Many years of electronic data processing have enabled the storage of a large amount of data that can be used today to improve educational processes through machine learning algorithms. Using data from the Moodle distance learning system, an artificial neural network model was created to predict the final outcome of students at the end of their studies based on their final grades of the first year of study. In three artificial neural network models, the power of this algorithm was demonstrated, where all models achieved a very low error, and the artificial neural network model achieved the best results with two hidden layers of nine neurons, whose absolute error was 0.1920, and the squared error 0.0562. The research shows that artificial neural networks are very effective in predicting the final outcome of students based on the grade from the first year of study and that such models have the potential to become an auxiliary tool and means of decision -making in educational institutions.

Višegodišnja elektronička obrada podataka omogućila je pohranu velike količine podataka koja se danas može iskoristiti za poboljšanje procesa u obrazovanju putem algoritama strojnog učenja. Koristeći se podacima iz sustava Moodle za učenje na daljinu, stvoren je model umjetne neuronske mreže s ciljem predviđanja konačnog ishoda studenta na kraju studija na temelju njegovih zaključnih ocjena prve godine studija. Kroz ukupno tri modela umjetne neuronske mreže pokazana je snaga ovog algoritma, gdje su svi modeli ostvarili vrlo nisku pogrešku, a najbolji rezultati postignuti su modelom umjetne neuronske mreže s dva skrivena sloja od devet neurona, čija je apsolutna greška iznosila 0,1920, a kvadratna pogreška 0,0562. Istraživanje pokazuje da su umjetne neuronske mreže vrlo učinkovite u predikciji konačnog ishoda studenata na temelju ocjena s prve godine studija te da takvi modeli imaju potencijal postati pomoćni alat i sredstvo donošenja odluka u obrazovnim institucijama.

The COVID-19 pandemic interrupted the higher education improvement and highlighted the maintenance of public health as an essential priority. Due to this unexpected situation, the educational system moved from face-to-face to distance learning without prior preparations. This contingency made it possible to study the benefits of ICT tools in the educational process. Starting from the primary function of the educational process and through the forecast of future trends in education, this paper presents the guidelines for improvement of the teaching and learning processes and some opportunities for their implementation. A survey was conducted among the Faculty of Economics, Business, and Tourism students in Split, Croatia, who evaluated the acceptance of various ICT tools. Based on the obtained research results, generic strategic guidelines for the effective use of IT tools in teaching are presented, including their potential impact on accreditation criteria.

The problem of processes simulation modeling is a significant issue for business analysts. Properly developed process models can be used not only to understand the process at both the operational and management level but also to identify bottlenecks and support in making decisions. The aim of this article was to classify processes from the point of view of simulation modeling using Discrete Event Simulation (DES) and System Dynamics (SD). The mentioned classification of processes is based on the Process Classification Framework (PCF) methodology developed by the American Productivity & Quality Center (APQC) organization. The literature studies of articles were carried out, in which processes were modeled using the methods above. For the DES method, 129 articles were analyzed, and then the processes were assigned to the appropriate category, while in the case of SD, 138 articles were analyzed, which were then also assigned to the proper process category.

The system dynamics applied in this research on modeling a tourist destination (area) life cycle (TALC) contributes to understanding its behavior and the way that information feedback governs the use of feedback loops, delays and stocks and flows. On this basis, a system dynamic three-staged TALC model is conceptualized, with the number of visitors V as an indicator of the carrying capacities’ dynamics and the flow function V(t) to determine the TALC stages. In the first supply-dominance stage, the model indicated that arrivals are growing until the point of inflexion. After this point, arrivals continue growing (but with diminishing growth rates), indicating the beginning of the demand-dominance stage, ending up with the saturation point, i.e., the maximum number of visitors. The simulated TALC system dynamics model was then applied to five EU destinations (Living Labs) to explain their development along the observed period (2007–2019). The analysis revealed that all observed Living Labs reached the second lifecycle stage, with one entered as early as in 2015 and another in 2018. Lifecycle stage durations may significantly differ across the destinations, as do the policies used either to prevent stagnation or to restructure the offer to become more sustainable and resilient.

Purpose – touristic destinations develop over time, which is why, in order to get a comprehensive picture of their development, it is necessary to observe it's dynamics. Methodology – in this paper system dynamics methodology and of DPSIR framework will use. In order to model reasoning behind the TALC behaviour, presented research in this paper leans on TALC logistic curve. Findings – deeper analysis of the causes and/or consequences elements of destination (sub)system (supply and demand) will indicate way of affect touristic area life cycle dynamics. Contribution – better understanding of the background structure of TALC pattern behaviour may help destination managers/planners to bring appropriate policies to move destination’s sustainability towards higher level of organisation.

