Developmental Work Research

Virtual teamwork is increasingly becoming a characteristic way of working within and between organisations in the digital economy, bringing both opportunities and drawbacks. This article considers communication in virtual teams and ways in which information and communication technologies (ICTs) can enhance or impede it. It is recognised that the richness of face-to-face communication cannot be captured fully by the tools on offer, although important steps to create team belonging in virtual presence have already been taken. While the tools go some way to permitting distributed team members to interact informally, they cannot go all the way to building and maintaining the personal side of relationships, nor provide stress-relief in many instances. Information overload is highlighted as an example of this failure, and ways to address the problems inherent in ICT-mediated communication and its usage should be sought via inter-disciplinary approaches. On the other hand, the virtual paradigm leads to new organisational forms and organisational culture that tend to strengthen the individual's role in the organisational grapevine.

Technology supplements to college textbooks, such as self-guided quizzes and exercises available over the Internet, have become commonplace. The current study examined student perceptions regarding the utility of technology supplements that accompanied a public speaking fundamentals textbook. At semester's end, students reported the supplements to be less useful than they had expected. The supplements were perceived to be more useful by females than by males. The supplements were reported to be more ...

Almost everyone in India is conscious of the importance and urgency of the Challenges in Education and these are reflected in several other parts of the world as well. Some of these are the challenge of numbers, of relevance, of Quality, of access, of costs and of speed. There is sometimes a sense of paralysis at the enormity of the challenge and the apparent impossibility of managing conflicting expectations. But we need a change in direction, as suggested in the scenario painted by Edward de Bono. “Imagine a ship at sea that is in trouble. The lights keep going out. The engine is faltering. The rudder is unreliable. The first mate is drunk. The crew is very demoralised. The service is appalling. The passengers on the ship are very dissatisfied. Then a new captain and first mate are brought in by helicopter. Very quickly everything changes. The morale of the crew is lifted. Service improves. The engine is fixed. The rudder is fixed. The lights stay on. Everything is fine. But the ship is still heading in the wrong direction.” The solution to these multiple challenges probably lies in a number of disruptive innovative solutions. These include inculcating self-learning (building on meta-cognition), measuring learning, collaborative and co-operative learning, personalisation of learning and learning analytics. However, in addition to new systems or technologies, we need a fundamental change of perspective. Education is seen as the responsibility of the State and the system is based on authority and licenses and permissions to allow education to be transacted in modern times this is unlikely to work. As Henry Maine had said ' as society progresses, it moves from status to contract'. So must the educational system build contractual relationships between the learner and providers of learning as more important than statutory authority. A very promising technological and pedagogical model that has received a lot of attention during the last few years and adoption by Stanford, Harvard, Duke and almost 100 of the world's top ranking Universities to teach millions of learners is that of the MOOC. The MOOC is considered on the one hand as a panacea for education and on the other as a defilement of the sanctity of the higher education tradition. The truth will probably lie somewhere in between and we must explore the potential of MOOCs to create a model of simultaneously teaching on-site and off-site learners, using synchronous and a-synchronous teacher learner interactions to deliver high quality learning to large numbers , maybe evolve a model for a classroom of 10,000 learners. This event is a step in that direction. We are experimenting here with mounting 10 MOOCs in a variety of subjects, for different target groups delivered by a team of Internationally renowned resource persons. We will be exploring several technological platforms and pedagogical models to find answers to a few interesting questions:
 What is the right size of a learning cohort that is empowered with technology?
 What is the right price for tuition?
 What would be the most appropriate technology platform for mass education?
 What is the best way to cope with linguistic diversity?
 What course programs are best delivered as MOOCs?
 What skill sets must learners have to benefit most from MOOCs?
 What skill sets must educators acquire to teach effectively with MOOCs?
I welcome and thank all those who are contributing to make this unique exploratory endeavour a success.
M.M. Pant

This paper reports on an investigation into the online visibility of work undertaken in South Africa in the field of poverty alleviation. An experiment with
Google searches was undertaken, motivated by concerns about the visibility of South African research and development work, particularly in a context where social
inequality is extreme and poverty such a critical issue. Aware that much attention – through research and the practice of development work – is being paid to
poverty alleviation1
, the authors set out to examine whether that work could be found easily, and what the nature of the search results would be. Significant sums
of public money are invested in research, which should result in the production and dissemination of locally generated knowledge as a public good grounded in
local realities. A great deal of national and international funding is also spent. Thus, research published online should inform and reflect on national and regional
development practice, while contributing perspectives from the South to the global corpus of poverty research. Research to understand poverty and inform the design
and targeting of poverty alleviation programmes needs to be freely available and actively shared in order for it to accumulate value. In this regard it is argued that
there are exponentially beneficial linkages between research, scholarly publication and social development, which originate with local knowledge production and
are amplified by the availability and discoverability of that research. Availability and discoverability add breadth and depth to the potential use, value and impact
of the knowledge produced

