ABSTRACT
Previous studies have reported the feasibility and benefits of online service learning, but little is known about who benefits more from online SL and who is more satisfied. This study addressed these questions based on an evaluation of online service learning projects implemented in Xi'an and Chengdu, China, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Pretest-posttest comparison showed significant positive changes in two intended learning outcomes (i.e., positive youth development qualities and service leadership qualities) and life satisfaction before and after the service among participating students in the Xi'an project. Cross-lagged modeling based on Xi'an and Chengdu data revealed that students with better initial positive youth development qualities tended to show increased service leadership qualities and life satisfaction after the service, while initial service leadership qualities did not predict positive youth development qualities and life satisfaction after the service. However, the two-line test indicated that some of these relationships might be curvilinear. Finally, Pearson correlation analyses demonstrated that students who experienced greater changes in positive youth development qualities and service leadership qualities reported better appraisal of course qualities, teacher performance, and course effectiveness, while multiple regression analyses showed the unique effects of change in service leadership qualities (but not change in positive youth development qualities) on the perception of teacher performance and course effectiveness. Altogether, this study not only showcases the potential benefits of online SL, but also provides initial evidence suggesting the variation in (perceived) benefits by students' psychosocial competencies and learning experiences.
ABSTRACT
This study aimed to investigate the efficacy of learning gamification in developing sustainable educational environments. To this end, gamified class data were analyzed to identify students' learning performance patterns. The study sample comprised 369 data points collected across four point domains: Activity, Game, Project, and Exam Points, which students obtained in their gamified college courses conducted between 2016 and 2019. A K-means data clustering algorithm and silhouette analysis were utilized to evaluate student performances and determine differential learning styles in gamified environments. Cluster analysis revealed three types of learning patterns centered on performance, mastery, and avoidance. Based on our findings, we propose suggestions regarding class design for instructors considering using gamification strategies to support a sustainable educational environment. We also highlight the scope for future research in both in-person and online gamified learning.
ABSTRACT
Total cost management (TCM) has developed as a systematic approach to managing resources, costs, profitability, and risks throughout the lifecycle of any enterprise, program, facility, project, product or service. However, a number of trends are today creating a new socio-technical scenario, characterized by increasing volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA), which is affecting the strategic scope and applicative dimensions of TCM. A logic of sustainability and multi-stakeholder value is increasingly required to account for the competing and multi-dimensional needs of customers, employees, partners, and large stakeholder ecosystems. This article presents a review of cross-disciplinary literature and the use of authors’ engagement and consolidated expertise in the field to drive a group model building process aimed to design a conceptual framework and a research manifesto for the evolving TCM discipline. The study provides a classification of nine major trends and evaluates the impact of those trends on a number of TCM dimensions. Next, a research agenda is showed, including nine trajectories for scholars and practitioners engaged to support the evolution of TCM towards a new idea of systemic value management (SVM). The study advances the current knowledge on value-based and sustainable approaches to management and offers to experts and practitioners a basis to implement innovative development projects in the field of TCM.
ABSTRACT
Emerging technologies and community empowerment have driven citizen science (CS) projects. However, their impact remains vague, partly because of the difficulties in monitoring and standardizing these projects. Notably, the development of citizens' complex thinking is not among the primary goals, despite the connection with the tenets of Education 4.0 and the training of socially committed citizens. Therefore, we propose a framework and typology to foster CS projects while scaling up complex thinking. We used the evidence-based educational innovation (EBEI) methodology and the Theory of Change (T°C) perspective, reviewing some of the most relevant frameworks under UNESCO's Open Science Recommendation. Findings from the CS projects analysis revealed that: (a) there is inattention to developing the sub-components of the complex thinking macro-competency;(b) a growing trend to develop frameworks for CS projects is taking place;(c) there is a prevalence of CS project frameworks focused on prevention and control, project evaluation and design, and education and research;(d) a framework with three dimensions based on T°C (Outbound, Threshold and Full-cycle) can guide the development of CS projects;and (e) an eight-component typology can measure the progress and impact of CS projects from the perspectives of Context-awareness, Citizen engagement, Infrastructure leverage, Technological innovation, Educational innovation, Outreach and Scale, Network building, and Complex thinking. We envision that the integrated framework and typology proposed, scaffolded by complex thinking, can comprehensively broaden the impact of CS initiatives.Alternate :Los proyectos de ciencia ciudadana (CC) han sido impulsados por tecnologías y empoderamiento de las comunidades. Sin embargo, su impacto es impreciso por las dificultades para su seguimiento y estandarización. En particular, el desarrollo del pensamiento complejo de los ciudadanos no figura entre sus objetivos, a pesar del fuerte vínculo con la Educación 4.0 y la formación de ciudadanos comprometidos con la sociedad. Por tanto, proponemos un marco y una tipología para los proyectos de CC a la vez que se introduce el pensamiento complejo. Se empleó la metodología de la Innovación Educativa Basada en la Evidencia (EBEI), desde la perspectiva de la Teoría del Cambio (TdC), revisando los marcos más relevantes, en virtud de la Recomendación de Ciencia Abierta de la UNESCO. Los resultados revelaron: (a) hay una falta de atención al desarrollo de las subcompetencias de la macro-competencia del pensamiento complejo;(b) existe un incremento y desarrollo de marcos de apoyo a la CC;(c) prevalecen marcos de proyectos de CC centrados en los participantes, evaluación-diseño de proyectos y la gestión de datos;(d) inexistencia de marcos de desarrollo basados en TdC de tres dimensiones, Limitada, Umbral y de Ciclo-completo;y (e) se propone tipología para medir el progreso e impacto de los proyectos de CC: Conciencia del contexto, participación ciudadana, aprovechamiento de la infraestructura, innovación tecnológica, innovación educativa, alcance y escala, creación de redes y pensamiento complejo. Prevemos que el marco y la tipología propuestos articulados al pensamiento complejo, ampliarán el impacto de las iniciativas de CC de manera integral.
