Influence of employer support for professional development on MOOCs enrolment and completion: Results from a cross-course survey

Although the potential of open education and MOOCs for professional development is usually recognized, it has not yet been explored extensively. How far employers support non-formal learning is still an open question. This paper presents the findings of a survey-based study which focuses on the influence of employer support for (general) professional development on employees’ use of MOOCs. Findings show that employers are usually unaware that their employees are participating in MOOCs. In addition, employer support for general professional development is positively associated with employees completing MOOCs and obtaining certificates for them. However, the relationship between employer support and MOOC enrollment is less clear: workers who have more support from their employers tend to enroll in either a low or a high number of MOOCs. Finally, the promotion of a minimum of ICT skills by employers is shown to be an effective way of encouraging employee participation in the open education ecosystem.JRC.J.3-Information Societ

Game Production Studies

Video games have entered the cultural mainstream and in terms of economic profits they now rival established entertainment industries such as film or television. As careers in video game development become more common, so do the stories about precarious working conditions and structural inequalities within the industry. Yet, scholars have largely overlooked video game production cultures in favor of studying games themselves and player audiences. In Game Production Studies, an international group of established and emerging researchers takes a closer look at the everyday realities of video game production, ranging from commercial industries to independent creators and cultural intermediaries. Across sixteen chapters, the authors deal with issues related to labour, game development, monetization and publishing, as well as local specificities. As the first edited collection dedicated solely to video game production, this volume provides a timely resource for anyone interested in how games are made and at what costs

“Clinical Supervision with Confidence”: Exploring the potential of MOOCs for faculty development

Background: Postgraduate medical trainees require named clinical supervisors. Given the time pressures and difficulties of geographical access, there is a need to identify appropriate solutions for faculty development. We developed and launched a clinical supervision MOOC (FutureLearn platform) in March 2015. Objective: To assess the potential of the clinical supervision MOOC for faculty development. Methods: Quantitative data was obtained from FutureLearn course analytics and course surveys; qualitative data was obtained from learner feedback within the MOOC. Results: Learners (1,938) from over 75 countries signed up for the MOOC. Of the 899 individuals who began the course, 334 (37.2%) completed. Learners were highly satisfied with the course design and delivery, and enjoyed the opportunities for interprofessional and social learning. Conclusions: MOOCs have great potential for faculty development without geographical boundaries

INTERACT 2015 Adjunct Proceedings. 15th IFIP TC.13 International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 14-18 September 2015, Bamberg, Germany

INTERACT is among the world’s top conferences in Human-Computer Interaction. Starting with the first INTERACT conference in 1990, this conference series has been organised under the aegis of the Technical Committee 13 on Human-Computer Interaction of the UNESCO International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP). This committee aims at developing the science and technology of the interaction between humans and computing devices. The 15th IFIP TC.13 International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction - INTERACT 2015 took place from 14 to 18 September 2015 in Bamberg, Germany. The theme of INTERACT 2015 was "Connection.Tradition.Innovation". This volume presents the Adjunct Proceedings - it contains the position papers for the students of the Doctoral Consortium as well as the position papers of the participants of the various workshops

Collaboration and Multi-Stakeholder Engagement in Landscape Governance and Management in Africa: Lessons from Practice

The severity of interconnected socio-economic and environmental impacts on landscapes and people across Africa are exacerbated as a result of land degradation, conflict, poor governance, competition for land and inequality, and exacerbated by climate change. In pursuing pathways towards a more resilient future, collaborative and multi-stakeholder governance and management of landscapes have been promoted by government agencies, NGOs and conservation organisations as a possible solution. However, there is no single way to achieve effective collaboration, and different landscape projects have experimented with different entry points and engagement processes. Grounded in partnerships amongst researchers, practitioners and development partners with expertise in landscape governance and management in Africa, this book describes and collates key lessons from practice for supporting more resilient and equitable landscapes

Leveraging facebook’s open graph to develop an environmental persuasive application

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia InformáticaSocial networking sites persuade millions of users each day to adopt specific behaviors. Using the persuasive principles inherent to these sites to increase environmental awareness and reduce our ecological footprint can be challenging but certainly worthy. The DEAP project has already invested time and resources to address persuasion through different devices for a broad audience. However, there are still many obstacles when it comes to such a delicate subject as people’s routines. For many years, social factors have prevented people from adopting a way of living friendlier to our Environment. Whether it is due to lack of proper knowledge about this topic or simply because they are not willing to change, the truth is that we are eventually reaching a point where it will be too late to keep our planet as we know it. Consequently, the time has arrived when there is great need for a platform to bring existing efforts together no matter where they come from but the goal they share: change incorrect behaviors towards environmental sustainability. Towards this ambitious goal a board game was developed and integrated in Facebook capable of merging third-party applications and an important and valuable basis for future research in the field of persuasion

Improving project management planning and control in service operations environment.

