Context-Aware End-User Development Review

Context-aware application development frameworks enable context management and environment adaptation to automatize people’s activities. New technologies such as 5G and the Internet of Things (IoT) increase environment context (from devices/services), making functionalities available to augment context-aware applications. The result is an increased deployment of context-aware applications to support end-users in everyday activities. However, developing applications in context-aware frameworks involve diverse technologies, so that it traditionally involves software experts. In general, context-aware applications are limited in terms of personalization for end-users. They include configurations to personalize applications, but non-software experts can only change some of these configurations. Nowadays, advances in human–computer interaction provide techniques/metaphors to approach non-software experts. One approach is end-user development (EUD)—a set of activities and development tools that considers non-software experts as application builders. In this paper, we present our analysis of existing EUD approaches for building context-aware applications. We present a literature review of 37 screened papers obtained from research databases. This review aims to identify the methods, techniques, and tools proposed to build context-aware applications. Specifically, we reviewed EUD building techniques and implementations. Building techniques include metaphors/interaction styles proposed for application specification, composition, and testing. The implementations include a specification method to integrate and process context on the target application platforms. We also present the adoption trend and challenges of context-aware end-user development.

Temporary Cable Force Monitoring Techniques During Bridge Construction-phase. The Tajo River Viaduct Experience

This article addresses the comparative analysis of current techniques for monitoring cable forces. Additionally, the experience of three cable force different monitoring techniques for strain control in bridge cables during the construction phase is included: a) installing load cells on the active anchorages of the cables, b) installing unidirectional strain gauges, and c) assessing the stress on cables by applying the vibrating wire technique through the installation of accelerometers. The main advantages and disadvantages of each technique analyzed are highlighted in the construction process context of the Tajo Viaduct, one of the most singular viaducts recently built in Spain.

Are Neighbors and Neighborhoods Still Important? Examining the Impact of Neighbors and Neighborhood Environments on Mothers’ Parenting Stress

The contemporary neighborhood literature discusses the complex relationships among neighborhood environments, social support, and parenting. Grounded in the Person-Process-Context-Time (PPCT) model, we examined how different sources of social support interact with Korean mothers’ perception of disorder in their neighborhoods, and if social support increases or decreases their parenting stress in rural and metropolitan areas. Using STATA 14.0, we conducted multiple regression modeling including tests for interaction effects. Our sample (from the 8th Wave PSKC) included 1,300 mothers of seven-year-old children who were transitioning to first grade. The results showed that for metropolitan mothers, support from neighbors was important. Interestingly, receiving social support from friends/colleagues could increase or reduce their parenting stress depending on the type of residential neighborhood. Both rural and metropolitan mothers who reported negative impressions of their neighborhood environment experienced more parenting stress. However, these relationships disappeared when controlling for the interactions between mothers’ perception of disorder in their neighborhood and social support. These findings suggest that the social support that mothers receive from neighbors, and friends/colleagues, in general, play an important role in relieving parenting stress when raising first graders. However, living in disorganized, unsafe, or stressful neighborhood environments may restrict mothers’ parenting choices due to anxiety and limited outdoor space, resulting in increased parenting stress. Therefore, careful consideration of neighborhood characteristics is required to develop community-based parenting support services as part of family-friendly policies to effectively reduce the burden of parenting school-aged children in Korea.

Teaching Reading Skills in “Surround Sound”

Considering that Japanese university reading classes are upwards of 100 minutes, EFL teachers need to be equipped with a variety of “active learning” methods to keep their students engaged and focused on specific reading skills, content comprehension, and vocabulary development. However, some Japanese students might be more familiar with a top-down, passive learning approach. Using the principles of Auster and Wylie’s (2006) four dimensions of the teaching process (context setting, class preparation, class delivery, and continuous improvement), surround-sound pedagogy (SSP) was designed by the author to increase student engagement and motivation in university-level EFL reading classes by stimulating active learning. This paper provides specific strategies on how to support student vocabulary and content comprehension/ retention, confidence when reading aloud, and accuracy in pronunciation/connected speech. 日本の大学ではリーディングの授業が100分以上に及ぶことから、EFLの教師は、生徒の読む力や理解力、語彙力の向上に向けて、様々な「アクティブラーニング」の手法を身につける必要がある。しかし、日本の学生の中にはトップダウンの受動的な学習方法に慣れている学生も存在する。Auster and Wylie（2006）のティーチングプロセスの4次元の原則（文脈設定、授業準備、授業実施、継続的改善）を用い、著者はサラウンドサウンド教育法（SSP）を考案した。これは能動的学習を促すことで、大学レベルのEFLリーディングの授業における学生の取り組み方とやる気を向上させるものである。本稿では、学生の語彙や内容の理解・保持、音読時の自信、発音・連結音声の正確さをサポートする方法について、具体的な戦略を示している。

