Teaching Digitally-Ready Soft Skills for Employability

The coronavirus pandemic triggered an abrupt change to emergency e-teaching and has accelerated the adoption of digital teaching practices in higher education. This transition from in-person instruction to online-only teaching took place globally and disrupted the conventional lecture format. While the catalyst, namely COVID, was the same throughout the world, a growing body of research confirms that instructors across the educational spectrum are experimenting with, and implementing, a plethora of methodologies based on their digital abilities and experiences. This paper will critically analyse several online-based methodologies and digital tools developed and introduced at the University of Europe for Applied Sciences within an undergraduate module called Employability. The authors will use the six areas of the European Commission’s DigCompEdu framework as a reference to analyse and summarise digital tool implementations and enhance students' digital collaboration skills, online experience, and learning outcomes. The methodological focus is on teaching soft digital skills for employability, namely, digital communication, problem-solving, collaboration skills, as well as, digital content creation and media literacy in tandem with the main content of the course. Possible issues when teaching the Employability module in post-COVID offline or hybrid classrooms will be discussed, particularly with regards to ensuring that teaching formats are fit-for-purpose in increasingly digital, and remote, work environments.

Does large-scale digital collaboration contribute to crisis management? An analysis of projects from the #WirVsVirus hackathon implemented in Germany during the COVID-19 pandemic (online first)

In recent years, collaborative approaches to crisis management involving citizens have gained increasing attention. One example is the #WirVsVirus hackathon, which was conducted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and had over 28,000 participants. Because research on large-scale, digital collaboration in crisis situations is scarce, consequences of their use in crisis management remain unclear. This article relies on the open governance paradigm as a lens for studying two projects emerging from the hackathon. Based on nine qualitative expert interviews, we ask how digital open governance affects governance capacity and legitimacy in crisis management. Our findings suggest that digital open governance can contribute to governance capacity and legitimacy, as it mobilises large, diverse groups of citizens to quickly develop citizen-centric, ready-to-use solutions for crisis-related problems. However, we also identified potential problems, including risks regarding legitimacy and accountability, difficulties with scalable solutions, and questionable long-term impacts.

Building Digital Bridges: Improving Digital Collaboration through the Principles of Hyperlinked Practice

<p>Effective collaboration requires access to timely and relevant information, but this is difficult given the complexity of the architectural design process and the segmentation of the architecture, engineering and construction industry. Effective collaboration is further complicated by the quantity and density of the digital information generated within a project, and the irregular adoption of technology by different team members. Consolidating project information within Building Information Models has improved its management, but the technology’s complexity limits who can contribute to it. This is a problem, because team members are capable of collaborating more effectively when they can record and reflect upon a comprehensive record of the project’s design process. The aim of research was to identify how information technology can assist architectural project teams to collaborate by more inclusively and comprehensively recording and reflecting upon the design process. To address this problem, this research proposes that the industry adopt Hyperlinked Practice, which is the creation of a distributed cloud of interconnected information describing an architectural project’s events, activities and digital artefacts. A set of fundamental principles were identified that would be used to guide the design and deployment of digital collaboration tools capable of facilitating Hyperlinked Practice. To ensure a flexible and inclusive environment, the principles were derived from concepts proven within the World Wide Web. To validate these principles, their collaboration influence, potential, and industry applicability was tested within a software prototype utilised in a university architecture course and two thought experiments. The results from testing the software prototype suggest that the principles are capable of influencing collaboration in a manner that promotes the recording of the design process, and reflection upon it. The thought experiments demonstrated that the principles provided an excellent framework for evaluating a digital collaboration tool’s ability to facilitate Hyperlinked Practice. Based on these results, the research concluded the identified principles of Hyperlinked Practice were capable of facilitating a collaboration environment that would allow the design process to be comprehensively recorded and reflected upon.</p>

Building Digital Bridges: Improving Digital Collaboration through the Principles of Hyperlinked Practice

<p>Effective collaboration requires access to timely and relevant information, but this is difficult given the complexity of the architectural design process and the segmentation of the architecture, engineering and construction industry. Effective collaboration is further complicated by the quantity and density of the digital information generated within a project, and the irregular adoption of technology by different team members. Consolidating project information within Building Information Models has improved its management, but the technology’s complexity limits who can contribute to it. This is a problem, because team members are capable of collaborating more effectively when they can record and reflect upon a comprehensive record of the project’s design process. The aim of research was to identify how information technology can assist architectural project teams to collaborate by more inclusively and comprehensively recording and reflecting upon the design process. To address this problem, this research proposes that the industry adopt Hyperlinked Practice, which is the creation of a distributed cloud of interconnected information describing an architectural project’s events, activities and digital artefacts. A set of fundamental principles were identified that would be used to guide the design and deployment of digital collaboration tools capable of facilitating Hyperlinked Practice. To ensure a flexible and inclusive environment, the principles were derived from concepts proven within the World Wide Web. To validate these principles, their collaboration influence, potential, and industry applicability was tested within a software prototype utilised in a university architecture course and two thought experiments. The results from testing the software prototype suggest that the principles are capable of influencing collaboration in a manner that promotes the recording of the design process, and reflection upon it. The thought experiments demonstrated that the principles provided an excellent framework for evaluating a digital collaboration tool’s ability to facilitate Hyperlinked Practice. Based on these results, the research concluded the identified principles of Hyperlinked Practice were capable of facilitating a collaboration environment that would allow the design process to be comprehensively recorded and reflected upon.</p>

THE IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON ECONOMY, EMPLOYMENT AND NEW SKILLS

This paper discusses the economic features of the current Covid-19 outbreak and its relation to labour markets and new skills in demand. At the same time, it focuses on how it started to expand worldwide, while reporting the ways of transmission and their effects on daily social and professional life. It is argued that focusing on skills and human capital could offer a strong foundation for building sustainable economies, as the recent months have been a suitable period to progress and advance digital skills, thus reducing digital illiteracy, while at the same time developing certain major sectors such as online education, ecommerce, telemedicine, entertainment, digital collaboration tools, virtual reality applications, etc. The author mainly focuses on the analysis of the recent global trends in many affected sectors, examines possible unemployment issues with an emphasis on the kind of new skills and soft skills in demand that are necessary for an easier transition to the new Covid-19 way of life.

