Creative Empowerment Research Articles

THE FUTURE OF 3D PRINTING IN MANUFACTURING (INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGY REVOLUTIONIZING MANUFACTURING PROCESSES AND PRODUCTS)

"Imagine a world where you can create anything you want just by pressing a button! That's the magic of 3D printing. In the future, this technology will change how we make things in big factories. Instead of traditional methods, like cutting and molding, 3D printers use special materials to build layer by layer. It's like building with Legos, but in real life! This cool technology lets us make custom toys, tools, and even houses. It's like having a superpower to create whatever we can imagine. Scientists are even exploring using 3D printing to make body parts and yummy food! With 3D printing, we can reduce waste and make things more efficiently. It's like a glimpse into the future where creativity knows no bounds. So, get ready to witness the amazing world of 3D printing!" KEYWORDS 3D Printing, Additive Manufacturing, Customization, Sustainability, Bioprinting, Material Innovation, Industry 4.0, Supply Chain, Prototyping, Regulatory Compliance, Automation, Innovative Design, Waste Reduction, Manufacturing Efficiency, Digital Fabrication, Creative Empowerment.

Future Professionals: Student Satisfaction with the General Medicine Degree Curriculum at University of Prishtina

Future Professionals: Student Satisfaction with the General Medicine Degree Curriculum at University of Prishtina

Weaving in the Threads

Weaving in the Threads

The Influence of Digital Marketing and Social Media on Product Creativity and Empowerment of Women's Culinary Group of Bojong Kulur Village, Bogor

This study investigated the impact of digital marketing and social media on the creativity of products and the empowerment of culinary groups of women in Bojong Kulur village, Bogor. It also aimed to identify the most important factor in increasing product creativity and culinary group empowerment. A total of 180 respondents were purposefully selected from April to August 2023. Purposive sampling was used to collect questionnaires from producers and consumers. Descriptive statistical analysis using SPSS version 22 was used to analyze the data.The research results showed that digital marketing and social media have a significant impact on creativity empowerment. The study found that the significance value (Sig) of digital marketing strategy (X1) on creativity empowerment (Y) is 0.000, which is less than the significance level of 0.05. This means that there is a statistically significant relationship between digital marketing strategy and creativity empowerment. The study also found that the significance value (Sig) of the effectiveness of using social media (X2) on creativity empowerment (Y) is 0.001, which is also less than the significance level of 0.05. This means that there is a statistically significant relationship between the effectiveness of using social media and creativity empowerment. Based on these findings, the study concluded that digital marketing and social media have a simultaneous effect on creativity empowerment. This means that both digital marketing and social media can independently and jointly influence creativity empowerment.

A game-based learning system based on octalysis gamification framework to promote employees’ Japanese learning

Using digital learning to assist in-service employees in promoting language skills has become an efficient way that can save training costs and profits. However, the employees’ language learning performance often is not as expected due to low learning motivation, willingness, and persistence. Therefore, this study developed a game-based Japanese learning system based on the Octalysis gamification framework proposed by Chou (2016) to facilitate enterprise employees’ learning effectiveness of Japanese as a second language (L2). All the eight core drives of the Octalysis gamification framework were adopted in the design of the learning functions and gamification mechanisms, including “epic meaning and calling,” “development and accomplishment,” “empowerment of creativity and feedback,” “ownership and possession,” “social influence and relatedness,” “scarcity and impatience,” “unpredictability and curiosity,” and “loss and avoidance.” This study used a true experimental design and recruited 54 Taiwanese employees from a Taiwan branch of an international Japanese business company to conduct a two-week experiment. The research participants were randomly assigned as the experimental and control groups respectively, using a Japanese learning system with or without a game-based design to support their Japanese learning. This study confirmed that the game-based Japanese learning system could significantly enhance the learners’ engagement in learning behaviors, learning performance, learning motivation, and immersion experience. In addition, for most learning functions designed by applying the core drives regarded as intrinsic motivators in the Octalysis gamification framework, the more frequently the learners used the functions, the better they performed in learning performance. Moreover, several learning functions designed by employing positive or negative motivators also had significant positive correlations between the number of use and learning performance. This study contributes to the digital game-based language learning field by applying the Octalysis gamification framework to design an effective game-based Japanese learning system for company employees and examine the correlations between the use of the learning functions and learning performance.

