Albena Antonova

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• Doctor of Philosophy
• Senior assistant lecturer at Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski"

Според множество учени и организации в момента се намираме в навечерието на поредната технологична революция, съизмерима по значимост и влияние върху икономиката с цифровата революция и появата на интернет. В резултат от тези идващи промени, водещи професори, инженери и бизнес лидери се обявиха за нов вид цифрова икономика, като заявяват нуждата от...

Virtual worlds (VW) propose an immersive environment and sophisticated infrastructure for active learning and complex competence development. While recently the interest toward VW declined, it is expected the release of virtual/augmented reality hardware equipment to bring new impulse for its further explorations in education. The present research...

Purpose This paper presents an in-depth study of learners’ learning and playing styles and their implications for educational video games. This study aims to scrutinize the manifestation of learning and playing styles among learners, to identify the style predispositions and dominance and to assess the implication of these results for educational v...

This chapter presents and compares video games about climate resilience and the vulnerability of built cultural heritage regarding modern climate changes, together with some results about user experience received through their experimental validation. Usually, game-based learning is considered a subcategory of serious games (SG). Educational video...

Digital technologies can play different roles to support value creation in companies. Although the increasing interest and investments in AI start-ups, the question now is how they could manage to become sustainable and profitable in long run. Thus, the present research aims to outline which are the digital platform business model benefits and chal...

Universities were among the first institutions to confront ethical concerns about the widespread implementation of ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools. Unexpectedly, lecturers from various disciplines faced GenAI misuse, plagiarism and cheating. Recognizing the complex GenAI impact on education, many universities have...

The digital transformation of schools aims to ensure a systematic process for adapting primary and secondary education to the level of technology innovations, preparing the next generation for new opportunities and demands. At the same time, digital transformation has to ensure complex organizational alignments beyond simple equipment implementatio...

Universities traditionally play a central role in building a thriving knowledge and innovation ecosystem. However, in many Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, universities and research centres are hardly recognized by students as attractive places for career development or as partners for successful business endeavours. Many factors can e...

Intelligent technologies can encourage the design and implementation of personalized learning solutions. In traditional school settings, teachers still hesitate about how to use educational video games in class. In this context smart services can support teachers to design personalized and adaptable learning games by providing more data-enabled, us...

Information technologies continuously transform the educational landscape, while the dynamic labour market expects fresh graduates and talents ready for the fast-changing job requirements. Smart services, defined as da-ta-enabled and contextualized digital services, can propose new models for learning personalization and adaptation. However, the te...

Institutions predefine and make possible development of many social processes. As already discussed, institutions define “the rules of the game,” encouraging further social and organizational transformations. The aim of Chapter 6 is to propose an alternative approach for shaping the future institutions. By assuming institutions to be game-designers...

The increasing use of game-based learning necessitates software platforms and technological tools to create serious video learning games. This article presents the APOGEE process for the automated creation of maze video learning games and describes the development methodology. This methodology has been applied to the design of four educational vide...

A national desk research on 21-st Century skills in Bulgaria (up to Dec. 2020). Within the frameworks of the Erasmus+ Project CATCH-21 Publicly available, alongside with the other project partners' national reports, at: https://www.catch21st.org/project-outputs

Teaching about climate change in secondary school education is both complex and demanding for in-service teachers. Climate change education (CCE) should prepare the new generations to proactively deal with open-ended problems, employ digital technologies and investigate complicated cause-effect dependencies searching for interdisciplinary solutions...

Background The prevalence of myopia has increased in recent years, with changes being dynamic and uneven in different regions. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the prevalence of visual impairment caused by myopia in Bulgarian school children, associated risk factors, and health care coverage. Methods A cross-sectional study among 1401 chil...

In the age of accelerating automation, companies expect young graduates to demonstrate domain-specific theoretical knowledge, practical skills and a good level of transversal and soft skills. Dominated by core field subjects, the university curriculum often under-estimates the role of soft skills and thus they remain addressed in a sporadic and iso...

project DigiLEAD - Supporting School leaders to build a digital transformation strategy, ERASMUS+, KA220-SCH-04FC1495, 2022-2024

INCLUSIVE POTENTIAL OF LEARNING SCENARIOS: EXTRACTING CRITERIA FOR EVALUATION T. Zafirova-Malcheva, A. Antonova, R. Stamenkova, N. Nikolova, P. Mihnev Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski" (BULGARIA) The dynamic political and economic world-wide context leads to quick changes of local educational environment in each country. Migration of people...

