An assessment of web-based textbook supplementary material to support student learning

There is an increasing trend by publishers to provide supplementary learning materials with text books in order to improve the learning experience and thus ultimately improve text book sales. This study will aim to establish the use of these materials and their relevance to students in terms of supporting student learning. The materials include multiple choice test banks, animated demonstrations, simulations, quizzes and electronic versions of the text. The study will focus on the extensive library of web-based learning materials available on the ‘WileyPlus’ web platform which accompanies the textbook ‘Operations Management’, 2nd edition authored by A. Greasley and published by John Wiley and Sons Ltd.

Evaluating the impact of a web-based resource on student learning

This paper reports on an experiment of using a publisher provided web-based resource to make available a series of optional practice quizzes and other supplementary material to all students taking a first year introductory microeconomics module. The empirical analysis evaluates the impact these supplementary resources had on student learning. First, we investigate which students decided to make use of the resources. Then, we analyse the impact this decision has on their subsequent performance in the examination at the end of the module. The results show that, even after taking into account the possibility of self-selection bias, using the web-based resource had a significant positive effect on student learning.

Linking design and manufacturing domains via web-based and enterprise integration technologies

The manufacturing industry faces many challenges such as reducing time-to-market and cutting costs. In order to meet these increasing demands, effective methods are need to support the early product development stages by bridging the gap of communicating early design ideas and the evaluation of manufacturing performance. This paper introduces methods of linking design and manufacturing domains using disparate technologies. The combined technologies include knowledge management supporting for product lifecycle management systems, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, aggregate process planning systems, workflow management and data exchange formats. A case study has been used to demonstrate the use of these technologies, illustrated by adding manufacturing knowledge to generate alternative early process plan which are in turn used by an ERP system to obtain and optimise a rough-cut capacity plan. Copyright © 2010 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Integrating service user and practitioner expertise within a web-based system for collaborative mental-health risk and safety management

Objectives: To develop a decision support system (DSS), myGRaCE, that integrates service user (SU) and practitioner expertise about mental health and associated risks of suicide, self-harm, harm to others, self-neglect, and vulnerability. The intention is to help SUs assess and manage their own mental health collaboratively with practitioners. Methods: An iterative process involving interviews, focus groups, and agile software development with 115 SUs, to elicit and implement myGRaCE requirements. Results: Findings highlight shared understanding of mental health risk between SUs and practitioners that can be integrated within a single model. However, important differences were revealed in SUs' preferred process of assessing risks and safety, which are reflected in the distinctive interface, navigation, tool functionality and language developed for myGRaCE. A challenge was how to provide flexible access without overwhelming and confusing users. Conclusion: The methods show that practitioner expertise can be reformulated in a format that simultaneously captures SU expertise, to provide a tool highly valued by SUs. A stepped process adds necessary structure to the assessment, each step with its own feedback and guidance. Practice Implications: The GRiST web-based DSS (www.egrist.org) links and integrates myGRaCE self-assessments with GRiST practitioner assessments for supporting collaborative and self-managed healthcare.

An alternative to BlackboardTM? Student use of web-based textbook teaching and learning material

This paper investigates the use of web-based textbook supplementary teaching and learning materials which include multiple choice test banks, animated demonstrations, simulations, quizzes and electronic versions of the text. To gauge their experience of the web-based material students were asked to score the main elements of the material in terms of usefulness. In general it was found that while the electronic text provides a flexible platform for presentation of material there is a need for continued monitoring of student use of this material as the literature suggests that digital viewing habits may mean there is little time spent in evaluating information, either for relevance, accuracy or authority. From a lecturer perspective these materials may provide an effective and efficient way of presenting teaching and learning materials to the students in a variety of multimedia formats, but at this stage do not overcome the need for a VLE such as Blackboard™.

Real estate research needs of the plan sponsor community:what do the plan sponsor real estate investment managers want to know?

This article reports the results of a web-based survey of real estate portfolio managers in the pension fund industry. The study focused on ascertaining the real estate research interests of the respondents as well as whether or not research funding should be allocated to various research topics. Performance measures of real estate assets and portfolios, microeconomic factors affecting real estate and the role of real estate in a mixed-asset portfolio were the top three real estate research interests. There was some variation by the type and size of fund providing evidence that segmentation is important within the money management industry. Respondents were also queried on more focused research subtopics and additional questions in the survey focused on satisfaction with existing real estate benchmarks, and perceptions of the usefulness of published research. Findings should be used to guide research practitioners and academics as to the most important research interests of plan sponsor real estate investment managers.

