Professor Constanţa Bodea

Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies | ASE

Presents advanced research on project, programme and portfolio management Offers an international and multidisciplinary approach to the topics Provides practical advice for applying the management and leadership techniques discussed

Globally, rehabilitation in healthcare systems requires major improvements so that affordable, high-quality services will become available to a larger scale. Rehabilitation benefits both individuals and the entire community from an economic and social point of view. There are different types of rehabilitation, for a wide range of medical conditions...

The idea of having a program which writes other programs based on specifications provided by humans was born very early in the history of computing. After going through several "winters" because of the results not living up to the high expectations, the idea is again popular and some commercial applications already exist, under the generic name of...

Learning analytics in online instruction is recognized as an emergent research field that continuously grows, taking the data generated in virtual learning environments and transforming it into information to improve teaching and learning processes. The main purpose of a learning analytics system is to offer customizable metrics that can be used to...

The current paper proposes the improvement of the smart university model, defined as a set of highly technical interrelated elements, by implementing a social learning platform within the university ecology. This platform should permit the collaboration of various stakeholders – students, professors, university representatives and companies and sho...

Currently, the worldwide project management area is covered by different international and national standards, project management methodologies, bodies of knowledge (BoK), international industrial and government/national standards, competence baselines, corporate internal project management methodologies and standards, etc. The new international st...

Patterns are widely known as regular sequences of actions or schemes. We often see them in decorative designs such as wallpapers, ornaments, mosaics, but also in daily activities and work tasks adopted by individuals or groups in a given situation. But how could these patterns influence one's employability? Since employment in European region doesn...

Self-regulated learning (SRL) is a process that assists students in managing their actions, thoughts and emotions in order to benefit of successful learning experiences, by allowing them to strengthen their study skills, monitor their performance or their academic progress. SRL is strongly connected to motivation and consists, roughly, in three pha...

The paper proposes an approach of enhancing knowledge workers’employability by inducing positive behavioural changes with the aid of current social and semantic technologies. Employability is seen as a psycho-social construct, connected to the development of knowing-how competencies and knowing-whom competencies, by continous learning and a rich so...

The tremendous economic challenges especially due by the persistence of the financial crisis and the continuous decline of public investments in the last years have increased the financial risks faced by construction companies, which make them very vulnerable. The financial weakness manifested by the lack of liquidity leads to delays in the project...

The chapter proposes an e-Learning solution for the entrepreneurship education, based on several simulation modules integrated into a classical learning management system. The originality of the approach is that the solution is domain independent and applied advanced IT technologies, such as agent-based simulations and extended graphical support. U...

This paper debates upon the adoption of a social learning platform to support the highly dynamic industry of consumer electronics' providers, acknowledging the role of emerging technologies on the delivery of efficient lifelong learning solutions. The discussion is based on mixed research methods, in which structured interviews and online questionn...

The Cognitive Learning Theory explains why the brain is the most incredible network of information processing and interpretation. The ability to learn and make sense of new information is crucial to successful learning and that is why developing cognitive skills is so important. The current study proposes a new cognitive training application, which...

The almost unlimited access to educational information plethora came with a drawback: finding meaningful material is not a straightforward task anymore. Recommender algorithms can be used to make smart decisions in complex information systems and help the users decide upon useful materials; therefore, they become a promising area in academia and in...

In the last 20-25 years the regional economies of the new EU member states were confronted with multiple challenges, from transition to crisis and EU integration. They were reflected by the content of structural transformations and regional policies, closely relating to economic, social and territorial cohesion objectives. This paper proposes a cas...

Construction sector is vulnerable to economic changes, especially during recession periods due to the high capital outlays, cost flexibility and high competition limiting the price. The changes of the business environment, often associated with shortage of funds, exchange rate fluctuation and political instability increase the construction projects...

The paper presents the module for formative e-assessment in a complex learning management system. The module implements the automatic evaluation of answers to open questions and provides feedback related to further reading or joining suitable expert communities. The evaluation of the questions is accomplished using diverse ontology-related technolo...

Professional certifications sustain lifelong learning through the continuous development of competencies required in a workplace. The current paper proposes a tool to facilitate the training of professionals who want to obtain a project management certification awarded by the International Project Management Association (IPMA). The tool makes the a...

The paper proposes an e-Learning framework in entrepreneurship. The framework has three main components, for identification the business opportunities, for developing business scenarios and for risk analysis. A common database assures the components integration. The main components of this framework are already available; the main challenging for t...

The increasing constraints that construction companies face due to the prolonged financial crisis and the contracting construction market necessitate the need for more and more realistic and efficient approaches to the planning, scheduling and monitoring of their projects. A deterministic approach to project management that has preset parameters of...

