Mid Sweden University

This study is about IT-tools and communication in distributed system development teams. The purpose of this study is to identify how the members of distributed teams perceive their own communication, and to identify the characteristics that are considered important in the IT-tools to be able to maintain a good communication. To carry out this work, we did a case study where we sent out survey to a company that works distributed and that has team members both in Spain and in Sweden. We also conducted an interview with one of the respondents to be able to get deeper answers to our survey questions. The study showed that most were satisfied with the communication, but they still felt that communication could be improved. The study also showed that most respondents lacked certain qualities in their current IT-tools. The result of this study should be of interest to companies with similar conditions.

Seeking out and understanding the benefits of information are essential to an organization. Internal in an organization it is important to understand created benefit in order to communicate, prioritize and increase or decrease prioritization in strategically important business areas. In modern society digitalized information is an area that is on the increase in enterprises, as is the knowledge that information is of importance. Therefore there should be a demand for understanding and measuring the beneficial factors that information gives an organization. In this study, empirical material was collected in a literature study from journals highly ranked in the Information Systems Area and with special focus on the benefit of information. The perspective of the study has been intra organizational. The purpose is to derive found benefit factors and use them as a basis to discuss and problematize on the nature of benefit of information and hereby give organizations help to understand this area.

Today´s information society is constantly increasing the quantity of digital information that organisations have access to and depend on. Despite this dependency, few descriptions exist of the benefits which this digital information can provide the organisation with. Examples of what the organisation can use the information for include business intelligence or in a business process. The absence of such benefit descriptions results in missed opportunities in organisational management and a failure to cultivate the artefact. In terms of a practical operational work role, this means that the artefact just exists and that there are no decisions, communication and discussions connected to it. Earlier research about benefits in the Information Systems field is focused on describing the process of finding benefit factors from different IT investments and how these investments can be measured financially. The result of this was that it was only the measurable benefits that were taken into consideration. Later benefit management research has shown interest in the intangible benefit factors as well and added this as an activity in the evaluation process. Today´s view is that the benefit consists both of tangible and intangible benefit factors. This thesis emphasises benefit factors found by means of qualitative research in organisations producing Technical Information (TI). TI isinformation connected to goods and services and is a part of a product. The intangible benefit factors found which are connected to TI are semantic interoperability and knowledge. Semantic interoperability is beneficial both for the organisation and the individuals – in the first case exemplified by a uniform working process and in the second as efficiency in the internal communication. Knowledge also provides benefit both to the organisation and the individuals – the organisation can operate without depending on certain individuals and information gives the individuals mobility in their profession.The next part in the thesis discusses information management´simpact on benefit factors. In the case of an autocratic approach, it is the organisation that benefits most, whereas a decentralised management style provides the individual co-workers with a greater number of benefit factors. This proves that information management is an important and decisive ingredient, and that it affects benefit factors.One step in the direction of converting the intangible benefit factors into tangible ones is to visualise them. In this work the theoreticallens provided by a boundary object has been used. This lens adds a qualitative view on cross-boundary information and has efficiency approaches. These approaches are the syntactical, semantic andpragmatic. Via interpretations from the thesis´s two empirical cases, those approaches are "measured" by interpretations and visualised by the three leaves of a clover. This gives the opportunity to describewhat information efficiency, in this case connected to a positiveexpectation, can contribute to the organisation or the individuals. By this procedure, different cases or time aspects can be compared,thereby providing a basis for decision-making, communication and discussion. Future research in this area can be made in different directions – one is to investigate whether the intangible benefit factors can be turned into measurable ones. In this way, the internal organisation can be provided with better knowledge of the digital information's impact. Another research direction is to investigate how the passage of time affects the benefit factors that digital information gives the organisation.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine what happens with the internal view an organisation has on information management when a holistic view is diminished into a blinkered view and the consequences it conveys for the customer. The customer consequences are divided into two parts – creation of external customers’ values and creation of value for the internal customer explored in terms of efficiency.

Methodology/approach – Interviews with both outsourced co-workers and project leaders still in the organization.

Findings – The organisations lack of listening to the external customer affects all three areas lifted in the analysis. The studied organisations have great opportunities for developing their process for producing TI, both regarding their mutual relationship as well as in regards to the external customer with the help of Lean and by applying a more holistic view on the production of Technical Information.

Keywords – Information management, Lean, Customer value, Technical Information, Efficiency

Paper type – Case study

Thesis supervision is an important activity in higher education with Bachelor's and Master's theses mandatory parts of university programmes. In traditional education, thesis supervision has been a face-to-face activity, but today, both the student groups and the learning environments are blended. This study describes and discusses the design and implementation of a blended learning environment for a student group at Mid Sweden University.  The research question that the study aims to answer is:  Which are the important factors in the design of a course for undergraduate students, to facilitate supervision of thesis projects in a technology enhanced environment? 

