Saxion University of Applied Sciences

Abstract To effectively prepare students for navigating complex societal and sustainability challenges, higher education institutions are increasingly experimenting with transdisciplinary learning environments (TLEs) in which students collaborate with external stakeholders across disciplinary and sectoral boundaries. This empirical study explores how TLEs in Dutch higher education are designed to support co-creation and co-learning between students and societal actors. Using a multiple case study design, eleven TLEs across research universities and universities of applied sciences were analysed. The findings reveal three types of TLEs: Consultancy TLEs (C-TLEs), where students address real-world problems posed by commissioners; Participatory TLEs (P-TLEs), where all participants are explicitly positioned as learners in co-creation processes; and Student-Led TLEs (SL-TLEs), where students initiate the challenge based on their intrinsic motivation and seek out relevant stakeholders. The pedagogical and design decisions made within each type were identified, focusing on how co-creation is facilitated across the phases of co-design, co-production, and co-dissemination, and to what extent co-learning is an explicit goal. While co-creation was often supported, co-learning—especially for stakeholders—was rarely intentionally designed for or assessed. P-TLEs were most explicit in embedding co-creation and co-learning in goals, activities, and support structures. Across cases, several enablers and barriers were identified, such as teacher roles, assessment alignment, use of physical spaces, and institutional embedding. Our findings highlight the importance of designing for “freedom within structure,” recognising learning surprises, and enabling reciprocal partnerships to strengthen TLE impact. The conclusion stresses that while TLEs hold great promise for transformative education and societal engagement, the concept and practice of co-learning remain underdeveloped. These findings call for more research and practical experimentation into supporting, assessing, and making visible the co-learning processes of all actors involved—students, teachers, and stakeholders alike—as a critical step toward realising the third mission of higher education.

Abstract. Visual-inertial navigation has become a cornerstone for deploying robots in diverse environments. Despite significant progress, current approaches may easily fail to deliver reliable and robust navigation for industrial applications. Therefore, evaluating these methods using various datasets under challenging operational conditions is essential to ensure safe integration into robotic platforms. As such, this paper aims to enrich the availability of navigation datasets by introducing SMARTNav, which includes raw data obtained from stereo cameras and IMU sensors mounted on both ground and aerial robots. These robots were deployed in various operational scenarios across different environments, such as greenhouses, urban streets, indoor spaces, and near-building areas. The data includes challenges of navigating in GPS-denied areas, repetitive structures, featureless environments, and adverse lighting conditions. In order to provide corresponding ground-truth for each sequence, different techniques were deployed, such as Motion Capture System, Real Time Kinematics (RTK), and dense LiDAR-based Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). Consequently, the resulting dataset can be used to address and validate key issues in vision-based state estimation, localization, and mapping for industrial applications. The SMARTNav dataset is accessible at: https://saxionmechatronics.github.io/smartnav-dataset/.

Generalists in palliative care and professionals with specialized expertise, including palliative care nurses, achieve high-quality palliative care. To strengthen their role, it is essential to understand the tasks palliative care nurses perform and their position within the organizations. We aim to accomplish this understanding and explore facilitators and barriers to taking on the role as specialized nurses from both the nurses’ and managers’ perspectives. A sequential mixed-method design combined an online survey, followed up by five focus groups. Analysis involved descriptive statistics and thematic coding. A total of 234 palliative care nurses across various care settings answered the survey. They primarily provided physical care (88%), with less focus on psychological (72%), social (68%), and spiritual (68%) domains, and were consulted for fewer than half of their activities. Having no job descriptions often occurred (from 78% in home care and nursing homes to 44% in hospitals). Hospital nurses were more involved in advisory teams (56%) than those in other settings (26% − 28%). Nurses showed leadership by promoting generalists’ expertise, connecting partners, serving as role models, and advocating for palliative care. Focus groups with twelve nurses and nine managers identified facilitators and barriers that palliative care nurses and their managers encounter in embedding their roles and positions. These covered: (1) distinction between generalist and specialist palliative care, (2) collaboration, (3) job descriptions, (4) leadership, (5) visibility, (6) funding and reimbursement. Palliative care nurses fulfill an essential role but experience ambiguity about their role and position. They and their managers emphasized the importance of leadership and advocating for palliative care in their organizations. Visibility, funding, reimbursement, and collaboration are facilitators and barriers to their role and position. There are notable areas for improvement, including joining a palliative care advisory team, having a job description, and finding ways to demonstrate cost-effectiveness.

