• Rural Digital Europe

In digital transformation, universities take a pivotal role in relation to the scientific basis of new digital technologies and the provision of digital education in an academic context. A university system, properly equipped with digital-related human and real capital is essential for driving a country’s digitalisation agenda. This chapter evidences the challenges faced by Germany in the development of societal digital potential and digital universities. German universities find the development of a digital university difficult as the process of digitalisation requires collective cross-discipline working and cultural change. Research activities need to be reconceived in the context of digitalisation, in terms of better and new data and methods. Respective digital solutions need to be communicated to secure engagement. Through digitalisation, teaching approaches will become less didactic and more personalised. Here again, universities need to pursue their ways of reform. Furthermore, the university administration will face a cultural change from pure budgetary administration to sophisticated strategic management. Several logics are evolving, the research logic and the educational logic, the communication logic in research and teaching, and the administrative and control logic. Higher education systems around the world have gone through large reforms during the past decades - although with different speeds and to varying degrees of success. However, it seems clear that Nordic and Baltic university systems are much further developed and more successful than the German one. The case of Germany is one where the need for improvement, for learning from others, and for a positive stance toward self-reflection and criticism is quite obvious. The COVID-19 crisis and the uncovering of many digital weaknesses in the German university system have proven to be powerful push factors. A number of improvements are already visible, such as in online teaching formats, digital exams, and video-conferencing. Nevertheless, policy makers and university managers are still obliged to take further, more purposeful steps.

Purpose – The research introduces means for improving premanufacturing processes (design, procurement and bidding) by leveraging digitalisation in offsite construction. Specifically, this paper proposes a framework that provides measures for the planning and implementation of digitalisation in offsite construction by positioning building information modelling (BIM) as the key technology and lean principles to add value and reduce waste. Design/methodology/approach – The paper follows the design science research approach to develop the proposed framework and attain the aforementioned objective. The developed framework includes data collection, value-stream mapping and simulation to assess current processes, develop and propose improvements. An empirical implementation is employed to demonstrate the applicability of both the framework and the measures used to evaluate the outcomes. Findings – The application of the proposed three-stage framework resulted in 9.45%–23.33%-time reduction per year for the various improvement categories in premanufacturing phases. Employing simulation and applying the developed measures provide incentive for upper management to adopt the suggested improvements. Additionally, while the empirical implementation was tested on a modular construction company, the methods used indicate that the framework, with its generic guidelines, could be applied and customized to any offsite company. Originality/value – While several studies propose that BIM-Lean integration offers an advantage in the context of production systems, this paper focuses on the initial design and planning phases, which are mostly overlooked in the literature. Moreover, the present study provides quantitative evidence of the benefits of data integration through BIM technology

Digitaliseringen i samhället går snabbt framåt men det är inte alltid enkelt att utveckla digitala tjänster, framförallt inte inom den offentliga sektorn. Inom skolväsendet har digitaliseringen gått långsamt och mött utmaningar i form av bristen på digital kompetens, säkerställa att elever inte hamnar i ett digitalt utanförskap och en ständigt växande EdTech-marknad. När covid-19-pandemin drabbade världen valde Sverige att stänga gymnasie- och högskolor och bedriva all undervisning på distans. Denna studie har undersökt hur gymnasielärare har upplevt hur digitaliseringsarbetet i svenska gymnasieskolor har påverkats under covid-19-pandemin när de har tvingats att bedriva undervisning på distans. Syftet har varit att få en större förståelse för hur skolor har hanterat pandemin och på vilket sätt det har påverkat skolors digitaliseringsarbete. Gymnasielärare har intervjuats för att ta reda på hur de har upplevt det digitala arbetet under covid-19-pandemin. Resultatet visar att gymnasielärare har stött på många utmaningar under pandemin varav det största har varit att säkerställa elevers närvaro och deltagande under distansundervisningen. Studien visar att gymnasielärare upplever att det har funnits en brist på gemensamma digitaliseringsstrategier i organisationen samt att de har fått en ökad arbetsbelastning i och med att all kommunikation sker digitalt. Resultatet visar också att när gymnasielärare under covid-19-pandemin har blivit tvingade att utföra allt sitt arbete på distans med digitala verktyg har de fått upp ögonen för hur undervisning kan bedrivas med digitala medel och de upplever att digitaliseringsarbetet i skolorna har tagit ett stort kliv framåt. Digitalisation in society is advancing rapidly, but it is not always easy to develop digital services, especially not in the public sector. In the school system, digitalisation has been slow and faced challenges in the form of a lack of digital competence, ensuring that students do not end up in digital exclusion and an ever-growing EdTech market. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit the world, Sweden chose to close universities and upper secondary schools and conduct all distance learning. This study has examined how upper secondary school teachers have experienced how the digitalisation in Swedish upper secondary schools has been affected during the Covid-19 pandemic when they have been forced to conduct distance learning. The aim has been to gain a greater understanding of how schools have handled the pandemic and in what way it has affected schools' digital work. High school teachers have been interviewed to find out how they have experienced the digital work during the Covid-19 pandemic. The results show that high school teachers have encountered many challenges during the pandemic, the largest of which has been to ensure students' presence and participation during distance education. The study shows that upper secondary school teachers feel that there has been a lack of common digitalisation strategies in the organization and that they have had an increased workload as all communication takes place digitally. The results also show that when high school teachers during the Covid-19 pandemic have been forced to carry out all their work remotely with digital tools, it has opened their eyes to how teaching can be conducted with digital means and they feel that digitalisation in schools has taken a big step forward.