This study employed a Design science research strategy with three phases for design, implementation and evaluation of a blended learning environment during thesis supervision. For the first phase, design requirements were specified based on document studies and a literature review. In the second phase (first part), the created design requirements were implemented as an instance in the Moodle virtual learning environment. Second phase (second part), the implemented instance was used as the online part of a blended learning course for students writing their Bachelor's thesis. In the third phase an evaluation was carried out with an online questionnaire were students gave their opinions on course design and teaching and learning sessions.

Findings show that the learning outcomes were good and that the course aim and the learning objectives were clearly stated. Found important factors for a successful supervision were peer collaboration, multimodality, and technology enhanced interaction.  Remaining challenges are to improve course content and to motivate students for research in the field of Informatics. Most surprising positive finding was that peer situation occurred informally, which deepen their knowledge for thesis writing and presentation. 

The communication of the intangible benefits to different stakeholders is important at the development for organizational resource and could be described as a boundary-spanning activity. In this study we build on Ahlin’s model (2014) and illustrates categorization of intangible benefits of digital information by using Carlile’s (2002; 2004) efficient boundary objects, the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic. Qualitative empirical pictures from three cases are illustrated by questions, derived from the efficient boundary objects. The illustrations show that this is an accessible path forward and that the illustrations can be changed to further research with the goal for practical test the communication model.The communication of the intangible benefits to different stakeholders is important at the development for organizational resource and could be described as a boundary-spanning activity. In this study we build on Ahlin’s model (2014) and illustrates categorization of intangible benefits of digital information by using Carlile’s (2002; 2004) efficient boundary objects, the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic. Qualitative empirical pictures from three cases are illustrated by questions, derived from the efficient boundary objects. The illustrations show that this is an accessible path forward and that the illustrations can be changed to further research with the goal for practical test the communication model. 

Long-term preservation of organisational knowledge gives the business opportunities to reuse stored knowledge. This preservation of knowledge is present both in the organisation as such, found explicitly in the organisational stock, and also in the individual workers, implicit in their flow of action. Theoretically have the reuse of knowledge been named organisational memory and also been addressed in knowledge management. In a single case-study of a manufacturing company, the authors study the utilisation of product configuration information (PCI) and its role in meeting requirements on long-time preservation of product-related knowledge. This structured and standardised information is used throughout the organisation, serving as a base for both organisational and individual knowledge for the entire company. Since the information has been used in the same way for decades it is a part of the organisation´s culture and influences structures and procedures connected to the information base. The result of the study implies that usage of PCI grants the individual worker a high degree of task-related freedom as well as intra-organisational mobility. The downside for the individuals is the long time period it takes to get familiar with PCI due to its complexity. For the organisation as such, PCI provides a stable stock of knowledge which is available over extended periods of time, drastically reducing dependence upon individual workers.

Speech and language relearning are challenging for stroke survivors, as well as medical caregivers. After a stroke, patient’s ability to read, write, speak, and listen is decreased to different degrees, which results in a compromised independent life and a decreased quality of life for the patients. Technology-Enhanced Systems (TES) can play a vital role in this context. However, the available software are not explicitly built for recovering stroke patients’ needs but often for children’s learning needs. This paper is, therefore, aimed at gathering requirements to support the design of speech and language relearning software applications for stroke survivors. A design science approach was adopted, where different stakeholders such as medical caregivers and information technology consultants were involved in the process. Deductive thematic analysis was conducted to analyze the main findings according to adult learning theory. The software requirements vary from patient to patient where the intensity of speech and language impairments, general medical condition, age, prior experience, and knowledge about the previous health record, and social setup of the patient are playing an important role. The speech therapists should have management functionality in the software to adjust the relearning exercises according to the patient's needs.  Since, stroke is most common in adults who learn differently than children, andragogy principles were useful in recognizing patients' health conditions. Adults are interested to be involved in the development of their relearning process. Software for speech and language assessment will be helpful to establish relearning objectives for patients.

Virtual reality (VR) is a computer generated 3D representation of real- or fictional environments. VR can be used to create real-life simulations that allow users to experience being present in the environment that being simulated. VR is applied for the purpose of education and training. However, technology takes on a growing role in education as it is considered an alternative to replace traditional teaching. The problem is that research on VR in engineering education is limited and it does not take into account the educators’ point of view regarding VR as an education tool. Which can lead to VR applications that do not hold in reality. The purpose of the study is to investigate VR's current position in engineering education through the identification of opportunities and challenges, based on the educators’ attitude towards VR as an education tool. A qualitative study was carried out to investigate the subject matter. The data for the study was collected via digital trace survey about VR and semi-structured interviews with programmanagers from various engineering programs. The results of the study shows that programmanagers have a positive attitude towards VR and that VR implementation as an education tool is limited within the universities / high schools that were investigated. Furthermore, VR is mostly used for research purposes. The lack of VR's application in education can be due to various factors that are regarded as challenges, which are: lack of confidence in VR-technology, lack of purpose of use and in need for development of VR simulations. There is also opportunities with VR which are: that VR has various positive individual effects, it is cost effective and that VR-laboratories are available for training and development purposes when applying VR.

