Caroline Dominguez

Adding value to the learning process by online peer review activities: towards the elaboration of a methodology to promote critical thinking in future engineers

Considering the results of research on the benefits and difficulties of peer review, this paper describes how teaching faculty, interested in endorsing the acquisition of communication and critical thinking (CT) skills among engineering students, has been implementing a learning methodology throughout online peer review activities. While introducing a new methodology, it is important to weight the advantages found and the conditions that might have restrained the activity outcomes, thereby modulating its overall efficiency. Our results show that several factors are decisive for the success of the methodology: the use of specific and detailed orientation guidelines for CT skills, the students’ training on how to deliver a meaningful feedback, the opportunity to counter-argument, the selection of good assignments’ examples, and the constant teachers monitoring of the activity. Results also tackle other aspects of the methodology such as the thinking skills evaluation tools (grades and tests) that most suit our reality. An improved methodology is proposed taking in account the encountered limitations, thus offering the possibility to other interested institutions to use/test and/or improve it.

Information Architecture For IS Function: A Case Study

Todays complex, unstable and competitive society raises several difficulties to organisations. In this context, Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) and information itself have become resources of vital importance. The pressing need for Information Systems (IS) to meet several business requirements, in addition to the complexity involved in technology and business management, turns the IS Function one of the main areas of influence for success of modern organisations. Through its capacity of representing activities, management objects and corresponding relations, the Information Architecture of the Information Systems Function (IAISF), a technique derived from the well-known Information Architecture but exclusively focused on the Information Systems Function (ISF), allows not only the conceptualization and understanding of the ISF itself, but also of its interactions with other areas within organizations. This paper presents the main results of a case study related to the application of the IAISF technique in a computer service centre of a University.

SME Managers’ Most Important Entrepreneurship and Business Competences

The requirements of an increasing globalized and competitive economy lead managers to search for training solutions which can rapidly bridge the gap of their lacking skills, knowledge or competences. To assert with adequate training programs, in particular for SMEs managers, a study was conducted in six European countries with the objective of identifying the most relevant competences they need to fulfill. A literature review and several interviews with business associations’ executives resulted in a list of 34 competences which were organized in four categories: personal, team management, business and technical. These competencies were put at trial through a survey conducted among 154 SMEs managers who had to evaluate each proposed competence with the attribution of a relevance degree. Although we show that SME managers should be well prepared in a rich set of complementary areas to perform their job, it is clear that some of the competences are crucial for them to tackle today’s challenges. This paper presents a ranking of the competences by importance as perceived by managers. These findings can help training institutions wishing to design new training programs which more in line with managers’ needs.

Argumentative skills development in teaching philosophy to secondary school students through constructive controversy: an exploratory study case

ABSTRACT The use of argumentative strategies that promote the defense of well-grounded personal arguments contributes to the development of a critical, ethical and political thought that leads to responsible and socially committed people. Based on the quality of the produced arguments in philosophical essays, this work evaluates the potential application of a cooperative learning method – the constructive controversy – for the development of argumentative skills in secondary school students in philosophy. The quality of the arguments was evaluated through the analysis of a total of 144 philosophical essays produced by the students over a school year. The results point to the advantages of using this method over more traditional ones in the acquisition of argumentative skills.

High Performance Teams: Do Perceptions and Reality Match?

Effective team management is one of the key factors that allow companies to tackle the challenges of todays demanding business environment. Although high-performing teams have been studied for some time, very little has been written on them from the construction industrys perspective. Based on the conclusions of previous work and on a project involving 44 professionals of seven teams, this exploratory case study intends to evaluate if there is a gap between what team members and leaders perceive as being a the most important features for managing teams into high performance and b the features that are present in their teams. The present study shows that, although teams under investigation had some high-performing features at the leadership dimension, there is room for improvement, in particular when it comes to empowering team members, involving them in planning the work, and creating proper reward systems.

New challenges for the quality of librarian services delivery in Portugal

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the users assessment of the level of quality of the library services of the Portuguese University of Tras‐os‐Montes e Alto Douro (UTAD) in order to identify its potential improvement.Design/methodology/approach – Following a literature review on library service quality assessment focusing on the ServQual, Lib Qual, or Biqual conceptual tools, a survey was designed and applied to a sample of the UTAD librarys users, and then subjected to statistical analysis.Findings – The literature review on library quality service assessment points out an array of dimensions that must be taken into account. The conceptual tools recently developed for that assessment showed that the services provided by the UTAD library needed to be redefined in order to enhance its users autonomy. The results of the survey follow the findings of the literature review and, in particular, show that for the UTAD case study: gender is an important variable to take into account; the acc...

Implementation of CRM systems in Portuguese Municipalities

Abstract Customer relationship management is a business strategy which dynamically integrates a set of services with the purpose of creating value for the organisation and for their customers. In Portugal, the 2009/2010 edition of ‘Simplex for Municipalities’, the action plan carried by the Portuguese government through the Secretarys Office of State for Administrative Modernisation, makes a commitment to promote a set of initiatives in order to help citizens using the public services. This process intends to reduce costs of context which burden the economic activities, making way for the modernisation of administration. Customer relationship management assumes a central role in this context. This paper presents the main results of a survey that was carried out with Portuguese municipalities, aiming a general characterisation of the adoption of customer relationship management systems, covering several aspects, from the motivations for CRM adoption to the obtained results. The improvement of the relationship with citizens and a higher information quality are some of the most important results obtained by municipalities.