Gamification and blended learning in vocational training and coaching in short courses

Vocational training and coaching delivered through short courses and workshops, needs to be as effective as possible due to several reasons: learners (and their employers) invest their time and energy, they expect direct usefulness of the course content and roadmap on how to implement the knowledge into real-life problems, there is certain extent of professional maturity that expects proper balance of theoretical and practical aspects and the outcomes are evident in short time for the benefit of all, or for the worse. These reasons motivated the trainers to use a specific instructional design that embodies gamification, blended learning and coaching for vocational training in short courses for group of participants from Western Balkans countries, with diverse backgrounds, languages, professions, education, personal and collective goals on the topic of preparing successful project proposals for funding, supported by the Western Balkans Alumni Association projects. The specifics in this instructional design have been multifold, compared to traditional training and coaching. One of the novel aspects is the combination of trainers related to the course content of projects funding from various aspects - National Agency expertise, academic, governmental and non-governmental experience, project evaluation and business practitioners. This setting of training facilitated by representative of almost every stakeholder in the higher educational ecosystem and articulated through the curricula of the trainers is aimed to enable overall knowledge apprehension, networking and immediate feedback loops. The incorporation of virtual activities before, during and after the in-person course utilises blended learning mashup of various tools such as e-learning platform for asynchronous communication, social networks for synchronous communication, webinar tool for virtual presence, video tutorials for future reference and expanded dissemination and personal contact for coaching. Another novelty in this approach is in the gamification aspect - introducing scout-game in the forest, using broad range of symbolic matrices - of compasses, maps, planned activities and unplanned events, training of skills and situational awareness, progress mechanics, challenges to achieve teamwork towards outputs and outcomes. And last but not least, the balance of theoretical and practical aspects is achieved by inviting each participant to have own working example and apply the concepts while receiving immediate feedback, or working on collective example - for all of which, follow up coaching is provided. The ‘magic’ of effective project proposals is complemented with appropriate change management and tactical management. The cognitive and knowledge dimension categories and components have been addressed in their entirety through the extended Bloom taxonomy and the evaluation has been made in formative and summative manner. The learning experience with our instructional design in this pilot instance happens for each participant - on the side of the learners and on the side of the trainers and other HEI stakeholders, including the WBAA - with specific goal to enable emergent effects of networked learners that can put their knowledge, skills and competences in right direction and produce primary and secondary effects for the Western Balkans region and EU

Leveraging Social Media within Integrated Service Delivery of Personalized Public Services towards Proactive E-government

Governments all over the world have had to continually come up with new strategies to advance and build e-government as a result of the incorporation of the newly developed digital technologies. As the front office is directly tied to communication, there is an ongoing push for new ways to communicate during the process of public services delivery. Social media platforms, as the most common phenomenon that technology has to offer to humanity, have shown to be effective tools for communication exchange. Social media are recognized as “window of opportunity” and crucial component of integrated service delivery for e-government development. This article focuses on personalized public services as the highest level of sophistication that some public services can acquire in the context of e-government projects aimed at becoming smart government. The paper's research technique is a case study of a current situation in the Republic of North Macedonia. The motivation for the proposed solution comes from the most recent published research on nations with comparable levels of e-government development. The purpose of this study is to point researchers and IT professionals in the direction of incorporating social media into the service delivery process for public services that can achieve a level of personalisation. Keywords: social media, integrated service delivery (ISD), proactive public services

Demarcation of the Field of E-Government Assessment

<p>The assessment of e-government is a part of the appealing field of e-government which has recently attracted the attention of many researchers, who most of the time carry out measurements and evaluations of e-government maturity and do international comparative analyses that rank different governments, nations, or countries. The intensive production of literature in this field for about twenty years now creates a vast pool of studies, reports and papers that differ one from the other on the basis of too many different attributes. The analysis of this literature is undoubtedly a difficult and challenging task which is beneficial to both researchers and end-users of these studies. We address this task in order to present a clear demarcation of the field of e-government assessment based on a comprehensive overview of thirty-seven written documents, studies and articles. We present a careful classification of the selected literature units according to four dimensions and attempt to draw clear lines between the terms – e-government measurement, evaluation and benchmarking, as they are often improperly used as interchangeable terms.</p

INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL ASPECTS OF GLOBAL HUMAN RESOURCES STAFFING

Globalization has become one of the most influential trends in the business environment in recent decades. Since companies started to spread their operations beyond national borders and to employ people originating from different countries, new challenges for human resource management have emerged. This paper ascertains, summarizes, and explains specificities of staffing in an international context, theories dealing with global staffing, and basic approaches to the staffing process in order to identify various determinants which may affect the process of choosing an appropriate staffing policy in multinational companies, i.e., the decision‐making process about staffing of global managers in an international business environment. Various research has shown that the success of a global manager depends not only on the employee’s personality and adaptability to different cultures, but also on the willingness and readiness of his or her family members to move to a foreign country. The conclusion of this paper is that staffing decisions for global managers, in addition to technical competencies and expertise, should take into consideration different individual and social factors (i.e., different personal attributes and skills, as well as specific requirements of a manager’s family) and that selection procedures should be customized to enable determining the best individuals for managerial positions in foreign subsidiaries of multinational companies, who will be able to fit into the new environment quickly and easily and perform the job in an expected manner

