Marketing students at work: organisation citizenship behaviour training as a tool to minimise survey non-response

A continuing decline in an institution’s response rates for student evaluations of teaching (SET) raised faculty concerns about non-response bias in summary statistics. In response, this institution’s SET stakeholders partnered with a Marketing Methods class section to create strategies for increasing response rates. The project was also an exercise in organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) training because students in that class section received intensive training on how SET feedback is valued by instructors and its role in improving their academic organisation. Within the context of OCB theory, this article finds student exposure to OCB training increases SET response rates because knowing how SET benefits their organisation increases unit-level response propensity for member surveys intended to improve their institution. In the year of the OCB training, SET response rates increased by 26%, though the increases did not persist into later academic years. The response rate increases are realised across all demographic groups with disproportionate increases among low response rate groups, including low performing students, men and ethnic minorities.     

Student evaluations of teaching: the impact of faculty procedures on response rates

In the last 10–15 years, many institutions of higher education have switched from paper-and-pencil methods to online methods of administering student evaluations of teaching (SETs). One consequence has been a significant reduction in the response rates to such instruments. The current study was conducted to identify whether offering in-class time to students to complete online SETs would increase response rates. A quasi-experiment (nonequivalent group design) was conducted in which one group of tenured faculty instructed students to bring electronic devices with internet capabilities on a specified day and offered in-class time to students to complete online SETs. A communication protocol for faculty members’ use was developed and implemented. A comparison group of tenured faculty who did not offer in-class time for SET completion was identified and the difference-in-differences method was used to compare the previous year’s response rates for the same instructor teaching the same course across the two groups. Response rates were substantially higher when faculty provided in-class time to students to complete SETs. These results indicate that high response rates can be obtained for online SETs submitted by students in face-to-face classes if faculty communicate the importance of SETs in both their words and actions.     

Disaster,civil society and education in China: A case study of an independent non-government organization working in the aftermath of the Wenchuan earthquake

In May 2008 nearly 90,000 people died in the most powerful earthquake in modern Chinese history. Many were students killed in substandard schools, creating a sensitive disaster zone inside a nation whose civil society organizations are beginning to flourish. This paper examines the education earthquake relief program of an international NGO, and the institutional environment the organization worked in. We argue that the restricted environment prevented implementation of high-impact programs in the most deprived places, but that the NGO needed to use the institutional opening created by the earthquake to establish a presence as an agent in China's development.     

Toxic Portraits: Resisting Multiple Invisibilities in the Environmental Justice Movement

This essay conceptualizes “toxic portraits,” close-up, in situ photographs of people in toxically assaulted places. Toxic portraits articulate the multiple invisibilities attending environmental injustice through a series of visible indexical signs. As a result, toxic portraits enable spectators to see the precariousness of life as dramatized in human relationships to the environments in which we live. Drawing on the “subjunctive voice of the visual” as a rhetorical heuristic, I conceptualize the productive space created by toxic portraits and ultimately argue that these images invite an ethically inflected response to the dangers of living in a polluted world.     

Drunkorexia: An Exploratory Investigation of College Students With Alcohol‐Related Infractions

The construct of drunkorexia, caloric restriction prior to or during alcohol consumption, was examined in 411 college students who experienced alcohol‐related infractions. Analyses were conducted to examine differences in demographic prevalence distributions, alcohol‐related consequences, and alcohol consumption between a subsample of participants who reported drunkorexia behaviors and a subsample who did not.     

Background Noise Acceptance and Personality Factors Involved in Library Environment Choices by College Students

For decades, academic libraries made efforts to provide study environments differing in acoustic environment. The present study aimed to provide an evidence basis for this practice by comparing background noise acceptance and personality factors of two groups of college-aged students self identified as preferring quiet or background noise when performing cognitive tasks. Twenty young adult college students participated. Each participant completed background noise assessment (reading and listening) and personality assessment (five factor inventory, locus of control, and self-control). Results of the present study indicate that personality factors are not related to an individual's acoustic environment preference while studying; however, background noise acceptance measured while reading and while listening to speech was related to study environment choice. Findings of the present study indicate that students accurately self-assess their acoustic study environment needs. This evidence indicates that academic libraries should continue to offer multiple acoustic study environments for college students.     

Thinking ecologically with Judith Butler

This essay traces several productive points of overlap and departure between the recent philosophical work of Judith Butler and ecological thinking. While ecological philosophers and theorists have often dismissed Butler's treatment of politics and ethics as narrowly anthropocentric, this essay charges that there are considerable conceptual resources within Butler's oeuvre that are not only in accord with much recent ecological theorising but which also stand to enrich our approaches to ecological thinking and politics. Focusing specifically on three conceptual clusters – exposure and precarity; infrastructure and coexistence; and assemblies and assemblages – this essay demonstrates how Butler's work can be leveraged to augment the ways we approach both ecosystems and our more-than-human cohabitants as elements of and actors within the dynamic play of forces that make coexistence more or less possible.