Interprofessional, Interdisciplinary, or Multidisciplinary?

As a longtime researcher in interprofessional collaborative care and deputy editor-in-chief of the Journal of Interprofessional Care, I was dismayed by the imprecise use of language in the article by Colbenson et al.1 The title says “interprofessional,” the first sentence of the abstract says “interdisciplinary,” and the abstract also uses the word “multidisciplinary.” These words have different meanings and are not interchangeable. The first implies collaborative interactions, the second is often used by physicians to imply physicians with different specialties interacting (eg, oncologist and pathologist), and the third simply means that persons from different professions are in the same space per- haps working in parallel, perhaps sequentially. Another term the authors use, “ICU [intensive care unit] teams,” may or may not actually be working as teams, but the terms are not defined. The theme “interdisciplinary dynamics” is really about multidisciplinary interactions and is minimally described. If nurses feel devalued and not involved in decision-making, the dynamics are not interprofessional or even interdisciplinary.

Reconceptualizing Tourists’ Extraordinary Experiences

Research that conceptualizes tourist extraordinary experiences both from the structural and anti-structural perspective is limited in the tourism literature. The purpose of this research is to develop a new theoretical perspective that re-conceptualizes our understanding of tourists’ extraordinary experience by taking into consideration both the structural and anti-structural elements of an experience. It draws on phenomenological interviews with 26 food tourists. The study finds that extraordinary experience consists of elements such as profaneness, collaborative interactions and conflict-easing, which represent both the structural and anti-structural elements. The findings of this study allow us to question whether extraordinary experience is purely structural or anti-structural as suggested by previous research. Rather, based on the findings, we argue that extraordinary experience is the positive co-existence of both the ordinary and the non-ordinary. As a result, we use the term “synstructure” to conceptualize the tourist extraordinary experience.

Educator Satisfaction Using LMS with ICT Infrastructure as a Mediation Variable

The use of technology during the COVID-19 pandemic is very helpful in providing teaching materials to students. Two-way and collaborative interactions can be created with a dynamic learning platform such as an LMS. This study aims to analyze user satisfaction, especially with educators in using LMS with the support of ICT Infrastructure. Satisfaction is seen in terms of usefulness (usability), Ease of Use (Ease of use), and Accessibility (Access Range). Respondents in this study were 55 respondents. The data was collected using an online google form questionnaire which was then tested for validity, reliability, and model fit using the War PLS 7.0 analysis tool. The test results show that usefulness has a significant impact on user satisfaction mediated by ICT Infrastructure (with a path coefficient value of 0.524, p-value <0.001). Ease of Use has no significant impact on user satisfaction mediated by ICT Infrastructure (with a path coefficient value of 0.150 with a p-value of 0.122). Accessibility has a significant impact on user satisfaction in mediation with ICT Infrastructure (with a coefficient value of 0.309 with p-value <0.001). The fit model is tested with a VIF value of 1.670 and a GoF value of 0.586. The limitations of this study are that the sample needs to be increased, and exogenous variables need to be added to expand knowledge.

Designing for robot-mediated interaction among culturally and linguistically diverse children

This qualitative study explored the design and implementation of a humanoid social robot that mediated collaborative interactions among culturally and linguistically diverse kindergarten children in a US school. The robotic mediation was designed to help children have positive interactions with one another. The study was grounded in theories of childhood development, intercultural communication, and culturally responsive pedagogy. Design research and ethnographic qualitative research methods were used to design, test, and improve the robot’s mediation skills over a ten-week period of active use in a real-world classroom setting. Findings describe the challenges we faced in designing robot-mediated interaction activities as well as the solutions we implemented through repeated ethnographic observations, summarized as (1) anticipating children’s communication styles with flexible design, (2) inviting children to participate with personalized, friend-like communication, (3) enhancing engagement with familiar contexts, and (4) embracing language diversity with a bilingual robot.