"Block Printing is the process of using an object to make an inked impression upon a plain surface. It is one of the oldest and most enjoyable of all the crafts and has given color and pattern to paper, cloth, and other surfaces for nearly 4,000 years.
Today the process is essentially the same. As it is simple and impressive, it is ideal for the beginner. "

a. Les avancées technologiques

Les avancées technologiques ont toujours existé et ont eu un impact important sur les différentes dimensions de la vie. En ce début de siècle, les nouvelles technologies ont mené au développement de nouveaux outils pédagogiques, qui, avec les nouveaux modes de communication ont créé un nouvel état de fait au niveau des formations délivrées jusque là par les moyens classiques.

b. Les acquis de la Psychologie Cognitive

D’autre part, et au delà du simple emploi de l’appareillage technique, l'aspect purement éducatif s’est enrichi des nouvelles avancées de l’approche cognitive, ce qui a mené à éclairer d’un jour nouveau tous les aspects opérationnels qui sous tendent la formation universitaire: La Langue et son rôle formateur, l’appropriation de la connaissance, l’action et son impact sur la conceptualisation et le développement des compétences dans les formations.

c. Problématique et Hypothèse

Ces deux données d'égale importance mettent les éducateurs devant la nécessité d'adopter une nouvelle approche qui se différencie des schémas classiques par son ouverture, sa flexibilité et son efficacité. Est-ce qu’une telle approche nécessite l’adoption d’un nouveau paradigme pédagogique ? Et lequel ? Existe-t-il une stratégie éducative qui répond aux exigences de succès de tels projets académiques? Quelles sont les conditions de succès d'une telle stratégie?

La théorie des Champs Conceptuels forme le canevas théorique de l’approche préconisée. Il s’agira alors de montrer comment ce canevas assure la complémentarité entre une formation par projets, la flexibilité de l’enseignement à distance et les critères de qualité requis. D’où l’hypothèse : Il est possible de mettre au point des formations à distance couplées avec une approche cognitive de résolution de problèmes qui répondent à l’esprit d’innovation et aux exigences de qualité.

More than 2 million people in the United States are unable to speak or use handwriting as an effective and efficient mean of communication (ASHA,2004). This paper discusses a brief history of augmentative alternative communication (AAC) devices. The ultimate goal of an AAC intervention is to enable individuals to efficiently and effectively engage in a variety of interactions. Communication is a critical element of staying connected to society and is the tool for redefining one’s self. This paper discusses the history of AAC, as well as etiologies that may benefit from AAC use. Without access to speech, individuals are severely restricted within communication and participation in all aspects of life. Furthermore, new mobile technology such as the iPad has brought AAC into the mainstream. The iPad and other mobile technologies provide powerful new tools to potentially enhance communication for individuals with developmental disabilities, acquired neurogenic disorders, and degenerative neurological conditions. A brief comparison between today's mobile technologies and traditional AAC devices such as the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) and the Voice Output Communication Device (VOCD) proves which speech generating device (SGD) is more beneficial to individuals that require AAC.


Keywords: Augmentative alternative communication; Picture Exchange Communication System; Voice Output Communication; Speech Generating Device; iPad; Mobile technology

Nykypäivänä työtä tuntuu riivaavan kiire ja stressi, ja työmarkkinoilla etsitään vain hyviä tyyppejä ja moniosaajia. Miten asiat olivat ennen? Suomalainen työntekijyys 1945–2013 -teoksessa kirjoittajat vastaavat kysymykseen tuoreesti selvittämällä, mikä suomalaisten työympäristössä ja -kulttuurissa on muuttunut viimeisen 70 vuoden aikana.

Suuri kertomus maaseudulta ja ruumiillisen työn parista kaupunkien toimihenkilöiksi siirtyvistä suomalaisista saa lisäulottuvuutta, kun tekijät tarkastelevat, kuinka työnkuvan muutos vaikutti työntekijää koskeviin odotuksiin. 1960–1980-luvut olivat työntekijöiden kannalta mullistavia, sillä silloin ryhdyttiin korostamaan moraalisen kunnollisuuden ja fyysisen vahvuuden sijasta yksilön sosiaalisia taitoja, joustavuutta ja motivaatiota.

