Over the last two decades, institutions for higher education such as universities and colleges have rapidly expanded and as a result have experienced profound changes in processes of research and organization. However, the rapid expansion and change has fuelled concerns about issues such as educators' technology professional development. Despite the educational value of emerging technologies in schools, the introduction has not yet enjoyed much success. Effective use of information and communication technologies requires a substantial change in pedagogical practice. Traditional training and learning approaches cannot cope with the rising demand on educators to make use of innovative technologies in their teaching. As a result, educational institutions as well as the public are more and more aware of the need for adequate technology professional development. The focus of this paper is to look at action research as a qualitative research methodology for studying technology professional development in HE in order to improve teaching and learning with ICTs at the tertiary level. The data discussed in this paper have been drawn from a cross institutional setting at Fontys University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands. The data were collected and analysed according to a qualitative approach.
Purpose Currently, most technology (robotics, smart homes, etc) that has been developed for the healthcare sector are difficult in use, expensive and often not affordable for individual persons in their home situation. Affordable innovations that activate people instead of taking tasks over can be a major breakthrough intervention in several treatments for different patient groups. On the other hand the already existing assistive innovations in home situations still don’t reach a large population (1). Scaling up innovations in public sectors, has more challenges in comparison with private sectors (2,3). The hypothesis of this study is that technical innovations need a social innovative approach to improve the availability and the use of technology by a larger population of people living with dementia. Method A Dutch Ecosystem research model for Dementia Care (EDC) was created. The main building blocks of social innovation in the EDC are communities of practice (CoP). In these CoPs, representatives of companies, knowledge institutes, healthcare organizations and governmental bodies are collaborating to study how people with dementia can be sufficiently supported based on three key principles: shared values, shared knowledge, shared savings. Per CoP case-studies are done. One CoP and accompanying case study focussed on putting ambulant nursing students as linking pin between assistive technology and people living with dementia at home. Results & Discussion A CoP seems to be a strong vehicle to tackle and gain knowledge on a specific issue, in this case reducing the gap between innovative assistive technology and people living with dementia. One major barrier (Table 1) for clients is to ask for help in learning to use technology. Healthcare students appear to be the linking pin between stakeholders’ perspectives and overcome the barrier of hesitant to ask for help. The huge intrinsic drive to come up with solutions from different stakeholder perspectives is structurally facilitated by the EDC.
It has been established that normative social influence can be used effec-tively in persuasive technology. However, it is unknown whether the application of more social pressure makes it more effective. To test this hypothesis, a quantitative experiment was conducted on the online social network Facebook. Although evidence to support the hypothesis was found, it cannot be concluded from this experiment that more intense persuasion is more effective, when utilizing normative social influence in persuasive technology.
Due to societal developments, like the introduction of the ‘civil society’, policy stimulating longer living at home and the separation of housing and care, the housing situation of older citizens is a relevant and pressing issue for housing-, governance- and care organizations. The current situation of living with care already benefits from technological advancement. The wide application of technology especially in care homes brings the emergence of a new source of information that becomes invaluable in order to understand how the smart urban environment affects the health of older people. The goal of this proposal is to develop an approach for designing smart neighborhoods, in order to assist and engage older adults living there. This approach will be applied to a neighborhood in Aalst-Waalre which will be developed into a living lab. The research will involve: (1) Insight into social-spatial factors underlying a smart neighborhood; (2) Identifying governance and organizational context; (3) Identifying needs and preferences of the (future) inhabitant; (4) Matching needs & preferences to potential socio-techno-spatial solutions. A mixed methods approach fusing quantitative and qualitative methods towards understanding the impacts of smart environment will be investigated. After 12 months, employing several concepts of urban computing, such as pattern recognition and predictive modelling , using the focus groups from the different organizations as well as primary end-users, and exploring how physiological data can be embedded in data-driven strategies for the enhancement of active ageing in this neighborhood will result in design solutions and strategies for a more care-friendly neighborhood.
Anne4Care is een virtuele assistent ontwikkeld door Virtual Assistant BV. Zij biedt ondersteuning aan mensen met cognitieve problemen bij het behouden van dagstructuur, het onderhouden van sociale contacten en uitvoeren van betekenisvolle dagactiviteiten. De instructiematerialen zijn in de Nederlandse taal beschikbaar en gericht op gebruikers met een Nederlandse achtergrond. Anne4Care wordt op dit moment geïmplementeerd bij een dagbesteding van IMEAN Care in Almelo voor migrantenouderen. IT-professionals van Anne4Care en de zorgprofessionals van de dagbesteding van IMEAN hebben behoefte aan instructiematerialen en leermethoden die aansluiten op de behoeften van de groep migrantenouderen. Met als doel de introductie, acceptatie en het gebruik van Anne4Care zo optimaal mogelijk te laten verlopen. Dit zal resulteren in een betere ondersteuning van migrantenouderen en daarmee sociale inclusie en zinvolle dagbesteding bevorderen. Het consortium bestaat uit mbk-partners IMEAN Care (praktijk) en Virtual Assistant BV (technologieontwikkelaar) en de lectoraten Technology, Health & Care en Verpleegkunde van hogeschool Saxion. Samen met eindgebruikers (migrantenouderenouderen, hun mantelzorgers en zorgprofessionals) worden instructiematerialen en leermethoden ontwikkeld voor het gebruik van Anne4Care. Op basis van (1) observationeel en (2) literatuuronderzoek wordt een programma van eisen opgesteld. Vervolgens worden in co-creatie met eindgebruikers de instructiematerialen en leermethoden ontwikkeld en geëvalueerd. Tot slot zal virtuele assistent Anne4Care zelf een rol krijgen als instructrice waarbij een onboarding faciliteit wordt gecreëerd. De resultaten van dit project zijn: - Programma van eisen waaraan de instructiematerialen en leermethoden aan moeten voldoen - Instructiematerialen en leermethoden passend bij de wensen en behoeften van migrantenouderen, hun mantelzorgers en zorgprofessionals - Onboarding faciliteit op de tablet: Anne4Care als ‘instructrice’ in eigen (Turkse) taal - Inzicht in het gebruik en het gemak van Anne4Care en de instructiematerialen - Inzicht in de invloed van de instructiematerialen en leermethoden op het gebruik van Anne4Care.
Due to the existing pressure for a more rational use of the water, many public managers and industries have to re-think/adapt their processes towards a more circular approach. Such pressure is even more critical in the Rio Doce region, Minas Gerais, due to the large environmental accident occurred in 2015. Cenibra (pulp mill) is an example of such industries due to the fact that it is situated in the river basin and that it has a water demanding process. The current proposal is meant as an academic and engineering study to propose possible solutions to decrease the total water consumption of the mill and, thus, decrease the total stress on the Rio Doce basin. The work will be divided in three working packages, namely: (i) evaluation (modelling) of the mill process and water balance (ii) application and operation of a pilot scale wastewater treatment plant (iii) analysis of the impacts caused by the improvement of the process. The second work package will also be conducted (in parallel) with a lab scale setup in The Netherlands to allow fast adjustments and broaden evaluation of the setup/process performance. The actions will focus on reducing the mill total water consumption in 20%.
