Knowledge governance in a Japanese project-based organization

Knowledge processes (knowledge creation, retention, and sharing) are influenced by organizational structure, and governance and coordination mechanisms. While project-based organizational structures facilitate knowledge creation; they can hinder knowledge retention and sharing without adequate governance mechanisms. Drawing from the knowledge management and knowledge governance literatures, this paper proposes knowledge governance mechanisms – consensus-based hierarchy, shared human resource practices, and performance measures and output control – that promote knowledge processes in project-based organizations (PBOs). The functioning of knowledge governance is described in a Japanese PBO, Maekawa Manufacturing Ltd. Although the case indicates that both soft and hard dimensions of knowledge governance support knowledge processes, soft dimensions are prioritized in this particular organization. Some implications and suggestions for further research are given.     

Gender and socioeconomic status differences in university students’ perception of social support

Perceived social support has been shown to be one of the most important protective factors for emerging adult students during their transition to university. However, the relationships between perceived social support and dimensions of gender and family background, which have been shown to affect adjustment to college life, remain unexplored. The current study analyzes the effect of gender, parents’ education, and family income level on social support perceived by Spanish university students. The sample consisted of 575 women and 280 men, of average age 18.02 years (SD?=?0.52) enrolled in the first year of degree courses at the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain). Three measures were used to assess various facets of perceived social support, namely perceived acceptance, social provisions, and support availability and satisfaction. Gender differences were identified for several perceived social support dimensions; women reported a wider social network, which should cover more diverse needs of social support. In addition, differences related to mother’s education and family income level emerged for the availability of support and perceived acceptance. The results highlight the different role of gender and family background in several dimensions of perceived social support during the transition to emerging adulthood.     

The Evolving Challenges and Opportunities in Global Publishing

An essay discussing the challenges and opportunities in global publishing and in particular the are addressing many of the big questions publishers are facing today which arise from the marriage of content and technology. Includes examination of three major verticals (STM, Education and Trade publishing) and considers the possibilities offered by cross-industry collaboration to evolve global standards.     

The Reception of Chinese Translated Books: In the Case of University Students in Taiwan

This study investigates the undergraduates of a university in northern Taiwan for their reading habits and evaluation of Chinese translated books. It is found that reading translated books is prevalent among them. Their experiences of reading Chinese translated books tend to be satisfactory and more than half of them think the quality of Chinese translated books is fine. The result of this study confirms previous research that accuracy is the basic requirement of translated books and translation mistakes should be avoided, but goes against the popular perception that the quality of Chinese translated books in Taiwan is poor.     

Fuzzy flexible resource constrained project scheduling based on genetic algorithm

Both fuzzy temporal constraint and flexible resource constraint are considered in project scheduling. Inorder to obtain an optimal schedule, we propose a genetic algorithm integrated with concepts on fuzzy set theory aswell as specialized coding and decoding mechanism. An example demonstrates that the proposed approach can assistthe project managers to obtain the optimal schedule effectively and make the correct decision on skill training before aproject begins.     

Teaching to the Test…or Testing to Teach: Exams Requiring Higher Order Thinking Skills Encourage Greater Conceptual Understanding

In order to test the effect of exam-question level on fostering student conceptual understanding, low-level and high-level quizzes and exams were administered in two sections of an introductory biology course. Each section was taught in a high-level inquiry based style but was assigned either low-level questions (memory oriented) on the quizzes and exams, or high-level questions (application, evaluation, and analysis) on the quizzes and exams for the entirety of the semester. A final exam consisting of 20 low-level and 21 high-level questions was given to both sections. We considered several theoretical perspectives based on testing effect, test expectancy, and transfer-appropriate processing literature as well as the theoretical underpinnings of Bloom’s taxonomy. Reasoning from these theoretical perspectives, we predicted that high-level exams would encourage not only deeper processing of the information by students in preparation for the exam but also better memory for the core information (learned in the service of preparing for high-level questions). Results confirmed this prediction, with students in the high-level exam condition demonstrating higher performance on both the low-level final-exam items and the high-level final exam items. This pattern suggests that students who are tested throughout the semester with high-level questions acquire deep conceptual understanding of the material and better memory for the course information, and lends support to the proposed hierarchical nature of Bloom’s taxonomy.     

Using technology pedagogical content knowledge development to enhance learning outcomes

This paper describes an intervention in which pre-service teachers developed their TPACK through multiple data sources. Teachers’ self-reports of their TPACK knowledge were triangulated with performance-based assessment of their instructional practices and artifacts to give a better understanding and nature of pre-service teachers’ TPACK development. Although self reported measures did not correlate with pre-service teachers’ actual increased knowledge of technology integration, this study enhances better understanding of the pre-service teachers’ TPACK development through the multiple assessment measures. The learning outcome measures provide specific information and concrete representation of what pre-service teachers can actually do with technology in their TPACK development. The findings suggested multiple concerns about self-reported measures that are discussed in the framework of the TPACK instrument.     

Content and knowledge provision service – a way to build intellectual capital in learning organizations

This paper presents the concept and the implementation of the Content and/or Knowledge Provision (CKP) service. The service is developed as a part of research within Intelligent Learning Extended Organization, an 7th Framework Program for R&D project in the area of technology-enhanced learning. The project aimed at enhancing cross-organizational Learning and Knowledge Building (LKB) practices at workplaces, leading to continuous growth of organization’s intellectual capital. By using the CKP service, employees can upload different kinds of knowledge assets into a knowledge repository, annotate them and (re-)discover relevant ones by performing semantic search over the knowledge repository. Hence, the service effectively serves as a content and knowledge-sharing facility and semantic search engine within a learning organization. Furthermore, CKP enables collaborative manipulation and annotation of knowledge assets in the repository, thus supporting all three components of intellectual capital.