Interactions in Augmented and Mixed Reality: An Overview

“Interaction” represents a critical term in the augmented and mixed reality ecosystem. Today, in mixed reality environments and applications, interaction occupies the joint space between any combination of humans, physical environment, and computers. Although interaction methods and techniques have been extensively examined in recent decades in the field of human-computer interaction, they still should be reidentified in the context of immersive realities. The latest technological advancements in sensors, processing power and technologies, including the internet of things and the 5G GSM network, led to innovative and advanced input methods and enforced computer environmental perception. For example, ubiquitous sensors under a high-speed GSM network may enhance mobile users’ interactions with physical or virtual objects. As technological advancements emerge, researchers create umbrella terms to define their work, such as multimodal, tangible, and collaborative interactions. However, although they serve their purpose, various naming trends overlap in terminology, diverge in definitions, and lack modality and conceptual framework classifications. This paper presents a modality-based interaction-oriented diagram for researchers to position their work and defines taxonomy ground rules to expand and adjust this diagram when novel interaction approaches emerge.

Value Co-Creation Practices in the Decommissioning of Offshore Platforms: A Case Study Approach

Over the years, value co-creation practices have become increasingly more important by supporting collaborative interactions and the achievement of sustainable and mutual competitive advantage between the ecosystem’ actors. In this direction, the oil and gas industry is proposing a sustainable re-use of offshore platforms based on value co-creation and resources exchange between the actors involved. According to this consideration, this work aims at re-reading the decommissioning of offshore platforms in the light of value co-creation practices, trying to capture the factors that governments and companies can leverage to pursue a sustainable development of local communities. To reach this goal, this work follows an exploratory approach by using, in particular, the case study. Specifically, one of the most notably projects in the Italian context have been chosen, the Paguro platform, in order to provide empirical insights into the nature of these value co-creation processes. Five value co-creation practices have been identified which highlight the importance of synergistic efforts of institutions, companies and technology-based platforms for improving the ability to co-create and capture value in the process of decommissioning. This exploratory work establishes a foundation for future research, and offers theoretical and managerial guidance in this increasingly important area.

Collaborative Robot Risk of Passage Among Dynamic Obstacles

Industry 4.0 projects ubiquitous collaborative robots in smart factories of the future, particularly in assembly and material handling. To ensure efficient and safe human-robot collaborative interactions, this paper presents a novel algorithm for estimating Risk of Passage (ROP) a robot incurs by passing between dynamic obstacles (humans, moving equipment, etc.). This paper posits that robot trajectory durations will be shorter and safer if the robot can react proactively to predicted collision between a robot and human worker before it occurs, compared to reacting when it is imminent. I.e., if the risk that obstacles may prohibit robot passage at a future time in the robot’s trajectory is greater than a user defined risk limit, then an Obstacle Pair Volume (OPV), encompassing the obstacles at that time, is added to the planning scene. Results found from simulation show that an ROP algorithm can be trained in ∼120 workcell cycles. Further, it is demonstrated that when a trained ROP algorithm introduces an OPV, trajectory durations are shorter compared to those avoiding obstacles without the introduction of an OPV. The use of ROP estimation with addition of OPV allows workcells to operate proactively smoother with shorter cycle times in the presence of unforeseen obstacles.

Authority (I): A Promise Theoretic Formalization

Authority is a central concept in social systems, but it has a variety of meanings. Promise Theory offers a simple formalized understanding of authority, and its origins, as polarization within a network of collaborative interactions. This idealized approximation stands in contrast to the usual deontic view of authority in socio-philosophical literature, and unifies the various interpretations with a single idea. It's shown that the elementary meanings of authority can all be understood as a promise, analogous to that of a `compass direction' within some decision space, with which agents may choose to align voluntarily. Authority is therefore separated from the embodiment by any particular agency or kind of agent, and is closely related to the concept of leadership in management science. Agents may try to impose authoritative directives onto subordinates, but imposition will generally be ineffective, due to their autonomy or causal independence. Stable configurations may be formed from resonant interactions that employ both semantics and dynamics to bind agents. This simple-minded formalization serves as an foundation for later study about the dynamics of authority and derived `power'.