Family Welfare Empowerment (PKK) Role in Set Woman Cooperation to Support Economy Creative Empowerment Based on Community

The aim of research is to explore the perception of replacing the family welfare empowerment (Pemberdayaan Kesejahteraan Keluarga or PKK) to be a women’s cooperation based on community. The main activities in PKK focus on family health support such as vaccination for babies, saving turns (arisan) and any issues related to family care. The PKK has developed in the Indonesian community which changes the membership majority to women. The PKK is a unique organization, because it is not legalized but it is permitted by the government to be set among citizens. However, there is one of ten main PKK activities that develop cooperation. A cooperation can develop a member’s economy through a main business which is based on the member’s deals. It is important to have some grounding in what social capital is, and how online social capital is both similar and different from it. In both instances, social capital involves social networks, with online social capital having the added dimension of residing within the structural ecosystem of digital networks.

It’s a Matter of Trust: Ngāi Tahu Democratic Processes and Māori Pākehā Research Partnership

The Ngāi Tahu indigenous Māori community of Aotearoa/New Zealand successfully maintained 150 years of legal grievance against the British Crown following the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi and colonization. The importance of women leaders, the guiding role of elders, the long-term commitment to intergenerational health for all tribal members, the democratic processes in the current context for Ngāi Tahu iwi within Aotearoa and engagement with the legal system was crucial in building towards a post-conflict society. Alongside this there were and are creative empowerment processes that nourished cultural vitality. This paper shares a ‘conversational exchange’ about the processes that occurred after Treaty of Waitangi settlement was reached, as the tribe stepped into the challenge of navigating the complicated additional corporate, bureaucratic, governance, and legal structures. The eldest Māori woman from Ōtākou Marae, Te Waipounamu (South Island), describes her experience of listening to the old people, going to tribal hui (meetings) and creating support and services in the Māori community. Her words, presented in full, modelling innovative methodology that prioritises the role of transparent Southern Māori and Pākehā conversation in a post-settlement environment. The relationship of trust between the authors, representing two cultures with a history of colonization, grew over several decades of shared discussion, cultural supervision and listening. Our kōrero (conversation) begins with one question: What are the effects of democracy on sustainable culture and community?

Twenty Years Working with Neighbours. Citizen Participation, Is It Possible? What We Have Learned in 20 Years

In 1999, the Governing Council of the Universitat de Barcelona approved the creation of the POLIS Research Center. Later, in 2016, the Center was ratified after passing an assessment of the Catalan Accreditation Agency (AGAUR). The Centre has an interdisciplinary vocation and brings together researchers from different research groups at the University of Barcelona and cooperates with nine European and Ibero-American universities in the fields of Arts, Architecture and Human and Social Sciences. Academically, the Centre has promoted the doctoral program Public Space and Urban Regeneration (1998–2017) and the Master’s Degree in Urban Design: Art, City, Society (since 2007) and the publication of the journal On the w@terfront. The research object of the Centre is the city and its public space and, more specifically, the role of citizens in the production of Public Art and Urban Design. For this reason, the work of the Centre covers the topics related to Urban Regeneration, Sustainability, Urban Governance, Civic Remembrance, Heritage. Throughout its twenty-year history, the Centre has developed a series of projects for citizen participation in various areas of the periphery of Barcelona: River Besòs (municipality of Sant Adrià de Besòs) La Mina neighbourhood (municipality of Sant Adrià de Besòs) and the Barcelona’s neighbourhoods of Baró de Viver and Bon Pastor. A characteristic of the work of the centre has been, and is, the endorsement of citizen participation, through an innovative approach based on enabling the creative empowerment of the neighbours within the framework of Participatory Action Research. This approach is based on a project methodology, as it is understood in various project disciplines from Art to Architecture, from Design to Engineering. This article, associated with the itinerant exhibition “20 years working with neighbours,” reviews the founding project carried out by the Centre, “Social Uses of the River Besòs” (1997–1999), analysing the lessons learned, with the aim of clarifying the research criteria that the Centre follows for the development of citizen participation projects.

