Decision-oriented frameworks for management information systems design

Despite the rapid growth in the use of computers in organizations, few of the resulting systems have had a significant impact on the way in which management makes decisions. Frameworks are needed which aid in understanding the structure of management information systems, toward providing focus and improving the effectiveness of systems efforts.This paper surveys recent conceptual and empirical work related to development of decision-oriented frameworks for management information systems design, particularly as related to the improving the management of organizations.     

Advising time inventory: Consequences of the general college individualized baccalaureate degree program on faculty advising,activities, and academic load

Faculty of the General College are assigned advising responsibilities in addition to their teaching load. Full-time members, for example, advise 35–40 students per year. When the College initiated an individualized baccalaureate degree program in 1971, little provision was made for consequent changes on the advising function and the academic load. As a result, advisers, faced with the complex and time-consuming matters that adhere to individualized learning programs, felt mounting pressure. Large numbers of evening school students were attracted to the program and sought advice and, upon admission, expected to be assigned a faculty adviser. The College made no formal acknowledgment of the addition of the non-day school advisees to advisers' loads. Strained by the overburden, faculty participated in this study to identify how much real time they spend in advising, with whom, and on what kinds of activities. Evidence from this study was used to support their request for recognition by the College of the changed nature and full scope of their advising work.The author wishes to acknowledge Drs. Paul J. Feltovich and Thomas Brothen for their help with the researching of this paper.     

Post-secondary Science Students’ Explanations of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Randomness</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Variation</Emphasis> and Implications for Science Learning

The concepts of randomness and variation are pervasive in science. The purpose of this study was to document how post-secondary life science students explain randomness and variation, infer relationships between their explanations, and ability to describe and identify appropriate and inappropriate variation, and determine if students can identify sources of variation. An instrument designed to test statistical concepts was administered to 282 college students from three universities, ranging from introductory non-science majors to science graduate students. Students readily distinguished between causes of variation. A naïve no-pattern concept of randomness persisted from first-year non-science majors to senior-level science majors, contributing to incorrect responses on the variation instrument. Students’ expressions of randomness were better predictors of performance on the variation instrument than their expressions of variation. It is argued that inclusion of everyday language uses of randomness in instruction can bridge the gap between vernacular and scientific uses of this term.     

Multi-informant assessment of maltreated children: convergent and discriminant validity of the TSCC and TSCYC

OBJECTIVE: This study examined the convergent and discriminant validity of two trauma symptom measures, the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children (TSCC) [Briere, J. (1996). Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children (TSCC). Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources] and the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Young Children (TSCYC) [Briere, J. (2005). Trauma Symptom Checklist for Young Children (TSCYC). Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources]. METHODS: Children's scores on the TSCC and their caretakers' ratings on the TSCYC were analyzed in a study of 310 children presenting to one of two child abuse treatment centers. RESULTS: TSCC and TSCYC scales generally converged in their assessment of symptomatology in maltreated children. Equivalent scales measuring anxiety, depression, anger, dissociation, and sexual concerns were generally most correlated with one another. Similarly, the Posttraumatic Stress-Intrusion (PTS-I) scale of the TSCYC correlated highest with the Posttraumatic Stress (PTS) and Anxiety (ANX) scales of the TSCC, the TSCYC Posttraumatic Stress-Arousal (PTS-AR) scale was correlated with the TSCC ANX scale, and the TSCC PTS scale was most correlated with the TSCYC ANX, PTS-I, and Sexual Concerns (SC) scales. The TSCYC Posttraumatic Stress-Avoidance scale was unrelated to any TSCC scale. Discriminant function analysis revealed that the TSCC PTS scale was the best single predictor of sexual abuse-related PTSD status as identified by the TSCYC. CONCLUSIONS: The TSCC and TSCYC display moderate convergent and discriminant validity with respect to one another, despite different information sources. Nevertheless, the relatively small association between relevant TSCC and TSCYC scales indicates that different symptom informants may have different perspectives on the child's symptomatology; an outcome that may be beneficial when both measures are administered simultaneously. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: These results reinforce the notion that both child- and parent/caretaker report measures should be used in the evaluation of traumatized children, so that multiple sources of information can be considered simultaneously. In the current context, administration of the TSCC to the child and the TSCYC to the caretaker, when appropriate (i.e., in children 8-12 years of age) may yield more clinical information on the child's symptomatology than either measure would alone-perhaps especially in cases when one of the two respondents under- or over-reports the child's distress.     