Smart Cities: Transport Challenges of the Macedonian Capital City

Smart City as a concept presupposes using new information and communication technologies in order to improve the quality of life within a particular geographic area. There are six different pillars in the frame of this concept and their one purpose is to achieve better efficiency of city operations. Smart mobility and transport are some of them. The efforts of traditional cities to become smart are not easily and quickly achievable. Numerous traffic solutions have already been implemented in different cities all over the world that make the ‘jump’ from traditional city to smart city. This paper provides an overview of the ‘smart’ transport solutions that have been implemented in the city of Skopje as a traditional city, which is on its way to becoming a smart city

Preoblikovanje zalednih služb s pomočjo centra skupnih storitev

Purpose: The paper points out a novel approach to e-Government back-office reengineering based on creating a Shared-Services Center at the sectorial level. Design/Methodology/Approach: To prove the Shared-Services Center as a proper solution for e-Government back-office reengineering, the authors used the case study of the Housing Facilities Sector in the Republic of North Macedonia. The research process follows Kettingers et al.\u27s framework of IT-enabled change with a holistic data-driven approach. Findings: The study indicates a complex information flow between stakeholders, an abundance of the same information and data collected from local stakeholders, and enormous citizen and institutional burden. The e-Government back-office reengineering solution for the specific case study based on creating a Shared-Services Center overcomes the problem of data redundancy, radically simplifies the information flow, and reduces citizen burden in line with the "Once-Only" principle. Practical Implications: The paper shows that by observing the network of all relevant stakeholders at the sectorial level, based on the information flow of core data, back-office problems can be identified, whereby the Shared-Services Center proves itself as a suitable solution. It may be a prerequisite for further studies on back-office process reengineering at the sectorial level. Originality/Value: Publications concerning back-office research at the sectorial level and, as in our case, within the House Facility Sector are almost non existing in scientific literature. Considering that there is a lack of analyses based on information flow and visualization of the information-flow network at the sectorial level (before and after the reforms), this paper will add original value to scientific literature.Namen: Članek predstavlja inovativen pristop k preoblikovanju zalednih služb e-uprave z ustanovitvijo centra skupnih storitev na sektorski ravni. Zasnova/Metodologija/Pristop: Na študiji primera stanovanjskega sektorja v Severni Makedoniji avtorji dokazujejo, da je center skupnih storitev ustrezna rešitev za preoblikovanje zalednih služb e-uprave. Raziskovalni proces temelji na okviru, ki so ga Kettingers idr. podali za informacijsko podprte spremembe s celostnim, na podatkih temelječim pristopom. Ugotovitve: Članek opozarja na zapleten pretok informacij med posameznimi deležniki, obilico istih informacij in podatkov, zbranih od lokalnih deležnikov, ter obsežno breme za državljane in institucije. Preoblikovanje zalednih služb e-uprave z vzpostavitvijo centra skupnih storitev, kot je prikazano na študiji primera, odpravi težavo z redundanco podatkov, izrazito poenostavi pretok informacij in zmanjša obremenitev državljanov skladno z načelom »samo enkrat«. Vpliv v praksi: Članek prikazuje, da lahko z opazovanjem mreže vseh relevantnih deležnikov na ravni sektorja na podlagi pretoka osnovnih podatkov prepoznamo težave v zalednih službah, ki se ustrezno rešujejo z vzpostavitvijo centra skupnih storitev. To je lahko podlaga za nadaljnje študije o možnostih preoblikovanja zalednih procesov na sektorski ravni. Izvirnost/Vrednost: Študij, ki bi se nanašale na zaledne službe na sektorski ravni, v našem primeru v stanovanjskem sektorju, v strokovni literaturi skorajda ni zaslediti. Glede na pomanjkanje analiz, ki bi temeljile na pretoku informacij in vizualizaciji informacijskih tokov med sektorji (pred in po reformi), članek ponuja izviren prispevek k strokovni literaturi

Development of the University’s Library Information System Model as an asset of the e-Society

Information society (e-Society) as new society base\ud on networks, computer and communication capabilities,\ud transforms the way that information is viewed and\ud managed, and change the way the organizations manage\ud their business processes. In this society the need for data\ud integration in one place has been present more than ever.\ud The key of success lies in creating appropriate information\ud system based on new technology and network capabilities\ud that will support the processes of the organization. The\ud universities represent specific organizations with the highest\ud priority of accessing to scientific knowledge. As academic\ud institutions which produce knowledge, universities use and\ud manage information from both: internal and external\ud sources. e-Society offer a new dimension for communication\ud between the students, professors and administrative staff by\ud allowing quick access to information from an unlimited\ud number of users from different locations at any time, with\ud the possibility of further processing and use thereof. The\ud existence of library information system (LIS) is a predisposition for quality assurance in universities. The\ud purpose of this paper is to propose a model for University’s\ud Library Information System (ULIS) that integrates\ud information in a simple way, and allows quick access to\ud books, electronic materials (internal books, lectures,\ud manuals, presentations etc.), articles or research results\ud from each member (unit) of the university