No description available.

No description available.

Today, as a result of the improvements especially in the area of medical sciences, conditions of life have changed and the work period has been prolonged. Currently more than one generation has been living together, and even working together. In recent years, it is observed that generationally diverse environments and product or services addressing multi-generational user groups have attracted the attention of particularly the marketing sector and this attention to the generational diversity has become a trend in the design field just as it has in many other areas. This study analyses the design assets of the office environments from the perspective of the important characteristic of the workforce, namely the generational diversity. Designing the office environment by taking only the current and future generations into consideration is not a sufficient way anymore. So, office designers are expected to consider also the older generations existing at the same environment. This trend towards generational diversity has started with the designs and arrangements of home environments / later, due to the advantages it has provided for the organizations&rsquo / success, it has gradually spread towards the designs of office environments. In this study, the work habits of generations have been analyzed initially and then it has been related to the office environments and work cultures. At the end of the study, the effects of multi-generational workforce on the office environment design assets have been discussed.

More than 35% of the U.S. workforce is composed of Baby Boomers who are eligible to retire within the next 5 years. Despite the potential loss of critical expertise, a gap in knowledge retention exists in small consulting businesses. The purpose of this case study was to explore effective strategies for retaining the tacit and explicit knowledge of retiring employees, to avoid operational knowledge drain. Exploration ensued through semistructured interviews at 2 small consulting businesses in the Washington, DC metropolitan area that are adept at innovatively retaining requisite knowledge. The conceptual frameworks of Bass' transformational leadership and Nonaka's knowledge creation led to the identification of strategies to retain tacit and explicit knowledge of retiring Baby Boomers. Seven small business leaders addressed questions on knowledge types, knowledge stimulation and sharing methods, and retention strategies to provide meaningful responses to the knowledge retention phenomenon. Data analysis included the Colaizzi and modified van Kaam methods of mining, categorizing, organizing, and describing participants' statements. Subsequently, the themes that emerged during the analysis identified reward, communication, and motivation as strategies for knowledge-share and transfer. Succession planning, mentoring, documentation, training, and knowledge sharing also emerged as effective methods for knowledge retention. The findings will contribute to social change by illuminating the roles effective leaders practice to influence and foster knowledge management, offering insight to other small businesses having difficulties remaining sustainable as the operational knowledge of Baby Boomers becomes unavailable as they retire.

People generate vast quantities of digital information as a product of their interactions with digital systems and with other people. As this information grows in scale and becomes increasingly distributed through different accounts, identities, and services, researchers have studied how best to develop tools to help people manage and derive meaning from it. Looking forward, these issues acquire new complexity when considered in the context of the information that is generated across one’s life or across generations. The long-term lens of a multigenerational timeframe elicits new questions about how people can engage with these heterogeneous collections of information and how future generations will manage and make sense of the information left behind by their ancestors. My prior work has examined how people perceive the role that systems will play in the long-term availability, management, and interpretation of digital information. This work demonstrates that while people certainly ascribe meaning to aspects of their digital information and believe that there is value held in their largely uncurated digital materials, it is not clear how or if that digital information will be transmitted, interpreted, or maintained by future generations. Furthermore, this work illustrates that there is a tension between the use of digital systems as ways of archiving content and sharing aspects of one’s life, and an uncertainty about the long term availability of the information shared through those services. Finally, this work illustrates the ways in which existing systems do not meet the needs of current users who are developing archives of their own digital information nor of future users who might try and derive meaning from information left behind by other people. Building on that earlier work, my dissertation work investigates how we can develop systems that foster engagement with lifetimes or generations of digital information in ways that are sensitive to how people define and communicate their identity and how they reflect on their life and experiences. For this work, I built a website that uses people’s Facebook data to ask them to reflect on the ways their life has changed over time. Participants’ experiences using this website illustrate the types of information that are and are not captured by digital systems. In addition, this work highlights the ways in which people engage with memories, artifacts, and experiences of people who have passed away and considers how digital systems and information can support those practices. I also interviewed participants about their experiences researching their family history, the ways in which they remember people who’ve passed away, and unresolved questions they have about the past. The findings from this aspect of the work contribute a better understanding of how digital systems, and the digital information people create over the course of their lives, intersect with the processes of death, dying, and remembrance.

