Deltagande Forskning – Lärdomar, resultat och erfarenheter från Växthusgruppens arbete 1999–2000

Centrum för uthålligt lantbruk (CUL) vid SLU har initierat ett pionjärarbete att få igång deltagande forskning inom lantbrukssektorn i Sverige. I denna rapport beskrivs den läro- och förändringsprocess, de framgångar och svårigheter, som en av de grupper som ingår i CUL:s satsning genomgått och mött under sitt arbete med deltagande forskning. De resultat gruppens försök och praktiska arbete lett fram till presenteras också. Rapporten är skriven av gruppens facilitator (Karin Eksvärd) efter att ha samtalat med gruppmedlemmarna enskilt och tillsammans om deltagarnas åsikter kring gruppens arbete och arbetsformer. Några av gruppdeltagarnas åsikter och uttalanden finns inlagda som citat i rapporten. Deltagarna har även haft möjlighet att kommentera rapporten under dess framtagande. Gruppens arbete har möjliggjorts genom att rådgivarna har arrangerat gruppens möten som kurser inom miljöstödsprogrammet. Det har varit ett givande och lärorikt arbete som fortsätter att öka vårt kunnande om ekologisk tomatodling, oss själva som grupp och sättet att arbeta. Vi hoppas att denna rapport skall inspirera fler lantbrukare, rådgivare och forskare att i högre grad samverka med varandra och att på detta sätt vidareutveckla svenskt lantbruk

Global public finance and funding the millennium development goals

The members of the United Nations have agreed to the Millennium Development Goals, but there remains a major challenge of funding these ambitions. This paper examines alternative sources of development funding: global taxes, new Special Drawing Rights, the International Finance Facility, a global lottery, and increased private transfers. The paper suggests that “global public finance” can contribute to the public debate about these alternatives. It indicates how progress can be made without unanimity, that subsidiarity can increase national acceptance, and draws attention to the implications of the changing world distribution of income

KP-LAB Knowledge Practices Laboratory -- Release of end-user tools

deliverablesThis deliverable describes the releases of KP-Lab end user applications and tools made during the DoW4 period of the project (M37-M48). These are as follows: KPE: Shared Space Views and Common, Support and Optional Tools provide the major functionality for the Knowledge Practices Environment. The Shared Space Views visualize the knowledge artefacts and their relations from different perspective, allowing users to view and access the information contained in a shared space in flexible manners. Common tools refer to the tightly integrated tools of KPE, which are available inside a shared space for working with knowledge artefacts. The support tools provide generic supplementary functionality to Shared Space Views and other KP-Lab tools, such as awareness, search, help as well as preference and settings. The optional tools provide functionality to support some specific aspects of or types of knowledge creation processes, such as real-time collaborative writing, activity system design, multimedia annotation and visual modelling. KPE Analytic tools provide means for two main categories of analytic facilities: 1) Data export tool (DE) for automatic data collection for its analysis in any third party tools and 2) Timeline-based analyzer (TLBA) and Visual analyzer (VA) for integrated reflection on knowledge creation processes and their analysis. * Data Export tool allows researchers and teachers to extract summary tables of user activities from the KPE for on-line investigation, and to export them for elaborations with any third party tool for analysis. In order to bring this tool closer to casual users (students, teachers or workers), the visual presentation of relations between KPE users has been added in the last period. * Visual analyzer allows users to analyze participation and activities within past or ongoing knowledge creation processes, by visually representing them based on information stored in the produced logs. More precisely, it visualizes frequencies of object-related activities in KPE and provides detailed information on the nature and type of the activities performed on particular (types of) knowledge objects. These visualizations stimulate teachers and students to reflect on the distribution and types of their activities with respect to time, type of object or subject etc. * Timeline-based analyzer allows users to display chronologically events that were recorded by the KPE tools, to define and store possible external events which could not have been recorded by the KPE tools and to define patterns of actions that can be identified in the historical data. In contrast to Visual Analyzer and Data Export tools, TLBA brings chronological overview of user actions into the user interface, which enables users to see and explore what kind of activities were performed on certain object in the shared space of interest. Activity System Design Tools (ASDT) enable users to look to the history, present and future of their work activity in a way that helps address issues critical for deliberate transformation of prevailing practices (according to the Change Laboratory intervention method). ASDT is a plug-in to Knowledge Practices Environment, utilizing its views and functionalities. In addition, ASDT has a specific view, Virtual whiteboard, which is designed based on the key elements of a developmental work research process and its conceptual tools. Semantic Multimedia Annotation Tool (SMAT) is a rich internet application that facilitates an individuals or a groups activity of assigning annotations to the document fragments. The tools allow users to plan and organise their annotation activity, structure any multimedia document by dividing it into fragments, annotate the document formally, informally or by linking external documents to specific anchors, as well as to analyse structurally and statistically annotations and visualize analysis results. SMAT is adaptable to the users domain. Meeting Support Tools propose new approaches to meeting practices. They support the preparation, execution and analysis of meetings (face-to-face and remote) by capturing synchronous and asynchronous interactions through the collaborative elaboration of "discussion maps". Map-It allows the use of meeting templates, advance individual preparations, share of artifacts, planning and follow-up of actions, automatic generation of meeting minutes in various formats. M2T, a rich internet application, provides analytical facilities for exploring meeting practices instrumented using Map-It and their integration in larger-scope activities, by connecting them to other KP-Lab concepts, visualisations (KPEs Content Views) and tools (ToDo). This deliverable provides the general description of tools in terms of targeted users, requirements for the use, new features, known issues, as well as deviations from the DII.8 specifications. More details can be found through the material available in the project intranet at: http://www.kp-lab.org/intranet/testable-tools/kp-lab-tools