Marketing: a history of the next decade

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one by Movando et al. concerning marketing measures and constructs, and an article by Grandcolas et al. concerning research methodologies and the future of web-based survey research.

Knowledge workers and their relationships with organisations

The programme of research examines knowledge workers, their relationships with organisations, and perceptions of management practices through the development of a theoretical model and knowledge worker archetypes. Knowledge worker and non-knowledge worker archetypes were established through an analysis of the extant literature. After an exploratory study of knowledge workers in a small software development company the archetypes were refined to include occupational classification data and the findings from Study 1. The Knowledge Worker Characteristics Model (KWCM) was developed as a theoretical framework in order to analyse differences between the two archetypes within the IT sector. The KWCM comprises of the variables within the job characteristics model, creativity, goal orientation, identification and commitment. In Study 2, a global web based survey was conducted. There were insufficient non-knowledge worker responses and therefore a cluster analysis was conducted to interrogate the archetypes further. This demonstrated, unexpectedly, that that there were marked differences within the knowledge worker archetypes suggesting the need to granulate the archetype further. The theoretical framework and the archetypes were revised (as programmers and web developers) and the research study was refocused to examine occupational differences within knowledge work. Findings from Study 2 identified that there were significant differences between the archetypes in relation to the KWCM. 19 semi-structured interviews were conducted in Study 3 in order to deepen the analysis using qualitative data and to examine perceptions of people management practices. The findings from both studies demonstrate that there were significant differences between the two groups but also that job challenge, problem solving, intrinsic reward and team identification were of importance to both groups of knowledge workers. This thesis presents an examination of knowledge workers’ perceptions of work, organisations and people management practices in the granulation and differentiation of occupational archetypes.

The promotion of children's health and wellbeing:the contributions of England's charity sector

Background. Sports and arts based services for children have positive impacts on their mental and physical health. The charity sector provides such services, often set up in response to local communities expressing a need. The present study maps resilience promoting services provided by children's charities in England. Specifically, the prominence of sports and arts activities, and types of mental health provisions including telephone help-lines, are investigated. Findings. The study was a cross-sectional web-based survey of chief executives, senior mangers, directors and chairs of charities providing services for children under the age of 16. The aims, objectives and activities of participating children's charities and those providing mental health services were described overall. In total 167 chief executives, senior managers, directors and chairs of charities in England agreed to complete the survey. From our sample of charities, arts activities were the most frequently provided services (58/167, 35%), followed by counselling (55/167, 33%) and sports activities (36/167, 22%). Only 13% (22/167) of charities expected their work to contribute to the health legacy of the 2012 London Olympics. Telephone help lines were provided by 16% of the charities that promote mental health. Conclusions. Counselling and arts activities were relatively common. Sports activities were limited despite the evidence base that sport and physical activity are effective interventions for well-being and health gain. Few of the charities we surveyed expected a health legacy from the 2012 London Olympics. © 2010 Bhui et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

The future workplace:views from the floor

Speculation on the future of work and the nature of the future workplace has come to dominate much academic discourse in recent years. Rarely however has the voice of what might be termed the average skilled employee been heard; those who are still shaping a career and may be most at the mercy of whatever changes occur. This study seeks to fill this gap. Stemming from a 1-year research project at Cranfield School of Management, this paper focuses on data collected from a survey exploring the understanding of current and future organisations, and the nature of current and future leadership. The survey was carried out in 2003 and sampled 469 MBA graduates and a further 340 respondents to a web-based questionnaire. The paper provides an overview of the academic discourse on the future workplace, explores the perceptions and expectations of the sample and draws conclusions regarding significant anticipated trends for the future workplace as seen by those on the shop floor. These centre around increased flexibility and autonomy, but with limited awareness of the nature of leadership skills required to lead such a workforce. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A method for automatically eliciting node weights in a hierarchical knowledge-based structure for reasoning with uncertainty