Projects have evidently become the core activity in most companies and organisations where they are investing significant amount of resources in different types of projects as building new services, process improvement, etc. This research has focused on service sector in attempt to improve project management planning and control activities. The research is concerned with improving the planning and control of software development projects. Existing software development models are analysed and their best practices identified and these have been used to build the proposed model in this research. The research extended the existing planning and control approaches by considering uncertainty in customer requirements, resource flexibility and risks level variability. In considering these issues, the research has adopted lean principles for planning and control software development projects. A novel approach introduced within this research through the integration of simulation modelling techniques with Taguchi analysis to investigate ‗what if‘ project scenarios. Such scenarios reflect the different combinations of the factors affecting project completion time and deliverables. In addition, the research has adopted the concept of Quality Function Deployment (QFD) to develop an automated Operations Project Management Deployment (OPMD) model. The model acts as an iterative manner uses ‗what if‘ scenario performance outputs to identify constraints that may affect the completion of a certain task or phase. Any changes made during the project phases will then automatically update the performance metrics for each software development phases. In addition, optimisation routines have been developed that can be used to provide management response and to react to the different levels of uncertainty. Therefore, this research has looked at providing a comprehensive and visual overview of important project tasks i.e. progress, scheduled work, different resources, deliverables and completion that will make it easier for project members to communicate with each other to reach consensus on goals, status and required changes. Risk is important aspect that has been included in the model as well to avoid failure. The research emphasised on customer involvement, top management involvement as well as team members to be among the operational factors that escalate variability levels 3 and effect project completion time and deliverables. Therefore, commitment from everyone can improve chances of success. Although the role of different project management techniques to implement projects successfully has been widely established in areas such as the planning and control of time, cost and quality; still, the distinction between the project and project management is less than precise and a little was done in investigating different levels of uncertainty and risk levels that may occur during different project phase.United Arab Emirates Governmen

Mobiilien liiketoimintaekosysteemien menestystekijät: laitteistokeskeisistä liiketoimintamalleista sisältöön ja mainontaan

For firms operating in a networked economy or business ecosystems, value creation may be highly dependent on the relationships with other firms, which has added a significant amount of complexity particularly to strategic and product-related decision-making. In systems thinking, a firm is seen as part of a wider economic ecosystem and environment where it influences and is influenced by other firms. Within a business ecosystem, firms coevolve capabilities around innovations, working both cooperatively and competitively to support new products, satisfy customers, and incorporate the following round of innovations. Ecosystems are often formed around platforms on which products and complements are built, and platforms may also facilitate transactions between distinct groups of users in a two or multi-sided market. In this study, established theoretical concepts have been brought together to analyze the success factors of mobile business ecosystems in a holistic manner. Additionally, the impact of the historical legacy and path-dependent evolution of a firm’s previous business activities, capabilities, and assets on decisions the firm has made in its ecosystem and platform strategies is studied, and a novel theoretical concept, ‘angle of entry’, is recognized. Through a qualitative multiple case study of three leading companies in the smartphone business and their respective business ecosystems, eight common success factors are identified that have contributed to the disruption of the smartphone business by these three new entrants from the IT world, replacing the incumbents. Based on the results, it can be stated that all three leading ecosystems utilize, at least to a certain extent, closed source code to protect their differentiating or otherwise significantly value-adding software components. Similarly, the product platforms of all three ecosystems offer sufficiently open application programming interfaces so that device manufacturers, accessory makers, and developers are able to create products and apps with meaningful differentiation.Verkostoituneessa taloudessa tai liiketoimintaekosysteemeissä toimivien yritysten arvonluonti saattaa olla hyvinkin riippuvaista suhteista muihin yrityksiin, mikä on lisännyt erityisesti strategisen ja tuotteisiin liittyvän päätöksenteon kompleksisuutta huomattavasti. Järjestelmäajattelussa yritys nähdään osana laajempaa taloudellista ekosysteemiä ja ympäristöä, jossa se vaikuttaa muihin yrityksiin ja on samalla ympäristönsä vaikutuksen kohteena. Liiketoimintaekosysteemissä yritykset kehittävät yhdessä kyvykkyyksiään innovaatioiden ympärillä tehden yhteistyötä ja kilpaillen samalla tukeakseen uusia tuotteita, tyydyttääkseen asiakkaita ja ottaakseen käyttöön uusia innovaatioita. Ekosysteemeitä muodostuu usein tuotealustojen ympärille, ja lisäksi alustat voivat välittää transaktioita erillisten käyttäjäryhmien välillä nk. kaksi- tai useampipuolisessa markkinassa. Tässä tutkimuksessa on yhdistetty tunnettuja teoreettisia käsitteitä mobiilialan liiketoimintaekosysteemien menestystekijöiden analysoimiseksi kokonaisvaltaisesti. Lisäksi on tutkittu yrityksen historian ja sen toimintojen, kyvykkyyksien ja resurssien polkuriippuvaisen evoluution vaikutuksia sen päätöksiin ekosysteemi- ja tuotealustastrategioissa. Tämän tuloksena on tunnistettu uusi teoriakäsite, ‘tulokulma’. Kolmesta johtavasta älypuhelinliiketoiminnan yrityksestä ja näiden kunkin ekosysteemistä tehdyn kvalitatiivisen monitapaustutkimuksen perusteella työssä tunnistetaan kahdeksan yhteistä menestystekijää, jotka ovat auttaneet näitä IT-maailmasta tulleita tulokasyrityksiä mullistamaan älypuhelinliiketoiminnan syrjäyttäen alan vanhat johtoyritykset. Tulosten perusteella voidaan todeta, että kaikki kolme johtavaa ekosysteemiä hyödyntävät ainakin jossain määrin suljettua lähdekoodia suojatakseen erilaistamista tai muuten merkittävää lisäarvoa tuottavia ohjelmistokomponenttejaan. Samoin kaikkien kolmen ekosysteemin tuotealustat tarjoavat riittävästi avoimia sovellusrajapintoja, jotta laitevalmistajat ja sovelluskehittäjät pystyvät luomaan tarpeeksi erilaistettuja tuotteita ja sovelluksia