Background: The prevalence of myopia has increased in recent years, with changes being dynamic and uneven in different regions. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the prevalence of visual impairment caused by myopia in Bulgarian school children, associated risk factors, and health care coverage. Methods: A cross-sectional study among 1401 chi...

Video games for education still remain unpopular educational resources and tools for learning. One of the reasons is that teachers do not understand the efficiency of video games for learning. In this perspective, the game assessment reports such as scores, points, and statistics have to provide meaningful information not only to players but as wel...

Climate resilience competencies improve people’s capacity to recognize and adopt strategies for mitigating negative climate effects. Especially concerning the built cultural heritage protection in the coastal areas, both professionals and citizens have to be prepared for water-related extreme events, such as floods, sea-level rise, and altered prec...

MOTTO: „The real power of interactive technologies is that they let us learn in ways that aren’t otherwise possible or practical.” David Lassner The module ‘Using technology as a tool for learning’ introduce the students in the concept of digital learning. It is oriented particularly to the competence-based learning, going through the main steps o...

Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski" (SU) is the first higher education organisation, as well as the largest and most prestigious university in Bulgaria. Sofia University also plays a strong role in academic research, which is attested by its ranking at a national level and by many international academic rating systems. Due to many socioeconomic...

The educational community is increasingly recognising the benefits of applying competence-based learning (CBL) in formal and informal training. Both learner-oriented and goals-oriented, competence-based learning encourages flexibility, adaptation and customisation of the learning process to specific learning context and individual preferences. At t...

The design and development of educational video games, and the realization of a successful video game project, often requires the research and analysis of data as a key element for success. Increasingly companies are integrating analytics tools into their structures, taking advantage of the analytics capabilities. The focus of this paper is on the...

Educational video games are considered interactive, user-oriented, and motivating learning instruments, allowing delivery of tailored learning experiences. Designing and implementing adaptive and personalized educational video games can become a suitable tool for teachers in student-centric learning. In this context, the present research aims to ou...

The Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) provides new m-learning solutions for "learning-on-the-go", packing in one educational content, pedagogical framework and community support. Reaching millions of users worldwide , the MOOCs have the potential to fully transform educational landscape. However, the spread of the MOOCs is still limited, the rete...

https://library.iated.org/view/NIKOLOVA2020DES

Smart services extend the level of human-computer interaction (HCI) by automating service' personalization and adaptation, based on end-user profiling, analytics, and context of use. On the other hand, the design of adaptable solutions such as educational video games is a challenging and demanding task. By adopting smart services functionality on a...

Puzzles are popular learning instruments and teachers easily adopt them in class, raising students’ motivation and engagement. Furthermore, puzzle-based learning has many advantages for developing complex transversal skills. Therefore, the APOGEE (smArt adaPtive videO GamEs for Education) research project exploits puzzles as building blocks for sup...

As social and environmental struggles intensify, the raising economic and social role of not for profits will continue to expand globally. Not for profit organizations have the potential to mobilize digitally-enabled communities and to work on various global challenges, overcoming the limitations of governmental institutions, local and short-term p...

Scholars agree that change has become a staple in organizational life and will likely remain as such beyond the twenty-first century. As the rate of change continues to accelerate, organizations must strive to develop and implement new initiatives in order to obtain significant benefits for organizational survival, economic viability, and human sat...

Digital transformation, new business models development and business processes automation ranks among the key business concerns and company priorities. In this context, smart services propose new models for service automation, combining data, analytical components and physical infrastructure in unique customer offerings. The present research aims t...

The European energy market liberalization strategy aims to assign a new role to consumers and end-users’ communities so that they can become active participants on the energy market. In this paper we present the project SOCIALENERGY, EU-funded under the H2020 program. This project aims to promote the EU energy market transformation policy and to de...

Virtual worlds (VW) propose an immersive environment and sophisticated infrastructure for active learning and complex competence development. While recently the interest toward VW declined, it is expected the release of virtual/augmented reality hardware equipment to bring new impulse for its further explorations in education. The present research...

Horizontal and vertical integration of companies within the value networks plays a substantial role for faster and wider implementation of Industry 4.0 and adoption of new digital business models. The policy for open data encourages companies to integrate more data flows coming from public sources into their operations. Thus, digital transformation...

Industry 4.0 is a new technological, economic and social trend marking the rise of sophisticated technology solutions that allow merging the physical and information space and their implementation in the production stage. The term "Industry 4.0" stands primary for new technologies such as cyber-physical systems, IoT systems, big data, robotics and...

Technologies continue to evolve and to largely transform business practices. In the near future, a few technologies, such as Internet of Things (IoT), Augmented Reality (AR), additive manufacturing (3D printing), and robots, can substantially influence businesses. The reason to focus specifically on these technologies as leading factors for organiz...

