Undergraduate Work Placement Programmes in Ireland: Issues and Solutions

The purpose of this paper then is to address this gap and to explore the state of placement programmes in third level institutes in Ireland in the early twenty-first century. The paper will begin with an overview of the growing need for graduates to acquire improved employability skills, as this has become even more relevant in the current economic downturn. It will also review the existing literature on the benefits of placement for students, employers and higher education institutions. It will then present the results of the first comprehensive survey of placement in Irish HEIs which focused on the scale and scope of work placement programmes in undergraduate courses in Ireland. With more than three hundred courses incorporated into this survey, it is one of the most wide-ranging studies to ever have been conducted in this field. This will present contextual information on the number of third level students involved in placement programmes across the country and the types of courses in Irish HEIs (by level and discipline) which include a work placement element in their core structure. It will also identify the accreditation and assessment methods employed for such programmes by Irish HEIs

Beyond Big Business. Opportunities and Challenges for Irish HEIs in Engaging with Family Businesses and Community & Voluntary Groups through the Student Work Placement Process

The purpose of this paper is to examine the opportunities and challenges for Irish HEIs in engaging with these organisations through the student work placement process. While a substantial amount of valuable work has already been carried out by the REAP project in ascertaining the current state of work placement provision in Ireland and developing a general set of guidelines for good practice in placement for HEIs, employers and students, there is an opportunity to take this body of work a step further. Indeed, the main aim of this report is to present a best practice model for engagement on work placement between Irish HEIs and specific types of organisations, namely family businesses and community and voluntary groups, as a one-size-fits-all approach may not necessarily be the best way to deal with these organisations. The key questions this work will therefore address include how can HEIs reach these organisations and establish lasting partnerships with them? What kind of practical difficulties exist in this type of engagement? How can these obstacles be overcome? The paper will begin with a contextual overview of family businesses and community and voluntary groups in Ireland in order to convey the span of these organisations within the country and the vast experience they have to offer work placement students. An outline of the 6 results of a recent survey carried out by this research team, which examined the views of work placement practitioners in Irish HEIs, as well as those of representatives from family businesses, and those from community and voluntary groups, will then be presented. This paper will subsequently attempt to analyse the key challenges raised by this research, before presenting our conclusions and recommendations for best practice in this field. It is hoped that this report will be widely used as a support tool by HEIs in engaging with family businesses and community and voluntary groups in the placement process and that by doing so, placement will become a more straightforward and appealing form of engagement to these organisations

Breaking Down Barriers to University-Business Cooperation in the University: Change through Incentivisation

Irish universities are currently engaged in a process of shifting their reliance on state subvention as their primary source of income to one that includes developing new streams of non-exchequer funding. This scenario emerges from a long-term trend of reduced state subvention which was dramatically accelerated by the virtual collapse of the Irish economy, which required an external rescue package brokered with the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund (which became know as the Troika) from November 2010. While Ireland has officially exited this arrangement, its public finance will remain severely constrained for an extended period. In this paper we examine the potential of University-Business Cooperation (UBC) in lifelong learning, which has been identified as one of the key university responses to meet the projected shortfall arising from reduced state subvention. We suggest that this area has very high potential for universities, but it has to be underpinned by internal mechanisms to incentivise key university staff to engage proactively in order to meet the targets set by individual Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Implementing an incentivisation policy will require many of the HEIs to address their own internal culture and modus operandi for rewarding and promoting their staff

Engaging with Employers in Economic Downturn

There has been an increasing focus on personal transferable skills by universities (Albrecht and Sack 2000). This has led to considerable growth in the number of placement programmes in undergraduate courses in Irish Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). As noted by Paisey and Paisey (2009) relatively little research has been carried out in this domain. This paper explores the state of non-clinical placement programmes in third level institutes in Ireland. It presents the results of the first comprehensive survey of placement in Irish. The survey reveals the scale and scope of work placement programmes in undergraduate courses in Ireland. With more than three hundred courses incorporated into this survey, it is one of the most wide-ranging studies to ever have been conducted in this field. This paper’s discussion will present contextual information on the number of third level students involved in placement programmes across the country and the types of courses in Irish HEIs (by level and discipline) which include a work placement element in their core structure. It presents several of the key obstacles facing undergraduate work placement programmes and their managers as a result of the current changes in the global economic environment. The paper presents and considers the conflicting imperatives facing employers who may previously have been enthusiastic partners in work placement programmes. It also considers the impact and likely trajectory of the paid/non-paid placement debate, and examines some of the combination models being considered at present. Finally, this paper will demonstrate how this form of engagement between education and industry can be mutually beneficial for all key stakeholders involved in work placement programmes, including employers, HEIs and third level students (Richardson and Blakeney 1998). The wide range of benefits – in particular benefits to teaching and learning - which placement programmes can generate for each of these stakeholders will be analysed

Beyond Big Business, Opportunities and Challenges for Irish HEIs in Engaging with Family Businesses and Community & Voluntary Groups through the Student Work Placement Process