Suomalaisesta aiheesta huolimatta se ammentaa myös kansainvälisestä palkkatyötä ja sosiaalisia suhteita koskevasta keskustelusta. Teos auttaa nykypäivän työntekijöitä ymmärtämään, miksi työelämä on sellainen kuin se on.

Kirjoittajat ovat työelämän, työpsykologian ja historian tutkijoina Työterveyslaitoksella.

Changes in executive functioning in the preschool years are recognized as playing a critical role in cognitive and social development, yet comprehensive data and recommendations about measurement of these changes are lacking. The performance of 602 preschool children on several executive function tasks was analyzed and reported as (a) age trends in performance and (b) task difficulty scales at 2, 3, 4, and 5 to 6 years of age. This analysis informs theories of executive function development and offers researchers an evidence-based guide to task selection and design.

Supported Employment (SE) was implemented within the vocational rehabilitation systems of the Nordic countries at a different pace and to various degrees. Sweden and Norway took to SE most rapidly during the 1990s, followed by Finland and Iceland. In Denmark, SE is still virtually an unknown concept, although there are practices that resemble and are inspired by SE. Several reports [1, 2, 5, 7, 8, 16–21, 24, 25, 28, 29, 32–36, 39, 41] have indicated that SE in the Nordic countries is a successful approach to support disabled job seekers 1 to get and keep a job in the ordinary labour market. However, SE is still not a large proportion of all work-related measures for people with vocational disabilities; in the Nordic countries the traditional sheltered sector and 'train then place' measures of vocational rehabilitation still prevail [19]. SE is typically provided as an " add-on " service by agencies that financially and skills-wise are based on traditional forms of pre-vocational training, sheltered workshops and municipality day care activities. To make quality-based SE services available on a widespread basis, the national levels will require strong government support. The policy-administrative levels must address the domination of the traditional vocational rehabilitation model and define the particular inclusion skills competence to be expected by the professional job coach/employment specialist of SE.

This qualitative study investigated the lived experiences of highly sensitive persons (HSPs) to better understand the way they experience careers.  Sensory processing sensitivity (SPS) is the underlying personality trait and is present in approximately 20 percent of the population, equally distributed across gender and racial lines.  SPS is considered a non-normative personality trait in some Western societies and subcultures.  Thus, many HSPs experience difficulty finding an appropriate match between innate temperament and career.   
This qualitative research perspective employed semi-structured interviews with 35 participants recruited through social media web sites and snowball sampling.  Participants in the study were primarily from the U.S., but also from five foreign countries.  Participants were chosen based on answers to a recruitment questionnaire and Elaine Aron’s HSP Self-Test.  Major findings reveal a complex, interwoven dynamic interplay between nine major themes: (1) empathy, (2) childhood’s influence, (3) self-care, (4) a rich inner life, (5) creativity, (6) high sensation-seeking, (7) the sociological perspective, (8) the experience of work, and (9) the integral being.  The significance of this study is that it is the first of its kind to investigate this topic in a systematic, scientific manner.

What is DTH?
Direct to Home, or DTH as it is popularly known is a technology capable of bringing the television signal directly to our home from the transmission station through a satellite and bypassing the cable system. Today's DTH technology has its origins in the Direct Reception Satellite (DRS) dishes used during the SITE experiment of 1975. DTH technology is ideally suited to localities where cable TV cannot reach and technically superior to the transmission delivered through cable, and permits even the transmission or reception of stereo audio. By using DTH technology, viewers will be paying for what they want to see, instead of being forced to accept

Abstract:
Over the past two decades, Information & Communication Technology (ICT) has become an essential tool for all areas of life. In many countries information and communication technology has a clear impact on the development of educational curricula and has fundamentally transformed all business and governance across the world. Education is a very socially oriented activity and quality education has traditionally been associated with strong teachers having high degrees of personal contact with learners. The use of ICT in education lends itself to more student-centred learning settings. Moreover, with the world moving rapidly into digital media and information, the role of ICT in education is becoming more and more imperative, and will continue to develop in this age. In this proposal, a literature review regarding the effective use of ICTs for education will be investigated, along with its effectiveness in teaching learning process; quality and accessibility of education, learning motivation.

