A study in semantics in industry today

This paper combines an interactionist perspective with a rules‐based approach for the purpose of analyzing and evaluating organizations. It is suggested that an organization is analogous to a culture and that it can be analyzed by identifying its collectively defined master contract. It may be critiqued by assessing the process by which that master contract is communicated among its members. The organization and its individual members can then be evaluated according to the competence with which members can coorient themselves to the master contract and can coordinate their activities within the constitutive and regulative rules established by the organization. A case study suggests this new approach to organizational communication will be a useful one for communication theory as well as for consultants.     

Resource use and academic performance among first year psychology students

Multiple questionnaires completed over the semester by 514 students enrolled in a first year psychology course reveal that no single pattern of reliance on print, online, or in-person resources guarantees a high mark. Analyses of the reported and measured frequency of use of various resources correlated against students’, performance on both individual assessments and their final marks suggests that students employ a range of strategies in their use of class resources. They tend to rely on their textbooks, Web-based lecture notes, and online quizzes, but their final marks are more strongly determined by their university entrance scores than by their resource use strategy, their sex, or whether or not English is their first language. The data suggest that students adapt their learning strategies to the resources available, with an apparent emphasis on learning what will be assessed rather than exploring for understanding. Importantly, the results argue that investment in development of educational technologies – and students’, use of educational technologies – must be informed by empirical data concerning its impact on the efficiency and quality of learning.