Showing papers by "Rob Dekkers published in 2013"

Outsourcing: decision-making methods and criteria during design and engineering

Abstract: Research to date for decision-making on outsourcing has almost exclusively focussed on strategic and operational levels. Consequently, we know relatively little about decision-making on outsourcing during design and engineering, i.e. the tactical level; that also means that the characteristics of design and engineering – incomplete and inaccurate information and progressive availability of data – are not incorporated in existing frameworks and methods at that level. To fill this gap, a first-of-its-kind framework, based on an extensive appraisal of the literature, is validated; to that purpose, a Delphi survey was undertaken gauging the opinions of two homogeneous groups of academic and industry experts. The analysis of the survey affirms the assumptions made about the role of the progressive availability of data during decision-making on outsourcing. The results from this study should not only inform further research into decision-making during design and engineering but potentially the framework might a...

Demystifying the Prejudice about International Students: A Matter of Module Design?

Abstract: Increased numbers of students from China have led academics to study their learning styles and performance. Based on a literature review, this paper investigates an approach to learning suitable for students from varied backgrounds. Using descriptive statistics from three deliveries and qualitative data collected during one of these deliveries of an undergraduate module at a UK Business School, the pedagogy and design may explain why Chinese students achieved high marks in some assessments, contrary to perceptions of them as passive learners. The findings reveal that the staged, collaborative and cumulative learning involved benefited them and they achieved marks similar to home students and sometimes higher than home and European students. However, unexpectedly, some home students objected to the design and preferred discrete blocks of learning and assessment rather than cumulative learning and assessment. Implications for module design to promote graduate attributes in students from diverse educational backgrounds are discussed.