Philip Tsang

ICT maturity as a driver to global competitiveness: a national level analysis

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine the role that information and communication technologies (ICT) maturity plays in the achievement of global competitiveness at the country level. The paper investigates the socio-economic and technological factors that are most likely to be associated with ICT maturity, and then assesses their role in driving the global competitiveness wheel forward. Design/methodology/approach - Secondary data were used, based on data sets generated by the World Bank, World Economic Forum, and UNESCO for the years 2003-2007. The countries common to all reports were included, yielding a study sample of 93 cases. Cluster analysis was used to categorize countries in terms of ICT usage, readiness, and environment. Structural equation modeling was used to test the fit of a model employing these factors. Findings - First, it was found that ICT plays an important role in driving a countrys global competitiveness forward, with a stronger relationship existing in high readiness countries than in low readiness countries. Second, ICT maturity was found to mediate the relationship between ICT quality and R&D spending on one hand and global competitiveness on the other. Finally, the relationship between R&D spending and global competitiveness was found to be stronger for low readiness countries than for high readiness countries. Practical implications - The papers findings provide insights to managers and government policy makers regarding the effects of economic, social and technological factors on ICT maturity, as well as the relationship between ICT maturity and global competitiveness. Such insights can influence the standards, programs, and strategies that governments implement in order to attain and maintain global competitiveness. Originality/value - The paper presents a holistic model that depicts the ICT maturity factors and their dynamic contributions to global competitiveness. Despite the considerable contributions of existing research in this domain, there is a lack of substantive research that examines the relationship at the country level between ICT maturity and its indicators on one hand and global competitiveness on the other. The paper is an attempt to fill this gap.

Social Media Tools and Platforms in Learning Environments

Online social media have transformed the face of human interaction in the 21st century. Wikis, blogs, online groups and forums, podcasts, virtual worlds, and social tagging are but a few of the applications enabling innovative behaviors that support acquisition, access, manipulation, retrieval, and visualization of information. It is, therefore, no surprise that educational practitioners and theorists have begun to explore how social media can be harnessed to describe and implement new paradigms for communication, learning, and education. The editors goal in publishing this book was to identify original research on the application of online social media and related technologies in education as well as emerging applications in Web technologies that could provide and shape future educational platforms. The selected contributions deal with questions such as how social media can truly enrich and enhance learning and teaching experiences in ways not otherwise possible; how learning can be integrated in a distributed and ubiquitous social computing environment; or what theories, paradigms, and models are applicable for the support of social computing in education. Researchers in education or educational software will find interesting and sometimes provocative chapters on paradigms and methodologies, virtual and mobile learning spaces, and assessment and social factors. Practitioners in these fields will benefit from an additional section devoted to case studies and first experience reports.

EduPunks and learning management systems - conflict or chance?

The term Edupunk coined by Jim Groom defines a do-it-yourself concept of using the most recent Web tools available for teaching, instead of relying only on commercial learning platforms - it is the information, the content, the knowledge which matters. Technology itself does not make education valuable per se, it is the creation of individual knowledge which is of paramount importance. However, today, so much free technology is available, which can be used as hands-on tools to enhance learning and teaching of students. However, in this article, we demonstrate that such issues can also be included in a large university wide LMS, which has been developed at Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) during the last years. The development was initiated by the necessity to emphasize and implement three crucial factors for learning: communication, active participation and social interaction. We assess the potential of current Web 2.0 technologies for implementing such factors. We show that the development process was not technology driven; on the contrary, end user requirements of all end user groups engaged into university learning (students, teachers and administrators) were thoroughly investigated and mapped onto functional components of the LMS. Finally, we provide an overview of the platform functionalities with an emphasis on Web 2.0 elements and EduPunk concepts.

Innovation in ICT teaching: a longitudinal case study of WiFi in Hong Kong

This paper presents the rationale and the main findings of a quantitative study of a longitudinal WiFi security survey in Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China. The authors have been conducting one of the world’s most comprehensive longitudinal WiFi surveys in HK since 2002. This paper looks at different ways that one can visualise WiFi AP data, to see how it is distributed within a city or an area and to draw conclusions about its use by means of mapping. This paper will be of interest to security experts and ICT educators in general. The results of the latest 2009–2010 WiFi survey experiments and implications drawn are also included in this paper.

