Discrepancies in purposes of student course evaluations: what does it mean to be “satisfied”?

Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability - Student evaluation of teaching is a multipurpose tool that aims to improve and assure educational quality. Improved teaching and student...     

Qualitätsmanagement in Unternehmen

Zusammenfassung Durch den immer schwieriger werdenden Wettbewerb und die steigenden Ansprüche der Kunden an Qualit?t hat sich Qualit?tsmanagement zu einem wichtigen strategischen Managementinstrument entwickelt. Einen besonderen Stellenwert hat die Norm ISO 9000 gewonnen, die zum Ziel hat, die Qualit?tsf?rderungsma?nahmen der Unternehmen transparenter zu gestalten. Die aktuelle Norm betont insbesondere den prozessorientierten Ansatz und die Notwendigkeit der kontinuierlichen Verbesserung. Generell wird Qualit?tsmanagement als Oberbegriff für eine Vielzahl von Managementmethoden verwendet, von denen zentrale Konzepte wie TQM. Benchmarking und Balanced Scorecard im überblick vorgestellt werden. Die wirtschaftliche Bedeutung des Qualit?tsmanagements begründet sich vor allem durch die Annahme, dass eine hohe Qualit?t des Produktionsprozesses betriebswirtschaftliche Potenziale er?ffnet, die im Idealfall den Unternehmenserfolg deutlich steigern. Gleichzeitig müssen strategische überlegungen zur Produktqualit?t und Kosten-Nutzen-Analysen berücksichtigt werden. Besonderheiten für die Bereiche Dienstleistung und Handel werden kurz skizziert. Ein Ausblick auf zukünftige Entwicklungen veranschaulicht, dass die Bedeutung von Qualit?tsmanagement in Unternehmen in den n?chsten Jahren weiterhin zunehmen wird.

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Summary Quality management in private enterprises Due to stronger competition and growing customer demands concerning quality, quality management has become a significant strategic management tool. The DIN standard ISO 9000, particularly, with the objective of advancing transparency in the methods of quality management used by companies has gained in importance. The current DIN standard places special emphasis on processes and the need for continuous improvement. Quality management refers to a large number of management tools, including TQM, Benchmarking and Balanced Scorecard, which are reviewed briefly. The economic relevance of Quality Management is primarily based on the assumption that high quality production processes increase the potential for commercial success. At the same time it is important to consider overall management strategies as well as cost-benefit analyses. Specials issues regarding the areas of trade and service are briefly sketched. Finally, an outlook on future developments is given, showing that the significance of quality management in companies will increase in the coming years.

     

Preschoolers’ private speech during spelling in Hebrew: the role of word structure and letter position

Reading and Writing - The study’s aims were to (a) evaluate preschoolers’ use of private speech (overt talk to themselves) during spelling; and (b) study how it is affected by the...     

Supporting multidisciplinary networks through relationality and a critical sense of belonging: three ‘gardening tools’ and the Relational Agency Framework

This article focuses on the Relational Agency Framework (RAF), an analytical tool developed for an Australian review and evaluation study of an early years’ policy initiative. We explore Anne Edward’s concepts of relational expertise, building common knowledge and relational agency to explore how Edwards’ concepts, which she refers to as ‘gardening tools’, and the RAF work together to support early years multidisciplinary networks. We argue that early childhood professionals who come together in a multidisciplinary network develop their collective capabilities through relationality and a focus on belonging. The RAF embeds Edwards’ relational concepts and enables the exploration and articulation of how network participants’ individual, discipline-specific knowledge and expertise augments to support collectively transformative practice within their network, their place and wider community. We conclude that a sense of belonging is foundational to the emergence of such relational agency in networks. Tools such as the ‘gardening tools’ and the RAF offer possibilities for addressing the challenges of how to support collaboration between government, early years professionals and communities to work holistically in the best interest of all children and their families.     

Doing curious research to cultivate tentacular becomings

Abstract

Referring to Haraway’s concept of tentacularity, this article embarks on a curious research practice-inspired speculative journey to think with material tentacular becomings in an Australian kindergarten. Some of the questions that guided our curious research practice asked: How does curious practice as a postqualitative methodology enable us, as researchers, to cultivate a presence that creates the conditions for these research encounters and events to be perceived? What becomes possible for generative relational diverse learning with matter-energies if we accept that there is no rational explanation at hand? What worlds come into being if we speculate instead of rationalize? How do children animate, and are animated relationally, in particular worlds and not in others? How do we, as researchers, become entangled within children’s ways of perceiving and naming encounters? We experimented with Haraway’s notion of tentacularity as our navigational tool to map four entangled territories in this article.     