As social and environmental struggles intensify, the raising economic and social role of not for profits will continue to expand globally. Not for profit organizations have the potential to mobilize digitally-enabled communities and to work on various global challenges, overcoming the limitations of governmental institutions, local and short-term p...

While simulated learning becomes an attractive learning method for learners and educators, it is the pedagogical framework behind the technology design that makes the learning efficient. Thus the context and the subject domain, along with learning theories largely influence its impact. Working with vulnerable people becomes part of many jobs specif...

Proper presentation of both numeric and descriptive data from various scientific sources becomes increasingly important as good visualization models can promote knowledge sharing, improve understanding of complex processes and enhance scientific communication. Thus researchers' skills and competences for knowledge visualization should be developed...

In order to encourage innovative and out-of-the-box thinking and inspiring ideas among students and young people, friendly environment, access to funding and entrepreneurship knowledge are not enough. New technologies offer many opportunities, but the main problem is how to motivate and incite students to consider complex issues with real entrepren...

The knowledge transfer is a complex activity influenced by many cultural, social and personal factors. It is recognized that a key competence of companies nowadays is to absorb and transform knowledge into innovations – new products, services and processes. The present paper proposes a theoretical approach to analyze the processes of knowledge shar...

New technologies lead to many economic and social changes. The world economy transformed substantially during the last few decades and we can hardly predict how our societies and companies will look in the next years. The effects that information technologies and Internet have on businesses are evident – companies become more efficient, physical pr...

Le développement des technologies d'information et de communication progresse et influence le développement de tous les autres secteurs de l'économie. Dans un horizon proche, on peut envisager qu'il y aura plus des technologies émergentes au travail telles que les robots, les imprimantes 3D, les technologies mobiles et les objets intelligents (avec...

This conference presentation aims to identify the secondary school students attitudes and appreciation of sense of initiative and entrepreneurship competences. It proposes an analyzes and evaluation of the students feedback from their participation in Bulgarian pilot projects with YEDAC methodology. Based on the collected 59 response forms and stru...

Technologies continue to evolve and to largely transform business practices. In the near future, a few technologies, such as Internet of Things (IoT), Augmented Reality (AR), additive manufacturing (3D printing), and robots, can substantially influence businesses. The reason to focus specifically on these technologies as leading factors for organiz...

Since antiquity technological innovations endanger environmental balance and there is major need to keep this balance in check. Any new technology generates more business activity, leading to increased resource extraction and waste and directly affecting natural ecosystems. Thus technological progress and economic growth are based on unsustainable...

The influence of Internet on knowledge acquisition increases as it became the primary source of reference, especially for young generations. Therefore, it is important to understand how social factors and Internet influences not only explicit but also implicit knowledge construction. Several theories explain the impact of the social groups on the k...

Value co-creation became a popular concept for involving customers and end-users in the value formation processes. As result of the downsized labor costs and in the quest of better economy of scales, companies increased self-services, often facilitated by new digital technologies. Thus customers and end-users are expected to be involved in the valu...

The cognition activities of humans are an integration of conscious and unconscious processes. The existence, universality and effectiveness of implicit cognition indicate that the cognitive process can be classified into explicit cognition and implicit cognition systems. They comprise two types of information processing systems with different natur...

Since antiquity, human activity and technological innovations endanger environmental balance. Any new technology generates more business activity, leading to increased resource extraction and waste and directly menacing natural ecosystems. As a result, technological progress and economic growth are based on unsustainable practices. In the last few...

Technologies continue to evolve and to transform educational and life-long learning landscape. Soon lecturers and students will be confronted to totally new instruments and applications, leaving the computer screens and merging digital world with the real world. For example augmented reality, 3D printing, Internet of Things and ubiquitous computing...

Abstract. Nowadays, new technologies continue to transform commercial, business and social practices on the global landscape. Soon new coming ubiquitous and pervasive technologies such as augmented reality, additive manufacturing (3D printing), Internet of things and ubiquitous computing will bring many new challenges to business organizations. Com...

Since antiquity, human activity and technological innovations endanger environmental balance. Any new technology generates more business activity, leading to increased resource extraction and waste and directly menacing natural ecosystems. As a result, technological progress and economic growth are based on unsustainable practices. In the last few...

Recently, different researchers and practitioners provided new evidence for successful implementation of Virtual Worlds (VW) in educational context. Virtual worlds propose an immersive environment and sophisticated technology infrastructure and stimulate active learning and complex learning scenarios. At the same time, many educators and learning i...

