Cultural Competence in Physical Education and Core Academic Subjects: Are There Differences?

This synthesis studied a critical mass of literature to determine cultural competence as it pertains to physical educators training and preparation for teachers in core academic subject areas. The studies focused more on experience and teacher training in physical education as well as core academics. Contact theory was used to help identify how teacher educators should utilize more hands on experiences to better train a more culturally competent teacher, who in turn will facilitate success in future students. Results of this synthesis show that the teacher training programs need to be changed in order to create a more culturally competent teacher. Results supported the notion that many teachers are being trained in programs that are not sensitive to creating a culturally competent skill set in today’s educators. This is at odds with trends in the United States that have traditionally led to increased diversity in the population. Teachers sensitive to constant changing demographics need to be culturally competent and this starts with teacher training programs

A Service-oriented Architecture for Ambient-Assisted Living

Ambient-Assisted Living (AAL) is currently an important research and development area, mainly due to the rapidly aging society, the increasing cost of health care, and the growing importance that individuals place on living independently. The general goal of AAL solutions is to apply ambient-assisted intelligence to enable people with specific demands (e.g. handicapped or elderly) to live in their preferred environment longer by tools (i.e. smart objects, mobile and wearable sensors, intelligent devices) being sensitive and responsive to the presence of people and their actions. The research describes the design and development of a novel service-oriented system architecture where different smart objects and sensors are combined to offer ambient-assisted living intelligence to older people. The design stage is driven by a user-centred approach to define an interoperable architecture and human-oriented principles to create usable products and well-accepted services. Such architecture has been realized in the context of an Italian research project funded by the Marche Region and promoted by INRCA (National Institute on Health and Science of Aging) in the framework of smart home for active ageing and ambient assisted living. The result is an interoperable and flexible platform that allows creating user-centred services for independent living

An ergonomics study on manual assembly process re-design in manufacturing firms

Nevertheless process automation is a global trend, some specific phases (i.e., assembly) in highly technological sectors (i.e., medical, pharmaceutical, diagnostics, dental) are still managed by human workers, due to high-precision tasks and low production volumes. In this context, operators are forced to work faster and adapt to not ergonomically workstations and workflows. As a consequence, human assembly is frequently the bottleneck of the entire process due a not ergonomic layout and process design. The study was conducted at a medical equipment manufacturer, leader of dental equipment production, and focused on the analysis of the assembly process of the dental units. Workers at the assembly line were observed by experts and involved also by interviews and focus groups to detect the assembly issues and process jam. The research provides a valuable example of how physical, cognitive and organizational ergonomic problems affect the final process performance and how human-oriented re-design actions can be easily defined according to the proposed analysis procedure

Sustainability and Industry 4.0: Definition of a Set of Key Performance Indicators for Manufacturing Companies

Today, sustainability represents a fundamental concept to be developed and implemented in any industrial context. Therefore, it is essential to be able to measure sustainability performance by proper indicators, along the entire lifecycle and the value chain, considering environmental, economic, and social impacts. Moreover, every manufacturing company should have a specific measuring framework to calculate all the specific parameters. In this direction, the modern digital transition and Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies are proposing to transform human–machine relations, with a significant impact on social and organizational aspects. At the same time, digitization can help companies to define and implement sustainability by correlating production with proper evaluation metrics. The aim of this research is to provide a complete overview of sustainability Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) based on the Triple Bottom Line concept, referring to the three sustainability areas. Such an overview can be used by companies to set their specific KPIs and metrics to measure their sustainability level, according to their needs

Benchmarking of Tools for User Experience Analysis in Industry 4.0

Abstract Industry 4.0 paradigm is based on systems communication and cooperation with each other and with humans in real time to improve process performances in terms of productivity, security, energy efficiency, and cost. Although industrial processes are more and more automated, human performance is still the main responsible for product quality and factory productivity. In this context, understanding how workers interact with production systems and how they experience the factory environment is fundamental to properly model the human interaction and optimize the processes. This research investigates the available technologies to monitor the user experience (UX) and defines a set of tools to be applied in the Industry 4.0 scenario to assure the workers' wellbeing, safety and satisfaction and improve the overall factory performance

A reference model to analyse User eXperience in integrated product-process design

The analysis of human factors is assuming an increasing importance in product and process design and the lack of common references for their assessment in industrial practices had driven to define a reference model to analyse the so-called User eXperience (UX) to support human-centred product-process design. Indeed, the recent advances in ubiquitous computing, wearable technologies and low-cost connected devices offer a huge amount of new tools for UX monitoring, but the main open issue is selecting the most proper devices for the specific application area and properly interpreting the collected information content in respect with the industrial design goals. The research investigates how to analyse the human behaviours of \u201cusers\u201d (i.e., workers) by a reference model to assess the perceived experience and a set of proper technologies for UX investigation for industrial scopes. In particular, the model has been defined for the automotive sector. The paper defines a set of evaluation metrics and a structured protocol analysis to objectify and measure the UX with the final aim to support the requirements definition in product-process design. The model has been defined to fit different cases: vehicle drivers at work, workers in the manufacturing line, and service operator

Technical-business design methodology for PSS

Concurrent Design (CD) is a systematic approach to integrated product design that emphasizes the response to customer expectations and the combination of creativity and engineering. Such a concept represents also the basis of Product- Service System (PSS), which represents a valid way for companies to add value to their products, create new value propositions, and easily improve their solution portfolio. Indeed, the fulfilling of the customer needs is fundamental for creating successful industrial PSSs (IPSSs), which aim at combining products and services into a marketable solution. However, the integration of technical and business aspects is crucial to succeed. In this context, this paper proposes an integrated methodology for PSS addressing both technical and business aspects; it adopts a QFD-based approach to structure PSS information along the different process stages, considering four main domains: customer, functional, assets and network. It allows technical feasibility to be carried out and business framework to be defined at the same time to have a robust design concept and a reliable business model from the early design stages. The method is based on the direct involvement of the customer voice according to the CD paradigm. The proposed method also allows to define earlier the network of stakeholders and to dynamically reconfigure the network itself along the process, promoting the creation of the lean enterprise