EU gazetteer evaluation

This JRC technical report summarises the ELISE (European Location Interoperability Solutions for e-Government) activities in support to the development of an EU gazetteer. Most Member States have their own national gazetteer service so, if an EU gazetteer service is to be justified, there needs to be sufficient demand for pan-European applications or sufficient added value beyond existing national gazetteers. The ELISE Action of the ISA2 Programme carried out a survey in conjunction with EuroGeographics in 2018, aimed at understanding the demand-side and supply-side perspectives related to pan-European gazetteer data and services. The results clearly showed that there is demand for an EU gazetteer to support multi-national applications or complement existing national gazetteers, for purposes such as emergency response, searching for datasets, news items, or tourism / cultural heritage sites, validating foreign addresses, etc. This report further investigates two datasets on the pan-European level: Geographical names and Addresses as the most relevant datasets for the EU gazetteer. In the report we also analyse authoritative vs. volunteered spatial datasets. The results of the analysis showed that both data sources, official and volunteered, are complementary and mutually enhanced results can be obtained by combining the two. In addition, "Cultural Heritage Testbed" application has been developed with the aim to identify data, functionality gaps and improvements needed in different gazetteer solutions. The findings and possible applications were discussed with several existing use cases, with cross-border and pan-European coverage. Overall findings in this report can be used to justify the relevance and importance of Geographical names and Addresses datasets in the context of defining future high value datasets at an EU level.JRC.B.6-Digital Econom

Developing a mobile learning solution for health and social care practice

In this article we share our experiences of a large‐scale five‐year innovative programme to introduce mobile learning into health and social care (H&SC) practice placement learning and assessment that bridges the divide between the university classroom and the practice setting in which these students learn. The outputs are from the Assessment & Learning in Practice Settings (ALPS) Centre for Excellence in Teaching & Learning (CETL), which is working towards a framework of interprofessional assessment of Common Competences in the H&SC professions. The mobile assessment process and tools that have been developed and implemented and the outcomes of the first‐stage evaluation of the mobile assessment tools are discussed from the student perspective