Maternal Responsiveness to Infants in Three Societies: The United States, France, and Japan

This study examines and compares prominent characteristics of maternal responsiveness to infant activity during home-based naturalistic interactions of mother-infant dyads in New York City, Paris, and Tokyo. Both culture-general and culture-specific patterns of responsiveness emerged. For example, in all 3 locales infants behaved similarly, mothers also behaved similarly with respect to a hierarchy of response types, and mothers and infants manifest both specificity and mutual appropriateness in their interactions: Mothers responded to infants' exploration of the environment with encouragement to the environment, to infants' vocalizing nondistress with imitation, and to infants' vocalizing distress with nurturance. Differences in maternal responsiveness among cultures occurred to infant looking rather than to infant vocalizing and in mothers' emphasizing dyadic versus extradyadic loci of interaction. Universals of maternal responsiveness, potential sources of cultural variation, and implications of similarities and differences in responsiveness for child development in different cultural contexts are discussed.     

Going beyond technology: Knowledge sharing as a tool for enhancing customer-oriented attitudes

Numerous articles, books and essays have shown that ongoing efforts to meet customers’ needs characterize market leaders. For a firm to successfully develop customer-oriented attitudes throughout the entire organization, employees at all levels and sections need to be committed to providing a high level of service. It is therefore essential to understand what drives employees – especially those who do not interact daily with customers – to adopt a customer-oriented attitude. The aim of this study is to shed some light on one facet of this relationship, namely the mechanism of knowledge sharing that may impact employee customer orientation. The underlying notion is that technology, in its various advanced forms of CRM software, enhances and enables client “knowing.” In other words, it leads to a greater ability on the part of employees to share knowledge, which brings about real customer orientation.This paper provides empirical evidence, based on a sample of 345 Hi-Tech workers from a telecommunication company, of a link between sharing explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge to enhance customer orientation. The findings indicate that sharing tacit knowledge has a positive effect on increasing employee customer orientation and increases sharing of explicit knowledge, while also strengthening communication about customers in the organization. It is concluded that firms should encourage tacit knowledge sharing and its transformation by technology into explicit knowledge to augment employees’ customer-oriented attitudes.     

Image annotation tactics: transitions,strategies and efficiency

Human interpretation of images during image annotation is complicated, but most existing interactive image annotation systems are generally operated based on social tagging, while ignoring that tags are insufficient to convey image semantics. Hence, it is critical to study the nature of image annotation behaviors and process. This study investigated annotation tactics, transitions, strategies and their efficiency during the image annotation process. A total of 90 participants were recruited to annotate nine pictures in three emotional dimensions with three interactive annotation methods. Data collected from annotation logs and verbal protocols were analyzed by applying both qualitative and quantitative methods. The findings of this study show that the cognitive process of human interpretation of images is rather complex, which reveals a probable bias in research involving image relevance feedback. Participants preferred applying scroll bar (Scr) and image comparison (Cim) tactics comparing with rating tactic (Val), and they did fewer fine tuning activities, which reflects the influence of perceptual level and users’ cognitive load during image annotation. Annotation tactic transition analysis showed that Cim was more likely to be adopted at the beginning of each phase, and the most remarkable transition was from Cim to Scr. By applying sequence analysis, the authors found 10 most commonly used sequences representing four types of annotation strategies, including Single tactic strategy, Tactic combination strategy, Fix mode strategy and Shift mode strategy. Furthermore, two patterns, “quarter decreasing” and “transition cost,” were identified based on time data, and both multiple tactics (e.g., the combination of Cim and Scr) and fine tuning activities were recognized as efficient tactic applications. Annotation patterns found in this study suggest more research needs to be done considering the need for multi-interactive methods and their influence. The findings of this study generated detailed and useful guidance for the interactive design in image annotation systems, including recommending efficient tactic applications in different phases, highlighting the most frequently applied tactics and transitions, and avoiding unnecessary transitions.     

Factors affecting the selection of search tactics: Tasks,knowledge, process,and systems

This study investigated whether and how different factors in relation to task, user-perceived knowledge, search process, and system affect users’ search tactic selection. Thirty-one participants, representing the general public with their own tasks, were recruited for this study. Multiple methods were employed to collect data, including pre-questionnaire, verbal protocols, log analysis, diaries, and post-questionnaires. Statistical analysis revealed that seven factors were significantly associated with tactic selection. These factors consist of work task types, search task types, familiarity with topic, search skills, search session length, search phases, and system types. Moreover, the study also discovered, qualitatively, in what ways these factors influence the selection of search tactics. Based on the findings, the authors discuss practical implications for system design to support users’ application of multiple search tactics for each factor.