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This paper aims to demonstrate the variety of ways institutions and their libraries approach student success both conceptionally and operationally.

Librarians from nine different institutions of higher education were given a series of questions about student success on their campuses and in their libraries. They responded with written essays describing their experiences and perspectives.

The contributed pieces are collected together and display a shared interest in defining “student success,” aligning strategic planning with student success initiatives and establishing (and assessing) strong infrastructure to support student success.

These examples help us observe what is happening throughout higher education and see potential paths forward at our own institutions engaged in this work.

Quality function deployment (QFD) is a method for structured product planning and development that enables a development team to specify clearly the wants and needs of customers. This method has been successfully employed in the construction industry in developed countries. However, the benefits of QFD have not been practically realised in developing countries such as Nigeria. Hence, this research aims to investigate the awareness and effectiveness of QFD as a quality control technique that enhances the satisfaction of clients in terms of quality, cost and project delivery time in design and build projects.

A qualitative and quantitative research approach in the form of in-depth telephone interviews and questionnaires was used to obtain the views of construction professionals such as civil engineers, architects, project managers, chief executive officers and trades people involved in design and build projects in the Nigerian construction industry, as well as 50 clients to ascertain the level of satisfaction derived from these design and build projects.

The results of this research are derived from statistical analysis and show that there is currently little awareness of QFD within the Nigerian construction industry or its potential effectiveness in design and build projects.

There has been little previous research into the use of QFD in the Nigerian construction industry, hence this paper provides insight but also highlights the need for further research.

This paper aims to introduce a practical expert decision support system (EDSS) for performing location analysis and making real estate location decisions in the organization’s facility and real estate management (FREM) department in presence of several decision criteria, under risk and uncertainty. This tool is particularly useful for making strategic decisions in facility planning, portfolio management, investment appraisal, development project evaluations and deciding on usage possibilities in an unbiased, objective manner.

The proposed EDSS uses fuzzy logic and uncertainty theory as two of the most useful tools to deal with uncertainties involved in the problem environment. The system performs an unbiased mathematical analysis on the input data provided by the decision-maker, using a combination of Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Global Criterion Method; determines a suitable compromise level between the objectives; and delivers a set of locations that complies best with the outlined desires of the management as the final solution. The application of the system is tested on a real case and has delivered satisfactory results.

The proposed EDSS took the defined objectives, the list of alternative locations, and their attributes as the required input for problem-solving, and used a combination of AHP, Possibilistic approach, and global criterion method to solve the problem. The delivered outcome was a set of proper locations with the right attributes to meet all objectives of the organization at a satisfactory level, confirmed by the problem owners.

The application of such a system with such a degree of preciseness and complexity has been very limited in the literature. The system designed in this study is an Industry 4.0 decision making tool. For designing this system several body of knowledge are used. The present study is particularly useful for making strategic decisions in the domains of portfolio management, investment appraisal, project development evaluations and deciding on property usage possibilities. The proposed EDSS takes the information provided by the experts in the field (through qualitative and quantitative data collecting) as the inputs and operates as an objective decision-making tool using several bodies of knowledge considering the trends and developments in the world of FREM. The strong scientific method used in the core of the proposed EDSS guarantees a highly accurate result.

Global warming has been a well recognized environmental issue in the United States for the past ten years, even though scientists had identified it as a potential problem years before in 1896. We find debate about the issue in the United States media coverage while controversy among the majority of scientists is rare. The role that media plays in constructing the norms and ideas in society is researched to understand how they socially construct global warming and other environmental issues. To identify if the U.S. Media presents a biased view of global warming, the following are discussed (1) the theoretical perspective of media and the environment; (2) scientific overview and history of global warming; (3) media coverage of global warming, and (4) research findings from the content analysis of three countries’ newspaper articles and two international scientific journals produced in 2000 with comparison of these countries economies, industries, and environments. In conclusion, our research demonstrates that the U.S. with differing industries, predominantly dominated by the fossil fuel industry, in comparison to New Zealand and Finland has a significant impact on the media coverage of global warming. The U.S’s media states that global warming is controversial and theoretical, yet the other two countries portray the story that is commonly found in the international scientific journals. Therefore, media, acting as one driving force, is providing citizens with piecemeal information that is necessary to assess the social, environmental and political conditions of the country and world.

After a successful run for many years as a resilient consumer electronics giant, Best Buy was under intense pressure at the end of 2014. Even as competitors like Circuit City melted away, Best Buy had been able to withstand the onslaught of online behemoth Amazon and discount retailers like Target and Walmart. However, its competitive position was threatened as online shopping became more popular, particularly among millennial customers.

With a new leadership team, Best Buy had recently undertaken bold initiatives to expand and refine its online presence and position itself for success. These initiatives had produced encouraging results, but Best Buy needed to do more to stem the loss of market share to Amazon and to become more relevant to millennial customers. To address these challenges, Best Buy approached the Kellogg School of Management to solicit ideas from student teams by sponsoring a Business Challenge competition. The teams came up with several strategic initiatives. Best Buy needed to evaluate these initiatives on two criteria: First, how well did these initiatives leverage Best Buy's privileged physical assets (stores, salespeople, and Geek Squad services staff) to create a winning customer experience? Second, how effective would these initiatives be in attracting and retaining millennial customers?

Economic justice is possible, if one means by it commutative justice which provides for human dignity, for fair exchange and for the participation of everyone who wants to participate. It is also essential if worldwide disorder is to be avoided. But many forces militate against it and it requires an insurance system such as the one which Josiah Royce proposed to control war as well as changes in the nature and use of money. Examines problems posed by such ideas as well as changes which seem to be taking place and which may make economic justice more feasible.

This paper aims to examine what elements in online environments promote engagement, learning and repeated visits for children aged 6‐12 years.

An in‐depth textual analysis, exploring components such as navigation, construction of site, character choice and development, style of text, types of questioning, animation, color and other factors, of six English‐language web sites, describing themselves as “educational and fun”, was carried out against a background of literature available on web site design for children, relying particularly on media text analysis and an evaluation method produced in relation to children's motivation and web site use.

The analysis of the six web sites resulted in a number of usability requirements for children's web sites, including the following: web sites should have an understanding of the community of users they serve; web sites should offer dynamic forms of learning; web sites should encourage interaction between users and site designers; web sites should offer open activities rather than closed ones; web sites should view young people as persons with rights.

Insights gained from the analysis of six web sites are hard to generalize. User behavior was not studied.

Web designers should bear the usability requirements in mind when designing web sites for children.

Although educational content for children on the internet is growing exponentially, the area is relatively under‐researched. This is one of the first detailed analyses of entertaining educational web sites targeting children.