Considering the growing competition in the market, each com­pany strives to operate in accordance with the time in which it exists and following modern techniques of business system management. One of such techniques is manifested in designing and managing business processes in organizations. The authors investigated two groups of respondents. The first group consists of employees of different organizations in Croatia. The second group of respondents are students of higher years of economic fac­ulties in Croatia. The perception of these two groups on the importance of the company’s business process orientation was examined. The two groups were examined for an overview of the current situation with the help of em­ployees and the future through the prism of future employees – current stu­dents. This paper aims to assume future trends of BPO use in organizations taking into account the perception of the participants surveyed.

One of the main goals of any higher education system is developing students’ critical thinking. Critical thinking contributes to decision-making and problem-solving skills, whether for professional or personal purposes. Teaching, on the other hand, has been largely influenced by new information technologies which have changed some of the related concepts and tools. The quality of the teaching process is multidimensional which is why no single unit of its measurement has been developed yet, in spite of numerous surveys that have collected massive amounts of information from the existing practice. The aim of this paper is to establish the most appropriate higher education quality measure, which would consist of all relevant indicators from different aspects, including implementation of critical thinking in the teaching process, weighting by two main groups of participants in the process - teachers and students. Multicriteria decision-making has been recognised as a suitable framework for achieving this goal. In fact, the problem of measuring teaching staff performance could be set up as a classical problem of multicriteria decision-making. With this approach the quality of teaching process should be simultaneously estimated by n quality assurance criteria and in accordance with those criteria m alternatives (professors) would be ranked or estimated.

Purpose. - This article aims to explain how the world heritage city management system may be improved, and the structure of its processes enhanced by including relevant stakeholders to reach better results, i.e. outputs and outcomes. With this aim, process-based orientation is proposed as a new management approach. Design/methodology. - The article is divided into two parts. In the first part, theoretical background of the world heritage city management system is given, and process orientation of heritage city management explained. In the second part theoretical concepts were applied to the cases of the world heritage cities (sites) of Split (Croatia) and Venice (Italy). A brief description of the basic characteristics (elements, processes) and of the main problems related to the results (outputs and outcomes) is followed by the application of the Unified Modelling Language as the method. The process architecture of the new management meta-model is presented, processes designed and documented, and activities and responsibilities among stakeholders, both existing as well as potential, within the proposed hierarchical structure shared. Findings. - By proposing the process-oriented approach to the management of world heritage cities, the paper sets out to contribute to the growing body of knowledge related to cultural heritage management (especially world heritage cities). By applying knowledge from different theories into a process-based approach to the management of world heritage cities, it enables UNESCO's directives to be implemented into the actual managerial system of a World Heritage Site (WHS). We find it potentially useful not only to WHS managers, but also to scholars and other experts who have managerial responsibilities but limited knowledge in this area. (C) 2020 L'Auteur(s). Publie par Elsevier Masson SAS.

Temeljem provedenog istraživanja tijekom prijave i implementacije projekta definirane su osnovne mogucnosti koristenja novih IT u svrhu bulje inkluzije slijepih i slabovidnih osoba. Uocene mogucnosti, uspoređene su s postojecim istraživanjima, te prikazane u obliku prijedloga organizacijskog modela inkluzije slijepih i slabovidnih osoba u proces e-ucenja. Rad je rezultat istraživanja na međunarodnom projektu pod nazivom „Studirajmo zajedno!“ (IPA IV komponenta „Razvoj ljudskih potencijala“, ugovorno tijelo: Agencija za strukovno obrazovanje i obrazovanje odraslih-Odjel za financiranje i ugovaranje EU programa)

Bankers and other financial experts have analyzed the value of automated teller machines (ATM) in terms of growing consumer demand, rising costs of technology development, decreasing profitability and market share. This paper presents a step-by-step cost-benefit analysis of the ATM automatic deposit service. The first step is to determine user attitudes towards using ATM automatic deposit service by using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). The second step is to determine location priorities for ATMs that provide automatic deposit services using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) model. The results of the previous steps enable a highly efficient application of cost-benefit analysis for evaluating costs and benefits of automatic deposit services. To understand fully the proposed procedure outside of theoretical terms, a real-world application of a case study is conducted.

