Knowledge mobilization on decision making for school improvement : Canadian principals learning network.

Principals duties have expanded beyond instructional leadership. Roles now include being curriculum leader, supervisor, manager, head of finance, administration, compliance, and legal matters, and so on. These additional responsibilities impact their decision-making in relation to teaching, learning and school improvement in general. How, and on what basis, they make these decisions is crucial both to their development as instructional leaders and to educational reform processes. To contribute to knowledge on principals’ decision making skills, we have created a strategic knowledge mobilization initiative called 'Canadian Principals Learning Network (CPLN)'. Through a variety of face-to-face and online activities, it collaboratively links together an international group of practicing principals and university-based researchers with related expertise. This paper describes the initiative and outcomes.

The e-learning cycle and continuous improvement for e-entrepreneurs

The purpose of this paper is to explore the integration of learning, continuous improvement and innovation theories as a basis for enhancing the education of e-entrepreneurs. Conceptual development of emerging interdisciplinary literature is combined with example analysis to develop the Circle of E-learning uniquely augmented by hermeneutics, action research and the creative destruction cycle of innovation using applied examples of e-entrepreneurship. Four R’s are discussed in the Circle of E-learning; Review, Revise, Reconstruct, and Reveal. Observations for each of the 4R’s are made regarding continuous improvement of the education of e-entrepreneurs. Findings are that the procedural pivot points indicated by the 4R’s can be helpful for administrators and educators to improve operations and outcomes in management and professional development situations.

A model to select processes for IT service management improvement

IT organisations are continually seeking improvements in managing IT service management processes. The selection of relevant processes to improve is one of the most crucial initial decisions to make in service improvement projects. In this paper, we focus on developing a process selection decision model using service perception factors from the Service Quality (SERV-QUAL) model and business drivers from the Balanced Scorecard perspectives along with the main objective of service improvement as improvement driver. We use a Design Science Research method to develop the model and then a prototype from our proposed model. We establish an evaluation protocol to determine the effectiveness of the prototype which will be demonstrated in a case organisation. The main contribution of the paper is to provide evidence-based decision support for IT service providers to select the most relevant service processes to improve.

Towards a semantic quality based approach for business process models improvement

Business process (BP) modeling aims at a better understanding of processes, allowing deciders to improve them. We propose to support this modeling with an approach encompassing methods and tools for BP models quality measurement and improvement. In this paper we focus on semantic quality. The latter is evaluated by aligning BP model concepts with domain knowledge. The alignment is conducted thanks to meta-models. We also define validation rules for checking the completeness of BP models. A medical case study illustrates the main steps of our approach.

Characterization of the improvement in depressive symptoms following Bariatric surgery

Background : The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) has been frequently employed as a measure of depression in studies of obesity, with the majority of studies reporting an improvement in scores following weight loss. Given the potential similarity in obesity-related and depressive symptoms, it is uncertain whether all components of depression would improve equally with weight loss.

Method : The study included obese patients who had undergone laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding (LAGB) surgery and had completed BDIs at baseline and 1 year after surgery. Two groups of patients were included, a general background group (N = 191, mean age = 41 ± 9, mean BMI = 43 ± 8) and a group identified as experiencing elevated depressive symptoms based on BDI scores ≥23 (EDS group; (N = 67, mean age = 40 ± 9, mean BMI = 45 ± 7).

Results : Overall, BDI scores fell for both groups, background group at baseline 17 ± 9–8 ± 7 at 1 year and for the EDS group at baseline 30 ± 5–14 ± 10 at 1 year. Patient scores on the negative self-attitude subscale were significantly greater than the two other subscales and showed the greatest improvement 1 year following LAGB. Preexisting antidepressant therapy had little or no association on the BDI scores or on its change following weight loss.

Conclusion : High rates of depression are continually reported in obesity, as is a remarkable decrease in depressive symptoms following weight loss. Negative attitudes towards one’s self appears to be driving elevated BDI scores rather than the overlap in physical symptoms between obesity and depression.