To work together in virtual teams has increasingly become a natural change

in how organizations work. Due to demands from the environment,

organizations have had to transform from traditional ways of working to

becoming more flexible and adaptive. The aim of this article is to identify

obstacles, problems, and presumptions in order to enable the virtual team to

be successful. A project — The TIC-project — is described, and results from

a study concerning collaboration and networking among companies within

Technical Communication are presented. Results show that, to a great

extent, experiences from networking are lacking. Furthermore, trust must be

embedded in the teams, meaning that personal meetings must precede

virtual meetings. Most interviewees declared a wish to collaborate despite

being competitors. Finally, questions and topics for further research are

presented.

The aim of the article is to evaluate how Distributed Concurrent Design works during collaboration in a distributed system development project. We studied collaboration between emergency authorities in Sweden and Norway developing a demonstrator for emergency training. Evaluation criteria were people, processes, and tools. We have used a multi-method approach with the evaluation criterion as a lens. Findings has so far shown that distributed concurrent design works as a method in system development projects but much effort must be put on planning, management and training in available tools.

The GSS project (Gaining SecuritySymbiosis) aimed at contributing towards increased security and quality of life for inhabitants and visitors of the border region of the middle part of Sweden and Norway. Within this goal the project also aimed at increasing the likelihood of saving livesand reducing threats to the environment and material assets. GSS focuses on providing the information and knowledge required in emergency and crisis situations. GSS emphasizes preparatory activities. The cross-border value added by the project has several dimensions: •It increases understanding, trust and cooperation between emergency personnel on both sides of the border.•Authorities with responsibility for security establish long-term institutional partnership with respect to security and crisis management.•The attractiveness of the border region increases due to enhanced securityand improved crisis management.•The mutual knowledge and understanding regarding the situation across the national border increases among project participantsThe project has implemented three yearly cycles of training consisting of building a scenario, training in handling a crisis situation and evaluation. The results from the evaluation have provided the foundation for the next year cycle. The project also developed a training system across these three cycles. The training system includes a scenario bank, training exercises and support, play-back function and an evaluation module including statistical functions. The evaluations from these training sessions are included in a separate appendix. The first training session was conducted as a table-top exercise at the Border Rescue Council meeting in 2011. The other two training sessions were designed in order to allow the participants to sit at their respective workplaces and communicating with the other participants partly through traditional communications channels and through the training system. The training sessions were then discussed in the subsequent Border Rescue Council meetings. By accessing the scenarios and exercises in the training system the participants from the various rescue teams took part in the training sessions.The project results show that there is a great need for this kind of training. The participating organizations express that the training sessions havebeen very instructive and that participants have gained new contacts or developed the contacts that were already established. The results also show that participants have directly benefited from the project during real emergency events. The project costshave amounted to approximately 3,2 SEK and just under 2,5 NOK. Expenses have primarily consisted of the working hours of partners and to some extent travel expenses. The travel expenses have been reduced by the frequent use of distance communication technologies instead of physical meetings.

In this article the focus is how to train collaboration and communication between emergency authorities in two countries (Norway and Sweden) by using a web-based tool supporting tabletop like exercises. The exercises are accomplished in three steps: Scenario design; exercise design and realization; and evaluation to examine the results of the exercises and for feedback to new scenario designs. The software ties all three steps together. The process is iterative, and involves users from each emergency authority. The preliminary results after two years show that the approach is promising. To be able to better foresee what will happen during an exercise the need for a simulator has appeared as one desirable and possible direction for further research.

This paper presents data from an emergency management exercise conducted in May 2011 with participants from emergency teams in Norway and Sweden. Software was developed specifically for the tabletop exercise in which a web-based presentation of the events of the emergency scenario allowed detailed recording of the communication among the teams both within and between the two countries. The communication messages were used to analyze who communicated with whom, how often and with what kind of information about the emergency event. The R-statistics open source package allowed analysis of the data for the debriefing session following the training session. A social network analysis model is planned as input to a system dynamics model. Data from 13 discrete events in the tabletop simulation will provide input to the system dynamics model in order to visualize communication patterns between emergency teams both within each country and across the border.

Cooperation across national borders is of paramount importance for the security in border close regions. Timely and adequate training, reflection, and preparation are core tools for facilitating and stimulating such interregional cooperation. Hence, NetAgora, a service oriented web portal for security cooperation, was designed. In NetAgora there is first a service package with accident- and emergency scenarios. Here multi-actors can train their cooperation and decision making skills. The R-statistics open source package is applied for recording and analyzing data from those training occasions. In subsequent debriefing sessions this is used for post-learning. Further, from anticipatory modeling and simulation it is found that rescue operations are delayed and misguided due to shortcomings in the communication between security command and communication centers. Hence, the NetAgora Learning System is designed and prototyped in order to overcome that problem. It will facilitate and stimulate reflection in action and double loop learning and aims at improving communication patterns by anticipatory pre-learning.