ABSTRACT
The findings within this short report, generated from thematic analysis of nine semistructured interviews with the Northern Ireland Project ECHO team (including authors of this reflection) and informed by reflective practice literature,7 highlight important additional lessons for other teams and organisations using the ECHO approach. Participatory approaches to setting curriculum and programme content, and linking objectives to wider service goals such as integration of care, service transformation and achieving measurable patient outcomes, were consistently present in networks that were considered most effective by the Northern Ireland Project ECHO operational team. Participants must feel safe in sharing sensitive information, discussing challenging cases, while being open to learning and critical feedback. Funding This study was undertaken as part of programmatic and process evaluation with healthcare providers funded through the Health and Social Care Board of Northern Ireland.
ABSTRACT
Background: Digital transformation (DT) is an increasingly relevant concept for businesses to remain competitive. As DT projects are disruptive to an organisation and are significantly different from traditional information technology projects, it is important to understand the value that specific DT projects will bring to an organisation before they are implemented, so that DT project portfolios can be optimally managed. Aim: This study aims to determine the key goals and benefits of DT projects, as well as the selection criteria for DT projects in South African businesses. The study also explores the most influential technologies for driving the implementation of DT projects. Setting: South Africa is an emerging economy. The study was performed in the initial phases of nationwide lockdown owing to COVID-19. Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 leaders from South African businesses of varying sizes, but all in significant local markets. Content analysis using CAQDAS was used to analyse the primary data, using both inductive and deductive coding methods. Results: South African businesses use a combination of financial and non-financial project selection criteria across four main goals and benefit categories: customer experience, operational efficiency, business culture, and traditional project evaluation. The fifth proposed goal (new business models) was not used to evaluate DT projects. The most influential technologies that drive the selection of DT projects were data-related, such as data storage, data processing, machine learning, and data-driven decision-making. Conclusion: Companies in South Africa can use traditional project evaluation criteria together with several new criteria to determine the value of DT projects more holistically. This study also suggests several key practical takeaways for businesses that are aspiring to implement their own DT projects. © 2022. The Authors. Licensee: AOSIS.
ABSTRACT
Localized actionable evidence for addressing threats to the environment and human security lacks a comprehensive conceptual frame that incorporates challenges associated with active conflicts. Protective pathways linking previously disciplinarily-divided literatures on environmental security, human security and resilience in a coherent conceptual frame that identifies key relationships is used to analyze a novel, unstructured data set of Global Environment Fund (GEF) programmatic documents. Sub-national geospatial analysis of GEF documentation relating to projects in Africa finds 73% of districts with GEF land degradation projects were co-located with active conflict events. This study utilizes Natural Language Processing on a unique data set of 1500 GEF evaluations to identify text entities associated with conflict. Additional project case studies explore the sequence and relationships of environmental and human security concepts that lead to project success or failure. Differences between biodiversity and climate change projects are discussed but political crisis, poverty and disaster emerged as the most frequently extracted entities associated with conflict in environmental protection projects. Insecurity weakened institutions and fractured communities leading both directly and indirectly to conflict-related damage to environmental programming and desired outcomes. Simple causal explanations found to be inconsistent in previous large-scale statistical associations also inadequately describe dynamics and relationships found in the extracted text entities or case summaries. Emergent protective pathways that emphasized poverty and conflict reduction facilitated by institutional strengthening and inclusion present promising possibilities. Future research with innovative machine learning and other techniques of working with unstructured data may provide additional evidence for implementing actions that address climate change and environmental degradation while strengthening resilience and human security. Resilient, participatory and polycentric governance is key to foster this process.
ABSTRACT
Decision-making processes related to transportation systems are often very complex, belonging to the class of “wicked problems” in social studies. The literature and the media abound in examples of transportation planning “failures” including decisions made, delayed or withdrawn without any traceable motivations, public opposition, public opposition, extra costs/implementation times and outright cancellation, wrong traffic/revenue forecasts. Planning failures stem from several causes, including technical errors in forecasting predictable effects, lack of consensus, new governance cycles and inability to recognize the intrinsic uncertainty affecting some key variables. The underlying assumption of this paper is that the quality of the decision-making process critically depends on how the process is structured and managed. The paper proposes a conceptual model to represent and organize transport planning as a cognitive decision-making process with strong involvement of different stakeholders in various stages, accounting for different levels of uncertainty and including short- and long-term decisions options. The result is a planning process that allows for changes in objectives, strategies and decisions during different stages of the process itself, as is usually the case when different governance and socio-economic cycles succeed over time. However, the process maintains a form of procedural consistency and is intended to counteract the “Penelope syndrome”, whereby decisions made under previous governance cycles are undone regardless of their merits and costs. The real-life implementation of the proposed model requires strong “political commitment” to an open and accountable decision-making process, a technical structure able to act as “process owner” coordinating technical and engagement activities, and a general societal attitude towards organized participation to public decision making. The proposed model was applied to the Regional Transportation Plan of Veneto in Italy where the above conditions applied. A number of lessons were learnt from that exercise: i) stakeholders’ engagement revealed an important potential to manage uncertainty and increase consensus;ii) flexibility and robustness with respect to medium–to–high uncertainty levels already recognized at the time of the plan (immediately before the COVID-19 crisis) were an appreciated feature of the plan;iii) separation between mature decisions and those needing further analysis was a success strategy, reducing political “decision costs” (from naysaying) by delaying decisions still recognizing underlying needs;iv) reduced decision time (a largely bi-partisan vote in less than one year).