Varieties of Professional Domains and Employability Determinants in Higher Education

This paper discusses graduates employability and early career success. In this context it follows multiple goals. First, it overviews the key research issues, results and concepts related to HE graduates’ transition. While this classification remains on the level of a simplified meta overview, it indicates the need for the contextualisation of graduate models and improvements in the interpretation of results. Second, it provides a short overview of the graduate transition models developed in early stages of the DEHEMS project and prior to it. Third, it applies theoretical considerations and the model developed in previous sections to a case study analysis of two domains. The data set relates to Slovenian graduates 5 years after they graduated from the HEGESCO international survey. The preliminary analysis leads to general conclusions and recommendations for further analysing and comparing different professional domains. Some concluding observations related do domain varieties are: a) graduates’ professional success is a multidimensional concept and requires modifications when applied to analytical models of study domains, b) even when the results of different study domains appear to be similar, their meaning can differ a lot when the interpretation is placed within the specific context of a professional domain, c) the principles and responsibility of the competencies incubation phase from education and the labour market should be interpreted and understood in line with the expected function of the HE institution, e) knowing the prevailing logic behind graduates’ jobs, such as managerialism, bureaucracy or professionalism in relation to graduates’ career observations might be another factor in determining graduates’ career success factors, f) when considering the factors of career success or the quality of jobs, one should be aware there might be an important difference when considering a model on an individual-level or a country-level basis.

Automated Operations and Safety Data Collection and Usage in Contemporary Flight Operations Quality Audit Programs

Flight Operations Quality Audit (FOQA) programs are becoming more common to airlines of today. Flight data recording devices modified for repeated and daily data readouts have been dem-onstrating their unquestionable advantages in FOQA programmes. They demonstrate the interest of airlines, that use them, to transport people, cargo and mail in safe and efficient way. The paper will present general FOQA structure, historical developments in this field together with common obstacles when introducing FOQA to an airline. It also brings the latest data and understanding of benefits that FOQA has on airlines operation with potential applications of similar concepts to other means of transportation as well

Different Automation Concepts in Civil Aircraft Cockpits of Today and Their Influence on Airline Flight Operations

Although there are different aircraft manufecturers and hence different practical solutions, there is one bottom line in automation. In aviation automation is only complement to humans. It is not present to challenge the pilot's role and responsibility. The use of new technologies and implementation of new functionality are dictated only by: significant safety benefits, obvious operational advantages, and clear response to the pilot's needs and operational factors influencing his functioning. The paper will discuss different approaches to automation related to flight operations in aviations. The paper intends to demonstrate how different manufacturers' approaches follows quite similar ideas in different automated system designs. The paper does not intend to give any final say when choosing one concept or the other. That is the matter of different circumstances requiring more justifying space and different criteria than the pure scientific one

Flight Operations and Engineering Documentation Managing and Distribution Supported by Intelligent Transport Systems

Aviation as a multitude of activities is meant to satisfy needs of its customers to overcome distance and time between any departure and arrival point in the world. Airlines and other aircraft operators (governments, armed forces, general aviation, and business aviation) differ in their structure depending on their size and services they provide. Some departments are to be found in larger airlines only. However, core departments, to every airline or aircraft operator, are flight operations department and engineering department. Sophistication and the size of these departments depend on the size of the system they are incorporated in. Business logistics of an airline consist of numerous distinctive activities and functions. These activities have to be planned and completed in synchronisation. The paper presents an overview to intelligent systems for the support to these activities with particular stress on flight operations and maintenance functions in a medium sized airline. Authors show how the approach to documentation management, as a part of logistics in the production of transportation service, has evolved since the early 1990s when aviation has started to recognise the value of digital technical data. In light of this, authors analyse conceptual framework adopted by today's aircraft manufacturers towards their logistics activities supported by Internet as a new means of transferring data. The advent of new sophisticated pilot-machine interfaces and aircraft systems tends to increase the volume of the documentation describing these tools drastically. The paper communicates how operational documentation has to change to move towards a more easy and modern media. Intelligent systems that prove aviation entering a period where the "written book" is going to be complemented if not largely supplemented by the "electronic book" are presented from the early beginnings of digital data application to the most recent achievements

Quantifying the effects of social influence

How do humans respond to indirect social influence when making decisions? We analysed an experiment where subjects had to repeatedly guess the correct answer to factual questions, while having only aggregated information about the answers of others. While the response of humans to aggregated information is a widely observed phenomenon, it has not been investigated quantitatively, in a controlled setting. We found that the adjustment of individual guesses depends linearly on the distance to the mean of all guesses. This is a remarkable, and yet surprisingly simple, statistical regularity. It holds across all questions analysed, even though the correct answers differ in several orders of magnitude. Our finding supports the assumption that individual diversity does not affect the response to indirect social influence. It also complements previous results on the nonlinear response in information-rich scenarios. We argue that the nature of the response to social influence crucially changes with the level of information aggregation. This insight contributes to the empirical foundation of models for collective decisions under social influence.Comment: 3 figure