This paper addresses the issue of competence management in companies in the branch of Technical Communication. The problems these companies deal with concerns lack of specific education, more complex products, and a rapid change in how technical information is produced. Due to the rapid change the companies also need to be proactive and steer towards a desired future state. A design of a tool, SYNCOM, for competence management in modern high technology companies is presented. The tool is developed during a process based in idealized design.  SYNCOM constitutes of a group of systemic models and techniques for competence management and competence development that has been used in earlier projects. The SYNCOM Tool presented is a general tool aiming to be a model for organizations. Implementation of the tool will require adjustments and adaptation to the specific organizations. The SYNCOM Tool has not yet been tested as a tool in any organization. The systemic models and techniques for competence management and competence development have been tested with good results in earlier projects where they in form of prototypes have been tested and verified.

The idea of anticipatory modeling and simulation with subsequent learning from the outcomes is here applied on inter-regional security work. In this setting, multi-actors have to both cooperate and make coordinated decisions with just partial information about each other. With help of netAgora, a net based environment for simulation, learning, and communication, the goal of training, preparedness and continuous improvement of decisions is met.

In this paper we will discuss security in functional regions that are divided between twoor more nations. Awareness and preparation requires some sort of warning mechanismmaking it possible for the people in the region to become aware and to preparethemselves for upcoming emergency situations. As both the disaster indicators and thecrisis to come are both fuzzy and unknown, we will speak about Soft Early WarningSystems (SEWS). In SEWS each individual living in a region will act as a networkedhuman anticipatory emergency sensor and actor. Our conception of such a regionalsecurity SEWS is given in the form of an idealised design called the netAgora portal.After discussing the broad lines of the netAgora design this paper will be focusing onthe key role anticipatory modelling and simulation may play in a tool for developing aSEWS capacity for handling transnational complex emergencies and disasters.

To route the rescue service, the police and the ambulance during an emergency event,the command and control units need information about accessibility. When twocountries are involved in the rescue work there is also a possibility to send rescue helpfrom either country, which complicates the situation but of course gives a greatopportunity. Good predictions for when rescue service are to appear at the scene of theemergency and from where to send them are of great importance. Different actions areto be taken due to the waiting time. Accessibility is a complex term which is furtherelaborated and conceptualized in the paper. The paper also presents tentative results forhow to conceptualize and simulate accessibility in this crisis management setting. Theresults are based on empirical data from the region involved in the GSS project.

An ICT tool is not only used in healthcare as an aid for caregivers, but can also help enhance the care experience of care recipients as these tools can bring benefit to the recipient. The positive care experience can also have the opposite effect, depending on the quality of information conveyed to the recipient. This study deals with SMS reminders information related to the quality of the care experience. It examines whether SMS reminders within the health system contains sufficient quality information to influence recipients care experience to the positive. This study was conducted by a qualitative method of semi-structured interviews with both care recipients and caregivers. This is to get two different perspectives on the information and quality care experience – from a care recipients perspective as receiving the SMS reminder, and from a caregivers perspective that send out the SMS reminders. By conducting a literature review, we acquired material that formed the basis of our interview questions. The results of the study show that SMS reminders in the current situation does not contain sufficient high quality information in order to reach a positive care experience for patients. In addition to information quality, we have also identified communication as a major factor contributing to increasing health care experience. Besides these two factors, we could also deduce that health care consumers have different needs depending on the life situation they are in.

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are gradually penetrating the industrial automation domain. This process is, however, inhibited by a number of challenges that need to be considered and addressed before WSN can serve the most demanding industrial applications. In the context of process automation, existing technology can only serve the three least critical application classes related to non-critical monitoring of slowly-changing physical variables. The main issue in that respect is the insufficient communication timeliness and reliability, caused by the influence of harsh radio environment and the infeasibility of applying advanced communication techniques, due to the poor computational power of low-cost specialized hardware. The goal of this work is to improve wireless communication reliability in industrial environments, where the proposed solutions are generally applicable to other WSN domains as well as radio environments. This research is based on the notion that corrupt packets contain valuable channel state information that can be leveraged to improve communication robustness. The research methodology used in this work is rather unconventional, compared to existing research, but also highly intuitive, bearing in mind that counteracting a phenomenon requires a thorough knowledge of its properties. In order to rectify the aforementioned challenges, this work makes the following three contributions. The first contribution is a comprehensive analysis of communication errors recorded in practically relevant scenarios in a number of industrial environments. The related literature is seemingly rich, but essentially poor, due to inadequate measurement objectives, environments, and scenarios. The main research outcome of this measurement campaign is a set of practically relevant conclusions, which can be used for the design of coding, interleaving and packet recovery schemes. The second contribution is the design of two packet recovery schemes, based on the knowledge about error patterns obtained in the industrial measurement campaign. The first scheme is a proposal for redefinition of the IEEE 802.15.4 physical layer, where digital errors are counteracted at the earliest stage in the receiver chain. The second scheme exploits the determinism in packet structure inherent to industrial communication. Both schemes significantly improve the correctability of corrupted packets received. The third contribution is a channel diagnostics algorithm that determines whether a packet was corrupt by multipath fading and attenuation or by wireless local area network interference. The algorithm is derived from the error traces collected in three industrial environments and tested at a fourth, previously unused, industrial site. The results of live tests verify the ability of the proposed algorithm to promptly reestablish communication after a sudden deterioration of channel quality.

