Innovation in acceptable doses: problems of supplementing educational technology innovations in firms

This paper gives the interim results of a research study of innovation in educational technology, and of obstacles to such innovation, based on interviews with senior management in 160 major firms. The special characteristics of innovation in this area are considered, including the duality between hardware and software, and the need to proceed by large steps. An analysis is made of the nature and sources of resistance to innovation, and of the possible means of overcoming it, including 'gatekeeper' activities. It is concluded that simple analyses and solutions are unlikely to be successful, and that a multi-dimensional approach is required.     

The Nature of Technology for Design

This paper reviews ideas from design and technology and science education and discusses knowledge, values and skills as aspects of technology in order to demonstrate that technology for design cannot be simply associated with a knowledge component of technology. The paper highlights the linguistic challenges in expressing issues in this area and the philosophical difficulty that the nature of cognitive modelling means that some aspects may be impossible to express using language. Values and a designerly way of knowing and the nature of technological skills are discussed in order to establish their relationship to technology for design. Prior studies concerning technology and designing have focused on engineering and science-based design areas. A research agenda in relation to the proposed broader interpretation of technology for design is discussed, which demonstrates that such research must ultimately be interdisciplinary. Nevertheless, initial steps which could be taken by design researchers are suggested.     

应用灌浆技术实例分析

通过对水泥混凝土路面中修工程中应用的灌浆技术的具体施工工艺的剖析,阐明了实施灌浆的4个步骤(准备、钻孔、灌浆、收尾)及3个控制要点(对各类人员技术准备情况的控制、对灌浆材料的控制、对灌浆终止条件的控制),指出灌浆技术在水泥路面维修养护中具有实用价值。     

项目教学法在高校《服装工艺》课程中的应用与实践

项目教学法是师生共同实施一个完整的项目工作而进行的教学活动,在整个教学过程中既发挥了教师的主导作用,又体现了学生的主体作用。在《服装工艺》课教学中,实施项目教学法的具体步骤包括项目的准备、计划制定、计划实施、评估和交流。通过设计不同的项目将理论知识点和技能训练有机融合,可提高教学效果。     

Experimental Research on the Relations between Stereoscopic Vision and Mechanical Designers' Activities, with a View to C.A.D. Teaching

This study examines the influence of two crossed factors upon the performance of a subject whose aim is to understand the functioning of a complex piece of technical apparatus, in this instance an automated arm from an assembly line. The primary factor was the encoding degree of the third dimension which constitutes the representation of the object. The methods of presentation were: a 3-D photograph, an axonometric perspective drawing and a first angle orthographic drawing. The second factor was professional experience. The subjects were, on the one hand, first year technology pupils (15--16 year-olds) and, on the other hand, professional draughtsmen from RENAULT. The results obtained with the 3-D photograph were twice as good as those obtained with the axonometric perspective or the orthographic drawing. It should be pointed out that experience did not effect the score. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

When should workers embrace or resist new technology?

The question of how workers might respond to new technologies has lurked behind many debates on the subject. It has not been posed directly, in part because of concerns about the determinism of asking about the effects of a technology. A preliminary is to set aside these concerns by showing that effects can be identified without determinism. The main argument is that technologies can be assessed on six dimensions: intended or unintended effects; direct and indirect effects; degree of reconstitution in use; immanence; degree of success and degree of discontinuity with the past. These dimensions can then be used to pose questions about any one technology. Three illustrations suggest how such questions can be posed in concrete conditions. Technologies can be challenged so that alternatives to extant systems of work organisation can be considered.     

Estimating Market Growth for New Products: An Analogical Diffusion Model Approach

There has been a lot of interest in diffusion models as a basis for prelaunch estimates of the sales of new products, and indeed there have been several models developed that have achieved fairly good acceptance by new product managers. One of the limitations of such models, however, has been the requirement that a sales history for the new product, even a short one from a test market, for example, be available to derive the parameters of the model. For some types of products—consumer durables, services, industrial products, for example—a sales history isn't available. In this article, Professor Robert Thomas suggests some steps toward the development of models that incorporate the attractive features of diffusion models. His approach is to use, in a systematic way, the sales histories of products that can be considered to have analogous features from a buyer's point of view. He illustrates the approach by forecasting the sales of a new service.     