"Jantra" as Coastal Education Equipmment and Creative Empowerment of Fishers Children Indrama

MI Al-Ikhlas Eretan Wetan is a school located in Eretan Wetan Village, Kandanghaur Subdistrict, Indramayu District, West Java. The majority of students who attend school there are fishermen who have very little knowledge of fisheries. So that the impact on the low interest of children in the world of fisheries. This is evidenced by the survey results of students of the Department of PSP-IPB from 30 children interviewed 100% have not understood marine fisheries. This condition is very apprehensive considering the fishery sector is a major sector for Indonesia as a maritime country. One effort to foster interest and knowledge of marine fisheries to children is through Jantra Education. Jantra's education includes play activities while studying fisheries such as environmental education, marine education delivered through a Jantra game, as well as training of trainers to teachers, and advocacy to relevant institutions for sustainability and expansion of the program. The program's activities resulted in an innovative marine educational media and increased knowledge and interest in marine fisheries.

Empowerment of the Students Creativity Through Participatory Art Project in Surakarta

The general objective of the participatory art project creation is to provide inspiration and concrete solutions to the creativity problems of senior high school students in Surakarta. While specifically aims to: 1) create useful the art strategies to empower the students creativity, 2) realize the art project that favors the development of students creativity potential, 3) create many artwork that comes from the students socio-cultural context. The methods of participatory art creation were done by: 1) an intensive on-site art project that was on going at SMAN 5 Surakarta, SMA Murni and MA Al-Islam in Surakarta. Object observation included student activities in and outside of school, the learning atmosphere in the classroom, student work documents, and documents teacher (curriculum, syllabus, lesson plans, learning materials). 2) In-deep interviews; with the head master, teachers, and students. 3) The literature review; to examine the theory to reinforce the concepts as a foundation that provides clear direction and path in the process of creating art works for the purpose of creating some participatory artwork. 4) Workshop and experiments; provide workshops of art creation to the students and conduct experiments with materials, techniques and formats in order to achieve a shape that corresponds to the concept of creation. The results of this art project are: 1) the product of participatory art creation strategies that are able to empower the students creativity. 2) the realization of participatory art project moving in the area of art creativity empowerment of students in the school. 3) the creation of art works based on the socio-cultural context, namely: print making, comic strips, comic puppets, etching. Through the creation of a participatory art project has been a change as follows: 1) An increase in the students activity receiving learning material of art creation, especially of the creativity led to the idea in visual forms. 2) Participatory art project can be oriented to direct experience of completing a variety of problems from simple. 3) The students have a skills to creative thinking with a different perspective and can be flexibly applied to solve a of problems as well welcoming the opportunity.

Creative empowerment of body positivity in the cosplay community

In a case study about the cosplay community in relation to creative empowerment of identity and body positivity, I created a blog (http://cosplaycasestudy.tumblr.com/) and devised a survey that allowed cosplayers whom I met online and in person to discuss what cosplay meant to them as individuals. Using a combination of qualitative, arts-based research and journalism, I used online documentation to record the ways cosplayers see the community changing, noting themes such as body policing, social media, and sexual harassment.

Enhancement and Innovation in Higher Education in Nigeria through Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) and Entrepreneurship Education

It is well reported that one of the factors that plague higher education system in Nigeria is lack of intrigue to discover an innovative effort that should bear on research and development, thus the backwardness of Nigeria among the comity of highly developed nations globally. Widely reported also, is that effort to implicate innovative discoveries among students through research and development (R & D) is not given the desired attention in Nigerian higher institutions. With mind cast on a possible situation that the world economy could be submerged into catastrophic social vices, Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) with its entrepreneurship component, has been acclaimed a system that could circumvent the eventual odd. In this paper, need for creative empowerment through TVET and entrepreneurship education for creativity and innovation were considered; with emphasis on indicator factors to global economy. The paper concludes that to join in the bandwagon of improved economy, stakeholders in Nigerian education must not neglect TVET education.

