Work-Based Learning: Effectiveness in Information Systems Training and Development

The ability to use methodologies is an essential ingredient in the teaching of Information System techniques and approaches. One method to achieve this is to use a practical approach where students undertake ‘live’ projects with local client organisations. They can then reflect on the approach adopted with the aim of producing a ‘reflective methodological practitioner’. This paper focuses on the use of experiential learning in a modular course at the University of Central Lancashire to produce these ‘methodological practitioners’ and is based on the experiences of the authors in running this module. A model is presented which outlines three viewpoints of the project. This is in line with a ‘soft systems’ perspective in analysing the three views of the project or problem situation. It reports the results of investigations into one of those viewpoints [that of the students]. This is approached by a survey undertaken amongst students to obtain their views on the determinants of project success and failure.     

Women scholars: Closing the publication gap

As more females receive advanced degrees in business and enter the field of teaching in higher education, the role of females as publishers in scholarly journals will increase. Data collected from 27 business-oriented journals covering a 23-year time period support this premise. The purpose of this article is to present that data in order to show the changing role of women in publishing and to highlight some of the similarities and differences between female and male authors.     

Making the Invisible Visible. On Participation and Communication in a Global, Web-based Master’s Programme

This study focuses on the discourse of an intercontinental on-line Master’s programme in adult learning, using English as the lingua franca of the programme and involving four collaborating universities in Sweden, South Africa, Canada and Australia. The programme is highly interactive, emphasising communication between students. Taking the variation in participation as the point of departure, a discourse analysis aiming at analysing the contingencies contributing to the pattern of communication in the programme was undertaken. Data consist of a variety of texts on-line web-documents, written notes, and narratives that participants wrote about their lives related to participation in the programme. The use of English as the lingua franca contributed to a mistake anxiety, which for some students was hampering their communication in the programme. Aspects of the material world such as the vast differences in the efforts and costs for participating in the programme were also highly interrelated to the shaping of socio-culturally situated identities among the students and thereby contributing to the variation in frequency in participation. The results show that the official discourse of the programme as a text, with its emphasis on equity, change and development, gets subordinated to the discourses produced and reproduced by the students in the programme as a discursive practice and social practice. The students’ accounts reveal that there are fragments of an alternative discourse emerging, based on mutual concern and friendship, which might suggest a potential for changing the communicative patterns in the programme.     

Control strategies and noncompliance in abusive mother-child dyads: an observational study

The present observational study of child abuse has isolated parental control strategies and child response as a promising area of investigation. The social interaction of 10 abusive and 10 matched control mothers and their preschool children was videotaped in a simulated home environment involving both structured and unstructured activities. A coding scheme was developed to record interactional behavior in each dyad. Particular emphasis was placed on the analysis of mother command/child compliance sequences. Compared to controls, abusive mothers employed more commands, and more power-assertive and less positively oriented control strategies. They were also more intrusive, more inconsistent in their use of parenting techniques, displayed more flattened affect throughout their control interactions, and were less flexible in their attempts to gain compliance from the child. In turn, children of abusive mothers demonstrated far more noncompliant behavior than their control counterparts.     

Rhetorical Analysis of Stakeholders in Environmental Communication: A Model

This article examines contributions of selected theories to technical communication's understanding of environmental discourse and uses a dialogical synthesis to construct a model of stakeholder analysis. The model, with its interactive variables of stakeholder knowledge, attitude, and desired behavior, is applied to a pollution prevention document and calls for an active research emphasis in determining effective communication strategies.     

Beg,borrow, and steal: Formal and informal access to the scholarly literature at U.S. master's universities

This study investigates the methods by which faculty obtain scholarly articles, books, and chapters. It focuses on full-text retrieval rather than discovery, drawing on a survey of 529 full-time faculty at U.S. colleges and universities in the Carnegie master's—large and master's—medium categories. When seeking articles, faculty rely mainly on their home-institution library collections, freely accessible online resources, and interlibrary loan. The situation is different for books, however; faculty most often purchase the books they need. Despite the continuing importance of formal access mechanisms (home-institution library collections and interlibrary loan), faculty rely on other sources of full text—informal access mechanisms—for 50% of the articles and 66% of the books they use. Nearly 25% get more articles from the open web than from any other source, and substantial minorities report heavy reliance on other sources. In particular, faculty sometimes use other libraries, often relying on current or past affiliations (e.g., part-time teaching) or on the user accounts of family, friends, and colleagues. Many are critical of their university library collections, but most are satisfied with freely accessible online resources and interlibrary loan.     

Health sciences librarians' research on medical students' use of information for their studies at the medical school, University of Queensland, Australia

This study reports the findings of research undertaken by health sciences librarians at the University of Queensland Library into how medical students use information for their studies, particularly resources and services provided by the Library. The methods utilized were an online survey and focus groups. Results indicated that students favor print resources over electronic, value accessing resources on a one-stop basis, and prefer training to be delivered flexibly. The implication of these results for future resource selection, service provision, and instructional design and delivery is discussed.     

Effects of threatening visuals and announcer differences on responses to televised alcohol warnings

This study examined threatening background visuals and voice-over differences in televised alcohol warnings. Participants ( N v = v 401) viewed four television adwarning pairs embedded in sports programming. Between-subjects conditions included a threatening visual behind the warning, a non-threatening visual, a plain background, and a no-warning control. Use of a male or female announcer, each using a relatively warm or imperative voice quality, were manipulated within-subject factors. Outcomes included knowledge, cognitive responses regarding warning content and presentation, and perceptions of the risk of the product (beer) shown in the ad. All warnings increased post-test knowledge of alcohol risks relative to control; the largest increase resulted when warnings were accompanied by the threatening visual. Threatening visuals also increased positive thought elaborations about the warning message content and presentation. However, the threatening visuals did not reliably impact perceived risk of beer use, suggesting that threatening visuals influenced responses and knowledge by increasing attention to the warning rather than by increasing perceived threat. These findings are consistent with the EPPM's proposed initial threat appraisal mechanism (Witte, 1992), and further suggest that threatening visuals serve as a heuristic cue motivating increased processing of message content (see Eagly & Chaiken, 1993), rather than an influence via a peripheral route as suggested by the ELM (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). Interactions between drinking level and announcer gender and vocal quality variables were also found, but contributed only trivially to explained variance.