The purpose of this paper is to examine the opportunities and challenges for Irish HEIs in engaging with these organisations through the student work placement process. While a substantial amount of valuable work has already been carried out by the REAP project in ascertaining the current state of work placement provision in Ireland and developing a general set of guidelines for good practice in placement for HEIs, employers and students, there is an opportunity to take this body of work a step further. Indeed, the main aim of this report is to present a best practice model for engagement on work placement between Irish HEIs and specific types of organisations, namely family businesses and community and voluntary groups, as a one-size-fits-all approach may not necessarily be the best way to deal with these organisations. The key questions this work will therefore address include how can HEIs reach these organisations and establish lasting partnerships with them? What kind of practical difficulties exist in this type of engagement? How can these obstacles be overcome

Fractal time series analysis of postural stability in elderly and control subjects

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The study of balance using stabilogram analysis is of particular interest in the study of falls. Although simple statistical parameters derived from the stabilogram have been shown to predict risk of falls, such measures offer little insight into the underlying control mechanisms responsible for degradation in balance. In contrast, fractal and non-linear time-series analysis of stabilograms, such as estimations of the Hurst exponent (H), may provide information related to the underlying motor control strategies governing postural stability. In order to be adapted for a home-based follow-up of balance, such methods need to be robust, regardless of the experimental protocol, while producing time-series that are as short as possible. The present study compares two methods of calculating H: Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (DFA) and Stabilogram Diffusion Analysis (SDA) for elderly and control subjects, as well as evaluating the effect of recording duration.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Centre of pressure signals were obtained from 90 young adult subjects and 10 elderly subjects. Data were sampled at 100 Hz for 30 s, including stepping onto and off the force plate. Estimations of H were made using sliding windows of 10, 5, and 2.5 s durations, with windows slid forward in 1-s increments. Multivariate analysis of variance was used to test for the effect of time, age and estimation method on the Hurst exponent, while the intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) was used as a measure of reliability.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Both SDA and DFA methods were able to identify differences in postural stability between control and elderly subjects for time series as short as 5 s, with ICC values as high as 0.75 for DFA.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Both methods would be well-suited to non-invasive longitudinal assessment of balance. In addition, reliable estimations of H were obtained from time series as short as 5 s.</p

Univariate and bivariate empirical mode decomposition for postural stability analysis

The aim of this paper was to compare empirical mode decomposition (EMD) and two new extended methods of Open image in new windowEMD named complex empirical mode decomposition (complex-EMD) and bivariate empirical mode decomposition (bivariate-EMD). All methods were used to analyze stabilogram center of pressure (COP) time series. The two new methods are suitable to be applied to complex time series to extract complex intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) before the Hilbert transform is subsequently applied on the IMFs. The trace of the analytic IMF in the complex plane has a circular form, with each IMF having its own rotation frequency. The area of the circle and the average rotation frequency of IMFs represent efficient indicators of the postural stability status of subjects. Experimental results show the effectiveness of these indicators to identify differences in standing posture between groups

Design et implémentation sur FPGA d'un algorithme DES

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

The impact of prescription medication cost coverage on optimal adherence to Hypertension and Diabetes Mellitus oral medications

Background: It can be difficult for patients who do not have prescription medication cost coverage to adhere to their medications. No previous study has examined the time-trend and impact of absence of coverage on adherence to oral diabetes and hypertension medications in Canada. Methods: Using data from the Canadian Community Health Survey cycles 2007, 2008, 2013, and 2014, I included individuals from participating provinces that opted to include questions about coverage (Ontario and New Brunswick). Included adults had either hypertension or diabetes and answered questions on both coverage and adherence to medications. A multivariate-adjusted logistic regression model was fitted to estimate the odds of non-adherence depending on coverage. I adjusted for confounding variables including demographic factors (socioeconomic status; age, education, sex, province of residence), and health system and behaviour variables (such as smoking, having a regular doctor, not receiving a flu shot, as well as having additional comorbidities). Results: The pseudo-cohort included 23,215 individuals. The weighted average age was 60 years. 20% of participants reported absence of coverage. This percentage increased slightly over the study period. Patients with no prescription medication coverage were at 23% higher odds of not adhering to their medication (adjusted odds ratio (OR) 0.77; 95% CI (Confidence Interval) 0.657 - 0.911). Subgroup analysis revealed that patients aged less than 65 years, lived in Ontario, and had a middle-income were also at a statistically significant lower odd for adherence with absence of insurance. Conclusion: Absence of prescription medication coverage is associated with a reduced adherence to diabetes and hypertension oral medications. Providing medication coverage may help in increasing the probability for adherence. As such, there is a need for further studies to quantify the effect of recent changes of provincial insurance coverage

Agent-based self-management of MPLS DiffServ-TE domain

MPLS DiffServ-TE presents the solution awaited so much by the network service providers by allowing a differentiation of services and a traffic engineering based on a fast packet switching technology. However, the management of such a network is not a simple function and could not be done manually. In this paper, we propose a novel architecture based on the Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) capable of managing automatically MPLS DiffServ-TE domains. Based on the network states, our intelligent agents take the appropriate decisions. They, for example, reconfigure the network accordingly5th IFIP International Conference on Network Control & Engineering for QoS, Security and MobilityRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI