The COVID-19 pandemic interrupted the higher education improvement and highlighted the maintenance of public health as an essential priority. Due to this unexpected situation, the educational system ...moved from face-to-face to distance learning without prior preparations. This contingency made it possible to study the benefits of ICT tools in the educational process. Starting from the primary function of the educational process and through the forecast of future trends in education, this paper presents the guidelines for improvement of the teaching and learning processes and some opportunities for their implementation. A survey was conducted among the Faculty of Economics, Business, and Tourism students in Split, Croatia, who evaluated the acceptance of various ICT tools. Based on the obtained research results, generic strategic guidelines for the effective use of IT tools in teaching are presented, including their potential impact on accreditation criteria.
One of the main goals of any higher education system is developing students’ critical thinking. Critical thinking contributes to decision-making and problem-solving skills, whether for professional ...or personal purposes. Teaching, on the other hand, has been largely influenced by new information technologies which have changed some of the related concepts and tools. The quality of the teaching process is multidimensional which is why no single unit of its measurement has been developed yet, in spite of numerous surveys that have collected massive amounts of information from the existing practice. The aim of this paper is to establish the most appropriate higher education quality measure, which would consist of all relevant indicators from different aspects, including implementation of critical thinking in the teaching process, weighting by two main groups of participants in the process - teachers and students. Multicriteria decision-making has been recognised as a suitable framework for achieving this goal. In fact, the problem of measuring teaching staff performance could be set up as a classical problem of multicriteria decision-making. With this approach the quality of teaching process should be simultaneously estimated by n quality assurance criteria and in accordance with those criteria m alternatives (professors) would be ranked or estimated.
Višegodišnja elektronička obrada podataka omogućila je pohranu velike količine podataka koja se danas može iskoristiti za poboljšanje procesa u obrazovanju putem algoritama strojnog učenja. Koristeći ...se podacima iz sustava Moodle za učenje na daljinu, stvoren je model umjetne neuronske mreže s ciljem predviđanja konačnog ishoda studenta na kraju studija na temelju njegovih zaključnih ocjena prve godine studija. Kroz ukupno tri modela umjetne neuronske mreže pokazana je snaga ovog algoritma, gdje su svi modeli ostvarili vrlo nisku pogrešku, a najbolji rezultati postignuti su modelom umjetne neuronske mreže s dva skrivena sloja od devet neurona, čija je apsolutna greška iznosila 0,1920, a kvadratna pogreška 0,0562. Istraživanje pokazuje da su umjetne neuronske mreže vrlo učinkovite u predikciji konačnog ishoda studenata na temelju ocjena s prve godine studija te da takvi modeli imaju potencijal postati pomoćni alat i sredstvo donošenja odluka u obrazovnim institucijama.
Višegodišnja elektronička obrada podataka omogućila je pohranu velike količine podataka koja se danas može iskoristiti za poboljšanje procesa u obrazovanju putem algoritama strojnog učenja. Koristeći ...se podacima iz sustava Moodle za učenje na daljinu, stvoren je model umjetne neuronske mreže s ciljem predviðanja konačnog ishoda studenta na kraju studija na temelju njegovih zaključnih ocjena prve godine studija. Kroz ukupno tri modela umjetne neuronske mreže pokazana je snaga ovog algoritma, gdje su svi modeli ostvarili vrlo nisku pogrešku, a najbolji rezultati postignuti su modelom umjetne neuronske mreže s dva skrivena sloja od devet neurona, čija je apsolutna greška iznosila 0,1920, a kvadratna pogreška 0,0562. Istraživanje pokazuje da su umjetne neuronske mreže vrlo učinkovite u predikciji konačnog ishoda studenata na temelju ocjena s prve godine studija te da takvi modeli imaju potencijal postati pomoćni alat i sredstvo donošenja odluka u obrazovnim institucijama.
Background: Organisations nowadays operate in a very dynamic environment, and therefore, their ability of continuously adjusting the strategic plan to the new conditions is a must for achieving their ...strategic objectives. BSC is a well-known methodology for measuring performances enabling organizations to learn how well they are doing. In this paper, “BSC for IS” will be proposed in order to measure the IS impact on the achievement of organizations’ business goals. Objectives: The objective of this paper is to present the original procedure which is used to enhance the BSC methodology in planning the optimal targets of IS performances value in order to maximize the organization's effectiveness. Methods/Approach: The method used in this paper is the quantitative methodology - linear programming. In the case study, linear programming is used for optimizing organization’s strategic performance. Results: Results are shown on the example of a case study national park. An optimal performance value for the strategic objective has been calculated, as well as an optimal performance value for each DO (derived objective). Results are calculated in Excel, using Solver Add-in. Conclusions: The presentation of methodology through the case study of a national park shows that this methodology, though it requires a high level of formalisation, provides a very transparent performance calculation.
This paper presents a highly formalized approach to the strategy formulation and optimization of strategic performance through proper resource allocation. A stochastic quantitative model of strategic ...performance (SQMSP) is used to evaluate the efficiency of the strategy developed. The SQMSP follows the theoretical notions of the balanced scorecard and strategy map methodologies, initially developed by Kaplan and Norton. The parameters of the SQMSP are suggested to be random variables and be evaluated by experts who give two-point (optimistic and pessimistic values) and three-point (optimistic, most probable and pessimistic values) evaluations. The Monte-Carlo method is used to simulate strategic performance. Having been implemented within a computer application and applied to solve the real problem (planning of an IT-strategy at the Faculty of Economics, University of Split), the proposed approach demonstrated its high potential as a basis for development of decision support tools related to strategic planning.
Bankers and other financial experts have analyzed the value of automated teller machines (ATM) in terms of growing consumer demand, rising costs of technology development, decreasing profitability ...and market share. This article presents a step-by-step cost-benefit analysis of the ATM automatic deposit service. The first step was to determine user attitudes towards using ATM automatic deposit service by using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). The second step is to determine location priorities for ATMs that provide automatic deposit services using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) model. The results of the previous steps enable a highly efficient application of cost-benefit analysis for evaluating costs and benefits of automatic deposit services. To understand fully the proposed procedure outside of theoretical terms, a real-world application of a case study is conducted.
The system dynamics applied in this research on modeling a tourist destination (area) life cycle (TALC) contributes to understanding its behavior and the way that information feedback governs the use ...of feedback loops, delays and stocks and flows. On this basis, a system dynamic three-staged TALC model is conceptualized, with the number of visitors V as an indicator of the carrying capacities’ dynamics and the flow function V(t) to determine the TALC stages. In the first supply-dominance stage, the model indicated that arrivals are growing until the point of inflexion. After this point, arrivals continue growing (but with diminishing growth rates), indicating the beginning of the demand-dominance stage, ending up with the saturation point, i.e., the maximum number of visitors. The simulated TALC system dynamics model was then applied to five EU destinations (Living Labs) to explain their development along the observed period (2007–2019). The analysis revealed that all observed Living Labs reached the second lifecycle stage, with one entered as early as in 2015 and another in 2018. Lifecycle stage durations may significantly differ across the destinations, as do the policies used either to prevent stagnation or to restructure the offer to become more sustainable and resilient.
The SPIS methodology provides methods and techniques of developing an information system (IS) that would correspond with the requirements of an organization. The result of its application is the ...strategic plan of IS development that would meet the future needs. As is the case in the methodology of the strategic planning in general, the primary drawback to the strategic planning of the information system is the lack of efficient control of implementation of the strategic plan, and this is precisely what this research paper deals with. One of the procedures in the measuring of results of an organization, which is also recommended by the SPIS, is the Balanced Scorecard methodology (BSC). However, the BSC concept which the classic SPIS methodology recommends as suitable for the evaluation of performance of the information technology (IT) on the business system and the performance of that new business system, does not take into account the constraint that may lead to non-implementation of the planned activities. Furthermore, the BSC has been criticised for the oversimplified modelling of the cause-consequence relations that do not take into account the time delay and the feedback.This paper provides results of the research that resulted in identification of two types of constraints that need to be included when determining the optimal IS/IT strategy. Within the context of the system dynamics (SD) approach, the broadening of the problem with the analysis of the strategy implementation dynamics results in the new practical knowledge about the control over the time-dependant values and, consequently, with a proposal that would eliminate the reasons for the abovementioned criticism.
The COVID-19 pandemic interrupted the higher education improvement and highlighted the maintenance of public health as an essential priority. Due to this unexpected situation, the educational system ...moved from face-to-face to distance learning without prior preparations. This contingency made it possible to study the benefits of ICT tools in the educational process. Starting from the primary function of the educational process and through the forecast of future trends in education, this paper presents the guidelines for improvement of the teaching and learning processes and some opportunities for their implementation. A survey was conducted among the Faculty of Economics, Business, and Tourism students in Split, Croatia, who evaluated the acceptance of various ICT tools. Based on the obtained research results, generic strategic guidelines for the effective use of IT tools in teaching are presented, including their potential impact on accreditation criteria.
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