Collaborative Maintenance Research Articles

Non‐formal learning and interprofessional collaboration in health and social care: the influence of the quality of staff interaction on student learning about collaborative behaviour in practice placements

AbstractThis paper reports findings from a qualitative study exploring pre‐qualifying health and social care students’ experiences of interprofessional learning and working in practice placement settings. The author argues that processes of non‐formal learning and unconscious role modelling in these environments are key to students’ developing collaborative skills. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with a quota sample of 52 students from 10 health and social care professions. Data were analysed thematically. The nature of interprofessional collaboration varied across different settings, with students encountering a more disparate range of professions and agencies in community and social work settings than in acute healthcare settings. Most students appeared to have been exposed to examples of both effective and poor collaborative working. Although many students characterized interprofessional collaboration in placement settings as ‘good’, this assessment often conflicted with their description of behaviour that could be considered to constitute suboptimal collaborative practice. Students perceived the quality of interprofessional interaction to depend mainly on interpersonal communication, showing little awareness of how organizational systems influence collaboration. The findings show that some staff in placement settings experienced problems when working with colleagues from other disciplines, and indicate that consequently, through processes of non‐formal learning and unconscious role modelling, some students may have learned inappropriate behaviours with regard to interprofessional working. Although students were not necessarily expected to appreciate the importance of appropriate organizational systems for the establishment and maintenance of effective interprofessional collaboration, it appeared that staff members might also not be aware of these issues. The author argues that staff in placement settings need to understand and model the relevant capacities in order to provide students with appropriate learning opportunities in this regard. It appears that qualified staff need support to develop their own collaborative practice, so that they are able effectively to support students’ interprofessional learning and working in practice.

Farmers’ knowledge of crop diseases and control strategies in the Regional State of Tigrai, northern Ethiopia: implications for farmer–researcher collaboration in disease management

Differences in perceptions and knowledge of crop diseases constitute a major obstacle in farmer–researcher cooperation, which is necessary for sustainable disease management. Farmers’ perceptions and management of crop diseases in the northern Ethiopian Regional State of Tigrai were investigated in order to harness their knowledge in the participatory development of integrated disease management (IDM) strategies. Knowledge of disease etiology and epidemiology, cultivar resistance, and reasons for the cultivation of susceptible cultivars were investigated in a total of 12 tabias (towns) in ten weredas (districts). Perception of diseases involved both scientific and spiritual conceptual frameworks. Of the more than 30 crop diseases recorded on the major crops in the region, only rusts and powdery mildews (locally called humodia) and a few root rots were considered by farmers to be important. Farmers’ awareness of other diseases was extremely low; some highly damaging but less conspicuous diseases, such as faba bean chocolate spot and chickpea ascochyta blight (also called humodia), were not regarded by farmers as disease but as problems caused primarily by excessive soil moisture. Considering that some of these “unrecognized” diseases can cause complete yield loss and genetic erosion in epiphytotic years, there is an urgent need for bringing together farmers’ and scientists’ knowledge to complement each other. Even when farmers had access to disease-resistant or disease-tolerant cultivars, they grew susceptible local varieties because of multiple criteria including earliness, good yield in years with low humodia severity, suitability for home consumption, market demand/quality, and low soil fertility and land management requirements. Farmer innovation and knowledge were evident in their use of diverse disease control measures, but these were a mixture of the “useful and the useless.” Our findings stress the necessity for extension workers and researchers to understand and improve farmers’ knowledge of crop diseases, and farmers’ ability to observe and experiment, through the Farmer Field School or a similar experiential learning approach. These insights about farmers’ knowledge of crop diseases provide a basis for further collaborative maintenance of crop genetic diversity, development of germplasm, and IPM-related research in Africa.

