User-designer collaboration during the early stage of the design process

As user involvement becomes a necessary part of the product development process, various ways of accessing users' latent needs have been developed and studied. Reviews of literatures in user involvement and product development have revealed that accessing users' latent needs and transferring them into design process could be facilitated by effectively implementing user-designer collaboration during the early stage of the design process. In this paper, various types of user-designer collaboration were observed and then distinct characteristics of user-designer collaboration were classified into three categories. 1) Passive objectivity, 2) workplace democratisation, and 3) shared contexts were observed as strategies for better user-designer collaboration, which have been employed in the area of user-centred design, user participatory design and design for experiencing. Based on the literature review, this paper proposed a basic collaboration mechanism between the users and the designers during the early stage of the design process and then discussed how its mechanism will help to describe the interactions between the users and the designers during the user involvement sessions.

Valuing the impact of the teacher librarian from an evidence base

Evidence-based practice as it applies to the Library and Information (LIS) sector and in particular teacher librarians is the focus of this research investigation. The context for this research is Australian school libraries and teacher librarians. This is a research in progress and the report here will include some very early findings and lessons learned from the initial pilot study. The contributions of this research will be in developing a framework for the library and information sector with a particular application for teacher librarians. Providing meaningful evidence of work practices that demonstrate contributions to the schools goals and mission statements in conjunction with contributions to student academic, social and cultural achievements are crucial for the future of the teacher librarian.

Collaborative research to develop a specialist, post-graduate competency-based education curriculum and continuing professional development structure for health librarians in Australia

Through a grant received from the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA), members of Health Libraries Australia (HLA) are collaborating with a researcher/educator to conduct a twelve month research project with the goal of developing an educational framework for the Australian health librarianship workforce of the future. The collaboration comprises the principal researcher and a representative group of practitioners from different sectors of the health industry who are affiliated with ALIA in various committees, advisory groups and roles. The research has two main aims: to determine the future skills requirements for the health librarian workforce in Australia; and to develop a structured, modular education framework for specialist post-graduate qualifications together with a structure for ongoing continuing professional development. The paper highlights some of the major trends in the health sector and some of the main environmental influences that may act as drivers for change for health librarianship as a profession, and particularly for educating the future workforce. The research methodology is outlined and the main results are described; the findings are discussed with regard to their implications for the development of a structured, competency-based education framework.

The contemporary librarian : skills, knowledge and attributes required in a world of emerging technologies

Seventy-six librarians participated in a series of focus groups in support of research exploring the skills, knowledge and attributes required by the contemporary library and information professional in a world of every changing technology. The project was funded by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council. Text data mining analysis revealed three main thematic clusters (libraries, people, jobs) and one minor thematic cluster (community). Library 2.0 was broadly viewed by participants as being about change whilst librarian 2.0 was perceived by participants as not a new creation but just about good librarian practices. Participants expressed the general belief that personality traits, not just qualifications, were critical to be a successful librarian or information worker in the future.

Living laboratories to support collaboration

Through a case study analysis, this paper discusses the essential elements of successful university-industry partnerships in the context of the integration of the scholarships of teaching, research and application. This scholarly integration is advocated as the modern paradigm of real-world laboratory activity termed the “living laboratory”. The paper further examines the application of the concepts of experimentation, engagement and regeneration as critical measures for evaluating successful university-industry partnerships. University-industry partnerships play an increasingly important role in the current climate of universities being held increasingly accountable for the benefits of their scholarship to be transferred to the wider community and to demonstrate measurable impacts.

Collaboration based on web services

Web services are software components designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interactions over a network, through the exchange of SOAP messages. Since the underlying technology is independent of any specific programming language, Web Services can be effectively used to interconnect business processes across different organizations. However, a standard way of representing such interconnections has not yet emerged and is the subject of an ongoing debate.

The Australian Palliative Care Outcomes Collaboration (PCOC) : measuring the quality and outcomes of palliative care on a routine basis

Australia is leading the way in establishing a national system (the Palliative Care Outcomes Collaboration – PCOC) to measure the outcomes and quality of specialist palliative care services and to benchmark services across the country. This article reports on analysis of data collected routinely at point-of-care on 5939 patients treated by the first fifty one services that voluntarily joined PCOC. By March 2009, 111 services have agreed to join PCOC, representing more than 70% of services and more than 80% of specialist palliative care patients nationally. All states and territories are involved in this unique process that has involved extensive consultation and infrastructure and close collaboration between health services and researchers. The challenges of dealing with wide variation in outcomes and practice and the progress achieved to date are described. PCOC is aiming to improve understanding of the reasons for variations in clinical outcomes between specialist palliative care patients and differences in service outcomes as a critical step in an ongoing process to improve both service quality and patient outcomes. What is known about the topic? Governments internationally are grappling with how best to provide care for people with life limiting illnesses and how best to measure the outcomes and quality of that care. There is little international evidence on how to measure the quality and outcomes of palliative care on a routine basis. What does this paper add? The Palliative Care Outcomes Collaboration (PCOC) is the first effort internationally to measure the outcomes and quality of specialist palliative care services and to benchmark services on a national basis through an independent third party. What are the implications for practitioners? If outcomes and quality are to be measured on a consistent national basis, standard clinical assessment tools that are used as part of everyday clinical practice are necessary.