În societatea actuala, în care accesul la date si informatii este tot mai usor de realizat gratie ritmului de dezvoltare a tehnologiilor informatiei si telecomunicatiilor, se pune problema de a cunoaste tot mai mult, de a sti cum sa folosesti imensitatea de informatii pe care o poti avea la un moment dat. Astfel, în aceasta lucrare am încercat sa sintetizam terminologia si opiniile aparute legate de concepte relativ noi, precum cunostinta, management al cunostintelor, capital intelectual, exemplificând câteva initiative care s-au bucurat de succes, pe care le-au avut în acest domeniu diferite firme de renume.

Defining the scope of sport psychology requires an updated understanding of the relationship between “body” and “mind” within the framework of cognitive science.
Embodied cognition theory offers a new approach to this relationship, one that rejects the assumptions of classical cognitivism and emphasizes the idea that mental functions are shaped by the material and temporal details of their bodily implementation. This theory resonates deeply with influential doctrines in developmental psychology and ecological psychology that paved the way to the foundation of sport psychology. The strong theoretical link between ecological approach and embodied mind theory is testified by the preeminence of Gibson’s notion of affordance in many of the chapters included in this collection. Sport psychology research has always dwelled on the themes, the notions, and the models of embodied cognition theory. Embodied cognition, in turn, has often found the most striking confirmations of its theoretical claims in the psychological accounts of sport performance and athletic skill. Due to the communal theoretical root of these two disciplines, an explicit integration of their respective philosophies would allow them to share a mutually beneficial experience of scientific investigation and critical reflection while affirming their irreducible specificity and their distinctive backgrounds.

En este trabajo vamos a presentar una herramienta de evaluación pedagógica de material didáctico que ha sido elaborada por el Grupo de Investigación de Tecnología Educativa (GITE) de la Universidad de Murcia. Esta herramienta ha sido utilizada por dicho grupo en recientes investigaciones y está formada por cinco dimensiones, una centrada en los datos de identificación del material y en sus aspectos descriptivos; dos en relación con el análisis de los elementos didácticos y psicopedagógicos; una dimensión que contempla el coste económico y las cuestiones de distribución del material; y por último, otra en la que se realizará una valoración global.

This study will examine the approaches toward instructional design that have been applied to date. A summary of the diverse types of instructional models will be classified them into various categories of instructional design. The evidence from many researches and theoretical discussions show and supports the classification of these instructional design categories. This study also investigates which existing trends are present in current instructional models. The most recent models have been designed under constructivism, but some of these models are considered postmodernism philosophy. Due to these new and hidden considerations we have developed and would to suggest a new trend in this field. In addition, we mention some reasons for this new trend based on social movements. The mentioned movements have been effected by postmodern philosophy. We attempt to propose an instructional design trend based on postmodernism orientation that named postmodern instructional design.

En este libro de texto se desarrollan aspectos teóricos y prácticos relacionados al uso de las tecnologías de la información y la comunicación en el quehacer docente. La obra resulta de utilidad para alumnos y docentes en asignaturas que incluyen los medios y las tecnologías en su currícula. Está destinada especialmente a los estudiantes de las carreras de profesorado y área de formación docente. Incluye conceptos y definiciones básicas que dan el marco conceptual y delimitan el alcance del texto. Además de proveer un recorrido por las tecnologías que se vienen utilizando en las aulas desde hace algún tiempo, señala futuras y potenciales herramientas con impacto pedagógico. Una parte importante está dedicada a la Internet y las herramientas de comunicación derivadas o asociadas con ella. Incluye propuestas de actividades en cada capítulo para que los docentes involucren a sus alumnos en la experimentación de las tecnologías, su aplicación en la resolución de problemas, o el diseño y...