Developing and Enhancing International Collaborative Learning

This paper is concerned with the role of international collaboration in the learning and teaching of geography in higher education. The dual aims are to provide a brief and selective review of the nature and range of international collaboration and to contextualize such observations within the internationalization project. It is argued that despite the growing interest and literature concerned with the internationalization of higher education, discipline-specific illustrations of pedagogy and practice require further attention. Several forms of collaboration in the geography arena are introduced and the factors influencing the establishment, maintenance and enhancement of international collaboration are discussed.

IPrice: a collaborative pricing system for e-service bundle delivery

Information goods pricing is an essential and emerging topic in the era of information economy. Several researchers have devoted considerable attention to developing and testing methods of information goods pricing. Nevertheless, in addition, there are still certain shortcomings and challenges to be overcome. This study encompasses several unexplored concepts that have attracted research attention in other disciplines lately, such as collaborative prototyping, prospect theory, ERG theory, and maintenance from design, economic, psychological, and software engineering, respectively. Compared to other methods, our pricing model not only provides the feasibility but the applicability for information goods.

5301 ポータルコラボレーション型O&Mサポートシステムの研究(第1報) : 3-D表示遠隔監視システムと連携したドキュメント管理システム(OS5 人と生産システム)

5301 ポータルコラボレーション型O&Mサポートシステムの研究(第1報) : 3-D表示遠隔監視システムと連携したドキュメント管理システム(OS5 人と生産システム)

DEVELOPING OF AN INTELLIGENT ENTERPRISE STAFF ELECTRONIC LEARNING COMPONENT

To permanently improve performance of a distributed enterprise, the principles of development of an intelligent and collaborative maintenance for the future generations of manufacturing or service processing systems by both involving the staff of given enterprise and integrating an intelligent electronic learning component of the staff within a product and process life cycle are given. For an adaptive collaboration with the learning employee, architecture of the learning component is proposed to be based on integration in a virtual learning environment of both the Self-Organizing Map type neural network and the Advice and Staff Knowledge Assessment Agents.

E-MAINTENANCE IN SUPPORT OF E-AUTOMATED MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS

ABSTRACT Eliminating costly unscheduled shutdown maintenances and accordingly reducing the failures of production systems as a whole help deliver the promises on ordered products. In the exploration of more efficient maintenance and service strategies, the approaches of condition-based proactive maintenance, collaborative maintenance, remote maintenance and service support, provision for real-time information access, and integration of production with maintenance have evolved into a new phenomenon called e-maintenance to meet the needs of the future e-automation manufacturing world. This paper introduces the emerging field of e-maintenance by studying its critical elements in support of the deployment of next generation manufacturing systems; we focus on industrial wireless technology and artificial intelligence, which are two essential technological means in the realization of scalable and agile e-maintenance. The technical issues and challenges involved for applying these technologies in an e-maintenance platform are explained. Finally, a framework for practical implementations is briefly presented.

A collaborative system for sharing paleontology collections data

Museum collections provide primary data for paleontologists, and recent advances in information technology have revolutionized how museums collect and share this information. However, many natural history museums have huge collections and small budgets, so museum scientists are challenged to keep these critical data current and available to the public. We suggest that establishing an open collaboration through the Internet is one possible solution to this challenge. To achieve this solution, we have implemented a Web-based collections catalog to encourage collaborative maintenance of collections data as a shared resource. Anyone can search the catalog via a simple interface designed for any standard Web browser, and Web users can also be authorized to add information or update records as stratigraphic and taxonomic concepts change. The goal is to establish two-way communication between our catalog and the scientific community wherein the museum shares its collections and related data, and in return the community contributes new data acquired through use of the collections. The catalog also provides a basic function for building links with online publications and other data sources. As data exchange standards become accepted, these links can be used to create metadatabases that could lead to global networks of collections, taxonomic, stratigraphic, and bibliographic information. By providing an efficient mechanism to locate and synthesize large volumes of disparate information, such loosely integrated systems have resulted in rapid progress in disciplines of the life

Remote sensing, diagnosis and collaborative maintenance with Web-enabled virtual instruments and mini-servers

