Rubric’s development process for assessment of project management competences

Assessment rubrics are recognized for their positive effects, being defined as an evaluative instrument that establishes assessment criteria and performance levels. In this sense, assessment rubrics can be associated with professional practices for more authentic assessment processes. In the context of Project Management, the International Project Management Association (IPMA) has developed a framework that establishes the individual competences for professionals working in the area, the Individual Competence Baseline (ICB). The objective of this study is to propose a process of rubric development for competence assessment in Project Management. A rubric for Leadership competence was developed to show the applicability and relevance of the proposed process. The research methodology adopted in the study was Design Science Research. The application and evaluation of this rubric in a pilot study show that the rubric development process allowed the creation of a specific rubric for the assessment of leadership competence. This paper guides those who need to develop and assess project management competences, and it is intended to propose a replicable process for the other ICB competences.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Application of Scrum and PM Canvas in a Project-based Learning Approach

Project-based Learning (PBL) is a teaching and learning strategy that allows students to develop competences while working on projects. It is important to apply good management approaches in order to achieve all project and learning objectives. This paper presents an application of Scrum and Project Model Canvas (PM Canvas) to manage learning projects developed by teams of students in interaction with industrial companies. These projects are part of a Project-based Learning (PBL) approach developed in the fourth year of an integrated master program in Industrial Engineering and Management. A group of 5 students from the fifth year of the same degree gave support to the PBL teams regarding the utilization of these tools. The work was developed during one month with meetings every Fridays. These project management tools were applied to help the PBL teams to organize and share the tasks, as well as visualize and control the whole project. To evaluate the teams' performance and the way they are realizing the tasks, it was counted the number of tasks done in each weekday and the students were inquired in order to understand their perceptions of the use of these project management tools. The results revealed that the groups performed most of the tasks on Wednesday and the inquiry revealed that most of the PBL teams did not know and had never used project management tools. The inquiry also revealed that the project management tools were considered helpful for the control and organization of the project tasks, improving overall team performance.(undefined

Consumer-led adaptation of the EsSense Profile® for herbal infusions

This work aimed to adapt the EsSense Profile® emotions list to the discrimination of herbal infusions, aiming to evaluate the effect of harvesting conditions on the emotional profile. A panel of 100 consumers evaluated eight organic infusions: lemon verbena, peppermint, lemon thyme, lemongrass, chamomile, lemon balm, globe amaranth and tutsan, using a check-all-that-apply (CATA) ballot with the original EsSense Profile®. A set of criteria was applied to get a discriminant list. First, the terms with low discriminant power and with a frequency mention below 35% were removed. Two focus groups were also performed to evaluate the applicability of the questionnaire. The content analysis of focus groups suggests the removal of the terms good and pleasant, recognized as sensory attributes. Six additional terms were removed, considered to be too similar to other existing emotion terms. Changes in the questionnaire, resulting in a list of 24 emotion terms for the evaluation of selected herbal infusions, were able to discriminate beyond overall liking. When comparing finer differences between plants harvested under different conditions, differences were identified for lemon verbena infusions, yielding the mechanical cut of plant tips as the one leading to a more appealing evoked emotions profile.Author C. Rocha acknowledges Industry Doctoral grant No. SFRH/BDE/100483/2014, funded by FCT, Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT). Authors Rocha, Cunha and Moura acknowledge financial support from the national funds by FCT, under projects UIDB/05748/2020 and UIDP/05748/2020 with funding from FCT/MCTES through national funds. This research was funded through project “Infusão Premium— Criação de lotes de plantas aromáticas premium com propriedades sensoriais e funcionais validadas com elevada aceitação pelo consumidor”, financed by ANI, through Sistemas de Incentivos à Investigação e Desenvolvimento Tecnológico do QREN; and also through project “4C’s—Consumer Cross-Cultural Context”, funded by COMPETE2020, Portugal2020, Norte2020 and FEDER-European Regional Development Funds.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Impact of defatting and drying methods on the overall liking and sensory profile of a cereal bar incorporating edible insect species

