Product service systems (PSS) are an example of a novel business model billed as having the potential to significantly reduce the environmental burdens of production and consumption processes. However, despite widespread interest in PSS, consensus regarding their actual environmental impacts, particularly with regard to salient issues such as global warming, is lacking. Hence this paper explores existing research to investigate the state of the art regarding the climatic impacts of PSS, alongside the set of factors that influence climatic impacts. The paper comprises a systematic review of peer-reviewed academic literature, quantifying the extent to which different types of PSS have the capacity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across multiple product categories. Our study shows that significant reductions in climatic emissions are possible, but PSS are in many cases associated with more modest reductions and, in some cases, increased emissions. Further, we observe no clear differences in climatic impacts according to the type of PSS model that is deployed. Rather, differences in climatic impact are influenced by factors such as production and design alongside use-phase impacts and contextual factors such as transportation and the energy mix. The study argues that further research is needed to establish a more robust baseline upon which to draw conclusions regarding the sources of climatic impacts, and outlines fruitful ways for companies to tackle the complexities of climatic emissions that are beyond their control.
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Autonomous learning behavior is an important skill for students, but they often do not master it sufficiently. We investigated the potential of nudging as a teaching strategy in tertiary education to support three important autonomous learning behaviors: planning, preparing for class, and asking questions. Nudging is a strategy originating from behavioral economics used to influence behavior by changing the environment, and consists of altering the choice environment to steer human behavior. In this study, three nudges were designed by researchers in co-creation with teachers. A video booth to support planning behavior (n = 95), a checklist to support class preparation (n = 148), and a goal-setting nudge to encourage students to ask questions during class (n = 162) were tested in three field experiments in teachers’ classrooms with students in tertiary education in the Netherlands. A mixed-effects model approach revealed a positive effect of the goal-setting nudge on students’ grades and a marginal positive effect on the number of questions asked by students. Additionally, evidence for increased self-reported planning behavior was found in the video booth group—but no increase in deadlines met. No significant effects were found for the checklist. We conclude that, for some autonomous learning behaviors, primarily asking questions, nudging has potential as an easy, effective teaching strategy.
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The circular economy (CE) is heralded as reducing material use and emissions while providing more jobs and growth. We explored this narrative in a series of expert workshops, basing ourselves on theories, methods and findings from science fields such as global environmental input-output analysis, business modelling, industrial organisation, innovation sciences and transition studies. Our findings indicate that this dominant narrative suffers from at least three inconvenient truths. First, CE can lead to loss of GDP. Each doubling of product lifetimes will halve the related industrial production, while the required design changes may cost little. Second, the same mechanism can create losses of production jobs. This may not be compensated by extra maintenance, repair or refurbishing activities. Finally, ‘Product-as-a-Service’ business models supported by platform technologies are crucial for a CE transition. But by transforming consumers from owners to users, they lose independence and do not share in any value enhancement of assets (e.g., houses). As shown by Uber and AirBNB, platforms tend to concentrate power and value with providers, dramatically affecting the distribution of wealth. The real win-win potential of circularity is that the same societal welfare may be achieved with less production and fewer working hours, resulting in more leisure time. But it is perfectly possible that powerful platform providers capture most added value and channel that to their elite owners, at the expense of the purchasing power of ordinary people working fewer hours. Similar undesirable distributional effects may occur at the global scale: the service economies in the Global North may benefit from the additional repair and refurbishment activities, while economies in the Global South that are more oriented towards primary production will see these activities shrink. It is essential that CE research comes to grips with such effects. Furthermore, governance approaches mitigating unfair distribution of power and value are hence essential for a successful circularity transition.
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The QuickScan CBM (Circular Business Model) offers an approach to develop a circular business model. It focuses primarily on the manufacturing industry, even though it can be used in other sectors. It consists of three parts: (1) an introduction with an explanation of backgrounds and central concepts, (2) knowledge maps of seven business models that together form a classification and (3) the actual QuickScan.An interactive application can be found at Business Model Lab. This last version is bilingual (Dutch and English). Regardless of the version, it can be used to develop a new CBM or adapt an existing business model based on a qualitative approach. The starting point is that better design and organisation of a CBM contributes to the transformation and transition towards a sustainable and circular economy.
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Comparisons of visual perception, response-selection, and response-execution performance were made between Type 2 diabetes mellitus patients and a matched nondiabetic control group. 10 well-controlled male patients with Type 2 diabetes without diabetic complications (M age 58 yr.) and an age and IQ-matched non-diabetic control group consisting of 13 male healthy volunteers (M age 57 yr.) were included. Significant differences were found only between the two groups on response-selection performance, which concerns the selection and preparation of an appropriate motor action.
