Using feedback requests to actively involve assessees in peer assessment: effects on the assessor’s feedback content and assessee’s agreement with feedback

Criticizing the common approach of supporting peer assessment through providing assessors with an explication of assessment criteria, recent insights on peer assessment call for support focusing on assessees, who often assume a passive role of receivers of feedback. Feedback requests, which require assessees to formulate their specific needs for feedback, have therefore been put forward as an alternative to supporting peer assessment, even though there is little known about their exact impact on feedback. Operationalizing effective feedback as feedback that (1) elaborates on the evaluation and (2) to which the receiver is agreeable, the present study examines how these two variables are affected by feedback requests, compared to an explanation of assessment criteria in the form of a content checklist. Situated against the backdrop of a writing task for 125 first-year students in an educational studies program at university, the study uses a 2 × 2 factorial design that resulted in four conditions: a control, feedback request, content checklist, and combination condition. The results underline the importance of taking message length into account when studying the effects of support for peer assessment. Although feedback requests did not have an impact on the raw number of elaborations, the proportion of informative elaborations within feedback messages was significantly higher in conditions that used a feedback request. In other words, it appears that the feedback request stimulated students to write more focused messages. In comparison with feedback content, the use of a feedback request did, however, not have a significant effect on agreement with feedback.     

Framing inclusive innovation within the discourse of development: Insights from case studies in India

The concept of ‘inclusive innovation’ for development has become increasingly prominent in both academic and policy discourses, raising important questions as to how this is being framed. Results from case studies conducted in India suggest inclusive innovation to be interpretively flexible and contested. One case presents a grassroots framing emphasising social and political empowerment, rooted in community self-sufficiency, autonomy and traditional belief systems. In contrast, the other cases co-opt the language of inclusion to present a predominantly market-based framing, heavily emphasising market readiness and participation. This framing is transforming rural social practices (including the organisation of space and time, the meaning of production and the role of women), introducing the potential for market dependency.     

税收,撬动风投的杠杆——美国风险投资税收经验谈

给点说服投资的理由 　　合理的税收政策是说服和鼓励风险投资者投资的办法之一. 　　在美国,大部分公司最初是由创业者本人向其家人、朋友募资,或者使用信用证,或者分期付款.这些融资都是个人融资.再就是“天使“,就是非常有钱的投资者,他们希望对资金做一个明智的使用,愿意把钱拿出来投资.对很多公司来说,找到这部分钱比较容易,但最后可能会在管理环节出现问题.还有一部分投资者是风险投资及投资银行和其他银行.……     

The role of trust in e-Government effectiveness,operational effectiveness and user satisfaction: Lessons from Saudi Arabia in e-G2B

Electronic government (e-Government) systems are becoming an essential strategic tool in the delivery of e-Government-to-Business services (e-G2B). The purpose of this research is to explore direct and indirect effects of trust in online services on the satisfaction of the e-Government service users and other perceptions such as e-G2B system effectiveness and the operational effectiveness of organizations. Based on a sample of e-G2B service users from Saudi Arabia, our preliminary findings suggest that the effects of trust on user satisfaction are mediated by e-G2B system effectiveness measures (e.g., System Quality, Service Quality, and Information Quality) and by operational effectiveness. In addition, we find that operational effectiveness and information quality are the most important drivers of user satisfaction. In contrast to previous research, our results show a negative relationship between trust in online services and service quality and suggest that this finding may have important implications for theory and practice.     

An empirical study on the relationships between knowledge management,knowledge-oriented human resource practices and innovation

The main purpose of this paper is to empirically analyse relationships between human resource (HR) and knowledge management (KM) practices and their effect on the firm’s innovation performance. From the knowledge-based view of the firm, hypotheses based on the specific interactions between an integrated set of KM and knowledge-oriented HR practices were established and statistically tested in a sample of 111 Spanish companies from technological industries. Survey methodology was used with the aim to gather data about KM practices and other related organizational aspects. Overall, this paper provides empirical evidence of a moderating effect of a set of knowledge-oriented HR practices in the relationship between KM exploitation practices and innovation performance. In line with previous research, we suggest that although KM practices are important in themselves for innovation purposes, when specific organizational conditions are properly established by managers the innovation capacity of the firm will significantly be improved and more successfully utilized.     

Heat transfer in packed bed heat recuperators-II. The film coefficient for dry sorbent solids

An elaborate experimental set up is described that was used to measure the thermal expiration curves of heat recuperators, that had been constructed with guard heaters and vacuum insulation to minimize heat losses. A much more general model is used along with a precision numerical analysis technique to show that a film coefficient correlation of the Dittus-Boelter type did an excellent job of representing the results from 162 runs in which three feed gas temperatures, two flow rates, two particle size ranges, one bed diameter and five desciccants were used. For comparison sake the reported film coefficient correlation is finally assembled in a table along with others found in the literature.