It is necessary to develop products with desirable sensory properties in order to increase the acceptance of insect-based products by Western consumers. In this work, the impact of defatting on the sensory properties of cereal bars with yellow mealworm (Tenebrio molitor) larvae, in addition to the impact of different drying methods and different species (T. molitor and house cricket Acheta domesticus) were assessed. A model cereal bar incorporating oats, dried and dehydrated fruits was developed as well as four additional formulations with insect flour: defatted (Soxhlet method with ethanol) mealworm (TM_D), microwave (TM_MW) or oven dried (TM_O) mealworm and oven dried cricket (AD_O). A panel of 99 consumers rated overall liking and willingness to buy (9-point scale), and profiled the bars using a Check-All-That-Apply ballot. The bars with defatted or microwaved mealworm had similar liking and willingness to eat scores in comparison with the control bar. Conversely, bars with oven-dried insects had worse evaluations and were associated with negative attributes related to odor and flavor, which were hampered by defatting or microwave-drying. This study highlights how different processing methods can be applied in order to increase the sensory liking of insect-based products and also provides information on their sensory characterization.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Final year Lean projects: advantages for companies, students and academia

The Integrated Master Degree on Industrial Engineering and Management, from the Department of Production and Systems of University of Minho – Portugal, requires the development of an individual final project which is almost exclusively developed in an industrial context. The degree is awarded upon the successful development of an individual masters’ thesis which directly derives from one such project. The process is triggered by companies which make a general proposal based on specific industrial challenges. The proposal might simply identify the theme and require one or more students to collaborate with them. Many of these projects involve the Lean Production paradigm, which to be successfully implemented, needs a change of culture inside the company that is often promoted by the students themselves. From this partnership there are advantages for both sides: companies, students and academia. Some advantages for students are the opportunity to work in an industrial environment with different professionals, gain some experience, enrich the curriculum, apply and explore the knowledge acquired in the university, transform theories into practice, and develop/apply transversal competences, such as those of teamwork, project management, critical thinking, problem-solving, communication skills, etc. Additionally, students develop awareness for the importance of their professional life, entrepreneurial attitude, and initiative spirit, among others. Beyond the project achievements, such as monetary gains stemmed from shop floor improvements, companies renew their staff, bring new ideas and knowledge, reinforce the links with the university, conduct low cost R&D, uncover new challenges, etc. University and supervisors (academia) gain recognition, practical experience, gain access to case studies and practical examples for classes, and so on. This paper aims to discuss the gains achieved by companies, students and academia, resulting from these industrial projects, and also some drawbacks. These drawbacks are bypassed when healthy partnerships are established, so the paper concludes with some guidelines to achieve this. The methodology applied in this paper uses document analysis for data collection. With respect to data analysis it uses content analysis. The main source of information is a set of master thesis concluded between 2011 and 2013 (inclusive), supervised by some of the authors of this paper

Students' first-hand experience on the development of competences: Solving interdisciplinary industry problems

The Integrated Master in Industrial Engineering and Management is a very challenging degree, mainly because it encompasses so many different scientific areas. It is very common for students to feel a little bit overwhelmed with the amount of competences that need to be developed and put in practice. The University of Minho takes a lead role in terms of creating projects which allow the interaction with companies as well as promote the development of transversal competences. The Integrated Project of the 4th year of Industrial Engineering and Management of the University of Minho is a Project-Based Learning (PBL) strategy sustained by the interaction with industrial companies in an active engineering learning process. Students should be able to accomplish the project's milestones and assimilate the company's culture in their weekly visits, during the 5 months of the project. The main objective of the present article is to analyse the student's visions of the work experience provided by the realization of this project. The methodology is based on the qualitative analysis of a group of students' narratives related to their visions on the experience. The results show that they perceived the advantages of interdisciplinary learning, development of transversal competences, learning methodologies of team management, and strategies applied in order to deal with the different project's stakeholders. The main result of this project is the recognition of PBL methodology as an efficient and ingenious form or learning that encourages the students to cope with the requirements and challenges of the actual labour market, while developing technical and transversal engineering competences.- (undefined

Risk assessment of irrigation-related soil salinization and sodification in Mediterranean areas

