Innovation and Employability in Knowledge Management Curriculum Design

During 2007/8, Southampton Solent University worked on a Leadership Foundation project focused on the utility of the multi-functional team approach as a vehicle to deliver innovation in strategic and operational terms in higher education (HE). The Task-Orientated Multi-Functional Team Approach (TOMFTA) project took two significant undertakings for Southampton Solent as key areas for investigation, one academic and one administrative in focus. The academic project was the development of an innovative and novel degree programme in knowledge management (KM). The new KM Honours degree programme is timely both in recognition of the increasing importance to organisations of knowledge as a commodity, and in its adoption of a distinctive structure and pedagogy. The methodology for the KM curriculum design brings together student-centred and market-driven approaches: positioning the programme for the interests of students and requirements of employers, rather than just the capabilities of staff; while looking at ways that courses can be delivered with more flexibility, e.g. accelerated and block-mode; with level-differentiated activities, common cross-year content and material that is multi-purpose for use in short courses. In order to permit context at multiple levels in common, a graduate skills strand is taught separately as part of the University’s business-facing education agenda. The KM portfolio offers a programme of practically-based courses integrating key themes in knowledge management, business, information distribution and development of the media. They develop problem-solving, communications, teamwork and other employability skills as well as the domain skills needed by emerging information management technologies. The new courses are built on activities which focus on different aspects of KM, drawing on existing content as a knowledge base. This paper presents the ongoing development of the KM programme through the key aspects in its conception and design

Coherently manipulating flying qubits in a quantum wire with a magnetic impurity

e study the effect of a magnetic impurity with spin-half on a single propagating electron in a one-dimensional model system via the tight-binding approach. Due to the spin-dependent interaction, the scattering channel for the flying qubit is split, and its transmission spectrum is obtained. It is found that, the spin orientation of the impurity plays the role as a spin state filter for a flying qubit.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

Band Gap of Strained Graphene Nanoribbons

The band structures of strained graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) are examined by a tight binding Hamiltonian that is directly related to the type and strength of strains. Compared to the two-dimensional graphene whose band gap remains close to zero even if a large strain is applied, the band gap of graphene nanoribbon (GNR) is sensitive to both uniaxial and shears strains. The effect of strain on the electronic structure of a GNR strongly depends on its edge shape and structural indices. For an armchair GNR, uniaxial weak strain changes the band gap in a linear fashion, and for a large strain, it results in periodic oscillation of the band gap. On the other hand, shear strain always tend to reduce the band gap. For a zigzag GNR, the effect of strain is to change the spin polarization at the edges of GNR, thereby modulate the band gap. A simple analytical model is proposed to interpret the band gap responds to strain in armchair GNR, which agrees with the numerical results.Comment: 30 pages,10 figure