Student diversity, extra-curricular activities and perceptions of graduate outcomes

This research will examine how different student groups engage with extra-curricular activities and what effect these activities have on their degree and graduate outcomes. Recent research has indicated that different student groups have different degree and employment outcomes, this research examines how different student groups engage with extra-curricular activities and what effect these activities have on their degree and graduate outcomes. It examines what extra-curricular activities students participate in and whether different groups have preferences for different types of activities (i.e. are there patterns of participation in certain activities by certain groups of students) and if so what impact does this patterning have on graduate employment potential. Extra-curricular activities are broadly defined in this research, such as part-time work, involvement in University union clubs and societies, (and different types of clubs and societies, cultural, sporting and other), other University related activities such as volunteering, class representation, etc. and other activities outside of University life, such as family commitments and community activitie

Transfer Printing of Photonic Nanostructures to Silicon Integrated Circuits

Optical systems require the integration of technologies fabricated on different materials. We use a transfer printing technique to integrate pre-processed III-V, polymer and silicon membrane devices onto passive optical circuits with nano-metric positional accuracy

The personal and contextual factors that affect customer experience during rail service failures and the implications for service design

© 2020 The Authors This paper: identifies personal and contextual factors that influence customer experience when service failures occur in rail transport; what is being conveyed through that factor (e.g. older age being used to convey vulnerability); and the implications for future service design. The results are from a thematic analysis of free-text rail passenger complaints (n = 516) reporting service failures that impacted on customer experience. The study differs from existing research on the pertinent personal and contextual factors for public transport service provision in that it: focuses on the passenger experience resulting from specific incidents (rather than evaluative, overall assessments of satisfaction), generates the factors inductively from the data (rather than a-priori) and uses detailed qualitative cases (rather than quantitative survey data). The findings (1) identify some similar factors to those used in previous research and uncover some new factors for both person and context, (2) provide an understanding of what they mean in terms of the passenger experience and (3) indicate how the factors might need to be measured if they are to be used by the rail industry. The paper concludes by using the outcome of an industry-based validation exercise to describe how the findings could be used in future rail services, namely: predicting where the customer experience is going to be sub-optimal, prioritising responses to particular circumstances, and designing services to better meet customer's needs. This exploratory research is timely, given the need for a more passenger-centric approach to service design and future developments such as smart-ticketing, which could potentially enable greater understanding of who is using the rail network and for what journeys

The assessment of meaningful outcomes from co-design: a case study from the energy sector

Even though co-design is a well-accepted approach for designing to meet user needs, what influence it has on design outcomes remains unclear. This article presents the co-design process of a prototype energy advice service. We evaluate the impact this process had on the outcome over time, demonstrate how co-design generated informative insights, and identify the benefits and challenges of employing a co-design process to design and develop meaningful content for future ‘information-intensive’ services. A theoretical framework, a “think aloud” approach, and systematic data coding, enabled us to uncover user perceptions of the evolving design qualities. This meaning-making co-design process enabled user needs to surface and be iteratively addressed. As the content of the reports became increasingly tailored, and the users’ familiarity with the topic increased, the process highlighted further evolving and underlying information needs. This confirms the value of adopting a content first approach when designing information intensive services and foregrounding meaning making within the complex energy demand reduction context

Template Based Semantic Integration: From Legacy Archaeological Datasets to Linked Data

The online dissemination of datasets to accompany site monographs and summary documentation is becoming common practice within the archaeology domain. Since the legacy database schemas involved are often created on a per-site basis, cross searching or reusing this data remains difficult. Employing an integrating ontology, such as the CIDOC CRM, is one step towards resolving these issues. However, this has tended to require computing specialists with detailed knowledge of the ontologies involved. Results are presented from a collaborative project between computer scientists and archaeologists that provided light weight tools to make it easier for non-specialists to publish Linked Data. Applications developed for the STELLAR project were applied by archaeologists to major excavation datasets and the resulting output was published as Linked Data, conforming to the CIDOC CRM ontology. The template-based Extract Transform Load method is described. Reflections on the experience of using the template-based tools are discussed, together with practical issues including the need for terminology alignment and licensing consideration