Smart Universities


Book Description

This book presents peer-reviewed contributions on smart universities by various international research, design and development teams. Smart university is an emerging and rapidly evolving area that creatively integrates innovative concepts; smart software and hardware systems; smart classrooms with state-of-the-art technologies and technical platforms; smart pedagogy based on modern teaching and learning strategies; smart learning and academic analytics; as well as various branches of computer science and computer engineering. The contributions are grouped into several parts: Part 1—Smart Universities: Literature Review and Creative Analysis, Part 2—Smart Universities: Concepts, Systems and Technologies, Part 3—Smart Education: Approaches and Best Practices, and Part 4—Smart Universities: Smart Long Life Learning. The book is a valuable source of research data and findings, design and development outcomes, and best practices for faculty, scholars, Ph.D students, administrators, practitioners and anyone interested in the rapidly growing areas of smart university and smart education.




Strong Society, Smart State


Book Description

The rise and influence of public opinion on Chinese foreign policy reveals a remarkable evolution in authoritarian responses to social turmoil. James Reilly shows how Chinese leaders have responded to popular demands for political participation with a sophisticated strategy of tolerance, responsiveness, persuasion, and repression—a successful approach that helps explain how and why the Communist Party continues to rule China. Through a detailed examination of China's relations with Japan from 1980 to 2010, Reilly reveals the populist origins of a wave of anti-Japanese public mobilization that swept across China in the early 2000s. Popular protests, sensationalist media content, and emotional public opinion combined to impede diplomatic negotiations, interrupt economic cooperation, spur belligerent rhetoric, and reshape public debates. Facing a mounting domestic and diplomatic crisis, Chinese leaders responded with a remarkable reversal, curtailing protests and cooling public anger toward Japan. Far from being a fragile state overwhelmed by popular nationalism, market forces, or information technology, China has emerged as a robust and flexible regime that has adapted to its new environment with remarkable speed and effectiveness. Reilly's study of public opinion's influence on foreign policy extends beyond democratic states. It reveals how persuasion and responsiveness sustain Communist Party rule in China and develops a method for examining similar dynamics in different authoritarian regimes. He draws upon public opinion surveys, interviews with Chinese activists, quantitative media analysis, and internal government documents to support his findings, joining theories in international relations, social movements, and public opinion.




Remaking the American University


Book Description

At one time, universities educated new generations and were a source of social change. Today colleges and universities are less places of public purpose, than agencies of personal advantage. Remaking the American University provides a penetrating analysis of the ways market forces have shaped and distorted the behaviors, purposes, and ultimately the missions of universities and colleges over the past half-century. The authors describe how a competitive preoccupation with rankings and markets published by the media spawned an admissions arms race that drains institutional resources and energies. Equally revealing are the depictions of the ways faculty distance themselves from their universities with the resulting increase in the number of administrators, which contributes substantially to institutional costs. Other chapters focus on the impact of intercollegiate athletics on educational mission, even among selective institutions; on the unforeseen result of higher education's "outsourcing" a substantial share of the scholarly publication function to for-profit interests; and on the potentially dire consequences of today's zealous investments in e-learning. A central question extends through this series of explorations: Can universities and colleges today still choose to be places of public purpose? In the answers they provide, both sobering and enlightening, the authors underscore a consistent and powerful lesson-academic institutions cannot ignore the workings of the markets. The challenge ahead is to learn how to better use those markets to achieve public purposes.




Smart University


Book Description

"This work describes how smart campuses are growing across the country, and how these efforts pose a significant threat to student policy"--




Smart Citizens, Smarter State


Book Description

Government “of the people, by the people, for the people” expresses an ideal that resonates in all democracies. Yet poll after poll reveals deep distrust of institutions that seem to have left “the people” out of the governing equation. Government bureaucracies that are supposed to solve critical problems on their own are a troublesome outgrowth of the professionalization of public life in the industrial age. They are especially ill-suited to confronting today’s complex challenges. Offering a far-reaching program for innovation, Smart Citizens, Smarter State suggests that public decisionmaking could be more effective and legitimate if government were smarter—if our institutions knew how to use technology to leverage citizens’ expertise. Just as individuals use only part of their brainpower to solve most problems, governing institutions make far too little use of the skills and experience of those inside and outside of government with scientific credentials, practical skills, and ground-level street smarts. New tools—what Beth Simone Noveck calls technologies of expertise—are making it possible to match the supply of citizen expertise to the demand for it in government. Drawing on a wide range of academic disciplines and practical examples from her work as an adviser to governments on institutional innovation, Noveck explores how to create more open and collaborative institutions. In so doing, she puts forward a profound new vision for participatory democracy rooted not in the paltry act of occasional voting or the serendipity of crowdsourcing but in people’s knowledge and know-how.