Green IT empowerment, social capital, creativity and innovation: A case study of creative city, Bantul, Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Purpose: This study aims at analyzing the role of empowerment of Green IT in SMEs and social capital of the creativity and innovation of creative SMEs in Bantul, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Design/methodology/approach: A statistical technique used in the present study was Partial Least Square . The primary data of the present research were obtained from questionnaires and interviews with some respondents. While secondary data were gained through the records and publications of related instancies. Findings: The research concluded that the empowerment of Green IT provides a significant role in creativity and innovation as well as social capital, and at the same time it also supplies a significant role in innovation. Research limitations/implications: . This study is proposed to fill the research gap and at the same time to emphasize the importance of the creative empowerment of SMEs in Indonesia in adopting Green IT and that they are not only ready to make use of Green IT. Green IT empowerment and social capital in the creative SMEs play an important function ingenerating of creativity and innovation in the Yogyakarta’s creative SMEs. Creative industries which capitalize creative ideas and skills are expected to positively contribute to support the national economy. Practical implications: Creative SMEs grow and develop rapidly here and form clusters of creative industries in accordance with the resources of each cluster. Originality/value: This paper is a first attempt to overlook the significant role of green IT empowerment in SMEs’ rapid development in Yogyakarta, a growing province in economic sector in Indonesia. The result of the study is expected to lead other similar research which in the future will craft out the role of economic development and the use of environmental friendly material of production.

Transsexuality as a Window on and a Metaphor for Contemporary Iran

Transsexuality as a Window on and a Metaphor for Contemporary Iran

Fan fiction metadata creation and utilization within fan fiction archives: Three primary models

Issues related to searchability and ease of access have plagued fan fiction since its inception. This paper discusses the predominate forms of fan-mediated indexing and descriptive metadata, commonly referred to as folksonomy or tagging, and compares the benefits and disadvantages of each model. These models fall into three broad categories: free tagging, controlled vocabulary, and hybrid folksonomy. Each model has distinct advantages and shortcomings related to findability, results filtering, and creative empowerment. Examples for each are provided. Possible ramifications to fan fiction from improved metadata and access are also discussed.

Integrated construction supply chain design and delivery solutions

This study describes the development of a decision framework to support multi-disciplinary information and knowledge management model which focuses on integrated design and delivery solutions for all construction supply chain actors. The framework was developed within the context of two national information technology research projects in Australia. The first study used diffusion theory to explain the barriers and enablers to future adoption of advanced information technology solutions such as building information modelling (BIM). A grounded theory methodology was deployed and a pathways model for innovative information technology diffusion accommodating diverse patterns of adoption and different levels of expertize was developed. The second study built on the findings of the first study but specifically focussed on innovators, early and late adopters of BIM and the development of a decision framework towards advanced collaborative platform solutions. This study summarizes the empirical results of the previous studies. The core of the decision framework is the creation, use and ownership of building information sub-models and integrated models. The decision framework relies on holistic collaborative design management. Design expertise is diffused and can be found in various locations along the construction supply chain within project teams. A wide definition of design is considered from conceptual to developed to detailed design. The recent development to the decision model offers much potential as the early upstream decisions are often made in a creative, collaborative and uncertain environment. However, decision making needs to balance both a reductionist and exploratory creative empowerment approach. Shared team expertise and competency and team mental models are explored as a fundamental requirement to collaborative BIM. New skills in interdisciplinarity are discussed as an implication of future construction industry collaborative platforms.