A big portion of software development is the method which controls the flow ofthe creative process. Thru experience it has been shown how a lack oforganisation can have a profoundly negative effect on the development workand finally on the product itself. We take the Scrum method in a two-man formand analyze how the a small-scale version effects the roles, artefacts andactivities associated with the original Scrum method. The result of the workusing a small scale Scrum is presented along with the changes that have beendone during the work. The result and the final discussion show a positive effecton using a structured development method.Lately the use of small screen devices and their use of the Internet has widelyincreased . With this change in user interface comes new challenges designing aWeb handling a wide variety of user devices. In the process of developing aweb application techniques for small-screen interfaces was analyzed from thewhere Responsive Design was found to be the best choice concidering relevantlimitations. Design principals from the concept of Responsive Design isanalyzed and applied.

Subjective assessment of Quality of Experience in stereoscopic 3D requires new guidelines for the environmental setup as existing standards such as ITU-R BT. 500 may no longer be appropriate. A first step is to perform cross-lab experiments in different viewing conditions on the same video sequences. Three international labs performed Absolute Category Rating studies on a freely available video database containing degradations that are mainly related to video quality degradations. Different conditions have been used in the labs: Passive polarized displays, active shutter displays, differences in viewing distance, the number of parallel viewers, and the voting device. Implicit variations were introduced due to the three different languages in Sweden, South Korea, and France. Although the obtained Mean Opinion Scores are comparable, slight differences occur in function of the video degradations and the viewing distance. An analysis on the statistical differences obtained between the MOS of the video sequences revealed that obtaining an equivalent number of differences may require more observers in some viewing conditions. It was also seen that the alignment of the meaning of the attributes used in Absolute Category Rating in different languages may be beneficial. Statistical analysis was performed showing influence of the viewing distance on votes and MOS results.

This project was about building a line graph utility, a software module that should read mapdata from a PostGIS database and transform that information into a line graph (edge based graph) that the calling software could use to perform routing decisions. This outer calling application is part of a project (by an anonymized company) for flexible public transportation, that is meant to manage and direct a fleet of vehicles to where the customers actually are, instead of idling at bus stops. The software module should take different kinds of restrictions and conditions into account when building the line graph, to reflect the actual traffic situation.That can be turn restrictions, traffic signs, inclination, or conditions such as temporary hindrances, time of day. Some are static, but others vary dynamically and the state is to befound in the database. This study has found a set of tools that aids in the transformation of OpenStreetMap data into a PostGIS database; for building the topology of the map; querying the database; and data structures for representing the graph and line graph. The result of the project is a piece of working software that can return a line graph as a Boost graph with some restrictions taken into account, but it has not yet implemented the mall, and more specifically, it does not handle conditional restrictions yet. There remains a good deal of work to implement all that complex logic.

There are several success factors defined for the implementation phase that should be achieved in order for an implementation project to be successful. Several studies focus on the supplier's commitment and success factors to implement a system that end users will accept. But there are identified success factors which clients themselves should implement or give attention to during the implementation phase to have the end users accepting the system and keeping the time frame of the project. How has the client's efforts and capacity affected the result of the implementation and the timing of deployment?

The aim with this study is to apply and develop a model for implementation of information systems which is based of success factors from a client perspective. The aim is also to identify advice on how to successfully implement a system, that the system is deployed on time and that the users is accepting the system.

Our theoretical framework is presenting eight identified success factors within the client organisation. This has been applied in a case study with semi-structured interviews. The result is a model from a client perspective which shows the connection between the success factors in the implementation phase. The model can be used by providers to inform clients about the success factors that affect the implementation project. It may then be easier for the client to see what needs to be done and how one action affects another.

Further, a number of recommendations extracted from the model is presented, which affects the result, the users’ acceptance and if the information system is deployed on time.

Previous studies have successfully demonstrated that there are variations in attitudes towards blended synchronous learning among students in higher education, but few have studied underlying factors. In an attempt to fill this gap, this study aims to investigate the relationship between personality traits and attitudes among students in blended synchronous learning environments.