""Abstract
The availability of e-learning competencies with faculty members at the  University of Ibb, Yemen.
This study Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for obtaining a master's degree in educational technology.
By / Marwan Hasan N. sallam          Supervisor Dr. / Saleh M. Al-Oteawi
ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ
This study aimed to identify the availability of competencies of e-learning competencies with faculty members at the University of Ibb, Yemen, and the researcher used the descriptive survey method, through a questionnaire consisting of (64) items distributed on four axes. It was Applied on a sample consisting of (77) faculty member, and used averages and standard deviations, The Mann-Whitney U test and "T" test, ANOVA analysis of sample responses. The results showed that faculty members at the University of Ibb Yemen possess the competencies of e-learning in the axis of the use of computer and its Peripherals, the axis of the use of networks and Internet with high level, and possess the qualifications of a culture of e-learning, and the design and management of e-learning with medium level. The results did not show differences in the availability degree of statistically significant of Attributable academic rank, or number of years of teaching experience, while differences appeared in the pivotal use of computer and its Peripherals, and the use of networks and Internet attributed to the variable college, and in favor of science colleges. It also appeared differences in statistically significant in all axes tool attributed to the variable number of training courses in e-learning, and for the benefit of those who attended three or more courses. The study came out with a set of recommendations and proposals, including the utilization of the results of this study when preparing training programs for faculty members in the field of e-learning, and Procedure a similar study to include the rest of the Yemeni universities.
Keywords: e-learning, competencies of e-learning, faculty members
"
========================================
مستخلص الدراسة
درجة توافر كفايات التَّعلُّم الإلكتروني لدى أعضاء هيئة التدريس في جامعة إب بالجمهورية اليمنية
دراسة مقدمة لاستكمال متطلبات الحصول على درجة الماجستير في تقنيات التعليم
إعداد الطالب/ مروان حسن ناجي سلاّم      إشراف الدكتور/ صالح بن محمد العطيوي
ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ
هدفت هذه الدراسة إلى التعرف على درجة توافر كفايات التَّعلُّم الإلكتروني لدى أعضاء هيئة التدريس في جامعة إب بالجمهورية اليمنية، ولتحقيق أهداف الدراسة، استخدم الباحث المنهج الوصفيّ المسحيّ، من خلال استبانةٍ مكونةٍ من (64) فقرةً موزعةً على أربعة محاور، طبّقت على عيّنةٍ مكونةٍ من (77) عضو هيئة تدريس، واستخدمت المتوسطات الحسابية والانحرافات المعيارية، واختبار مان ويتني واختبار "ت"، وتحليل التباين الأحادي لتحليل استجابات العينة.
وبيّنت نتائج الدراسة أن أعضاء هيئة التدريس في جامعة إب بالجمهورية اليمنية، تتوافر لديهم كفايات التَّعلُّم الإلكتروني في محور استخدام الحاسب الآلي وملحقاته، ومحور استخدام الشبكات والإنترنت بدرجة "عالية". في حين تتوافر لديهم كفايات ثقافة التَّعلُّم الإلكتروني، وتصميم وإدارة التَّعلُّم الإلكتروني بدرجة "متوسطة".
ولم تظهر النتائج فروقاً ذات دلالة إحصائية في درجة التوافر تعزى للرتبة الأكاديمية، أو عدد سنوات الخبرة في التدريس، في حين ظهرت فروق في محوري استخدام الحاسب الآلي وملحقاته، واستخدام الشبكات والإنترنت تعزى لمتغير الكلية، ولصالح الكليات العلمية، كما ظهرت فروق ذات دلالة إحصائية في جميع محاور الأداة، تعزى لمتغير عدد الدورات التدريبية في التَّعلُّم الإلكتروني، ولصالح من حضروا ثلاث دورات فأكثر. وفي ضوء نتائج الدراسة قَدّمَ الباحث عدد من التوصيات والمقترحات، منها الاستفادة من نتائج هذه الدراسة عند إعداد البرامج التدريبية الخاصة بأعضاء هيئة التدريس في مجال التَّعلُّم الإلكتروني، وإجراء دراسة مماثلة تشمل بقية الجامعات اليمنية.
الكلمات المفتاحية: التَّعلُّم الإلكتروني، كفايات التَّعلُّم الإلكتروني، أعضاء هيئة التدريس.
"

"This study consists of research on the use and creation of digital learning resources (DLRs) in schools and its intention is to understand the way DLRs are integrated into teachers’ practices and the roles teachers have as resource authors and editors.
The methodology adopted in the study is that of action-research, undertaken in a school cluster and involved using systematic, reflexive teacher education, combining training cycles and data collection.
This study used various types of data collection instruments such as questionnaires, LORI scale (Learning Object Review Instrument), focus-group interviews, field led notes and think aloud protocols.
Results show that teachers combine traditional resources with digital ones in their practice and that when using DLRs they do not change their pedagogical strategies significantly. Data reveal that knowledge teachers have of DLRs available in educational repositories is scarce and that training in this area is thus very much needed.
The study also helped identify the factors that practitioners take into account when creating their own resources and shows evidence of the difficulties they feel as DLR authors and editors. These difficulties are organizational and pedagogical in scope and nature and are related to the lack of specific as well as technical skills and knowledge, due to the fact that technologies and applications which have been designed to support this kind of process are relatively complex."