Problems in Demand Estimation For a New Technology

It is difficult to estimate demand for a new product or service when a prelaunch test market is not practical. This is often the case for products that incorporate advanced technology. In this article, Robert Thomas reviews 29 different research methodologies used to measure demand for a new telecommunications service. He found several problems in how the research was designed and executed and offers a number of suggestions for improving the accuracy of demand estimates.     

Knowing what engineering and technology teachers need to know: an analysis of pre-service teachers engineering design problems

With the rapid advances in civilization, technological breakthroughs, and a globally growing workforce, there is a strong need for engineers capable of working in the 21st century environment (Galloway, The 21st century engineer: A proposal for engineering education reform. ASCE, Washington DC 2008). To help increase the quality and quantity of students choosing to pursue engineering, leaders have called on K-12 education to look for methods of inserting pre-engineering into the K-12 curriculum. Leaders in technology education have responded to the call to develop top quality candidates for engineers by infusing engineering into the technology education curriculum. Teacher preparation programs have used various methods to provide future technology teachers with the required content knowledge in order to effectively teach engineering design within the technology curriculum. One such program uses an ABET accredited engineering curriculum for the content and additional training to strengthen engineering education pedagogy for technology teachers. Students who graduate from this program possess both an engineering degree and technology teaching license. The purpose of this investigation was to ascertain the differences between technology teachers from this program and traditionally trained technology teachers. In particular, how each group incorporates the engineering design process in classroom assignments. Design briefs were gathered from pre-service teachers who graduated from the aforementioned program and compared to design briefs of practicing technology teachers around the United States. The engineering design process was used to develop a rubric to compare the usage of engineering content between the two groups. It was found that students with 4 years of engineering training were more likely to use all steps of the engineering design process. Further examination illustrates that engineering trained technology teachers were significantly more likely to use mathematical and analytical methods to determine optimum solutions. In order for technology education teachers to effectively infuse engineering design into coursework, they need to be familiar and comfortable with the engineering sciences and the design process. With limited engineering design experience, technology teachers are not as likely to use optimization techniques involving mathematical and analytical reasoning. These concepts are critical for engineering students to be successful in college engineering programs and beyond.     

Organizing for technological collaborations: a managerial perspective

Researchers and practitioners have recently paid great attention to technological partnering. In this paper, the problem of choosing which organizational form the technological collaboration should take is carefully examined. The aim is to support the decision-maker who, once it has been decided that a certain technology is to be acquired externally, has to identify the most appropriate mode for such an acquisition. This is not an easy task and is critical to the success of the collaboration. A framework is suggested to assist the decision-maker, based upon the preliminary results of a qualitative empirical study. It is then applied to two case studies. The framework is articulated into three logical steps. First, the characteristics of different organizational forms of collaboration are analysed in terms of integration and formalization. Second, the company's requirements from a specific collaboration are defined in similar terms within the context of objective, content, partner typology. Third, the characteristics of the organizational form are matched with the company's specific requirements so as to identify the most appropriate organizational form for the collaboration.     

Using patent information for designing new product and technology: keyword based technology roadmapping

With the rapid change in markets and technologies, it is becoming essential for firms to develop new products constantly. This can most successfully be achieved by using technology roadmaps (TRMs), which are effective tools for connecting product and technology planning. However, TRMs generally tend to overstate the qualitative and expert-dependent knowledge rather than incorporating quantitative and objective information. This paper proposes a new approach where patent data are used in a quantitative methodology to support reliable decision-making in roadmapping processes. In this study, text-mining techniques were utilized to extract the relevant information on which portfolio, co-word, and network analyses were carried out. The results were three types of product-technology maps that can be applied to specific roadmapping steps. The suggested approach is expected to yield useful information about roadmapping, and help improve the overall effectiveness and quality of the technique.     

Linking of Manufacturing Strategy,Market Requirements and Manufacturing Attributes In Technology Choice: An Expert System Approach

This paper suggests a framework for acquisition of new manufacturing technology that links the manufacturing strategy, market requirements and manufacturing attributes using an expert system approach. This paper takes a closer took at traditional notion of manufacturing-marketing coordination and attempts to find its links with manufacturing capabilities provided by recent evolving new manufacturing technology. For this purpose we deal with different steps involved in the strategic evaluation process beginning with the choice of a suitable competitive strategy by a firm. Then the chosen competitive strategy is linked with the market requirements, system attributes and appropriate manufacturing technology choices. The proposed model is integrated by an expert system approach that includes strategic factors of both a tangible and an intangible nature and is implemented by using the VP-Expert shell.     