The research question asked in this paper was:

What type of relationships are there between personality traits and students’ attitudes towards their education in blended synchronous learning environments? This was done by deploying a web based survey to 352 students at Mid Sweden University in Sweden which in the end had a response rate of 25%. Further, a quantitative approach was chosen as the most suitable way to test these relationships and both bivariate and multivariate regressions was used.

The findings in the study indicates that personality traits are linked to a different set of attitudes among the students. The conclusions were that there exist significant relationships between

Conscientiousness and Neuroticism and students estimated study achievement. There was also a positive significant correlation between Extraversion and that students prefer to study in groups and significant correlations between Extraversion and Conscientiousness and that students prefer to study independently was also found. Finally, there exist significant relationships between Conscientiousness and Neuroticism and students' perceived learning ability through blended synchronous learning environments.

To increase the preparedness Crisis response and management authorities carry out various forms of exercises. This article is based upon a three year long project named Gaining security symbiosis (GSS). The project was aiming to increase the collaboration between crisis actors in the Swedish-Norway border region through exercises. We argue that creation of scenarios is a design challenge. In the GSS project, the exercises are built upon designed scenarios, which should make the exercise realistic and make the trainee train the expected. We propose a scenario design method that is built upon an iterative approach and that includes collaboration with the actors that are involved in the exercise. The method also includes a set of characteristics that could be used to evaluate the events of the scenario. The method have been developed and refined during the project and show some promising result. There is however a need for future research when it comes to further development and evaluation of the proposed design method.

This research examined teachers’ attitudes in a school development project, The best regional educational system in the world which focuses on regional development and school improvement. The project was performed in counties in Mid Sweden, which have a lower educational level and school achievements and a competence escape compare with other parts of Sweden. Project schools were compared to references schools concerning staffs perception of the pedagogical platform. This study is based on a web-based survey. The quantitative results show that two of the factors in the survey distinguished themselves with statistical significance; namely, the pedagogical platform was 0.44 (p=0.036) and leadership factor, which was 0.25 (p=0.052) was lower for the project schools. The directed content analysis showed differences regarding awareness of the pedagogical platform concerning understanding vs. ambiguity and specifically targeting vs. general descriptions. The reference schools described an understanding of the school’s overall educational platform and described more clearly the school’s focus. The study points to the importance of teachers are aware of their own school platform to develop leadership and teams, which in turn influences student learning and achievement. If schools in the two counties are to be successful, in terms of students’ school performance and the competitiveness of the region, the pedagogical platform should be made clear to staff and be anchored in the teachers’ team work, probably even more than in other schools.

This study focus on adolescents motivations about remaining in rural areas in the Mid Sweden Region, a part of Sweden with decreasing school performance scores and high out-migration. The study is based on 1,500 young people’s responses to a Web-based survey within the framework of a regional school development project. The research questions focused on: whether youths were going to stay there or move the future in urban or rural areas, influences, and the future choices and differences among genders, regions, and age groups. The empirical data are processed with statistical analysis. The study confirms previous research on young people’s relocations from rural areas; jobs and education are important motives, and the most prone to move are women. What is new knowledge is that lessons about the region’s importance have a positive, significant effect on individuals’ plans to remain in their home municipality. This can and should be highlighted in local, regional, and national politics, but more importantly in school discourses. Since school plays a role in students’ thinking and future choices, a larger formation effort could be of great value for norms and regional political standpoints. The study has relevance to the international terms of similar geographical areas.

The MPEG 3DV project is working on the next generation video encoding standard and in this process a call for proposal of encoding algorithms was issued. To evaluate these algorithm a large scale subjective test was performed involving Laboratories all over the world. For the participating Labs it was optional to administer a slightly modified Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ) from Kennedy et al (1993) before and after the test. Here we report the results from one Lab (Acreo) located in Sweden. The videos were shown on a 46 inch film pattern retarder 3D TV, where the viewers were using polarized passive eye-glasses to view the stereoscopic 3D video content. There were 68 viewers participating in this investigation in ages ranges from 16 to 72, with one third females. The questionnaire was filled in before and after the test, with a viewing time ranging between 30 min to about one and half hour, which is comparable to a feature length movie. The SSQ consists of 16 different symptoms that have been identified as important for indicating simulator sickness. When analyzing the individual symptoms it was found that Fatigue, Eye-strain, Difficulty Focusing and Difficulty Concentrating were significantly worse after than before. SSQ was also analyzed according to the model suggested by Kennedy et al (1993). All in all this investigation shows a statistically significant increase in symptoms after viewing 3D video especially related to visual or Oculomotor system.

This study is about interoperability in the collection and transmission of glucose data and focuses on a new eHealth technology. This technology is part of the Internet of Things (IoT) and involves interoperability in systems with sensors applied to the human body. The purpose has been to investigate the interoperability of data collection and transmission of glucose data based on the interoperability issues, how interoperability is used, and the pros and cons of different types of interoperability.