Bridging the gender digital divide: an analysis of existing guidance for gender digital inclusion programmes’ evaluations

Purpose This aim of this paper is to examine the existing gender digital inclusion evaluation guidance and proposes future research recommendations for their evaluation. Despite modern progress in towards gender equality and women’s empowerment movements, women’s access to, use of and benefits from digital technologies remain limited owing to economic, social and cultural obstacles. Addressing the existing gender digital divide is critical in the global efforts towards the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In recent years, there has been a global increase of gender digital inclusion programmes for girls and women; these programmes serve as a mechanism to learn about gender-specific digital needs and inform future digital inclusion efforts. Evaluation reports of gender digital inclusion programmes can produce critical insights into girls’ and women’s learning needs and aspirations, including what works and what does not when engaging girls and women in information and communications technologies. While there are many accounts highlighting the importance of why gender digital inclusion programmes are important, there is limited knowledge on how to evaluate their impact. Design/methodology/approach The thematic analysis suggests three points to consider for the gender digital inclusion programmes evaluation: context-specific understanding of gender digital inclusion programmes; transparency and accountability of the evaluation process and its results; and tensions between evaluation targets and empowerment of evaluation participants. Findings The thematic analysis suggests three points of future focus for this evaluation process: context-specific understanding of gender digital inclusion programmes; transparency and accountability of the evaluation process and its results; and tensions between evaluation targets and empowerment of evaluation participants. Originality/value The authors propose recommendations for gender digital inclusion evaluation practice and areas for future research.

The contingent nature of warehouse flexibility

PurposeIn a volatile marketplace, warehouse management is fundamentally contingent of changes in its supply network environment. Flexibility is therefore a key logistics issue in distribution centre management. This study probes into the nature of warehouse flexibility in a supply network through simulation.Design/methodology/approachBy using the FlexSim simulation tool the dynamic behaviour of the warehouse system are conceptualised, documented, simulated, analysed and evaluated.FindingsSimulation revealed that external changes affect daily processes and the reorganisation of warehouse processes. Given the extensity of resource use, simulation also revealed that process reorganisation should not be a daily undertaking. This is because warehouse processes react in unpredictable and different manners to even the smallest disturbance from the environment. This reaction is not necessarily negative impending more long-term change of warehouse processes.Originality/valueThe warehouse is a complex system that self-adapts with limited need to calculate new optimised warehouse processes to counter changes in its environment. Rather than following deterministic optimisation procedures, the development of flexible resources is a key issue in warehouse management. The applied simulation model is generic and therefore applicable in other distribution centres pointing to how to monitor warehouse processes to in a pre-emptively develop warehouse flexibility through change of process context.