Abstract Smart factory research has primarily concentrated on the manufacturing sector, without taking the building sector into closer consideration. Combining these two ventures can lead to a variety of synergies to minimize the CO2 emissions of existing buildings. By producing facade and roof panels on an industrial scale for energetic refurbishments, Construction 4.0 and prefabrication can make a significant contribution to achieving climate targets. In this context, the purpose of this paper is to identify, how data of a virtual building can be used in procurement logistics of a smart factory. To achieve this, this paper follows a case study analysis. At the beginning, the procedure of developing a virtual building model is described. This is followed by the design of the inbound workflows of a smart factory in the construction industry. The findings demonstrate how the information from virtual building models can be leveraged to control procurement processes of a smart factory.

ABSTRACT The development of interdisciplinary education is a complex task. Many cohesive decisions need to be taken to create a coherent curriculum and strong leadership is needed in order to realise long-term results. This article reviews seven research studies from three interdisciplinary education contexts at Saxion University of Applied Sciences, conducted over the past five years. Two main research questions are addressed: What are lessons learned for the design and implementation of interdisciplinary education, regarding the core elements of the curricular spider web [Van den Akker, J. 2003. “Curriculum Perspectives: An Introduction.” In Curriculum Landscapes and Trends, edited by J. J. H. van den Akker, W. A. J. M. Kuiper, and U. Hameyer, 1–10. Kluwer]? How does educational leadership contribute to or hinder the design process and the sustainable implementation of interdisciplinary education? We summarise and reflect on key results and argue to add elements to the spider web in order to acknowledge the complexity and advise educational leaders to pay more attention to creating a shared vision, to share leadership and responsibility, and to help teachers develop specific coaching skills.

Power converters in the smart grid systems are essential to link renewable energy sources with all grid appliances and equipment. However, this raises the possibility of electromagnetic interference (EMI) between the smart grid elements. Hence, spread spectrum (SS) modulation techniques have been used to mitigate the EMI peaks generated from the power converters. Consequently, the performance of the nearby communication systems is affected under the presence of EMI, which is not covered in many situations. In this paper, the behavior of the G3 Power Line Communication (PLC) channel is evaluated in terms of the Shannon–Hartley equation in the presence of SS-modulated EMI from a buck converter. The SS-modulation technique used is the Random Carrier Frequency Modulation with Constant Duty cycle (RCFMFD). Moreover, The analysis is validated by experimental results obtained with a test setup reproducing the parasitic coupling between the PLC system and the power converter.

ABSTRACT Relations between load and acute psychophysiological responses have been widely studied in football. However, due to the large heterogeneity in contexts, operationalization, and results, the direction and strength of these relations remain unclear. In this meta-analysis, we examine the relation between load and typical acute (i.e. within one week) responses – wellbeing, recovery, and heart rate measures – in football players from all football codes (soccer, rugby, futsal, American football, and Australian rules football). We consulted PubMed, Web of Science, and CINAHL up to the 19th of June 2024, and included 62 articles and 1,474 participants in the meta-analysis. Subsequently, we estimated 12 meta-analysis models and applied meta-regression models to explore the influence of several moderators. Significant relations were found between load and overall wellbeing (r = −0.33 [95%CI: −0.48; −0.19]), muscle soreness (r = −0.36 [95%CI: −0.49; −0.24]), fatigue (r = −0.41 [95%CI: −0.56; −0.26]), sleep quality (r = −0.21 [95%CI: −0.31; −0.10]), and stress (r = −0.16 [95%CI: −0.26; −0.06]). Given the high risk of bias, inconsistency (wide prediction intervals), and imprecision, the certainty in these findings based on the GRADE assessment is very low. Additionally, the high risk of bias scores indicates that the overall quality of the included studies is low. In conclusion, this meta-analysis provides comprehensive information on the acute responses of the athlete to load, and directions for improvement of the quality of future studies.