A case study with six semi-structured interviews has been conducted. The analysis of the interviews has been conducted using a theoretical framework dealing with IoT and interoperability as well as a two-part interoperability model. The first part of the model has been used to analyze the occurrence of basic, functional and semantic interoperability in the collection and transmission of glucose data. The second part of the model has been used to analyze the information systems based on different maturity levels for interoperability.

When collecting glucose data, there are basic, functional and to some extent semantic interoperability. When transmitting glucose data, basic and functional interoperability occur. Basic interoperability dominates here, except for one case.

When collecting glucose data, messages and notifications and the automatic adjustment of medication have been identified as benefits. In the case of transmitting glucose data, the fact that respondents do not need to bring their device to caregivers and, in one case, that several users can see the glucose data collected have been identified as benefits. Some clear disadvantages have not been identified.The second part of the interoperability model has resulted in twomaturation levels for the interoperability of transmitting glucose data,"distributed organization-bound" and "integrated national".

De agila projektmetoderna har använts i stor utsträckning under de senaste åren som ett sätt att motverka svagheterna med traditionella metoder. Men studierna visar att införandet av varken agila - eller traditionella metoder är effektiva i stora organisationer när det gäller stora och komplexa IT-projekt. Stödet för integrering av agila- och traditionella projektmetoder fortsätter därför att växa inom den akademiska litteraturen. Det finns för lite forskningar som beskriver hur en hybridmetod ska införas i stora och komplexa IT-projekt. Denna rapport tar fram en detaljerad projektstyrningsmodell som kommer att integrera den traditionella och agila metoden med hjälp av hybridmetoden. Rapporten beskriver även roller och möten behövs. Det används ett stort urval av vetenskaplig litteratur för att förstärka den detaljerade projektstyrningsmodellen. Den kvalitativa metoden används och intervjuer görs med respondenter från två stora organisationer; en myndighet och ett konsultbolag. Sammanlagt tretton personer intervjuas med roller som projektledare, scrummaster och produktägare. Resultatet av denna studie är ett förslag på en detaljerad tragil projektstyrningsmodell med roller och möten som behövs för att kunna uppnå en högre andel lyckosamma IT-projekt. Den tragila projektstyrningsmodellen kan användas av stora organisationer som bedriver stora eller komplexa IT-projekt. Slutsatsen är att organisationerna kan anpassa projektstyrningsmodellen efter behovet eftersom varje organisation och IT-projekt kan vara unikt.

Wireless sensor networks have been a key driver of innovation and societal progressover the last three decades. They allow for simplicity because they eliminate ca-bling complexity while increasing the flexibility of extending or adjusting networksto changing demands. Wireless sensor networks are a powerful means of fillingthe technological gap for ever-larger industrial sites of growing interconnection andbroader integration. Nonetheless, the management of wireless networks is difficultin situations wherein communication requires application-specific, network-widequality of service guarantees. A minimum end-to-end reliability for packet arrivalclose to 100% in combination with latency bounds in the millisecond range must befulfilled in many mission-critical applications.The problem addressed in this thesis is the demand for algorithmic support forend-to-end quality of service guarantees in mission-critical wireless sensor networks.Wireless sensors have traditionally been used to collect non-critical periodic read-ings; however, the intriguing advantages of wireless technologies in terms of theirflexibility and cost effectiveness justify the exploration of their potential for controland mission-critical applications, subject to the requirements of ultra-reliable com-munication, in harsh and dynamically changing environments such as manufactur-ing factories, oil rigs, and power plants.This thesis provides three main contributions in the scope of wireless sensor net-works. First, it presents a scalable algorithm that guarantees end-to-end reliabilitythrough scheduling. Second, it presents a cross-layer optimization/configurationframework that can be customized to meet multiple end-to-end quality of servicecriteria simultaneously. Third, it proposes an extension of the framework used toenable service differentiation and priority handling. Adaptive, scalable, and fast al-gorithms are proposed. The cross-layer framework is based on a genetic algorithmthat assesses the quality of service of the network as a whole and integrates the phys-ical layer, medium access control layer, network layer, and transport layer.Algorithm performance and scalability are verified through numerous simula-tions on hundreds of convergecast topologies by comparing the proposed algorithmswith other recently proposed algorithms for ensuring reliable packet delivery. Theresults show that the proposed SchedEx scheduling algorithm is both significantlymore scalable and better performing than are the competing slot-based schedulingalgorithms. The integrated solving of routing and scheduling using a genetic al-vvigorithm further improves on the original results by more than 30% in terms of la-tency. The proposed framework provides live graphical feedback about potentialbottlenecks and may be used for analysis and debugging as well as the planning ofgreen-field networks.SchedEx is found to be an adaptive, scalable, and fast algorithm that is capa-ble of ensuring the end-to-end reliability of packet arrival throughout the network.SchedEx-GA successfully identifies network configurations, thus integrating the rout-ing and scheduling decisions for networks with diverse traffic priority levels. Fur-ther, directions for future research are presented, including the extension of simula-tions to experimental work and the consideration of alternative network topologies.

