Supporting searching on small screen devices using summarisation

In recent years, small screen devices have seen widespread increase in their acceptance and use. Combining mobility with their increased technological advances many such devices can now be considered mobile information terminals. However, user interactions with small screen devices remain a challenge due to the inherent limited display capabilities. These challenges are particularly evident for tasks, such as information seeking. In this paper we assess the effectiveness of using hierarchical-query biased summaries as a means of supporting the results of an information search conducted on a small screen device, a PDA. We present the results of an experiment focused on measuring users' perception of relevance of displayed documents, in the form of automatically generated summaries of increasing length, in response to a simulated submitted query. The aim is to study experimentally how users' perception of relevance varies depending on the length of summary, in relation to the characteristics of the PDA interface on which the content is presented. Experimental results suggest that hierarchical query-biased summaries are useful and assist users in making relevance judgments

CSDP and the open method of coordination: developing the eu’s comprehensive approach to security

How can we best describe the operation of the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), and how can we improve policy-making in CSDP? The Open Method of Coordination (OMC) is predicated on the conviction that there are clear limits to the extent that European Union (EU) foreign and security policy can be strengthened through the restricting tendencies of intergovernmental cooperation between EU member states. Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) – agreed by the European Council and 25 EU member states in 2017 – offers practical instruments towards delivering value-added capacity to the process of crisis management beyond intergovernmentalism. As a process, PESCO is analogous to the logic of OMC, including more appropriate levels of coordination at the national organisational level in order to effectively facilitate the EU’s comprehensive approach to conflict prevention and crisis management. The requirement for new and “open” types of EU foreign and security policy coordination is underlined by the immense differences between EU member states in external policy, both concerning national crisis management structures and the resulting inefficient segmentation of policy at the EU level

Explaining the European Union's Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP): Power, Bureaucratic Politics and Grand Strategy.

This study explores the meaning and operation of the European Union Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) from the Saint Malo Declaration in December 1998 up to the European Council of December 2013. Applying a comprehensive strategic culture framework, the study affirms that CSDP began as an intergovernmental initiative but its institutional structure and implementation reflects a non-traditional type of intergovernmentalism, lacking the usual interests-based interstate bargaining. The study affirms that there is an emergent European strategic culture that co-exists with member state strategic cultures. It further identifies a credibility gap between the Union’s stated security and defence ambitions and its current level of capability and actorness. The explanation for these shortcomings lies in a form of bureaucratic politics suffused throughout CSDP processes. The bureaucratic politics explanation of CSDP stands in sharp contrast to suggestions that the policy area exhibits Europeanisation, finding this concept too vague to be analytically useful in understanding what CSDP represents. The original contribution of the study is that the often suggested need for CSDP to be driven by Grand Strategy in the academic literature is inappropriate and unfeasible because member states consistently fail to define their common interests, and the form of bureaucratic politics of CSDP conflicts with the development and implementation of Grand Strategy. While Grand Strategy cannot work, bureaucratic politics may in the long-term incrementally deliver an EU strategic culture, strategic actorness and enhanced capability. The study therefore concludes that despite shortfalls, the bureaucratic politics approach is the most effective way to analyse CSDP in a scholarly sense and also as a means to achieve the declared ambitions of CSDP

Adapting conventional delivery to cope with large cohorts: turning seminars into workshops and changing assessment

[EN] Teaching a popular postgraduate political economy module to around 50 international business and environment students (mainly Chinese) had always gone well. Delivery consisted of lectures and seminars with assessment via a 3,000-word essay. But with a three times larger cohort in 2017 things went wrong. The response from the teaching team was twofold. First to replace seminars with team-taught 2-hour workshops, to provide fewer targeted readings accompanied by specific questions for groups to answer, plus a redesign of the assessment, introducing a shorter more issue-specific approach based on short (500-word) answers to five questions chosen from ten, all tied to module learning outcomes and content. How did all this go? The paper highlights problems with the traditional approach and offers an initial evaluation of the changes introduced in 2018. Ultimately the paper addresses the strengths and weaknesses of the before and after and relates this to the changing demands placed on tutors charged with teaching large cohorts in a department going through rapid expansion. The case highlights the critical balance between volume and quality and asks difficult questions about the student experience and how universities respond to an increasingly marketized higher education sector.Sweeney, S. (2019). Adapting conventional delivery to cope with large cohorts: turning seminars into workshops and changing assessment. En HEAD'19. 5th International Conference on Higher Education Advances. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 1059-1068. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAD19.2019.9505OCS1059106

The European Union and EUFOR Althea's contribution to a dysfunctional peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Bureaucratic politics, emergent strategy?

This article assesses the EU Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) in the Western Balkans, with a focus on EUFOR Althea in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). Althea is a military operation that conducts mainly civilian functions as well as the training of the Bah Armed Forces; its ‘civilianisation’ is symptomatic of CSDP’s orientation as a mainly civilian crisis management instrument. Althea works within the framework of the Union’s ‘comprehensive approach’ to regional development and the accession process of the Western Balkans to the EU. I argue that the mission displays the bureaucratic modus operandi of CSDP and not a Grand Strategy approach. Nevertheless, CSDP’s incremental, lowest-common-denominator, low cost, low risk bureaucratic politics have enabled a form of emergent strategy that complements the Union’s multi-instrument and comprehensive approach to development throughout the Western Balkans. I further suggest that the EU Global Strategy (EUGS) and the newly activated Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) provides opportunities for EU member states to build on low key emergent strategy to ensure that CSDP develops the substance and actorness needed to address current threats

Student Engagement: : Key Skills, Social Capital, and Encouraging Learner Contributions to Module Resources

This project involves a Masters module on political economy, taught annually to diverse cohorts studying an MSc in international business. It has generated a substantial resource of learner-created material. The opening weeks of the course introduce key international political economy (IPE) concepts; then the module addresses challenges to global stability and the business environment. Students are invited to work in groups to create researched presentations on any country in which issues of governance, political dysfunction, or stresses relating to globalization, affect economic and political development. Each presentation is supported by a reading list and other support materials. Over five years, countries ranging from St Lucia to Myanmar, from China to Romania, have been included. This student-generated, student-selected work has built a developing resource for the module, available on the module Virtual Learning Platform. The initiative showcases independent learning and develops key skills, group work, research, and enhanced presentation techniques. Several presentations have incorporated mixed media. Importantly, students bring their prior experience and own-country knowledge to the wider cohort, encouraging and enabling internationalist perspectives, sharing experience and comparison between diverse situations and challenges. The project therefore facilitates enhanced cross-cultural understanding and sharing of cultural capital to generate educational capital

CSDP and the open method of coordination: Developing the EU's comprehensive approach to security

How can we best describe the operation of the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), and how can we improve policy-making in CSDP? The Open Method of Coordination (OMC) is predicated on the conviction that there are clear limits to the extent that European Union (EU) foreign and security policy can be strengthened through the restricting tendencies of intergovernmental cooperation between EU member states. Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) - agreed by the European Council and 25 EU member states in 2017 - offers practical instruments towards delivering value-added capacity to the process of crisis management beyond intergovernmentalism. As a process, PESCO is analogous to the logic of OMC, including more appropriate levels of coordination at the national organisational level in order to effectively facilitate the EU's comprehensive approach to conflict prevention and crisis management. The requirement for new and 'open' types of EU foreign and security policy coordination is underlined by the immense differences between EU member states in external policy, both concerning national crisis management structures and the resulting inefficient segmentation of policy at the EU level.