Background: Organisations nowadays operate in a very dynamic environment, and therefore, their ability of continuously adjusting the strategic plan to the new conditions is a must for achieving their strategic objectives. BSC is a well-known methodology for measuring performances enabling organizations to learn how well they are doing. In this paper, "BSC for IS" will be proposed in order to measure the IS impact on the achievement of organizations' business goals. Objectives: The objective of this paper is to present the original procedure which is used to enhance the BSC methodology in planning the optimal targets of IS performances value in order to maximize the organization's effectiveness. Methods/Approach: The method used in this paper is the quantitative methodology - linear programming. In the case study, linear programming is used for optimizing organization's strategic performance. Results: Results are shown on the example of a case study national park. An optimal performance value for the strategic objective has been calculated, as well as an optimal performance value for each DO (derived objective). Results are calculated in Excel, using Solver Add-in. Conclusions: The presentation of methodology through the case study of a national park shows that this methodology, though it requires a high level of formalisation, provides a very transparent performance calculation.

This paper presents a highly formalized approach to strategy formulation and optimization of strategic performance through proper resource allocation.A stochastic quantitative model of strategic performance (SQMSP) is used to evaluate the efficiency of the strategy developed.The SQMSP follows the theoretical notions of the balanced scorecard (BSC) and strategy map methodologies, initially developed by Kaplan and Norton.Parameters of the SQMSP are suggested to be random variables and be evaluated by experts who give two-point (optimistic and pessimistic values) and three-point (optimistic, most probable and pessimistic values) evaluations.The Monte-Carlo method is used to simulate strategic performance.Having been implemented within a computer application and applied to solve the real problem (planning of an IT-strategy at the Faculty of Economics, University of Split) the proposed approach demonstrated its high potential as a basis for development of decision support tools related to strategic planning.

The SPIS methodology provides methods and techniques of developing an information system (IS) that would correspond with the requirements of an organization. The result of its application is the strategic plan of IS development that would meet the future needs. As is the case in the methodology of the strategic planning in general, the primary drawback to the strategic planning of the information system is the lack of efficient control of implementation of the strategic plan, and this is precisely what this research paper deals with. One of the procedures in the measuring of results of an organization, which is also recommended by the SPIS, is the Balanced Scorecard methodology (BSC). However, the BSC concept which the classic SPIS methodology recommends as suitable for the evaluation of performance of the information technology (IT) on the business system and the performance of that new business system, does not take into account the constraint that may lead to non-implementation of the planned activities. Furthermore, the BSC has been criticised for the oversimplified modelling of the cause-consequence relations that do not take into account the time delay and the feedback. This paper provides results of the research that resulted in identification of two types of constraints that need to be included when determining the optimal IS/IT strategy. Within the context of the system dynamics (SD) approach, the broadening of the problem with the analysis of the strategy implementation dynamics results in the new practical knowledge about the control over the time-dependant values and, consequently, with a proposal that would eliminate the reasons for the abovementioned criticism.

This study seeks to determine the importance of tools that are offered within the software (simplicity, help, etc.) and sort them according to your preferences. The results are intended for novice users in business planning. The study was carried out among students who are familiar with the possibilities of five programs for business planning. The students conducted the evaluation in accordance with each of the presented programs that were selected by experts from the problem areas. The practical importance of the results of this research is seen as a recommendation of faculties of economics in procurement of software for business planning for educational purposes. It is possible to apply the already appointed multi criteria (AHP) model to the target group with extensive entrepreneurial experience, with a change to the set of criteria weights.

Lanci opskrbe donose dodanu vrijednost onima koji ih organiziraju. Vrijednost se odražava u dodatnim prihodima iznad troskova organiziranja same mreže. Splet pozitivnih i negativnih krugova povratnog djelovanja izvedeni iz uzrocno posljedicne strukture osnova su za izucavanje obrazaca ponasanja sustava lanca ponude. Transport predstavlja jedan od regulatora brzine protoka materijala u lancu opskrbe. Zbog toga je ovim radom lanac opskrbe promatran kao cjeloviti sustav. Prvi korak je izvesti i definirati osnovne znacajke sustava lanca opskrbe, sto je napravljeno u prvom dijelu ovog rada. U drugom dijelu rada prikazan je opci model strukture uzrocno posljedicnog djelovanja u sustavu lanca opskrbe. Time je ostvaren doprinos u razumijevanju uzrocno posljedicnog djelovanja kako među elementima lanca opskrbe (takticka razina), tako i među konkurentskim lancima opskrbe (strateska razina). Na osnovu takvog modela moguce je pozicionirati potrebnih kapaciteta transporta radi opskrbe dionika u lancu opskrbe