E-learning and market orientation in higher education

Technology is modifying the way companies do business all over the world. The education sector is no exception; virtual education has emerged as a basic tool to satisfy the changing needs of traditional and newly incorporated students, as well as meet the new requirements of educational institutions. This article therefore tries to achieve a double objective: to analyze what drives the development of online education within the Universities of the European Union and to design a theoretical framework that permits to obtain responses to que question of why students continue their estudies at the same educational institution. Thus, first, the analysis of external factors identifies social, political and technological capacity as issues that explain the rise of e-learning within the field of European higher education. Second, the empirical work shows the design of a cause-effect model with relationships between different variables in which market orientation of Universities and usability play an important role in the future intentions of use for students.     

Examining the Effectiveness of Systematically-Designed Web-Based Instruction

The present study examines the effectiveness of using a Web interface for delivering multi-cultural education at a distance. More specifically, this study examines the pedagogical effectiveness of one unit of Web-based instruction on Examining Prejudice. Two research questions guided the investigators: (1) Are there significant gains between the pretest and the posttest for all subjects participating in the study? and (2) Are there significant differences between the mean scores of subjects approaching the information individually and of those working collaboratively?     

“I don't belong here”: Chicanas/Latinas at a Hispanic Serving Institution Creating Community Through Muxerista Mentoring

In order to create more diverse communities and greater social justice in academia, a group of Chicana/Latina junior faculty at a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) established a research collaborative, Research for the Educational Advancement of Latin@s (REAL). Using a co-operative inquiry and dialogical epistemology, we document how REAL is an agency of transformative resistance to combat racism and sexism within academia. Also we reveal the importance of peer “muxerista mentoring” as an ideology and practice in building a supportive community in the bid for tenure. We provide implications and recommendations for the retention, tenure, and promotion of Chicana/Latina faculty.     

Outcomes Assessment and Legal Research Pedagogy

This article explores application of a taxonomic approach in legal research pedagogy to outcomes assessment based on Prof. Paul Callister's adaptation of Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives which integrates instructional design and learning activities compatible with formative assessment during the learning process and summative assessment at its conclusion. It reviews the development of outcomes assessment initiatives by legal educators and the development of outcomes assessment standards by the American Bar Association for the accreditation of law schools.     

Fueling and delinking from energy coloniality in Puerto Rico

In September 2017, Hurricane María rattled Puerto Rico and its Caribbean neighbors. To study this US colony’s post-hurricane crises, long-time histories and present experiences with what I call ‘energy coloniality’ and ‘energy privilege’ must be foregrounded. This approach allows for an understanding of this unnatural disaster as just one of countless systemic colonial and neoliberal entwined cruelties, driven by disaster capitalism. Informed by fieldwork and years of ‘e-advocacy,’ I critique four rhetorical problems that shape everyday and extraordinary emergencies in Puerto Rico. While I focus on this archipelago, hegemonic emergency discourses are widespread and linked to what I term the ‘emergency manager effect.’ This shock doctrine outcome is constituted by neoliberal and colonial governance and discourses, whereby undemocratically appointed overseers manage local places and peoples, who are perceived as anachronistic and incapable of solving problems independently. Delinking from these exploitative strategies and systems requires intervening in the entanglements of energy coloniality, energy privilege, and neoliberalism, as reckless extractivism continues to disproportionately target frontline communities.     

Mapping citation patterns of book chapters in the Book Citation Index

In this paper we provide the reader with a visual representation of relationships among the impact of book chapters indexed in the Book Citation Index using information gain values and published by different academic publishers in specific disciplines. The impact of book chapters can be characterized statistically by citations histograms. For instance, we can compute the probability of occurrence of book chapters with a number of citations in different intervals for each academic publisher. We predict the similarity between two citation histograms based on the amount of relative information between such characterizations. We observe that the citation patterns of book chapters follow a Lotkaian distribution. This paper describes the structure of the Book Citation Index using ‘heliocentric clockwise maps’ which allow the reader not only to determine the grade of similarity of a given academic publisher indexed in the Book Citation Index with a specific discipline according to their citation distribution, but also to easily observe the general structure of a discipline, identifying the publishers with higher impact and output.     

A fuzzy linguistic model to evaluate the quality of Library 2.0 functionalities

Libraries incessantly undergo change determined by evolving user needs. These are often induced by the emergence of previously unavailable tools. Web 2.0 represents an example of such a need-shifting technology, which has led to an embrace of new user interactivity services for many library websites, thus coined Library 2.0. This paradigm shift calls for new evaluation models to include the implementation of Web 2.0 technologies. The aim of this paper is to present such a model, and to evaluate the quality of Library 2.0 functionalities, measuring the quality of the 2.0 services offered through the websites based on user perception. We adopt fuzzy linguistic modeling to represent user perception, and apply aggregation operations to linguistic labels in order to evaluate the quality of the new services. Furthermore, our model subsumes the LibQUAL+ methodology, allowing for the identification of specific 2.0 functionalities in need of improvement and of those outstandingly satisfied by the system.