The overall performance of project-oriented organizations (POO) relies not only on the successful implementation of one or two large, complex projects that they are implementing but instead on how the entire set of projects is managed. Many POO view successful portfolio project management (PPM) as a competitive advantage and establish a formal PPM...

The current paper presents a platform for self-built e-learning communities, in which a trainee enrolls into the educational process, gains points through achievements and ultimately becomes a trainer, based on those points. When creating a new account, an intelligent profile is attached to the newly created trainee. This profile is composed by the...

The continuous growth of the challenges and the complexity of projects, lead to the development of new approaches to model and support uncertainties and risks. The experience gained in project planning shows that the probability of successful implementation of deterministic project schedules and budgets is very low. Therefore project planning techn...

In recent years, many business education programs have focused on the development of competences, instead of knowledge transfer. For this reason, various innovative training approaches were adopted, including educational simulations. The increasing availability of the simulation resources also contributes to the proliferation of simulation in busin...

The paper presents an recommender engine, embedded in the feedback module of an e-assessment platform for project management. The objective of this engine is to provide links to the web pages connected with the identified knowledge gaps of the students making the assessments. An ontology-based clustering algorithm is used to generate these recommen...

The aim of this chapter is to provide a model for requirement specification, useful in developing efficient e-assessment applications with personalized feedback, which is enhanced by calling a recommender engine. The research was done in the context of using educational technology to facilitate learning processes. The data used to build the require...

In recent years, many business education programs have focused on the development of competences, instead of knowledge transfer. For this reason, various innovative training approaches were adopted, including educational simulations. The increasing availability of the simulation resources also contributes to the proliferation of simulation in busin...

National Authority for Scientific Research (ANCS) and Executive Unit for Higher Education, Research and Development and Innovation Funding (UEFISCDI) participate to several projects funded under the Framework Programmes, since 1998. The staff from each the two organisations participating in projects are merely the same, typically from “internationa...

The chapter presents a meta-search tool developed in order to deliver search results structured according to the specific interests of users. Meta-search means that for a specific query, several search mechanisms could be simultaneously applied. Using the clustering process, thematically homogenous groups are built up from the initial list provided...

The paper presents an educational recommender engine, which is fired by the feedback module of an e-assessment application for the project management domain. The recommendations consist in web pages related to the knowledge gaps of the students who took an e-test. The authors argue that using a recommender engine within the e-assessment would incre...

The aim of this chapter is to provide a model for requirement specification, useful in developing efficient e-assessment applications with personalized feedback, which is enhanced by calling a recommender engine. The research was done in the context of using educational technology to facilitate learning processes. The data used to build the require...

The chapter presents a competency based system, developed for an IT project-oriented organization, during the implementation of a conventional Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP) system. The proposed solution is an ontology-based extension of the Human Resources module. Two competence ontologies, one for each relevant profession in the organization...

A risk evaluation model for IT projects using fuzzy inference is proposed. The knowledge base for fuzzy processes is built using a causal and cognitive map of risks. This map was specially developed for IT projects and takes into account the typical lifecycle and the risk taxonomy created by the Software Engineering Institute. The model was used to...

We propose an empirical analysis of the clustering phenomenon in the Eastern part of Romania as a relevant example to support the idea that the question of clusters in lagging regions, usually with economic structures dominated by mid-tech and low-tech industries, could become an interesting niche for cluster-devoted research in forthcoming years....

The papers reunited in the present volume have been submitted to the KM-06: The 6th International Conference “Knowledge Management – Project, Systems and Technologies”, Bucharest, Romania, October 27-28, 2011. This event follows the 5th KM Conference hosted in Bucharest by “Carol Ist” National Defense University in November 2010, the 4th KM Confere...

The new economic and social dynamics increase project complexity and makes scheduling problems more difficult, therefore scheduling requires more versatile solutions as Multi Agent Systems (MAS). In this paper the authors analyze the implementation of a Multi-Agent System (MAS) considering two scheduling problems: TCPSP (Time-Constrained Project Sc...

Various research studies addressing the specific problems and difficulties in the underdeveloped regions in the transition countries from Central and Eastern Europe have identified possible reactions regarding appropriate economic and social policy measures. Some of them take into consideration the role of cluster initiatives as a response to poor...

This chapter presents a meta-search approach, meant to deliver bibliography from the internet, according to trainees' results obtained at an e-assessment task. The bibliography consists of web pages related to the knowledge gaps of the trainees. The meta-search engine is part of an education recommender system, attached to an e-assessment applicati...

This chapter proposes an e-assessment method for project management competences, using the computer adaptive testing (CAT) principle. Competences are represented using concept space graphs. The proposed model increases the tests configurability by considering several knowledge constraints when an item is selected. The proposed model is also seen as...