基于B/S的考试成绩管理系统设计与实现及数据分析

根据军队任职教育院校成绩管理特点,建立数据模型,采用B/S模式,通过ASP.NET 2.0技术基于三层架构设计开发学员考试成绩管理系统,实现了权限管理、数据维护、数据审核、查询统计、导出打印功能,并应用数据挖掘技术实现对成绩数据的分析,极大提高了工作效率,为管理部门决策提供依据,从而提高教学质量。     

Forecasting Market Size and Market Growth Rates for New Products

How many times is a forecast of a technological development correct? According to many experienced managers, it almost never is. Then what good is a forecast? A forecast helps make important innovation decisions, according to Brian C. Twiss. He argues that precision in forecasting a technological development is seldom needed for purposes of long-term planning and that any innovation so marginal that small errors in forecasting will make a big difference should not be considered anyway. Twiss suggests that technology forecasting can be of real value once it is accepted that it is essentially concerned with modeling human behavior. This is the unexpected viewpoint that Twiss presents in this article. He explains how to develop and how to use a technology forecast in long-range planning.     

Developing Technological Knowledge

It is argued in this paper that various approaches are available in designing teaching and learning experiences for technology education. However, many approaches are based on inappropriate assumptions about transfer, the ways in which meaning is represented by individuals and relationships among different kinds of experiences. It is advanced that the development of technology knowledge in school should aim at developing a rich inter-connectedness among the ways in which technological meanings can be understood by learners, so that learners experience transformations in relation to themselves, technological practice and their knowledge. Cultural-historical activity theory is suggested as a useful basis for designing instruction aimed at the various purposes of technology education.     

Sales forecast errors for new product projects

It is difficult to avoid errors in sales forecasts for new industrial products, especially when the forecasts are made at the new product screening stage. But if managers are aware that a forecast is likely to be in serious error, they can take steps to deal with the uncertainty. A research project analyzed 185 new product projects to develop four major indicators of sales forecast error. The indicators can be derived for specific firms from typical project screening questions and can be used to alert new product managers to special development problems that may be present.     

Reviewing the relations between teachers’ knowledge and pupils’ attitude in the field of primary technology education

This literature review reports on the assumed relations between primary school teachers’ knowledge of technology and pupils’ attitude towards technology. In order to find relevant aspects of technology-specific teacher knowledge, scientific literature in the field of primary technology education was searched. It is found that teacher knowledge is essential for stimulating a positive attitude towards technology in pupils. Particularly, teachers’ enhanced Pedagogical Content Knowledge is found to be related to pupils’ increased learning and interest in technology. Six aspects of technology-specific teacher knowledge that are likely to play a role in affecting pupils’ attitude are identified and schematically presented in a hypothetical diagram. It is concluded that more empirical evidence on the influence of technology-specific teacher knowledge on pupils’ attitude is needed. The hypothetical diagram will serve as a helpful tool to investigate the assumed relations between teacher knowledge and pupils’ attitude empirically.     

Supporting the technology-push of a discontinuous innovation in practice

The hydraulic power generation business is usually faced with continuous innovation, meaning that progress is rather made in small than in large steps. Nevertheless, there are currently some examples of discontinuous innovation, the Powerformer -technology being one of them. The implying difficulties for successful innovation are internal communication and linking the technology to the most suitable markets. In order to proficiently push the Powerformer -technology onto the markets, an appropriate procedure is identified and implemented to practice.
First, a SWOT-analysis is used for assessing the competitive product concept of this discontinuous innovation. This contributed the specific calls for action. Second, the identified procedure for leveraging this technology-push aggregates the technology choice tool, roadmapping and a process for technology commercialization. As a result, specified market segments, a market penetration schedule as well as development and design aims were defined. This paper intends to give a practice example on how the mentioned methodologies were applied for the technology-push of a discontinuous innovation.     

火电厂限排对河南煤炭销售的影响

阐述了燃煤电厂大气污染物限排政策及执行情况,分析燃煤电厂脱硫、脱硝及除尘技术改造对河南省内煤炭需求变化及销售的影响,针对河南省内煤炭资源分布及煤质状况,提出煤炭企业要加快产品结构调整步伐,推进洁净煤技术革新,增强煤炭企业产品竞争力。