Salinization and sodification are important processes of soil degradation a ecting irrigated lands. A large proportion of the global irrigated area is a ected by some degree of soil salinity or sodicity caused by the intensification of irrigation. The increase of the frequency of adverse climatic conditions, like high temperatures and variations in precipitation patterns caused by climate change, will potentially amplify these processes in arid, semi-arid, and Mediterranean areas. The use of integrated approaches for the spatial and temporal prediction of the risk of salinization and sodification in irrigated areas is of great value, helping in the decision-making regarding land uses and choice of more suitable agricultural practices. In this study, based on key criteria for the assessment of irrigation-related salinization processes (e.g., climate, topography, soil drainage, water quality for irrigation, and crop irrigation method), we developed a methodology for the prediction of soil salinity and sodicity risk in irrigated lands, using two composite indices, the Salinization Risk (RSA) index and the Sodification Risk (RSO) index. The application of these indices to a real scenario (a Mediterranean area in Southern Portugal) showed that 67% of the potentially irrigated area presented a low risk of salinity development, 68% had a moderate risk of sodification, and 16% was of high risk of sodicity development. Areas under moderate risk of salinization (26%) were mostly characterized by low slopes and fine-textured soils, like Luvisols and Vertisols, with limited drainage conditions. Areas with high risk of soil sodification presented a large incidence of low slope terrain, moderate-to-restricted soil drainage, in high clay content Luvisols, Vertisols and Cambisols, and land use dominated by annual crops irrigated with surface or sprinkler systems. These risk prediction tools have the potential to be used for resource use planning by policymakers and on-farm management decision by farmers, contributing to the sustainability of irrigated agriculture in Mediterranean regionsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Power Allocation, Relay Selection, and User Pairing for Cooperative NOMA Systems with Rate Fairness

Funding Information: This research was partially funded by Fundac¸ão para a Ciência e Tecnologia under the Projects CoSHARE (PTDC/EEI-TEL/30709/2017), UIDB/04111/2020, IF/00325/2015, and UIDB/50008/2020.Assuming a cooperative non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) system with rate fairness in a scenario with multiple users and arbitrary relays, this paper investigates adaptive power allocation (PA), relay selection (RS), and user pairing (UP) policies. Specifically, two adaptive PA optimization problems are formulated, one at the base station (BS) and another at the selected relays. Closed-form expressions for the power allocation factors are derived as well as an algorithm that provides the optimal solution at the BS. In order to show the superiority of the proposed study, our results are compared with other benchmark schemes in terms of outage probability, Jain's fairness index, and average sum rate.publishersversionpublishe

Consumer perception of the circular economy concept applied to the food domain: an exploratory approach

Every year, agri-food industries in industrialised countries produce approximately 1.3 billion tonnes of food loss and waste. The adoption of a circular economy policy has received special attention by the agri-food industries, allowing for the creation and development of new food products made of by-products that would otherwise be wasted or used for secondary applications. The present work, of an exploratory nature, aims to assess how consumers conceptualise the circular economy in order to identify consumer recognition of the use of by-products from the food industry to upcycle food products and to evaluate attitudes towards the circular economy. To this end, a mixedmethodology was applied to 340 participants. The first part was qualitative and used free word association to evaluate consumers’ conceptualisation of the circular economy and use of by-products as foods. Data were analysed by grouping the responses into exclusive and exhaustive categories and a correspondence analysis was also performed to originate perceptual maps. Additionally, a questionnaire was designed to evaluate major concepts and attitudes correlated with the circular economy. Data were reduced by principal component analysis (PCA) and participants grouped through clustering. Results showed that consumers understand circular economy as related mainly into Sustainability, Economy, and Circularity dimensions. Participants had great difficulty identifying the by-products used as foods or as food ingredients. From the quantitative data, four groups were identified based on the associations to the six principal components originated by the PCA. However, the results highlighted a very low association with all clusters of the Food Valorisation dimension within the concept of the circular economy, and also a lack of a clear understanding of consumers’ attitudes towards food products from the circular economy. Greater promotion and dissemination by the competent entities aimed at the general public may contribute towards greater integration, participation and acceptance of the circular economy concept for the upscaling of food by-products.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A Experiência da Emergência Pré-Hospitalar da Unidade de Socorro de Faro da Cruz Vermelha Portuguesa no apoio a grandes eventos

Relata-se a experiência da Unidade de Socorro da Delegação Distrital de Faro da Cruz Vermelha Portuguesa na organização e na montagem de um dispositivo médico e socorrista, para apoio aos participantes da Concentração de Motos de Faro, que decorre desde há longos anos em estreita colaboração com o Motoclube de Faro e as Unidades de Saúde da zona