Within the last decade open innovation became a key ingredient for knowledge creation and knowledge absorption strategies of large companies. SMEs are usually considered to lack resources and capacity to organize alone open innovation activities. In this perspective, Hafkesbrink and Scholl (2010) proposed the model of Innovation 3.0 or embedded inn...

Lifelong learning is a must in the new realms of dynamic and complex global environment. New professions constantly emerge requiring new skills and competences. Companies need to fastly adapt to the current situation and therefore have to progressively improve skillset and competences of their employees. The present research aims to identify how ma...

Entrepreneurship and innovations are important factors for development of stable regions and sustainable economy. However entrepreneurship skills and innovative thinking could not be trained with traditional teaching methodologies. Therefore, active learning is widely applied and different innovative teaching approaches as learning by doing, practi...

Nowadays, serious games increasingly attract public interest, and many applications of serious games in education, business, politics, healthcare, and social issues are reported. Serious games offer unlimited number of opportunities for experiments and training, where different experiences become possible, without cost, time, or physical limitation...

The chapter proposes a complex model for companies to enhance their value offering, through optimization of services, value co-creation, and addressing sustainability issues. It investigates different approaches of service science and services to improve business models toward more sustainable practices. Different knowledge flows between various pr...

Настоящият учебник цели да представи на заинтересованите един систематичен труд, обхващащ различни аспекти от процесите по управление на знания. В него са засегнати различни въпроси за управлението, организацията и технологиите в контекста на знанията като икономически ресурс. Предложените методи, процеси и подходи целят да помогнат на българските...

The chapter proposes a complex model for companies to enhance their value offering, through optimization of services, value co-creation, and addressing sustainability issues. It investigates different approaches of service science and services to improve business models toward more sustainable practices. Different knowledge flows between various pr...

Nowadays a large number of IT solutions, facilitating Knowledge Management (KM) and Knowledge Sharing (KS) are available in the market, but different studies (KPMG, 2004) prove that they still remain moderately used in practice. KS is recognized as an increasingly important KM problem because it influences the capacity of the organization to absorb...

Sophisticated Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) instruments as training simulations and Serious Games (SG) do not provide knowledge content in an explicit form, but propose interactive solutions for learners to build their own skills and competences in close to real situations. Thus, expert knowledge should be implicitly embedded into design of SG...

Within knowledge-based society companies are the main engines of technological innovations, boosted by severe global competition and shorter product life-cycle. In parallel learning systems slowly adapt to increasing needs of learners, society and companies. Learning often becomes isolated practice, concentrated in educational institutions and not...

Knowledge sharing (KS) is one of the main concerns for organizational knowledge management. Knowledge sharing contributes for better visibility of knowledge flows, improves access to knowledge assets, and leads to increased organizational efficiency. However, the recent analysis of Antonova et al. (2011) has demonstrated that in practice organizati...

Serious games (SG) are increasingly gaining popularity in various fields such as, education, business, entertainment and research, and they capture attention of learners, researchers and the business community. Serious games are commonly defined as digital games used for purposes other than mere entertainment or fun. SGs are considered as effective...

Serious games and virtual worlds gain impetus in business and education, broadening perspectives for their wider use and implementation. Both serious games and virtual worlds' technologies changed fundamentally the motivation and user involvement in educational process, enhancing active knowledge building and sharing. The present research aims to i...

Today many complex information systems (IS) emerge, pretending to improve information and knowledge flows in companies and to enhance decision making. The number of available IS is increasing and even for labeled knowledge management systems (KMS) it is difficult for companies to understand and assess how any IS solution can optimize its knowledge...

What inspires employees especially managers, working under top managers, to share their knowledge within their organization? The authors have conducted an empirical survey in Bulgaria, Hungary and Serbia, which intends to answer this question. Beyond studies focusing mainly on the regions of the USA, Japan and Western Europe, there is barely any re...

How and why do people share their knowledge? An analysis was made in Bulgaria, Hungary and Serbia which intends to answer this question. Beyond several studies about knowledge management there is barely any research work focusing on knowledge sharing through comparing the national culture profiles of three countries of the Central-Eastern European...

Reflecting on the global challenges ahead, the present paper aims to discuss sustainable innovations in order to designate the new role and vision for the innovation process within companies. Sustainable innovations are presented as factor of change toward enhanced sustainable products, services, processes and systems in a global plan. One fundamen...

By 2012 the Earth population is expecting to reach 7 Bln people, and this number is expecting to grow to 9 Bln till 2050. Many recent reports discover the problems of resource scarcity and climate change. Some scenarios anticipate total resources extraction of around 200% of 1980 equivalent by 2020, necessary just to sustain the worldwide economic...