Fostering Distributed Science Learning Through Collaborative Technologies

TACTICS (French and Spanish acronym standing for Collaborative Work and Learning in Science with Information and Communications Technologies) is an ongoing project aimed at investigating a distributed community of learning and practice in which information and communications technologies (ICT) take the role of collaborative tools to support social construction of knowledge. This community is composed of researchers, graduate students, and high-school teachers and their students, from six schools and four universities in Canada and Mexico. It set out in fall 2000 to develop a community around the general topic of integrating concepts in science school subjects. Once a prototype community is established, it can become a terrain where different aspects could be studied. Subsequently, researchers could gradually take a back seat allowing as well as ensuring the autonomy of the school members involved and, thereby, the viability of the learning community. The set up of the proposed prototype distributed science learning community was therefore an essential yet far from trivial first step. This paper discusses the process of setting up the community and the lessons learned.     

Preschool Teachers' Perceptions about Conflict Resolution, Autonomy, and the Group in Four Countries: United States, Colombia, El Salvador, and Taiwan

Preschool teachers (N = 160) in four countries (U.S., Colombia, El Salvador, and Taiwan) were surveyed about their views of conflict resolutions for moral and social-conventional conflicts, providing choice in the classroom (autonomy), maintaining a sense of the group, and general pedagogical aims of early childhood education. The findings revealed cultural similarities regarding conflict resolution intervention techniques and providing choice in the classroom. Cultural differences were found for maintaining the group and encouraging traditional group values. The items regarding the general pedagogical aims revealed a mixture of cultural differences and similarities. The results have implications for formulating generalizable goals for facilitating social and moral development in early childhood development and education.     

Bringing Total Quality Improvement into the college classroom

This paper describes a recent effort to infuse the Total Quality Improvement (TQI) approach, popularized by Deming and others, into an upper-division, junior-senior economics course at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The process of infusing TQI into instruction has received relatively little attention. Most efforts to bring TQI into higher education focus on improving administrative operations and establishing courses and programs for students to learn how to apply TQI in their future jobs. The challenge is in using TQI to help students realize their potential for learning in traditional courses.The TQI instruction approach developed for use in the course had three major elements. Customer Focus is represented by the proficiencies emphasized in the course and expected of graduating economics majors. Student Involvement is represented by team-centered research projects whose purpose is to enhance the proficiency of creating new knowledge. Continuous Improvement is represented by ongoing student evaluations of the course and instructor, carried out by a student team.After discussing the motivation for adopting this approach and the independent development of the concept of proficiencies in the economics major, the paper moves on to discuss the planning, implementation, and execution of the course. Particular attention is given to discussing the operation of the teams and the development of a multi-faceted ongoing evaluation process to assess the effectiveness of the TQI Instructional Approach.The evaluation results indicate strong student satisfaction with the TQI orientation of the course, while at the same time pointing out ways of improving what was done.The author is grateful to Jacob O. Stampen and Mark Finster for helping him learn about TQI, and to Ian Hau whose seminar stimulated this effort to infuse TQI into the classroom. Helpful comments on a draft of this paper came from Jacob O. Stampen, Maury J. Cotter, Charles A. Liedtke, Paul Weiss, and Michael L. Williamson. Special thanks for generating much of the underlying data go to the Evaluation Team of Kevin Brumm, Kimberly Klatt, and John Kittilstad, and to the Proficiency Team of Evan Anderson, Deana Lynn Grobe, and Tom Yale. Ilona Loser and Kris Feggestad assisted in assembling the results of the surveys. Suzanne Vinmans handled the typing, Vicki Szypulski made the visuals, and Elaine Moran provided helpful editorial suggestions. Laura A. Guy, Data and Program Library Service, facilitated access to the Current Population Survey tape used by several teams, and Kurt Neuwirth, Social Science Microcomputer Laboratory, created a user-friendly approach to the Current Population Survey data.     

Motion detection, letter position encoding, and single word reading

Recent research has shown that many people with dyslexia find it unusually difficult to detect flickering or moving visual stimuli, consistent with impaired processing in the magnocellular visual stream. Nonetheless, it remains controversial to suggest that reduced visual sensitivity of this kind might affect reading. We first show that the accuracy of letter position encoding may depend on input from the magnocellular pathway. We then suggest that when children read, impaired magnocellular function may degrade information about where letters are positioned with respect to each other, leading to reading errors which contain sounds not represented in the printed word. We call these orthographically inconsistent nonsense errors letter errors. In an unselected sample of primary school children, we show that the probability of children making “letter” errors in a single word reading task was best explained by independent contributions from motion detection (magnocellular function) and phonological awareness (assessed by a spoonerism task). This result held even when controlling for chronological age, reading ability, and IQ. Together, these findings suggest that impaired magnocellular visual function, as well as phonological deficits, may affect reading.