Breaking the frame: cultural motivation in the production of an online artwork – the case of BoyBlack

This article explores the agency of independent cultural producers in new media spaces, though a specific case study: BoyBlack.co.za, an artwork created by two young South Africans in 2003. This site is self-described by its creators as a work of ‘freestyle pixel art’ that allows each viewer to create a ‘pseudo-unique experience’ through its various interactive elements. Based on interviews with the artists in 2007 and 2009, the article argues that artworks such as BoyBlack.co.za enact a form of resistance to an aesthetic and cultural hegemony – that of the global creative industries. The article is theoretically framed by sketching out the characteristics of both industrial and expressive cultural products. The former have been conceptualised largely in pessimistic terms as limiting agency and manipulating creative expression, while the latter offer the possibility for individual creative empowerment. It is argued that the artwork is an example of expressive cultural production and that it resists industrial cultural production through four strategies of ‘breaking the frame’. The first is the framework of the standardised web browser, which is challenged through the scale-free space of the artwork. The second is the metaphor of the mainframe and the mainframe itself, which are challenged through subject matter that explores human–computer interaction as well as one element of the artwork that has the potential to slow down a hard drive. The third is the frame of correct coding, which is resisted through an ethic of leaving coding mistakes in and considering them equally valid elements of the artwork. The fourth is the design framework of aliasing, which is undermined through a celebration of the materiality and aesthetic of the pixel. The article concludes by asserting the potential of expressive cultural products like BoyBlack.co.za to forge alternatives to the dominant consumerist aesthetic.

Digital Fair

The key element of Web 2.0 is what O’Reilly refers to as an ‘architecture of participation’. Taglines such as YouTube’s ‘broadcast yourself ’ and Lulu’s ‘publish your words, your art — for fun or profit’ point to the creative empowerment that has accompanied the mass adoption of digital technologies and the rise of Web 2.0 applications. Combined with the ‘rip, mix and burn’ nature of digital technologies, the Web has rapidly become a locus for user-created content, much of which copies, appropriates and mashes up copyrighted materials. The invitation to engage with the media-saturated environment has led to a proliferation of prosumerism through which many consumers have become producers of content. Appropriation and redeployment of copyrighted materials in the prosumption arena has drawn creators and right holders into conflict. Copyright owners seek to maintain control over information flows, whilst prosumers make (what they consider to be) fair uses of elements harvested from the media-saturated environment. This article is concerned with these tensions that — whilst not new — have been exacerbated by Web 2.0. Specifically, this article addresses the issue of fairness (in the context of the US fair use doctrine) in the digital age and questions whether powerful cultural forces require a reconfiguration of copyright law. Fairness is an elusive concept; in the realm of copyright, an act may simultaneously be decried as piracy and defended as a fair use. Web 2.0 has fostered a growing prosumer culture that freely appropriates from media sources to give effect to new works, and this article questions whether the customary practices of this emergent culture should impact upon the legal construction of fairness.

Poaching State Politics in Socialist China: Uxin Ju's Grassland Campaign, 1958–1966

This study explores the local experience of a state‐initiated campaign to improve the grassland in Uxin Ju, a Mongolian community in northern China, from 1958 to 1966. The contrast between the local experience and the official representation reveals great discrepancies and attests to the ability of local people to utilize state policies to meet local needs, transforming socialist ideologies into local rationales. Applying Michel de Certeau's theory of everyday practice that sees book reading as poaching and the use/consumption of political and cultural discourses as a process of creative empowerment, I examine how the Mongols in Uxin Ju “poached” state politics to their own advantages and appropriated the grassland campaign in the making of the local landscape. This poaching further elucidates James Scott's concept of ideological resistance by focusing on the creative use of nonoppositional nature, which is an important way in which local people could express their agency in the oppressive regime of socialist China. This article calls attention to how nonsubversive co‐optation of state policies can function as an expression of agency in the making of local human‐environmental history, even on the part of individuals who are actively accommodating to the ideology of the dominant regime.

Fides Quaerens Spem

Pastoral care must recover its unique identity as a theological discipline. In addressing the reality of evil, pastoral care reinterprets divine power as compassionate and creative empowerment, the basis for hopeful activity.