The provision of quality of service for Wireless Sensor Networks is more relevant than ever now where wireless solutions with their flexibility advantages are considered for the extension/substitution of wired networks for a multitude of industrial applications. Scheduling algorithms that give end-to-end guarantees for both reliability and latency exist, but according to recent investigations is the achieved quality of service insufficient for most control applications. Data aggregation is an effective tool to significantly improve on end-to-end contention and energy efficiency compared to single packet transmissions. In practice, though, it is not extensively used for process data processing on the MAC layer. In this paper, we outline the challenges for the use of data aggregation in Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks. We further extend SchedEx, a reliability-aware scheduling algorithm extension, for packet aggregation. Our simulations for scheduling algorithms from the literature show its great potential for industrial applications. Features for the inclusion of data aggregation into industrial standards such as WirelessHART are suggested, and remaining open issues for future work are presented and discussed.

We propose novel strategies for end-to-end reliability-aware scheduling in Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks (IWSNs). Becauseof stringent reliability requirements in industrial applications where missed packets may have disastrous or lethal consequences,all IWSN communication standards are based on Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA), allowing for deterministic channelaccess on the MAC layer. We therefore extend an existing generic and scalable reliability-aware scheduling approach by the name ofSchedEx. SchedEx has proven to quickly produce TDMA schedules that guarantee a user-defined end-to-end reliability level 𝜌 for allmultihop communication in a WSN. Moreover, SchedEx executes orders of magnitude faster than recent algorithms in the literaturewhile producing schedules with competitive latencies. We generalize the original problem formulation from single-channel tomultichannel scheduling and propose a scalable integration into the existing SchedEx approach. We further introduce a noveloptimal bound that produces TDMA schedules with latencies around 20% shorter than the original SchedEx algorithm. Combiningthe novel strategies with multiple sinks, multiple channels, and the introduced optimal bound, we could through simulations verifylatency improvements by almost an order of magnitude, reducing the TDMA superframe execution times from tens of seconds toseconds only, which allows for a utilization of SchedEx for many time-critical control applications.

One of the biggest obstacles for a broad deploymentof Wireless Sensor Networks for industrial applications is the dif-ficulty to ensure end-to-end reliability guarantees while providingas tight latency guarantees as possible. In response, we proposea novel centralized optimization framework for Wireless SensorNetworks that identifies TDMA schedules and routing combi-nations in an integrated manner. The framework is shown toguarantee end-to-end reliability for all events send in a schedulingframe while minimizing the delay of all packet transmissions. Itcan further be applied using alternative Quality of Service ob-jectives and constraints including energy efficiency and fairness.We consider network settings with multiple channels, multiplesinks, and stringent reliability constraints for data collectingflows. We compare the results to those achieved by the onlyscalable reliability-aware TDMA scheduling algorithm to ourknowledge, SchedEx, which conducts scheduling only. By makingrouting part of the problem and by introducing the conceptof source-aware routing, we achieve latency improvements forall topologies, with a notable average improvement of up to31percent.

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are gaining popularity as a flexible and economical alternative to field-bus installations for monitoring and control applications. For missioncritical applications, communication networks must provide endto- end reliability guarantees, posing substantial challenges for WSN. Reliability can be improved by redundancy, and is often addressed on the MAC layer by re-submission of lost packets, usually applying slotted scheduling. Recently, researchers have proposed a strategy to optimally improve the reliability of a given schedule by repeating the most rewarding slots in a schedule incrementally until a deadline. This Incrementer can be used with most scheduling algorithms but has scalability issues which narrows its usability to offline calculations of schedules, for networks that are rather static. In this paper, we introduce SchedEx, a generic heuristic scheduling algorithm extension which guarantees a user-defined end-to-end reliability. SchedEx produces competitive schedules to the existing approach, and it does that consistently more than an order of magnitude faster. The harsher the end-to-end reliability demand of the network, the better SchedEx performs compared to the Incrementer. We further show that SchedEx has a more evenly distributed improvement impact on the scheduling algorithms, whereas the Incrementer favors schedules created by certain scheduling algorithms.

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) must ensure worst-case end-to-end delay and reliability guarantees for mission-critical applications.TDMA-based scheduling offers delay guarantees, thus it is used in industrial monitoring and automation. We propose to evolve pairs of TDMA schedule and routing-tree in a cross-layer in order to fulfill multiple conflicting QoS requirements,exemplified by latency and reliability.The genetic algorithm we utilize can be used as an analytical tool for both the feasibility and expected QoS in production. Near-optimal cross-layer solutions are found within seconds and can be directly enforced into the network.