This thesis, from the theoretical point of view, is concerned with the role of each generation in the wider, multi-generational family in the present day. The fundamental subject in this study is a preschool child and his/her bond to other family members, who play essential part in the child's upbringing and socialisation (family and its changes, legal status, pro- family political movements, moral education, the role of grandparents, the full meaning of a functional family for a child's healthy development. There is a full description of the research, mapping the way and course of important festivities in the multi-generational families with a different social status, education as well as different educational surroundings in the empirical part of the research. The study examines the role of the oldest generation in handing the traditions and family customs over to the younger generations and the role each member assumes in the realization of the celebration in the multi-generational family living together. Key Words: multi-generational family, cohabition, parenthood, grandparenhood, traditions and rituals

Sustainable Built Environments Senior Capstone / The traditional architecture is replaced with modern architecture which delivers less sustainable designs. The houses consume more energy, are less useful, and eventually cost more money. The focus of social, economical, and environmental impacts helps the project become more sustainable. The pillars are narrowed to patterns and principles. The vernacular architecture with passive design supports the principle. A Pattern Language with logical explanation supports the patterns. The design includes a floor plan, elevations, and section to provide the idea of how to apply the principles and patterns.

No description available.

This study examined the delivery of information and services offered to grandparents who had become the primary caregivers of pre-k through third grade students to determine if the information and services were effective in decreasing chronic early absence as defined by Chang and Romero (2008). This mixed-method, multi-case study focused on the perceived needs of custodial grandparents and examined if the school system was meeting their needs through delivery of information and services. The researcher sought participation from 5 custodial grandparents who had grandchildren in pre-k, kindergarten, first, second, or third grades in a Northeast Tennessee school system and whose grandchildren had accumulated absences that met the definition of chronic early absenteeism (10% or more absences) as defined by Chang and Romero (2008). Skyward Database provided a list of families who met the aforementioned criteria. The average age of this group of grandparents was 51.8 with a range of ages from 48 to 54.The comparison group, also retrieved from the Skyward Database, included 4 custodial grandparents whose grandchildren had the highest attendance rates (top 5%). The average age of this group was 53 with a range of ages from 48 to 59. Researcher-developed questionnaires and interviews were used to determine outcomes and major findings. [a1] Major findings included 1) A Chi Squared Test determined that children in grandparent-led households were significantly more likely to meet the criteria of chronic early absence than children from parent/other guardian-led households; 2) 100% of grandparents in both groups had not heard of chronic early absence, 33% of teachers had not heard of chronic early absence, and 50% of Family Resource Center Staff had not heard of chronic early absence; 3) 47% of grandparent-led households met the criteria of chronic early absence while only 18% of parent/other guardian-led households met criteria of chronic early absence; 4) 0% of the parents were involved in the child’s life or education in the grandparent-led households while 50% of the parents were involved in the child’s life or education in parent/other guardian-led households; 5) 20% of children in grandparent-led households with chronic early absence had disciplinary actions while 100% of children in grandparent-led households with high attendance had significant disciplinary actions; and 6) Sickness was the primary reason for absences in grandparent-led families with chronic early absence; 7) A majority of grandparents in both groups used verbal communication with teachers and school staff, but written communication was preferred by each group.

This thesis project is an attempt to learn from vernacular building traditions when designing sustainable homes for families in a contemporary rural setting. My proposal is a multi-generational home consisting of reused old log houses, which would otherwise be torn down, joined together through a composition of local materials for new rammed earth structures.  The site is located in Dalarna, a province known for its image based around traditions closely related to small-scale farming and tight knit local communities. Vernacular architecture has been, and still is, the icon of this region. Vernacular buildings in the north part of Sweden have been almost exclusively log houses. The widespread accessibility of good quality wood has enabled sturdy log structures to be built that may last for hundreds of years.  The construction method of stacking logs on top of each other, held together only by their own weight and the pieces interlocking, is a flexible building method. The house can grow if needed by adding on additional logs, or taken apart completely for easy transportation. This is something that has enabled me to gather existing building from different parts of Sweden and bring them new life. This proposal consists of seven log houses, all found for sale online.