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© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York Video is increasingly used as an instructional tool. It is therefore becoming more important to improve learning of students from video. We investigated whether student learning effects are influenced through an instruction about other viewing behaviours, and whether these learning effects depend on their prior knowledge. In a controlled environment, 115 students watched a number of instructional videos about the technical equipment needed in a course on digital photography. Every second student was instructed about other possible viewing behaviours. A pre-post-retention test was carried out to calculate learning effects. The differences with respect to the learning effects of students who received an awareness instruction on an alternative viewing strategy were not significantly different. The differences as observed in our earlier experiment however could not be reproduced. Students with a broad viewing repertoire showed higher learning effects than students with a narrow repertoire. Furthermore, students with a strategic viewing approach also showed higher learning effects. Certain conditions have to be met: the technical and didactical quality of the video must be good, the integration in a learning task must be apparent, students must be aware of their viewing behaviour, and teachers must be aware of their students’ viewing behaviour in order to enrich the viewing repertoire of students when they have at least some basic knowledge e.g. after several lessons on the topics at hand. In future research, this study should be replicated using more complex video episodes than the instruction videos we used in our experiments that were only on the factual knowledge level of the taxonomy of Bloom. Moreover, replication of this study with a larger sample size could yield a significant improvement in learning effects. This is plausible because students need an amount of prior knowledge beyond a certain threshold value in order to be able to expand their knowledge network in their long term memory. Finally, additional media player functionality, facilitating effective student learning from video, can be described based on the results of this study.
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The purpose of this literature study is to obtain information about educational approaches to teaching 11 to 12 years old children focusing on how to distinguish between real news and fake news. With this purpose we studied 16 academic papers about learning activities to make primary school children media-literate and able to recognise fake news. What we found is that having children create their own news messages seems to be the most effective approach. News messages that they create can be text messages as well as videos, audios, pictures and animations. Based on this conclusion, students from The Hague University of Applied Sciences Teacher Training Institute (PABO) have been asked to develop a set of learning materials that can be used for instruction in primary schools. The effectiveness of those materials is currently being tested at an elementary school in Rijswijk. The results of the literature and the field study will be shared in the Dutch centre of expertise for media literacy education, Mediawijzer.net.
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The BMT provides the building blocks to develop a logic for a business model. In such a model the nature of value creation, how value creation is organized, and how transactions are taking shape are operationalized so that they meet the proposition. Practice shows that at present business models aimed at capturing multiple value creation can be divided into three major categories: (1) platform business models, (2) community-based (or collective) business models, and (3) circular business models. The three archetypes differ mainly in the way in which they create value, as well as the objective, the mechanism through which value creation takes place, and the infrastructural and technological requirements. When using the BMT, it is useful to consider at an early stage which business model archetype is dominant in the realization of the intended value proposition. Choosing a business model archetype might look straightforward, but it can be quite a tricky task.
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Het is belangrijk om als klantmanager een begin te maken met vakmanschap.Louis Polstra ontwikkelde samen met Divosa en de Beroepsvereniging voor Klantmanagers (de BvK) de beroepsstandaard voor klantmanagers. Hij geeft vijf tips hoe je kunt werken aan je eigen werk.
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An important step in the design of an effective educational game is the formulation of the to-be-achieved learning goals. The learning goals help shape the content and the flow of the entire game, i.e. they provide the basis for choosing the game’s core (learning) mechanics. A mistake in the formulation of the learning goals or the resulting choice in game mechanics can have large consequences, as the game may not lead to the intended effects. At the moment, there are many different methods for determining the learning goals; they may be derived by a domain expert, based on large collections of real-life data, or, alternatively, not be based on anything in particular. Methods for determining the right game mechanics range from rigid taxonomies, loose brainstorming sessions, to, again, not any method in particular. We believe that for the field of educational game design to mature, there is a need for a more uniform approach to establishing the learning goals and translating them into relevant and effective game activities. This paper explores two existing, non-game design specific, methods to help determine learning goals and the subsequent core mechanics: the first is through a Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA), which can be used to analyse and formalize the problem and the knowledge, skills, attitudes that it is comprised of, and the second is through the Four Components Instructional Design (4C-ID), which can be used to determine how the task should be integrated into an educational learning environment. Our goal is to see whether these two methods provide the uniform approach we need. This paper gives an overview of our experiences with these methods and provides guidelines for other researchers on how these methods could be used in the educational game design process.
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