Hierarchical knowledge structures are frequently used within clinical decision support systems as part of the model for generating intelligent advice. The nodes in the hierarchy inevitably have varying influence on the decisionmaking processes, which needs to be reflected by parameters. If the model has been elicited from human experts, it is not feasible to ask them to estimate the parameters because there will be so many in even moderately-sized structures. This paper describes how the parameters could be obtained from data instead, using only a small number of cases. The original method [1] is applied to a particular web-based clinical decision support system called GRiST, which uses its hierarchical knowledge to quantify the risks associated with mental-health problems. The knowledge was elicited from multidisciplinary mental-health practitioners but the tree has several thousand nodes, all requiring an estimation of their relative influence on the assessment process. The method described in the paper shows how they can be obtained from about 200 cases instead. It greatly reduces the experts’ elicitation tasks and has the potential for being generalised to similar knowledge-engineering domains where relative weightings of node siblings are part of the parameter space.

UncertWeb processing service:making models easer to access on the web

Models are central tools for modern scientists and decision makers, and there are many existing frameworks to support their creation, execution and composition. Many frameworks are based on proprietary interfaces, and do not lend themselves to the integration of models from diverse disciplines. Web based systems, or systems based on web services, such as Taverna and Kepler, allow composition of models based on standard web service technologies. At the same time the Open Geospatial Consortium has been developing their own service stack, which includes the Web Processing Service, designed to facilitate the executing of geospatial processing - including complex environmental models. The current Open Geospatial Consortium service stack employs Extensible Markup Language as a default data exchange standard, and widely-used encodings such as JavaScript Object Notation can often only be used when incorporated with Extensible Markup Language. Similarly, no successful engagement of the Web Processing Service standard with the well-supported technologies of Simple Object Access Protocol and Web Services Description Language has been seen. In this paper we propose a pure Simple Object Access Protocol/Web Services Description Language processing service which addresses some of the issues with the Web Processing Service specication and brings us closer to achieving a degree of interoperability between geospatial models, and thus realising the vision of a useful 'model web'.

A study into the effectiveness of quality management training:a focus on tools and critical success factors

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effectiveness of quality management training by reviewing commonly used critical success factors and tools rather than the overall methodological approach. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology used a web-based questionnaire. It consisted of 238 questions covering 77 tools and 30 critical success factors selected from leading academic and practitioner sources. The survey had 79 usable responses and the data were analysed using relevant statistical quality management tools. The results were validated in a series of structured workshops with quality management experts. Findings – Findings show that in general most of the critical success factor statements for quality management are agreed with, although not all are implemented well. The findings also show that many quality tools are not known or understood well; and that training has an important role in raising their awareness and making sure they are used correctly. Research limitations/implications – Generalisations are limited by the UK-centric nature of the sample. Practical implications – The practical implications are discussed for organisations implementing quality management initiatives, training organisations revising their quality management syllabi and academic institutions teaching quality management. Originality/value – Most recent surveys have been aimed at methodological levels (i.e. “lean”, “Six Sigma”, “total quality management” etc.); this research proposes that this has limited value as many of the tools and critical success factors are common to most of the methodologies. Therefore, quite uniquely, this research focuses on the tools and critical success factors. Additionally, other recent comparable surveys have been less comprehensive and not focused on training issues.

Uncertainty analysis in the Model Web

This thesis provides a set of tools for managing uncertainty in Web-based models and workflows.To support the use of these tools, this thesis firstly provides a framework for exposing models through Web services. An introduction to uncertainty management, Web service interfaces,and workflow standards and technologies is given, with a particular focus on the geospatial domain.An existing specification for exposing geospatial models and processes, theWeb Processing Service (WPS), is critically reviewed. A processing service framework is presented as a solutionto usability issues with the WPS standard. The framework implements support for Simple ObjectAccess Protocol (SOAP), Web Service Description Language (WSDL) and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), allowing models to be consumed by a variety of tools and software. Strategies for communicating with models from Web service interfaces are discussed, demonstrating the difficultly of exposing existing models on the Web. This thesis then reviews existing mechanisms for uncertainty management, with an emphasis on emulator methods for building efficient statistical surrogate models. A tool is developed to solve accessibility issues with such methods, by providing a Web-based user interface and backend to ease the process of building and integrating emulators. These tools, plus the processing service framework, are applied to a real case study as part of the UncertWeb project. The usability of the framework is proved with the implementation of aWeb-based workflow for predicting future crop yields in the UK, also demonstrating the abilities of the tools for emulator building and integration. Future directions for the development of the tools are discussed.