The internet is increasingly used as a primary source of information for patients with musculoskeletal pain. Private physiotherapy practices provide informative content on low back pain (LBP) and neck pain (NP) on their websites, but the extent to which this information is biopsychosocial, guidelines-consistent, and fear-inducing is unknown. The aim of this study was to analyse the information on websites of private physiotherapy practices in the Netherlands about LBP and NP regarding consistency with the guidelines and the biopsychosocial model and to explore the use of fear-inducing language. The content of all existing Dutch private physiotherapy practice websites was examined in a cross sectional study design. Content analysis was based on predetermined criteria of the biopsychosocial model and evidence-based guidelines. Descriptive statistics were applied. After removing duplicates and sites without information, 834 (10%) of 8707 websites remained. Information about LBP was found on 449 (54%) websites and 295 (35%) websites informed about NP. A majority of websites (LBP: n = 287, 64%; NP: n = 174, 59%) were biomedically oriented. Treatment advice was given 1855 times on n = 560 (67%) websites. Most of the recommended interventions were inconsistent with or not mentioned in the guidelines. Fear-inducing language was provided n = 1624 (69%) times. The majority of the information on the Dutch private physiotherapy websites was biomedical and not in line with the current guidelines and fear-inducing. This study revealed that the majority of private physiotherapy practice websites that provide information on LBP and NP are inconsistent with the biopsychosocial model and current guidelines. This information has a negative impact on patients' knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and expectations, potentially affecting treatment outcomes. Consequently, most physiotherapy practice websites are unreliable sources of information on LBP and NP for patients. There is an urgent need to implement strategies to make websites reliable and helpful sources of information.

Abstract The current study combines an experimental research design, Virtual Reality (VR) and multimodal (survey and physiological) measurements to measure and explain situational fear of crime. 159 participants completed our VR experiment in which we focused on the role of physical and social disorder in engendering situational fear of crime. Drawing on our survey measures, we find significant effects of disorder on a variety of outcome variables: situationally experienced safety, fear of theft, fear of verbal aggression, fear and physical aggression and fear of sexually transgressive behaviour. Most of our physiological measures rendered null findings. Hence, we also conclude that the results from our two data sources (survey measures vs. physiological measures) diverge in important ways.

High Kinetic Energy Ion Mobility Spectrometry (HiKE-IMS) is a technique for rapid and reliable detection of trace compounds down to ppbV-levels within one second. Compared to classical IMS operating at ambient pressure and providing the ion mobility at low electric fields, HiKE-IMS can also provide the analyte-specific field dependence of the ion mobility and a fragmentation pattern at high reduced electric field strengths. The additional information about the analyte obtained by varying the reduced electric field strength can contribute to reliable detection. Furthermore, the reduced number of ion-molecule reactions at the low operating pressure of 10 – 40 mbar and the shorter reaction times reduce the impact of competing ion-molecule reactions that can cause false negatives. In this work, we employ HiKE-IMS for the analysis of phenyl-2-propanone (P2P) and other precursor chemicals used for synthesis of methamphetamine and amphetamine. The results show that the precursor chemicals exhibit different behavior in HiKE-IMS. Some precursors form a single significant ion species, while others readily form a fragmentation pattern. Nevertheless, all drug precursors can be distinguished from each other, from the reactant ions and from interfering compounds. In particular, the field-dependent ion mobility as an additional separation dimension aids identification, potentially reducing the number of false positive alarms in field applications. Furthermore, the analysis of a seized illicit P2P sample shows that even low levels of P2P can be detected despite the complex background present in the headspace of real samples.