19,410 research outputs found

    Eco4 Biz: Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity Tools to Support Business Decision-Making

    Get PDF
    Eco4Biz provides a structured overview of existing tools and approaches that are publicly available. The aim is to help companies make better-informed decisions about which tool they could apply when assessing and managing their ecosystem impacts and dependencies, in order to ultimately lower risk, and enable companies to be more competitive over time. Eco4Biz clusters tools around two questions corporate managers might ask themselves: At what scale would you like to carry out an assessment, i.e. global, landscape (including individual site and portfolio of sites), or product level? What outputs would best support your decision-making, e.g. a map (including supporting reports), a quantitative value, or a score showing priority areas?We have also indicated whether each tool is more focused on biodiversity or ecosystem services assessment

    freeUP: Productivity Made Possible

    Get PDF
    As education evolves, more and more emphasis is placed upon group projects. With group projects come diversity, in-depth learning, open-mindedness, and many added stressors. One of the main causes of these stresses, as concluded in this thesis, is the task of scheduling. What if there was an app that you could download to schedule those group meetings for you? Well, there is! freeUP is an application that links to your school’s learning platform (for example, Blackboard or Canvas) to make scheduling meetings easy and more productive. freeUP will provide much needed answers to today’s top group work problems: scheduling, effective communication, and accountability. This thesis will illustrate the research and findings of a study launched specifically around group work and technology. This research was conducted around group work in general, as well as targeting the value added by using technology to alleviate the pain points of group work. The purpose of this research is to examine how freeUP can help improve team coordination challenges and effective meeting management. These problems, or themes, and the functionalities derived from their solutions, will be discussed in detail throughout this thesis

    Impact in networks and ecosystems: building case studies that make a difference

    Get PDF
    open accessThis toolkit aims to support the building up of case studies that show the impact of project activities aiming to promote innovation and entrepreneurship. The case studies respond to the challenge of understanding what kinds of interventions work in the Southern African region, where, and why. The toolkit has a specific focus on entrepreneurial ecosystems and proposes a method of mapping out the actors and their relationships over time. The aim is to understand the changes that take place in the ecosystems. These changes are seen to be indicators of impact as increased connectivity and activity in ecosystems are key enablers of innovation. Innovations usually happen together with matching social and institutional adjustments, facilitating the translation of inventions into new or improved products and services. Similarly, the processes supporting entrepreneurship are guided by policies implemented in the common framework provided by innovation systems. Overall, policies related to systems of innovation are by nature networking policies applied throughout the socioeconomic framework of society to pool scarce resources and make various sectors work in coordination with each other. Most participating SAIS countries already have some kinds of identifiable systems of innovation in place both on national and regional levels, but the lack of appropriate institutions, policies, financial instruments, human resources, and support systems, together with underdeveloped markets, create inefficiencies and gaps in systemic cooperation and collaboration. In other words, we do not always know what works and what does not. On another level, engaging users and intermediaries at the local level and driving the development of local innovation ecosystems within which local culture, especially in urban settings, has evident impact on how collaboration and competition is both seen and done. In this complex environment, organisations supporting entrepreneurship and innovation often find it difficult to create or apply relevant knowledge and appropriate networking tools, approaches, and methods needed to put their processes to work for broader developmental goals. To further enable these organisations’ work, it is necessary to understand what works and why in a given environment. Enhanced local and regional cooperation promoted by SAIS Innovation Fund projects can generate new data on this little-explored area in Southern Africa. Data-driven knowledge on entrepreneurship and innovation support best practices as well as effective and efficient management of entrepreneurial ecosystems can support replication and inform policymaking, leading thus to a wider impact than just that of the immediate reported projects and initiatives

    Examining the issues & challenges of email & e-communications. 2nd Northumbria Witness Seminar Conference, 24-25 Oct 2007 Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne.

    Get PDF
    These proceedings capture the content of the second Witness Seminar hosted by Northumbria University’s School of Computing, Engineering and Information Sciences. It followed the success of the first witness seminar in terms of its format and style but differed in that it focused on one topic - managing email and other electronic communications technologies from a records perspective. As before the witnesses were invited to share their views and opinions on a specific aspect taking as their starting point a pertinent published article(s). Three seminars explored the business, people and technology perspectives of email and e-communications, asking the following questions: What are the records management implications and challenges of doing business electronically? Are people the problem and the solution? Is technology the problem or panacea? The final seminar, 'Futurewatch', focused on moving forward, exploring new ways of working, potential new technologies and what records professionals and others need to keep on their radar screens

    Subject Specific Information Literacy Curriculum and Assessment

    Full text link
    Academic libraries have been changing the traditional instructional framework of library instruction teaching modules to information literacy teaching modules. National standards for information literacy increased the possibility to unify such efforts throughout the country and clarify for librarians, administrators, and faculty the desired student learning outcomes. This paper presents findings of a quantitative research study developed to provide documentation for a regional accrediting body, college administration, and faculty on the efficacy of a subject specific information literacy curriculum and assessment instrument. The study took place within a seminary and began with an initial needs assessment. A previously developed instrument, B-TILED, which had been through a rigorous process of reliability and validity testing was applied to conduct the needs assessment. The findings of the needs assessment indicated a requirement for intervention which led to the development and implementation of a formal course of instruction in information literacy. The course was developed and taught by the researcher in the fall of 2010. All incoming 1st year students were required to take, complete, and pass a one-unit class in information literacy. In order to assess the effectiveness of the course, and to provide supportive documented data to the accrediting body, pretests and posttests were administered. The instrument used, B-TILED, was the same as that used in the needs assessment study

    The "Artificial Mathematician" Objection: Exploring the (Im)possibility of Automating Mathematical Understanding

    Get PDF
    Reuben Hersh confided to us that, about forty years ago, the late Paul Cohen predicted to him that at some unspecified point in the future, mathematicians would be replaced by computers. Rather than focus on computers replacing mathematicians, however, our aim is to consider the (im)possibility of human mathematicians being joined by “artificial mathematicians” in the proving practice—not just as a method of inquiry but as a fellow inquirer

    Web 2.0 - help or hype? : social softwares and their value to libraries

    Get PDF
    Over the summer of 2007, as Service Innovation Officer at the University of Warwick Library, I was asked to write a report on Web 2.0 technologies, and I spent some time investigating different technologies and social softwares. The only way to explore these social softwares is to use them. Make friends on them, install applications, get content and try to use them to their limits. I investigated a number of different technologies all labelled as "Web 2.0", and the ones with most potential for libraries are discussed here

    "I'm Not Rockefeller": 33 High net Worth Philanthropists Discuss Their Approach to Giving

    Get PDF
    Presents findings from interviews, conducted between September 2007 and April 2008, with 33 donor who were able to give $1 million annually. The study focused on how donors make giving decisions

    Assessment @ Bond

    Get PDF
    • …
    corecore