Company Facebook and Organizational Identification

This study examined links between organizational Facebook pages and employee connection to the larger organization. Employee interaction with their company’s Facebook page was linked to higher levels of organizational identification and bridging social capital outcomes. Bridging social capital outcomes was also associated with organizational identification. Results indicate that the company Facebook page, considered primarily as a tool to engage external stakeholders, may also function to engage employees.     

Raising awareness of campus diversity and inclusion: Transformationally teaching diversity through narratives of campus experiences and simulated problem solving

ABSTRACT

Courses: Organizational Communication, Intercultural Communication

Objectives: This activity encourages students to learn collaboratively about diversity through the sharing of student experiences; deepen and complicate their understanding of organizational diversity; and enhance their ability to apply course material to increasingly complex organizational environments.     

Graphing in Physics: Processes and Sources of Error in Tertiary Entrance Examinations in Western Australia

Interpretation and construction of graphs are central to the study of physics and to performance in physics. In this paper, I explore the interpretation and construction processes called upon in questions with a graphical component, in Western Australian Physics Tertiary Entrance Examinations. In addition, I list errors made by students as reported by examiners and offer explanations for the errors. Outcomes of the inquiry are the identification of sources of challenge in the graphing questions, including requirements to calculate gradient and analyse experimental data. I also identify question structures that could be barriers to students' understanding the examination questions. The micro-analysis of graphing in one jurisdiction can inform assessment of high-school physics in general.     

User Behaviour in Relation to Electronic Information Services within the UK Higher Education Academic Community

The User Behaviour Monitoring and Evaluation Framework has been established to investigate and profile the use of electronic information services (EIS) within higher education in the UK. Electronic information services are defined as: collections of information tools/products delivered to requesting users electronically, and usually computer mediated. This encompasses media of all types. This article discusses aspects of the methodology of the Framework, and preliminary findings from the first annual cycle of the Framework. Findings are based on interactions with 1500 users, including academic staff, library and information services staff, and students. Executed through three strands, the framework methodology uses an array of quantitative and qualitative approaches to lend a variety of insights into user behaviour with electronic information services, factors that encourage the use of electronic information services, and those that act as barriers to the effective integration of electronic information services into the learning experience.     

PAR is a way of life: Participatory action research as core re-training for fugitive research praxis

Abstract

In this article, we present participatory action research (PAR) as a radical act of humanity: a direct response to real dehumanization of vulnerable communities. We argue, as an enactment of critical social theories, that PAR privileges relationships and shared knowledge creations as strategies for transforming everyday worlds. We draw on interviews conducted with nine participants of a 2013 Krueger-Henney, P. (2013). Co-researching school spaces of dispossession: A story of survival. The Association of Mexican American Educators Journal, 7(3), 42–53. [Google Scholar] PAR Institute, which aimed to explore and document the ways in which PAR is taken up in the lives, bodies, and thinking of PAR activists and students. Interviews reveal PAR is not an act of imagination, but rather an act of reclaiming and disrupting realities. As a result, PAR fractures an ongoing dystopia/utopia dialectic, and positions horror and hope side-by-side in the material world. It is through and with participant interview narratives that we frame PAR as a site for re-training one’s epistemic core away from Western, Eurocentric standardized and normalized human conduct rooted in historical and ongoing violence towards a fugitive praxis. We conclude that PAR is a radical commitment to guiding social science researchers towards epistemological fugitivity: a moving with and through current, though historically rooted, devastating social realities, as a possibility for a way to be with each other – indeed with the other – in this world. We find that PAR is a way of resisting and rejecting the nastiness of the world, while not waiting for utopia: It is a way of being in this world, a way of life.     

Getting to know nature: evaluating the effects of the Get to Know Program on children’s connectedness with nature

People in industrialized countries may be losing their connection with nature. The Get to Know Program (Get to Know) is a multi-faceted program aimed at encouraging direct connection with nature through a variety of activities (observations of wildlife, hiking, creative arts, and special events), specifically among youth. Three studies assessed the effects of three Get to Know program activities on youth’s implicit connectedness with nature (measured using a computer based game). Participants were youth recruited from southern California schools or youth organizations. Participation in the Get to Know Program’s Creative Arts Contest was associated with increased implicit connectedness with nature. However, participation in the Get to Know Natural Treasure Adventure and Virtual Hike did not have an effect on connectedness with nature. Implications of these findings are important for agencies seeking to find effective tools for outreach focused on connecting participants with nature.