When studying the acquisition of social-communicative competence, it is important to take students' individual learning theories into account. Increased insight into the role ILTs play can be of help in improving social work education.
Although learning analytics benefit learning, its uptake by higher educational institutions remains low. Adopting learning analytics is a complex undertaking, and higher educational institutions lack insight into how to build organizational capabilities to successfully adopt learning analytics at scale. This paper describes the ex-post evaluation of a capability model for learning analytics via a mixed-method approach. The model intends to help practitioners such as program managers, policymakers, and senior management by providing them a comprehensive overview of necessary capabilities and their operationalization. Qualitative data were collected during pluralistic walk-throughs with 26 participants at five educational institutions and a group discussion with seven learning analytics experts. Quantitative data about the model’s perceived usefulness and ease-of-use was collected via a survey (n = 23). The study’s outcomes show that the model helps practitioners to plan learning analytics adoption at their higher educational institutions. The study also shows the applicability of pluralistic walk-throughs as a method for ex-post evaluation of Design Science Research artefacts.
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Communication plays an important role in manyprofessional contexts. This is especially truefor students in the field of social work. Theaim of this study was to develop formative,self-regulated multimedia self-assessment ofsocial-communicative competencies for socialwork students. First, a pilot study wasconducted to gain insight into the students'specific characteristics. This insight was usedto design guidelines for the development of theassessment instrument in order to tune these tothe students' perceptions, instructionalpreferences, and personalities and thusenhancing the students' enthusiasm to use theself-assessment instrument. This might increasethe chance for successful implementation ofthis new form of assessment. A first version of a multimedia test wasdeveloped. A quality expert meeting wasorganised to gain insight into expertjudgements on the quality of the test and toobtain indications for improvement of theassessment. A second version of the test wasconstructed and put on the Internet. Nearly 400students completed the assessment and expressedtheir opinions on this new way of communicationassessment. We found it was possible to testsocial-communicative competence by means ofmultimedia, with the help of digital video. Theuse of Internet makes assessments available atany time to fit curriculum needs and alsoresolves time and space constraints. Ourconclusion was that the multimedia test isreasonably valid. All students reported havingliked the multimedia assessment.
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This project aims to develop a measurement tool to assess the inclusivity of experiences for people with varying challenges and capabilities on the auditory spectrum. In doing so, we performed an in-depth exploration of scientific literature and findings from previous projects by Joint Projects. Based on this, we developed an initial conceptual model that focuses on sensory perception, emotion, cognition, and e[ort in relation to hearing and fatigue. Within, this model a visitor attraction is seen as an “experienscape” with four key elements: content, medium, context, and individual. In co-creative interviews with experts by experience with varying challenges on the auditory spectrum, they provided valuable insights that led to a significant expansion of this initial model. This was a relevant step, as in the scientific and professional literature, little is known about the leisure experiences of people with troubled hearing. For example, personal factors such as a person’s attitude toward their own hearing loss and the social dynamics within their group turned out to greatly influence the experience. The revised model was then applied in a case study at Apenheul, focusing on studying differences in experience of their gorilla presentation amongst people with varying challenges on the auditory spectrum.Societal issueThe Netherlands is one of the countries in Europe with the highest density of visitor attractions. Despite this abundance, many visitor attractions are not fully accessible to everyone, particularly to visitors with disabilities who sometimes are not eligible to ride due to safety concerns, yet when eligible generally still encounter numerous barriers. Accessibility of visitor attractions can be approached in various ways. However, because the focus often lies on operational and technical aspects (e.g., reducing stimuli at certain times of the day by turning o[ music, o[ering alternative wheelchair entrances), strategic and community-focused approaches are often overlooked. More importantly, there is also a lack of attention to the experience of visitors with disabilities. This becomes apparent from several studies from Joint Projects, where visitor attractions are being visited together with experts by experience with various disabilities. Nevertheless, experience is often being regarded as the 'core product' of the leisure sector. The right to meet, discover, develop, relax and thus enjoy this core product is hindered for many people with disabilities due to a lack of knowledge, inaccessibility (physical, digital, social, communicative as well as financial) and discrimination in society. Additionally, recreation entrepreneurs still face a significant gap in reaching the potential market of guests with disabilities and their networks. Thus, despite the numerous initiatives in the leisure sector aimed at improving accessibility on technical and operational fronts, often people with disabilities are still not being able to experience the same kind of enjoyment as those without. These observations form the pressing impetus for initiating the current research project, tapping into the numerous opportunities for learning, development and growth on making leisure offer more inclusive.Benefit to societyIn total, the current project approach comes with a number of enrichments in terms of both knowledge and methodology: a mixed-methods approach that allows for comparing data from different sources to obtain a more complete picture of the experience; a methodological co-design process that honours the 'nothing about us without us' principle; and benchmarking for a group (i.e., people with challenges on the auditory spectrum) that despite the size of its population has thus far mostly been overlooked.
Business relations between Brainport organisations and their partners based in China have been growing rapidly. This postdoc project explores the Sino-Dutch corporate communicative strategies in the intercultural and geo-political context. Adopting discourse analysis and design-based research methods, the research aims to develop effective communication strategies for organisations in Brainport. Probing the geo-political, intercultural and digital challenges, the project provides a framework and insights in terms of corporate communication in the intercultural settings. Based on the results, the publications, the teaching activities, and the public talks, this research will generate future research leads and more societal discussions on the interplay between intercultural and business communicative strategies. Furthermore, this research engages the teaching activities through lectures and workshops at Fontys School of Business and Communication. Engaging the students in various learning activities, I will encourage the learning groups to participate and experiment in a hybrid learning environment at Fontys. I will lead a research project team in our minor China and World Economy, and encourage the learning group to participate and experiment in a hybrid learning environment at Fontys.
