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Online learning can present challenges and barriers for students, especially when it comes to self-motivation and discipline. Non-traditional learners and those who may be underprepared are often the students most likely to seek virtual learning options. As a result, methods of supporting online learners must be intentional and robust to stay attentive to students’ needs. The American Women’s College (TAWC) at Bay Path University designed its Social Online Universal Learning (SOUL) model to promote degree completion through a constellation of evidence-based practices that cultivate student engagement in a personalized online learning environment. SOUL employs an innovative adaptive technology approach with Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles to promote accessibility and affordability. Foundational to these frameworks is a commitment to leveraging technology to gather data that drives action-oriented analytics, triggering interventions by faculty and staff and generating predictive models to inform wrap-around support. SOUL’s high-tech, high-touch attributes give students agency over their unique learning paths and provide instructors and administrators the meaningful insights needed to target efforts in a personalized yet scalable way, to promote and positively impact student success. Lessons learned in the process of developing data-driven “high-tech, high-touch” practices are presented.

This chapter recounts the story of the Regional Learning Collaborative (www.rlcollab.com) and its powerful positive impact, beginning in one urban region and expanding gradually. It first sets forth the challenges that gave birth to its vision. It introduces the intersegmental solutions and strategies innovated to address the challenges that thousands of students faced in advancing across the education transitions. The chapter next provides significant student achievement data in evidence of the Regional Learning Collaborative's proof of concept in supporting over one hundred thousand (113,000) primarily low-income and largely first-generation students to successfully transition across their academic and career pathways. Finally and importantly, the rigorous collaborative community approach and framework that continue to generate the Collaborative's equity outcomes are introduced and discussed.

As the world continues to urbanise, cities face increasing pressure to become more sustainable, efficient and livable. Sustainable smart cities are emerging as a promising solution to this challenge, leveraging technology and data to improve urban systems and services while reducing environmental impact. This chapter provides an overview of the concept of sustainable smart cities and its implications for urban development. It explores the key features of sustainable smart cities, including their focus on technology, data and citizen engagement and the challenges they are facing in terms of infrastructure, data management, social equity, environmental sustainability, governance and regulations. The chapter also highlights the implications of sustainable smart cities for urban planners, policymakers and other stakeholders, emphasising the need for collaborative approaches that engage citizens and stakeholders in the design and implementation of smart city initiatives.

This chapter unpacks the unique characteristics of online students, research that exists pertaining to support of online students in American higher education, and reviews the subsequent chapters in this volume. The chapters in this book focus on research, theoretical foundations for supporting the success of online student. Authors present case studies in various context including a large state university system, a large and increasingly growing public master’s degree, two private institutions, and a Scottish institution. Various theoretical constructs are provided to help inform practices for supporting online students including “communities of practice” (Wenger, 2000) or “communities of inquiry” (Garrison, 2007) and the Dynamic Student Development Metatheodel (DSDM). The final chapters of this book unpack the experiences of specific populations including post-baccalaureate, students, and doctoral students, understanding that each subset of students encounters different challenges throughout their online experiences. Finally, this book closes with a focus on a very important topic for all professionals: accessibility discussing the importance of inclusion, participation, and engagement for students with disabilities no matter the modality of learning. The last chapter compares two models of support (medical and social) and offers recommended changes for implementation of best practices to enhance literacy supports in online learning environments.

Intergenerational appreciative inquiry is an approach that maximizes the generativity of all generations and the generative outcomes of intergenerational collaboration. While conversations about intergenerationalism have increased in recent decades, forums and strategies for intergenerational collaboration have emerged at a much slower rate. In this chapter we explore definitions of the concepts of intergenerational and multigenerational and discuss generativity in the context of intergenerationalism. We share how we have found the appreciative inquiry summit, and other appreciative-based processes, to possess a natural capacity for enabling intergenerational inquiry that can maximize generativity. We conclude by turning to the future and discussing generational changes that are taking place in society and why we expect intergenerational appreciative inquiry will only increase in importance as we continue caring for the future together.

The growing turbulence of the external environment has progressively led to the necessity by organizations of exploiting new opportunities provided by data-driven approaches for supporting the even more complex decision-making processes. The new digital environment has led to the development and adoption of innovative approaches; also in the urban context which has always been characterized by different, interconnected, and dynamic dimensions. Urban governance models have been enhanced by smart technologies, which act as enablers of advanced services and foster connections between citizens, public and private organizations, and decision-makers. In this context, the objective of this chapter is to examine the role of data-driven approaches in the urban context during the chaotic and high variable circumstances related to the diffusion of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19). Thanks to the adoption of the co-evolutionary perspective, a cycle in urban governance decision-making approach based on digital technologies is depicted and its contribution for managing the ongoing Covid-19 is traced. The results of the analysis highlight how the data-driven approach supports urban decision-making process and shed light on the co-evolutionary perspective as heuristic device to map the interactions settled in the networks between local governments, data-driven technologies, and citizens. In this sense, this chapter offers interesting insights, potentially capable of generating useful implications for both researchers and professionals in the public sector.

Significant advances in digital technologies impact both organisations and knowledge workers alike. Organisations are now able to effectively analyse significant amounts of data, while accomplishing actionable insight and data-driven decision-making through knowledge workers that understand and manage greater complexity. For decision-makers to be in a position where sufficient information and data-driven insights enable them to make informed decisions, they need to better understand fundamental constructs that lead to the understanding of deep knowledge and wisdom. In an attempt to guide organisations in such a process of understanding, this research study focuses on the design of an organisational transformation framework for data-driven decision-making (OTxDD) based on the collaboration of human and machine for knowledge work. The OTxDD framework was designed through a design science research approach and consists of 4 major enablers (data analytics, data management, data platform, data-driven organisation ethos) and 12 sub-enablers. The OTxDD framework was evaluated in a real-world scenario, where after, based on the evaluation feedback, the OTxDD framework was improved and an organisational measurement tool developed. By considering such an OTxDD framework and measurement tool, organisations will be able to create a clear transformation path to data-driven decision-making, while applying the insight from both knowledge workers and intelligent machines.

The progressive increase in the size of datasets has given life to the so-called big data that provides researchers with the opportunity to extract a greater amount of useful information in many sectors, especially in the tourism industry.

The chapter aims to demonstrate that sustainable tourism (ST) could be particularly favored by using big data and a data-driven approach. Furthermore, as ST appears in line with a new type of responsible entrepreneurship, called Humane Entrepreneurship (HumEnt), this chapter investigates the link between ST and HumEnt and the impact of big data and data-oriented approaches on ST and HumEnt.

The research adopts a qualitative approach, applying the case study technique. The authors conducted ten semi-structured interviews with key informants from a specific form of hospitality: Albergo Diffuso. Findings show the advantages of the data-driven approach to tourism and entrepreneurship highlighting how using data creates new opportunities for decision making in ST and HumEnt.