This chapter presents a Web-based learning system in IT project management, capable of building and conducting a complete and personalized training cycle, from the definition of the learning objectives to the assessment of the learning results for each learner. The focus is on the content management solution, using an educational ontology and a com...

Firm performance is strongly related to growth and dependent on competitive advantage. Relying on the fact that competitive advantage is not given by market power, but comes from inside, from employees' competences, current paper underlines the correlation between investments in education and training and increased earning for business. A case stud...

The papers reunited in the present volume have been submitted to the KM-05: The 5th International Conference “Knowledge Management – Project, Systems and Technologies”, Bucharest, Romania, 12-13 November 2010. This event follows the 4th KM Conference hosted in Bucharest by “Carol I” National Defense University in November 2009, the 3rd KM Conferenc...

An average annual rate of growth of 6.92% during 2002-2008 has ensured the gradual decrease in the gap between Romania and other EU member states. Key economic indicators are shown in Table 1. The main growth factor for this period has been the domestic demand. Having grown at a steady pace for several years, EU-27 value added generally peaked in t...

Increasing project complexity makes scheduling problems more difficult to solve and requires more versatile algorithms. Two different approaches for the project scheduling optimization could be considered: TCPSP (Time-Constrained Project Scheduling), and RCPSP (Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling). In this paper we study thepossibility to apply...

This paper proposes an efficient requirement specification model used in developing e-as-sessment applications. Our model was designed using data gathered from an existing e-assessment application for project management competencies. An interview-based survey was conducted to check the feasibility of our approach. The International Competence Basel...

The competence-based hvman resource management has the potential to facilitate organizational change, enhance competitive advantage as well as increase financial performance and productivity. The identification, modelling and assessment of competencies represent the foundation of the competency-based human resources management. The paper proposes,...

The paper presents a project management competencies model, using an ontological approach. The ontology, named PMCatalog, was developed in the framework of the project CONTO, financed by Romanian through the grant 91-037/2007. PMCatalog is consistent with the competence definition and PM competence elements included in the International Competence...

The papers reach high academic standards and cover a wide range of key issues. The authors bring forth extensive experience and diverse views of the state and local governmental institutions, universities, small businesses, private industry and research institutes from all over the world. The main areas of interest proposed for the papers submissio...

ternational multidisciplinary teams. This year’s Knowledge Management Conference itself provides – as its organizing committee has stated – a forum for discussion of topics related to the development of Knowledge Management and related subject matters. This event follows the 3rd KM Conference hosted in Bucharest, by the Academy of Economic Studies,...

In this paper, we propose a new approach for evaluating research projects and programs. According our approach, the improvement might be achieved by adopting a results-based and a project portfolio approach, and assuring a research and technology development (RTD) indicators documentation through a standard and comprehensive indicator description,...

This paper proposes two automatic test generation models for project management knowledge assessment. Two different parameters are used: the difficulty and the diversity of knowledge to be assessed. The test generators use a project management knowledge representation based on semantic nets and concept space graphs. The first model is a test genera...

The paper presents the econometrical models usedfor evaluating research projects from the point of view of qualitative evaluation through categorical variables. The case of qualitative exploratory variables and non-alternative variables are taken into account for econometric modeling applied for different industrial technologies.

It is an original paper, which contains a hierarchical model with three levels, for determining the linearized non-homogeneous and homogeneous credibility premiums at company level, at sector level and at contract level, founded on the relevant covariance relations between the risk premium, the observations and the weighted averages. We give a rath...

A strategic goal of the Academy of Economic Studies Bucharest is represented by the continuous improving of the quality for the didactic and scientific research activities. To this purpose a special importance should be given to the process approach of the activities by integrating the activities the students are involved in at the university activ...

Due to growing requirements for skilled workers, the education should value the outcome and address students’ real performance in life. A learning process turns out to be good when the degree of transformation made possible through that process is high or the degree of competences increases. Current paper indicates e-learning as a suitable activity...

ll numerical results in this paper were ned using the software package CRAC 2.0., which use Jewell's hierarchical model. The hierarchical credibility model can be ap- plied to solve quite a number of practical in- surance problems. The one studied here is the problem of the franchise deductible policy in credit insurance, but the same philosophy an...

Is an original paper, which contains a hierarchical model with three levels, for determining the linearized non-homogeneous and homogeneous credibility premiums at company level, at sector level and at contract level, founded on the relevant covariance relations between the risk premium, the observations and the weighted averages. We give a rather...

The paper presents the testing and evaluation facilities of the SinPers system. The SinPers is a web based learning environment in project management, capable of building and conducting a complete and personalized training cycle, from the definition of the learning objectives to the assessment of the learning results for each learner. The authors w...