First steps towards an integrated Personal Learning Environment at the university level

Personalization is seen as the key approach to handle the plethora of information in today’s knowledge-based society. It is expected that personalized teaching and learning will efficiently address learner needs. The education of the future will change as a result of the influence of Web 2.0 content typified by a steadily increasing supply of data. This means that the students of tomorrow will regularly have to deal with sharing and merging content from different sources. Therefore, mashup technology will become a very important lens by which to focus on individual learning needs and enable personalized access to particular information. The following paper describes the challenges of Personal Learning Environments at higher education institutions. In the first section, the concept of Personal Learning Environments is presented, while the second section discusses the new challenges that arise for learning with the help of Personal Learning Environments. The third section describes the technical background of Personal Learning Environments and the widget standard in general. In section four, a first prototype of a personal learning environment will be presented, which is integrated into the learning culture at the Technical University of Graz. A detailed description of the available widgets for the prototype, along with a first expert evaluation, is provided. Finally, the conclusion of the article consolidates the main points of the paper and present plans for future research together with the prospective developments.

Improving Markov Logic Network learning using unlabeled data

Existing Markov Logic Network (MLN) learning methods aim at learning an MLN from a set of training examples. To reduce the human effort in preparing training examples, we have developed a semi-supervised framework for learning an MLN from unlabeled data and a limited number of training examples. One characteristic of our approach is that instead of maximizing the pseudo-log-likelihood function of the labeled training examples, we aim at optimizing the pseudo-log-likelihood function of the observation from the set of unlabeled data. The learned MLN can then be applied to the unlabeled data for conducting inference in a more precise manner. We have conducted experiments and the empirical results demonstrate that our framework is effective, outperforming existing approach which considers labeled training examples alone.

A practical approach to the teaching of internet programming and multimedia technologies

This paper describes a case study analysis of an implementation model that has been employed to enhance the currency and reputation of a key course in the ICT suite of subjects offered by a Hong Kong University. The model described is referred to as the Tripod Approach. The model is an enhancement of the iteration model of innovation and incorporates three critical components namely: A virtual laboratory environment, a self-paced guide book, and a portal for information dissemination and collegiality building. Implementation of the model was shown to be successful as demonstrated by statistical analysis and semi structured interviews. The Tripod Approach has resulted in a changed student mindset towards a traditionally difficult and unappealing ICT course. It is suggested that the model ought to be applied to other disciplines that are besieged by the problems of rapid change in content and technology.

A new win-win-win business service model for the Hong Kong police force

The operational challenges facing indoor radio coverage to emergency services; especially police, fire and ambulance are examined. A solution is achieved within the paradigm of a public-private partnership service model. The paper includes a consolidated literature review of the basics of PPP and various PPP research frameworks that lay the background in the development of our PPP-WWW reference model. A review of the challenges associated with the highly profiled HK Police Force project, a Third Generation Command and Control Communications System (CC3) in support of frontline beat patrol police officers, is examined. Finally an innovative PPP business model will be presented and justifications for its acceptance will be delineated.

Competency model for Chinese distance education in higher education

This paper presents the responses to two research questions that formed the core of a distance education study undertaken by the authors: 1) according to Chinese experts what are the roles and competencies necessary to achieve success in high-level distance education; and 2) how do distance education experts rate the importance of these competencies. This Chinese study modified the traditional approach to developing competency models for tertiary distance education in that it employed a Delphi face-to-face group discussion and a questionnaire survey. 13 roles and 17 general and role-specific competencies were identified. Some comparisons to the study conducted at Texas A & M University were made and considerable differences were identified. Differences were largely limited to training and cultural matters. Dissemination of findings will be used to provide base line information to staff delivering distance education programs and as a key input into the design of training curricula for staff and graduate students.