PRACTICAL TRAINING OF FUTURE PSYCHOLOGISTS: HOW TO ENSURE THE ACQUISITION OF PROFESSIONAL COMPETENCES

The purpose of the article is to reveal the scientific and applied issues of organization and content of internship as components of the preparation of students of psychology for professional activities. In the article, internship represented as a component of the educational process, a practice-oriented element of acquiring professional competencies and as an environment for forming a value attitude to future professional activity. The main generalizations are made on the basis of the following methods: analysis of activity products (practice reports), observation of students᾿ work during the implementation of professional functions at the practice base, design of success factors and quality criteria of students᾿ acquisition of professional competencies, analysis of students᾿ inquiries on problematic issues of performance of tasks provided by the content of practice and professional self-determination in view of «immersion» in the profession. The obtained results showed: the content aspect of the internship program is determined by the need to objectify the knowledge component of student training in practical skills to solve problems of professional activity; the logic of stages in the construction of their activities during the testing of psychotechnologies of psychological care must be best consistent with the logic of working out the client᾿s problems and his request, the formulation of tasks allows them to perform at the individual-creative and personal-activity levels. The dependence of the content-process context of the tasks of internship and qualitative indicators of professional identification and adaptation of applicants to the new social role – psychologist is recognized. Among them: professionalization of thinking, personal and value attitude to professional activity, actualization of personal resources of mastering professional competencies, integration of personal and professional qualities, ability to self-reflection, motivation for self-development in the profession.

Testing Kumpfer’s Resilience Model Among Adults With Serious Mental Illness

Having a serious mental illness (SMI) is often associated with significant adversities, and people respond differently to adversities. The existing research supports that people with SMI can achieve and maintain positive life outcomes despite experiencing adversities. Resilience, the ability to cope with (or bounce back quickly from) crisis, can help buffer the negative effects of various types of adversities, including chronic illness and disability, and facilitate the psychosocial adaptation process to SMI. Kumpfer’s resilience model, a person-process-context framework, has been widely used to conceptualize, and assess for, resilience in various populations, including people with chronic illnesses and disabilities. However, the research in resilience among people with SMI is very limited. The purpose of this study was to empirically assess the utility of Kumpfer’s resilience model and its proposed predictive components for conceptualizing the adaptation process to SMI. One hundred forty-four participants completed a Qualtrics survey containing demographic questions and a series of validated instruments representing the major components of Kumpfer’s resilience model. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to analyze the data, and the final model explained 71% of the variance of the dependent variable—adaptation to disability. Avoidance coping, internalized stigma, and optimism were significant independent predictors of adaptation to disability. This study supports the utilization of Kumpfer’s resilience model to conceptualize the adaptation to disability process among people with SMI. Implications for rehabilitation counseling practices are discussed.

Research Ethics: A Perspective of South Asian Context

Research ethics is concerned with ethical issues that can arise while conducting research. Social science research entails a combination of three equal entities: process, context and human agency. In each study, these entities demand rich interaction with each other. Generally, research ethics questions the interrelation between the research context and the human involvement established within that context. The research context and interaction between researcher and research participants lead to variations in the construction of knowledge, while research ethics plays a major role throughout all undertakings. In this narrative review paper, I have critically reflected my arguments on behalf of research ethics as a context-specific issue. I argued that the one-size-fits-all approach of research ethics is not viable by presenting ethical practices from the South Asian perspective. The paper is organized in three specific sections – ethical theories, research ethics and its contextual practices. Research ethics is very much a private affair and directly linked to the personal outlook of the researcher towards others. The ethical issue in research is not generic, but specific to the research context, i.e. the context of the research determines what form of behaviour is ethical and what is not. I explore the idea that the South Asian context may have its own system to conduct research ethically, as in euro-western and indigenous systems.

Enabling situational awareness of business processes

PurposeThe purpose of this research is to explore the ways of integrating situational awareness into business process management for the purpose of realising hyper automated business processes. Such business processes will help improve their customer experiences, enhance the reliability of service delivery and lower the operational cost for a more competitive and sustainable business.Design/methodology/approachOntology has been deployed to establish the context modelling method, and the event handling mechanisms are developed on the basis of event calculus. An approach on performance of the proposed approach has been evaluation by checking the cost savings from the simulation of a large number of business processes.FindingsIn this research, the authors have formalised the context presentation for a business process with a focus on rules and entities to support context perception; proposed a system architecture to illustrate the structure and constitution of a supporting system for intelligent and situation aware business process management; developed real-time event elicitation and interpretation mechanisms to operationalise the perception of contextual dynamics and real-time responses; and evaluated the applicability of the proposed approaches and the performance improvement to business processes.Originality/valueThis paper presents a framework covering process context modelling, system architecture and real-time event handling mechanisms to support situational awareness of business processes. The reported research is based on our previous work on radio frequency identification-enabled applications and context-aware business process management with substantial extension to process context modelling and process simulation.