This is how we learn A Best Practice Case of Qualification in SMEs for Work 4.0 - A Best Practice Case of Qualification in SMEs for Work 4.0

Digitalization is forcing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to rethink their work and production processes. Initiated by this process, the organization of production and employees are subject to change. As a result, the job profiles of employees are changing and expanding, as well as the way how knowledge is imparted. Innovative and digitized formats should be integrated into existing training programs and presented in a way that is suitable for use on mobile de-vices. Therefore, suitable and target group-specific teaching/learning formats are needed that support participative methods and digital collaboration. For this purpose, a digital teaching and learning format for the application area of automotive engineering in SMEs was designed. This prototypical teach-ing/learning format was created and evaluated in an iterative process through the participation of the potential users and taking into account existing usability criteria. The two methods used to evaluate the format were Think-Aloud and focus group, the results of this evaluations are presented in this paper. The results show that when evaluating the teaching/learning format, the test subjects mainly refer to the usability criteria of DIN ISO 9241-110, the structure of the course and the information content of the course. Recommendations for the creation of future digital teaching and learning formats for SMEs are derived from these findings.

Pengaruh Digital Leadership dan Digital Collaboration terhadap Digital Skill Semasa COVID-19

<p>Ketidaksetaraan dalam hal <em>digital skill</em> menjadi tantangan tersendiri yang dihadapi organisasi baik perusahaan maupun pemerintahan untuk menjamin produktivitas dan efektivitas dalam <em>work from home</em> semasa Covid-19. Pengembangan <em>digital skill</em> menjadi faktor penting yang coba dibahas pada artikel ini. Apakah <em>digital skill</em> dari pegawai yang melakukan WFH itu lebih dipengaruhi oleh <em>digital leadership</em> dari supervisornya ataukah oleh <em>digital collaboration</em> yang mereka lakukan dalam tim kerja? Riset empiris yang bersifat <em>cross sectional</em> dan melibatkan 824 pekerja kantoran 32 propinsi di Indonesia sebagai responden. Pengumpulan data mengunakan <em>online-questionnaire</em> dengan pendekatan <em>convenience</em> dan <em>snowballing</em> sebagai <em>sampling method</em>. Data yang diperoleh dianalisis menggunakan <em>structural equation modelling</em> yang berbasis <em>partial least square</em> dalam format <em>first order constructs</em>. Hasil pengujian hipotesis secara statistik menjelaskan bahwa <em>digital skill</em> dipengaruhi secara signifikan oleh <em>digital collaboration</em> dan <em>digital collaboration</em> dipengaruhi oleh <em>digital leadership</em>. <em>Digital leadership</em> berpengaruh tidak langsung terhadap <em>digital skill</em>. Kepemimpinan supervisor selama melewati masa COVID-19 sebaiknya lebih diarahkan untuk mendorong berkembanganya <em>digital collaboration</em> sehingga melalui hal tersebut berkembanglah <em>digital skill</em>.</p>

Lessons from failure: neurosurgical outreach in Managua, Nicaragua

With respect to the tremendous deficit in surgical care plaguing developing nations, it is critical that medical outreach models be organized in such a fashion that sustainable advancements can be durably imparted beyond the duration of targeted missions. Using a didactic framework focused on empowering host neurosurgeons with an enhanced surgical skillset, a mission was launched in Managua, Nicaragua, after previous success in Kiev, Ukraine, and Lima, Peru. Unfortunately, the failure to critically assess the internal and external state of affairs of the region’s medical center compromised the outreach mission. Herein lies the visiting team’s lessons from failure and insights on facilitating effective communication with host institutions, circumventing geopolitical instability, and utilizing digital collaboration and video-conferencing tools in the post-COVID-19 era to advance the surgical care of developing regions in a fashion that can be generationally felt.

Students’ Perceptions Concerning Emergency Remote Teaching During COVID-19

The sudden shift from physical classroom education towards emergency remote teaching (ERT) in higher education during the unprecedented global pandemic SARS-CoV-2, or more commonly known as COVID-19, caused an abrupt change in the learning environment for students and educators alike. The disruptive overnight change to convert entire courses to emergency remote teaching caused distress for not only educators, but also students as they had little time to adapt to the new circumstances. While the embedment of technologies in the classroom is not a new concept, this quantitative research examined the impact on perceived student engagement as a result of the sudden change, and how students in higher education in Finland (n = 121) and Thailand (n = 137) responded to this change. One of the primary findings of the research was that students in Thailand indicated difficulties completing group assignments digitally, while, contrary to that finding, students in Finland consented to ease in digital collaboration concerning their group works. As a logical next step, it is recommended to conduct qualitative research to gain a more comprehensive insight into how the views on this particular statement differed significantly between both focus groups of students.