Smart Education and e-Learning—Smart University


Book Description

This book contains the contributions presented at the 10th international KES conference on Smart Education and e-Learning (SEEL-2023) with the Smart University as the main conference theme. The conference is being held on June 14-16, 2023 in Rome, Italy in both in-person and online modes. The book contains high quality peer-reviewed papers that are grouped into several interconnected parts: Part 1 – Smart Education, Part 2 – Smart e-Learning, Part 3 – Smart University, Part 4 – Smart Education: Case Studies and Research, and Part 5 – Smart Company: Case Studies and Research. Smart education, smart e-learning, smart universities and smart companies are emerging and rapidly growing areas with the potential to transform the existing teaching strategies, learning environments, and educational/training activities and technology in academic institutions and training centers. Smart education/training and smart e-learning are focused on enabling instructors/trainers to develop innovative ways of achieving excellence in teaching in highly technological smart classrooms/labs, and providing students/learners with new opportunities to maximize their success and select the best options for their education/training, location and learning style, as well as the mode of content delivery. This book serves as a useful source of research data and valuable information on current research projects, best practices and case studies for faculty, scholars, Ph.D. students, administrators, and practitioners – all those who are interested in smart education, smart e-learning, smart university and smart business/company paradigms, concepts, systems and technology.




Smart Machines


Book Description

We are crossing a new frontier in the evolution of computing and entering the era of cognitive systems. The victory of IBMÕs Watson on the television quiz show Jeopardy! revealed how scientists and engineers at IBM and elsewhere are pushing the boundaries of science and technology to create machines that sense, learn, reason, and interact with people in new ways to provide insight and advice. In Smart Machines, John E. Kelly III, director of IBM Research, and Steve Hamm, a writer at IBM and a former business and technology journalist, introduce the fascinating world of Òcognitive systemsÓ to general audiences and provide a window into the future of computing. Cognitive systems promise to penetrate complexity and assist people and organizations in better decision making. They can help doctors evaluate and treat patients, augment the ways we see, anticipate major weather events, and contribute to smarter urban planning. Kelly and HammÕs comprehensive perspective describes this technology inside and out and explains how it will help us conquer the harnessing and understanding of Òbig data,Ó one of the major computing challenges facing businesses and governments in the coming decades. Absorbing and impassioned, their book will inspire governments, academics, and the global tech industry to work together to power this exciting wave in innovation.




Book Smart


Book Description

In Book Smart: How to Support Successful, Motivated Readers, the experience of reading together is used as a vehicle for discussing the varied yet interconnected language and literacy skills that jumpstart the career of a successful reader.




What Makes Us Smart


Book Description

How a computational framework can account for the successes and failures of human cognition At the heart of human intelligence rests a fundamental puzzle: How are we incredibly smart and stupid at the same time? No existing machine can match the power and flexibility of human perception, language, and reasoning. Yet, we routinely commit errors that reveal the failures of our thought processes. What Makes Us Smart makes sense of this paradox by arguing that our cognitive errors are not haphazard. Rather, they are the inevitable consequences of a brain optimized for efficient inference and decision making within the constraints of time, energy, and memory—in other words, data and resource limitations. Framing human intelligence in terms of these constraints, Samuel Gershman shows how a deeper computational logic underpins the “stupid” errors of human cognition. Embarking on a journey across psychology, neuroscience, computer science, linguistics, and economics, Gershman presents unifying principles that govern human intelligence. First, inductive bias: any system that makes inferences based on limited data must constrain its hypotheses in some way before observing data. Second, approximation bias: any system that makes inferences and decisions with limited resources must make approximations. Applying these principles to a range of computational errors made by humans, Gershman demonstrates that intelligent systems designed to meet these constraints yield characteristically human errors. Examining how humans make intelligent and maladaptive decisions, What Makes Us Smart delves into the successes and failures of cognition.




The Smart Wife


Book Description

The life and times of the Smart Wife--feminized digital assistants who are friendly and sometimes flirty, occasionally glitchy but perpetually available. Meet the Smart Wife--at your service, an eclectic collection of feminized AI, robotic, and smart devices. This digital assistant is friendly and sometimes flirty, docile and efficient, occasionally glitchy but perpetually available. She might go by Siri, or Alexa, or inhabit Google Home. She can keep us company, order groceries, vacuum the floor, turn out the lights. A Japanese digital voice assistant--a virtual anime hologram named Hikari Azuma--sends her "master" helpful messages during the day; an American sexbot named Roxxxy takes on other kinds of household chores. In The Smart Wife, Yolande Strengers and Jenny Kennedy examine the emergence of digital devices that carry out "wifework"--domestic responsibilities that have traditionally fallen to (human) wives. They show that the principal prototype for these virtual helpers--designed in male-dominated industries--is the 1950s housewife: white, middle class, heteronormative, and nurturing, with a spick-and-span home. It's time, they say, to give the Smart Wife a reboot. What's wrong with preferring domestic assistants with feminine personalities? We like our assistants to conform to gender stereotypes--so what? For one thing, Strengers and Kennedy remind us, the design of gendered devices re-inscribes those outdated and unfounded stereotypes. Advanced technology is taking us backwards on gender equity. Strengers and Kennedy offer a Smart Wife "manifesta," proposing a rebooted Smart Wife that would promote a revaluing of femininity in society in all her glorious diversity.