Optimised maintenance can reduce operating costs by demanding less resources and avoiding equipment breakdown, hence ensuring that daily manufacturing and production will not be interrupted. Web-based maintenance is one of the most efficient methods for optimising maintenance. The Web-based maintenance system that we have developed uses virtual instru- ments, to provide remote sensing, monitoring, and on-line fault diagnosis for equipment, together with a collaborative mainte- nance platform for international experts to interactively share their experiences in maintenance. Moreover, Web-based main- tenance is suitable for multi-tasking and multi-user types of in- dustrial work environments. In this paper, we summarise the methods used for Web-based remote sensing and monitoring, the design and implementation of Web-enabled virtual instru- ments, the architecture of the collaborative maintenance plat- form, and the design for the mini-servers. Each mini-server is equipped with a conventional mini-Web-server and a data acqui- sition (DAQ) server. With the help of Web-based maintenance, local companies can be transformed into global companies pro- viding services to their customers anywhere and at anytime.

Building man–man–machine synergies: Experiences from the Vanderbilt and Geneva clinical information systems

Objectives: To demonstrate how a transition to an open hospital information system architecture can help foster stronger collaborations between computer-based clinical tools and the network of care process stakeholders. Methods: Description of two evolution strategies towards an open, component-based architecture: the vertical decomposition of a monolithic system, and the transversal integration of foundation components such as terminology servers, documentation management, prescription, scheduling, workflow and notification engines. Conclusion: The progressive migration of production clinical systems towards a component-based architecture is feasible at a reasonable cost and leads to substantial benefits in terms of user acceptance through participative design and collaborative maintenance of knowledge bases, as well as improved ability to evolve, scale and share individual components. A taxonomy of the components of a health information system and their interactions should be developed to realize the collaborative potential of a marketplace of interoperable components.

Distributing Case‐Base Maintenance: The Collaborative Maintenance Approach

Case‐base maintenance is an important emerging issue for case‐base reasoners as they scale up to handle real‐world problems in unstable environments. Over time, the contents of a case base may become out of date or inconsistent with the target problem space, and maintenance strategies must be devised to help recognize and repair these problems by deleting, adding, or modifying cases, for example. In this article we describe a maintenance framework called collaborative maintenance (CM), which has been designed to facilitate, monitor, and control the incremental update of live, dynamic case bases. Our approach is novel in that it automatically supports a distributed, interactive maintenance process—users are permitted to recommend case updates, and the collaborative maintenance process ensures that these recommendations are properly reviewed and actioned.

1A1-B2 複数の遠隔操作ロボットにおける作業実現 : オペレータ負担軽減のための自動化(41. 作業移動ロボット)

1A1-B2 複数の遠隔操作ロボットにおける作業実現 : オペレータ負担軽減のための自動化(41. 作業移動ロボット)

CITYWORK: Application of Collaborative Technologies for Infrastructure Management

This paper describes a collaborative maintenance management application called CITYWORK being developed for the Public Works Department at the Fort Gordon Army Installation in Augusta, Ga. The work described in this paper is being carried out in the context of project “CITY” (Civil Infostructure TechnologY—National Science Foundation Grant No. ECS94-22730) to support the sustainable management of civil infrastructure. Infrastructure management requires the coordination of a variety of efforts and integration of information across a range of facilities. CITYWORK addresses coordination, collaboration, and integration in the maintenance management process in a context of sound organizational behavior. The project involves an interdisciplinary team including engineers and social scientists from the IMPACT laboratory at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and U.S. Army Construction Engineering Research Laboratories, Champaign, Ill. CITYWORK supports t...