Today, business information systems (BIS) has become an umbrella term that indispensably indicates more than just a main business infrastructure. Information systems have to enhance the capacity of knowledge workers to enable business organizations to operate successfully in complex and highly competitive environments. Despite the rapid advancement...

The present research aims to discuss the role of serious games and virtual worlds as emerging technologies leading to high-level learning experiences. A review of theoretical concepts for knowledge acquisition and learning is provided, focusing on the role of personal experiences and trial-anderror methods. Some of the basic characteristic of serio...

The paper considers the importance of knowledge management in the new economy, and focuses on the concept of knowledge audit and its need for developing and monitoring the knowledge management implementation. A special focus is made on knowledge audit concept and the approaches and processes proposed and used in practice. The paper highlights also...

The paper presents the results of a project for organizational knowledge management. It highlights the knowledge needs and the main barriers for knowledge management implementation in some organizations in Europe, as well as the results of a knowledge audit pilot carried out in selected organizations. On this base are highlighted some challenges fo...

Distributed technologies attract researchers interest as they propose many technological, but as well organizational and end-user benefits. With development of Web 2.0 and Cloud computing, distributed networks are considered as new source of business opportunities. The present research will identify advantages and limitations of distributed knowled...

Knowledge management systems (KMS) become increasingly important in periods of crises and economic slowdown, as many organizations are forced to lay off people, to reduce research and ICT budgets, to restructure departments and to optimize their costs. Subsequently, organizational knowledge assets, and mainly the existing tacit knowledge are threat...

Following the Lisbon Summit, EU has undertaken several initiatives for boosting innovation and technology transfer in Europe and overcoming the problems in networking of industry and academia. Bulgaria also has paid considerable attention to the weaknesses in research and innovation, however, a lot of problems still exist. The paper presents the tr...

The changing global environment and the new technologies face learning providers with new challenges. Bulgarian universities have undergone a difficult period during the economic transition in last decades and need to further adapt to the European criteria for higher education and to the new skills needs of the economy and society. The paper presen...

Today, the adoption of Enterprise 2.0 is not an option, but a must for knowledge-based organizations within the changing social paradigms. The new-coming generation of employees and customers expect the technological proficiency to be part of the customer-centered business models. On their turn, organizations need to apply new forms of cooperation...

The transformation of the innovation processes is a fact and new forms of cooperation and partner- ship among companies and research community emerge. The paper presents a model of concept design of Innovation platform, based on the 4 networked innovation models. Knowledge management is a common approach, providing opportunity for better knowledge...

Today, the adoption of Enterprise 2.0 is not an option, but a must for knowledge-based organizations within the changing social paradigms. The new-coming generation of employees and customers expect technological proficiency to be part of the customer-centered business models. On their turn, organizations need to apply new forms of cooperation with...

The paper focuses on the challenges for Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics (FMI) of Sofia University. It presents the results of a foresight exercise carried out within the Faculty in 2008. The main findings of a SWOT analysis and environmental survey are given in the paper, as well as the strategic priorities and challenges for FMI in order to...

The main aim of the paper is to raise some issues related to the access and usage of In-formation and Communication Technologies (ICT) in South-Eastern Europe. It is based on the results of a recent project and highlights the trends and the remaining challenges for ICT development in the region. A short review is made on the changes in the concept...

The global communication networks provide nowadays access to enormous quantity of information and knowledge coming from a great variety of sources. The information overload raises new challenges to individuals and organizations. First, there is a need for proper knowledge management (KM) at individual level in order to access fast and easy the info...

The paper will focus on four topics: It will initially consider knowledge management (KM) challenges and benefits. Second, it will present the approach for building KM curricula within the project TRAINMOR KNOWMORE. It will outline the project experience and the results of the needs analysis carried out. In addition, the paper will highlight the pr...

Purpose: The paper focuses on the challenges for Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics (FMI) of Sofia University. It tries to provide an answer to the main questions – how to use the best practice of a leading universities in order to link the main research and academic faculty goals to specific problems to be planed and implemented; how to suppor...

Knowledge management (KM) has gained momentum in the last few years as an important tool for competitiveness of organizations. Its successful implementation, however, depends on a number of interrelated factors, including technology, human beings, organizational culture and leadership, etc. The properly carried out Knowledge audit (KA) could essent...

The information society development in Bulgaria like elsewhere in the world depends on the pace of adoption of information and communication technologies (ICT) in all social and economic fields. A number of policy and research reports have stressed the impact of ICT and their potential for economic growth and competitiveness of enterprises, in part...