Examining online consumers’ behavior: A service-oriented view

Retailers’ websites are an important interface between retailers and their customers. The various features and elements that retailers include on their websites play a critical role in attracting customers and ensuring their satisfaction with the online shopping process. By conducting a three-phased study, we identify how the elements of a website shape customers’ salient beliefs. These salient beliefs, in turn, determine the level of customers’ satisfaction with the website. This study provides both theoretical insights into the beliefs of online shoppers and practical insights for retail website operators. Specifically, we argue that when retail websites are constructed to include several specific elements that appeal to the key salient beliefs of information quality, service quality, and system quality, retailers will increase customers’ satisfaction with the online shopping process.     

The Many Turnings of Agricultural Extension in Australia

Abstract

Purpose: This article outlines the development of extension as a discipline in Australia, its organization, and the ideological changes that have occurred from the second half of the nineteenth century through to the present.

Design/Methodology/Approach: It considers the evolution of extension across the different states of Australia from a national perspective and describes how the research development and extension (RD&E) complex has rotated through cycles of crises, highs, awakenings in thought and practice, and periods where achievements and institutions unravel.

Findings: Discussed is the tension between public and private sector extension, as well as the successes and failures of various paradigms. It considers the impacts of different agricultural policy on Australian agricultural RD&E across the decades. In particular it deals with the current ‘unravelling’ of the agricultural RD&E system in Australia, and tries to anticipate future demands on agricultural extension and how these services might be delivered into the future.

Practical Implications: The article challenges the reader to consider the discipline of extension as a subset of the greater society in which it exists. It provides an insight into how the agricultural research, development and extension capacity of a nation can be observed to ebb and flow over generations in accord with the rhythm of society.

Originality/Value: The article presents a perspective that has not been fully captured or understood until now.     

A Placement Test for Computer Science: Design,Implementation, and Analysis

An introductory CS1 course presents problems for educators and students due to students' diverse background in programming knowledge and exposure. Students who enroll in CS1 also have different expectations and motivations. Prompted by the curricular guidelines for undergraduate programmes in computer science released in 2001 by the ACM/IEEE, and driven by a departmental project to reinvent the undergraduate computer science and computer engineering curricula at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, we are currently implementing a series of changes which will improve our introductory courses. One key component of our project is an online placement examination tied to the cognitive domain that assesses student knowledge and intellectual skills. Our placement test is also integrated into a comprehensive educational research design containing a pre- and posttest framework for assessing student learning and providing valuable feedback for needed instructional revisions. In this paper, we focus on the design and implementation of our placement exam and present an analysis of the data collected to date.     

Math Shelf: A Randomized Trial of a Prekindergarten Tablet Number Sense Curriculum

Research Findings: Effective preschool mathematics instruction is especially important for low-income children. Previous research demonstrates that low-income children enter kindergarten behind their middle-income peers. They receive less mathematics support at home and from public preschools. The aim of this study was to test Math Shelf, a tablet intervention designed to improve at-risk preschoolers’ mathematics performance. A total of 100 children participated in a randomized controlled trial in a large urban Head Start center. Intervention students played Math Shelf on tablet computers for 6 weeks, whereas comparison students played the most downloaded and best reviewed preschool math apps on tablets for an equal amount of time. During game play, graduate student researchers supervised intervention and comparison students in separate rooms. Intervention and comparison groups did not differ on pretest assessments. Math Shelf students performed statistically significantly better (Cohen’s d = 0.57) than comparison students at posttest. Practice or Policy: Math Shelf results suggest that teachers can enhance low-income preschoolers’ mathematics knowledge in a relatively short amount of time by incorporating developmentally appropriate tablet interventions.     

College Course Grades for Dual Enrollment Students

This study compared college course grade outcomes, both during and after high school, of dual-enrollment students to those of traditional students. The study was based on a large, multiyear sample of Iowa high school and community college students. The results showed that while in high school, dual-enrollment students consistently outperformed traditional students in community college courses. However, much of the difference might be due to underlying differences in the two groups associated with the type of college the students chose to attend after high school (i.e., four-year vs. two-year). Dual enrollment students tended to perform about the same as traditional students in terms of post-high-school community college course grades. For students who enrolled in four-year institutions after high school, analyses of college course grade data suggested a small positive effect of dual enrollment on first-year college grade point average (GPA).     

An Overview of Canada’s Contemporary Book Trade in Light of (Nearly) Four Decades of Policy Interventions

Canada’s book trade is fascinating not only because it really consists of two book trades—the Anglophone and the Francophone—but also because it is a site of intense and sustained policy interventions designed to foster greater domestic control. Examining the country’s book policies, Statistics Canada data, trade association membership rosters and trade directories, this paper reveals that Canada’s contemporary book trade is characterized by three features: circa 40 years of government interventions in response to foreign dominance; the central role of foreign firms despite these interventions; and the dominance of Toronto and Montreal as domestic sites of book production.     

Connecting a Museum with Its Community

Abstract The exhibition, Changing Places: From Black and White to Technicolor, at the Levine Museum of the New South, in Charlotte, North Carolina, is more than a story about a changing community—it’s a platform for an experience that engages its local audience.