Conducting Trials in Community Setting: The Provider Perspective

Providers and their treatment programs are the focus of efforts to translate research into practice. In the best of partnerships, they are more than the recipients of research efforts, because they are actively involved in developing and evaluating healthy links between practice and research. This article reports on experiences in a multisite methamphetamine treatment trial funded in October of 1998 by the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment. The goal of the trial is to generate knowledge about how a comprehensive treatment protocol developed by the Matrix Center in Los Angeles can be effectively transferred to the community drug treatment system. The Matrix model provides a three-times-per-week outpatient treatment experience that combines behavioral, educational, and 12-Step counsseling techniques. When complete, the study will compare outcomes of the 16-week Matrix program with the usual treatment offered by the programs at the eight participating sites. The UCLA Drug Abuse Research Center and the Matrix Institute on Addictions coordinate the trial. This article describes factors that have fostered or hindered the development of this partnership. These factors can be divided into three temporal phases. although the circumstances presented may occur at any time during the research process. The first set of factors affecting the development of a healthy research-to-practice relationship exists prior to the establishment of that relationship. Asecond set of circumstances occurs at the initiation of the collaborative enterprise, and the third set of factors is more involved in the development and maintenance of ongoing productive collaboration between researchers and providers.

Researching and developing virtual Scotland – a perspective from the Centre for Digital Library Research

Scotland, with its Parliament recently re‐established after 300 years, is likely to see the development of a networked service to make electronic information, learning and research materials readily available to all of its citizens as a key aim in the early part of the twenty‐first century. The newly‐created Centre for Digital Library Research (http://bubl.ac.uk/cdlr) at Strathclyde University (http://www.strath.ac.uk/) in Glasgow aims to be a significant player in the process of making the vision a reality, whilst also contributing to international research efforts in the area. Bringing the networked service of the future into being requires collaborative research and development effort in a range of areas – from identifying and documenting current problems and establishing future requirements, to work on major elements of the problem such as user needs and user interfaces, collaborative collection development, content creation and maintenance, interoperability problems, navigation and integration issues, access control, metadata, and standards and policy frameworks. The Centre is already working with stakeholder institutions, organisations and individuals across the country on a number of relevant projects and initiatives that will contribute to understanding and develop expertise in these areas. Many of them have a practical focus that will help to partially implement the kind of environment envisaged. Examples are GDL (the Glasgow Digital Library project ), CVU (Clyde Virtual University project) (http://cvu.strath.ac. uk/), CAIRNS (Co‐operative Academic Information Retrieval Network for Scotland) (http://cairns.lib.gla.ac.uk/), SCONE (Scottish Collections Network Extension project) and DIO (Digital Information Office project).

"Out-of-the-mainstream" youth as partners in collaborative research: exploring the benefits and challenges.

Forming collaborations between university-based researchers and community-based organizations (CBOs) serves to improve health promotion research and service. Unfortunately, members of the targeted populations are typically not included in such collaborations. This article describes the development and maintenance of a successful university-CBO collaboration that was formed to explore HIV-related risk rates and prevention strategies for suburban street youth and discusses the benefits and challenges of including out-of-the-mainstream youth as full collaborative partners in the research. Specific benefits included population-specific modifications of the research methods and instruments, recruitment of hard-to-reach youth, greater ease in tracking participants, and increased project acceptability and credibility. Among the challenges were issues related to boundaries, confidentiality, commitment, and burnout. Although such collaborations require increased time and commitment, the synergistic knowledge and experience of university researchers, community-based service providers, and out-of-the-mainstream youth can result in the development of unique and informative research and service programs.

Conducting in-depth accident studies

In 1983 the Accident Research Unit at the Institute for Consumer Ergonomics began a major study, sponsored by the UK Department of Transport and three motor companies, to investigate the causes of injury to occupants in car accidents. This study has been under way for nearly ten years and the database of information is one of the most comprehensive of its kind in the world. This information plays a key role in establishing the priorities for safety research in the UK, based on real life accident data. This paper is concerned with the practical aspects of the collection and analysis of real life accident data. Issues include the establishment and maintenance of collaboration with police forces, hospital consultants and coroners; recruitment and training of staff; accident sampling; data quality control and large scale project management. The case is also made for the need to establish a coordinated European database of accident information to facilitate the development of appropriate safety requirements and to set priorities for safety research in Europe.