings and suggestions from the field research work which investigated four major consumer electronics product companies in practice. The findings also validates the necessity of adopting a proactive product strategy and evaluates acceptability of the future visioning system model for practical use. The final future visioning system model is defined after the opinions of the design managers are considered and applied. The major suggestions from the research findings are: (1) Executing proactive product strategy can be a valuable strategic tool (2) A new process is necessary for the companies to create one-step-ahead product (3) Future visioning system is recommended as an advanced approach that creates new product concept. (4) Future visioning system model should consist of eight stages: project initiation, environmental scanning, future visioning, generating product concepts, scenario planning, concept testing, concept visualisation, and finalized concepts. (5) Product concepts can be generated from future vision by applying backcasting. (6) Scenario planning should be used in the future visioning system model as a concept testing tool providing objective validating criteria. (7) Executing a future visioning system model creates new roles for the designer such as information integrator, process moderator, and futurist

Development of a Personal Visioning Guidance System

The primary intent of this project was to formulate a novel guidance system to help individuals gain clarity and understanding of their inner vision of a desired future state. My secondary goal was to enrich the palette of resources and tools available for coaching individuals in their discovery and crafting of personal and/or professional visions. Initially, I conducted an extensive literature review that inspired my approach. Then, I followed a process for assessing existing visioning tools and then imagining new opportunities to create, conceptualize, and craft at least five novel visioning tools. The project outcome includes a Personal Visioning Guidance Model to navigate through the visioning process. In it, I described the key five stages and the Torrance Incubation Model (TIM) as micro-stage in each main stage. I ideated a palette of approaches to offer a broad spectrum of possibilities for visioning tools, and I conducted front-end development of seven of them. I also presented specific learning about every stage of the model as well as those from trialing five visioning tools with two subjects. Finally, I analyzed how this project adds value and a number of actions to progress further

Vision for 2020

Our vision for the DeWitt Wallace Library of 2020 is to expand and build up our current vibrant and active space for engaging scholars. We want a library that contributes to the transformative experience for all students as well as a space that will attract faculty to utilize our space, resources, and expertise for collaborating on digital projects. We want to continue to be a community gathering space where all points of view can be shared and civil discussions can take place. We want to be a welcoming center of learning and understanding

Publishing Makerspace: A New Approach to Scholarly Publishing

This article describes the concept of the Publishing Makerspace, which is a publishing environment that is reconfigured as a place where all the components of a scholarly project—books and e‐books, virtual and physical exhibits, visualizations, live performance and film—can be integrated using a collaborative process. This place enables the creation of a multimodal publishing environment that fully integrates digital content with manuscripts and “traditional” scholarly content. Starting with an overview of the history of the team that devised this approach and its membership, the article describes the problem that the authors have identified with current approaches to multimodal publishing and outlines a workshop model for engaging in a reconfiguration of the publishing process, including a description of a new publishing and knowledge making ecosystem that includes librarians, publishers, and other collaborators