The Early Prevention of Obesity in CHildren (EPOCH) collaboration : an individual patient data prospective meta-analysis

Background: Efforts to prevent the development of overweight and obesity have increasingly focused early in the life course as we recognise that both metabolic and behavioural patterns are often established within the first few years of life. Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of interventions are even more powerful when, with forethought, they are synthesised into an individual patient data (IPD) prospective meta-analysis (PMA). An IPD PMA is a unique research design where several trials are identified for inclusion in an analysis before any of the individual trial results become known and the data are provided for each randomised patient. This methodology minimises the publication and selection bias often associated with a retrospective meta-analysis by allowing hypotheses, analysis methods and selection criteria to be specified a priori. Methods/Design: The Early Prevention of Obesity in CHildren (EPOCH) Collaboration was formed in 2009. The main objective of the EPOCH Collaboration is to determine if early intervention for childhood obesity impacts on body mass index (BMI) z scores at age 18-24 months. Additional research questions will focus on whether early intervention has an impact on children’s dietary quality, TV viewing time, duration of breastfeeding and parenting styles. This protocol includes the hypotheses, inclusion criteria and outcome measures to be used in the IPD PMA. The sample size of the combined dataset at final outcome assessment (approximately 1800 infants) will allow greater precision when exploring differences in the effect of early intervention with respect to pre-specified participant- and intervention-level characteristics. Discussion: Finalisation of the data collection procedures and analysis plans will be complete by the end of 2010. Data collection and analysis will occur during 2011-2012 and results should be available by 2013. Trial registration number: ACTRN12610000789066

Overcoming challenges to collaboration: Nurse educators’ experiences in curriculum change

This article describes challenges to effective collaboration encountered by nurse educators as they transformed a unit within a school of nursing in Taiwan. This study introduced collaborative action research as a vehicle for curriculum change. Although the team achieved positive outcomes in transforming a unit, the collaborative process was complex with four major challenges: meaning, time, work culture, and conflicting views. This article provides an overview of the study, and the major challenges posed by working together are expounded and illustrated with excerpts drawn from the study data. Possible reasons for the challenges, how these challenges were overcome, and facilitation of the collaborative process are discussed.

Becoming “Librarian 2.0” : the skills, knowledge, and attributes required by library and information science professionals in a Web 2.0 world (and beyond)

In 2005, Stephen Abram, vice president of Innovation at SirsiDynix, challenged library and information science (LIS) professionals to start becoming “librarian 2.0.” In the last few years, discussion and debate about the “core competencies” needed by librarian 2.0 have appeared in the “biblioblogosphere” (blogs written by LIS professionals). However, beyond these informal blog discussions few systematic and empirically based studies have taken place. This article will discuss a research project that fills this gap. Funded by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council, the project identifies the key skills, knowledge, and attributes required by “librarian 2.0.” Eighty-one members of the Australian LIS profession participated in a series of focus groups. Eight themes emerged as being critical to “librarian 2.0”: technology, communication, teamwork, user focus, business savvy, evidence based practice, learning and education, and personal traits. This article will provide a detailed discussion on each of these themes. The study’s findings also suggest that “librarian 2.0” is a state of mind, and that the Australian LIS profession is undergoing a significant shift in “attitude.”

A new and efficient intelligent collaboration scheme for fashion design

Technology-mediated collaboration process has been extensively studied for over a decade. Most applications with collaboration concepts reported in the literature focus on enhancing efficiency and effectiveness of the decision-making processes in objective and well-structured workflows. However, relatively few previous studies have investigated the applications of collaboration schemes to problems with subjective and unstructured nature. In this paper, we explore a new intelligent collaboration scheme for fashion design which, by nature, relies heavily on human judgment and creativity. Techniques such as multicriteria decision making, fuzzy logic, and artificial neural network (ANN) models are employed. Industrial data sets are used for the analysis. Our experimental results suggest that the proposed scheme exhibits significant improvement over the traditional method in terms of the time–cost effectiveness, and a company interview with design professionals has confirmed its effectiveness and significance.

Deliberation and collaboration in the policy process : a Web 2.0 approach

This paper is a summary of a PhD thesis proposal. It will explore how the Web 2.0 platform could be applied to enable and facilitate the large-scale participation, deliberation and collaboration of both governmental and non-governmental actors in an ICT supported policy process. The paper will introduce a new democratic theory and a Web 2.0 based e-democracy platform, and demonstrate how different actors would use the platform to develop and justify policy issues.

Scaling acoustic data analysis through collaboration and automation

Monitoring and assessing environmental health is becoming increasingly important as human activity and climate change place greater pressure on global biodiversity. Acoustic sensors provide the ability to collect data passively, objectively and continuously across large areas for extended periods of time. While these factors make acoustic sensors attractive as autonomous data collectors, there are significant issues associated with large-scale data manipulation and analysis. We present our current research into techniques for analysing large volumes of acoustic data effectively and efficiently. We provide an overview of a novel online acoustic environmental workbench and discuss a number of approaches to scaling analysis of acoustic data; collaboration, manual, automatic and human-in-the loop analysis.