Yhteistyöjärjestelmien käyttö ja toimivuus henkilöstön osaamisen kehittämisen ja ylläpidon näkökulmasta

Methods used in the traditional institutional education do not alone meet the needs for renewal and learning in organisations, because present-day work environments are changing so fast. Often training outside working context may results in such competences and knowledge that are already outdated at the moment of their application. Knowledge requirements, demands for innovativeness and knowledge sharing, distributed project work and the development of technologies create new learning requirements. Responding to these challenges requires skilled personnel, who are capable of renewing their competences and skills through their work practices and by reflecting them. In addition, the intensive working pace often prevents employees from participating in traditional training. First part of the study is based on literature, and examines theories on competence development, learning mechanisms, and the use, implementation and outcomes of collaborative working environments. Second part is a case study, which demonstrates the benefits and challenges related to the implementation and use, and perceived benefits and challenges of a virtual meeting system in a large global enterprise. The meeting system was mostly used for internal meetings and training in the enterprise. Employees can enrol to these sessions using their own computer connected to the internet. Some or even thousands of employees can participate at the same time. At the moment of data gathering, there were only a limited amount of users, who were mainly members of executive teams and management teams of internal projects. With the help of the system, distributed teams met weekly, and steering group and department meetings were arranged. The system was also used for internal product and sales training. According to the interviewees, the use of the virtual meeting system enhanced communication and information sharing and improved personnel's work motivation. The use of the system also increased cost savings and competitiveness of the enterprise. The main challenges of the use were related to technical problems and unfamiliar communication style.Perinteinen työn ulkopuolella toteutettava institutionaalinen koulutus ja sen menetelmät eivät riitä tyydyttämään työorganisaatioiden uudistumisen ja oppimisen tarpeita, koska nykyaikaiset toiminta- ja työympäristöt muuttuvat nopeasti. Monesti työn ulkopuolella saatu koulutus on vanhentunutta jo soveltamisvaiheessa. Uusia oppimistarpeita luovat niin tietointensiivisyys, vaatimukset innovatiivisuudesta ja tiedon jakamisesta, projektimainen ja hajautettu työ kuin teknologian kehityskin. Näihin haasteisiin vastaaminen edellyttää osaavaa henkilöstöä, joka uusintaa tietojaan ja taitojaan käytäntölähtöisesti työn tekemisen ja reflektoinnin kautta. Lisäksi kireä työtahti estää usein perinteiseen koulutukseen osallistumisen. Tässä tutkimuksessa tarkastellaan kirjallisuuteen perustuen osaamisen kehittämistä, oppimisen mekanismeja sekä yhteistyötä tukevia teknologisia järjestelmiä niiden käyttötarkoituksen, käyttöönoton ja vaikutusten näkökulmista. Tapaustutkimuksena selvitetään yhden suuren globaalin yrityksen sähköisen kokousjärjestelmän käyttöönottoa, käyttöä sekä käytön koettuja hyötyjä ja haasteita. Tutkimuksen kohteena ollutta kokousjärjestelmää käytettiin yrityksessä enimmäkseen sisäisiin neuvotteluihin ja koulutukseen. Sähköisiin tilaisuuksiin voi osallistua oman internetiin kytketyn tietokoneen äärellä, ja niissä voi olla mukana muutama tai jopa tuhansia henkilöitä samaan aikaan. Tutkimusajankohtana kokousjärjestelmää käytti suhteellisen rajattu kohderyhmä, johon kuului etenkin johtoryhmien ja sisäisten projektien vetoryhmien edustajia. Järjestelmän avulla saatiin kokoon hajautetut tiimit niin viikko-, johtoryhmä- kuin osastopalavereihinkin. Järjestelmän avulla toteutettiin myös yrityksen sisäistä tuote- ja myyntikoulutusta. Kokousjärjestelmän koettiin tehostavan vuorovaikutusta ja tiedon välittymistä ja parantavan henkilökunnan motivaatiota. Lisäksi nähtiin, että kokousjärjestelmän käyttö johti taloudellisiin säästöihin ja kilpailukyvyn paranemiseen. Järjestelmän haasteiksi koettiin erilainen vuorovaikutus ja tekniset ongelmat

Information and communication technology adoption at work : employees' experiences of adoption and learning

The aim of this thesis is to investigate employees' experiences of a successful adoption of information and communication technology (ICT) systems at work. Since organizations actively implement new ICT systems and previous literature has identified end users as the most common source of ICT implementation problems and failures, the topic of this study is relevant and timely. The literature reviews carried out for this thesis suggest that in the ICT adoption research there is a lack of studies which apply theoretical approaches that view ICT adoption as a dynamic and social process and which have a qualitative and interpretive research approach. The three empirical sub-studies in this thesis make a contribution to the existing knowledge of ICT adoption by studying qualitatively and comprehensively employees' experiences when they adopt ICT systems, for example, how the employees learn how to use ICT systems and what problems they encounter during the adoption and learning process. This thesis considers an ICT adopter as a solitary and autonomous actor but also as a social actor who is tightly engaged in his or her social environment and context. The data were gathered from qualitative semi-structured interviews among 50 employees in three case organizations. The three case organizations represented different contexts: public and private and education, military, and industrial. The data were analyzed using a thematic analysis approach. The main findings show that employees prefer informal ways of learning how to use ICT, e.g., they ask for help from peers; the social context was the main source of use-related problems in ICT adoption, and self-determination in ICT adoption was experienced as a successful yet unsystematic way of adopting ICT. The main finding was that eight enablers for the successful adoption of an ICT system by employees were distinguished. The theoretical implication is that this thesis shows how three alternative theoretical research approaches, the activity system model, the model of institutionalization as a structuration process, and a learning approach, can be applied in order to analyze and understand the adoption of ICT by individuals. The practical implication is that the thesis provides useful information for support staff, managers, and designers on the adoption of ICT by individuals, such as how the adoption of ICT systems proceeds, how employees learn how to use ICT systems, and what problems they encounter

Scripting for large-scale sequencing based on Hadoop

The large volumes of data generated by modern sequencing experiments present significant challenges in their manipulation and analysis. Traditional approaches are often found to be complicated to scale. We describe our ongoing work on SeqPig, a tool that facilitates the use of the Pig Latin distributed scripting language to manipulate, analyze and query sequencing data applying the advances motivated by the “big data revolution” in data-intensive activities. SeqPig provides access to popular data formats and implements a number of custom sequencing-specific functions. Most importantly, it grants users access to the scalable Hadoop platform from a high level scripting language84-85Pubblicat

Hadoop-BAM: directly manipulating next generation sequencing data in the cloud

Summary: Hadoop-BAM is a novel library for the scalable manipulation of aligned next-generation sequencing data in the Hadoop distributed computing framework. It acts as an integration layer between analysis applications and BAM files that are processed using Hadoop. Hadoop-BAM solves the issues related to BAM data access by presenting a convenient API for implementing map and reduce functions that can directly operate on BAM records. It builds on top of the Picard SAM JDK, so tools that rely on the Picard API are expected to be easily convertible to support large-scale distributed processing. In this article we demonstrate the use of Hadoop-BAM by building a coverage summarizing tool for the Chipster genome browser. Our results show that Hadoop offers good scalability, and one should avoid moving data in and out of Hadoop between analysis steps

Optimized detection of transcription factor-binding sites in ChIP-seq experiments

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MicroRNA Expression Profiling Reveals MiRNA Families Regulating Specific Biological Pathways in Mouse Frontal Cortex and Hippocampus

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Chipster : user-friendly analysis software for microarray and other high-throughput data

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