Linking versus searching: A case study of performance support use

In highly competitive global organizations, the practice of hit‐and‐miss searching for information is a luxury seldom afforded. This article examines a case study of an organization that explored the use of different types of performance support interventions for four years. Results show that performance support systems that link to relevant support content were used significantly more than systems that required the performer to search for and locate information. A comparison of these findings with the existing literature and the implications of these results for performance technologists are discussed.     

The effect of performance support and training as performance interventions

For decades, training has been one of the most common interventions used by organizations to improve the performance of their employees and teach them new ideas and skills. But owing to the cost of developing and delivering training, organizations have adopted alternative ways to enable employee performance while reducing the cost and minimizing the time users spend away from the job. One alternative is electronic performance support systems (EPSS). The present study examined the effect of EPSS and training on user performance, time on task, and time in training. Results revealed that participants receiving only EPSS and those receiving training and EPSS performed significantly better on a tax preparation procedure than participants who received only training. Training‐only users also spent significantly more time completing the procedural task than their counterparts in other treatment groups, leading to a negative correlation between time on task and performance. The implications of these findings for the design and development of performance support and training interventions are discussed.     

Engagement in Language Policies and Practices with and for Vietnamese Minority Student Youth

Drawing on the recent call for repositioning youth as creative and responsible agents in language and education research (e. g., McCarty & Wyman, 2009) and the notion of engaged ethnography (e.g., Davis & Phyak, 2015), the researcher engaged 16 minority student youth in a remote mountainous province in Vietnam in interrogating the realities of the current language policies (LP) while working actively with them to give rise to effective and responsive LP transformations. Youth’s resistance to the current LP, their critical awareness of their linguistic wealth, and their comprehensive recommendations for LP improvements greatly affirm themselves as resourceful and responsible agents in decision-making and pedagogical revitalizations. This article calls for respecting and recognizing youth’s power, voices, and rights, and invites them to deconstruct educational policies to promote multilingualism and effective educational change. Towards this end, I discuss implications to promote youth engagement in language education policies and practices.     

Waiting to decide helps in the face of probabilistic uncertainty but not delay uncertainty

A first-person shooter video game was adapted for the study of causal decision making within dynamic environments. Participants chose which of three potential targets in each of 21 groups was producing distal explosions. The source of the explosion effect varied in the delay between the firing of its weapon and its effect (0.0, 0.5, 1.0, and 2.0 s), the probability that the weapon caused the effect (50%, 75%, and 100%), and the occurrence of auditory events that filled the delay. In Experiment 1, participants’ choice accuracy was highest with short delays but was not affected by probability; participants often compensated for lower probability by increasing their latencies, and thus the number of outcomes sampled. In Experiment 2, a broad range of delays (0–2 s) and probabilities (20%–100%) were randomly sampled for each cause; the results largely replicated those of the prior experiment. The experiments demonstrate people’s ability to successfully modulate their environmental sampling in the face of uncertainty due to lower cause–effect probabilities, but not in the presence of longer cause–effect delays.     

How academics manage individual differences to team teach in higher education: a sociocultural activity theory perspective

Higher Education - In the higher education (HE) landscape worldwide, team teaching has become increasingly common. The growing prevalence of team teaching in HE has mainly been driven by the...     

Challenges and Accomplishments of Practicing Formative Assessment: a Case Study of College Biology Instructors’ Classrooms

International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education - This study presents a glimpse into the private classrooms of biology instructors and the way they practice formative assessments within...     

A case analysis of ICT for knowledge transfer in small businesses in Vietnam

Small businesses face numerous issues in regard to the management of their knowledge, including potential loss of knowledge due to high employee turnover and the willingness and ability of employees to share their knowledge. This case study examines two small ICT companies in Vietnam to determine how knowledge transfer was conducted with and without the use of ICT. A knowledge transfer framework for small businesses was used as a lens to analyse the results. The findings showed differences in knowledge transfer approaches in both cases. It was observed that employees whose jobs required less flexibility needed more explicit knowledge, but if their working procedures were more flexible they were more likely to need tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge was mainly transferred by non-ICT methods, with explicit knowledge being transferred via a combination of methods. The cases differed in regard to the existence of knowledge transfer guidelines – as well as the willingness and ability of employees to share knowledge with others in the business. Both case businesses lacked appropriate measures to determine the level of success of knowledge transfer activities.     

Self-report measures of the home learning environment in large scale research: Measurement properties and associations with key developmental outcomes

Favourable home learning environments (HLEs) support children’s literacy, numeracy and social development. In large-scale research, HLE is typically measured by self-report survey, but there is little consistency between studies and many different items and latent constructs are observed. Little is known about the stability of these items and constructs over time when used in either longitudinal research or studies with children with a wide range of ages. A review of the literature shows commonalities and differences between approaches in research on HLE. When we tested the psychometric properties of a short-form measure of HLE with a Rasch item-response-model using longitudinal data from over 1600 Australian families, there was support for two dimensions of HLE—formal and informal learning frequency. We found that this measure was stable over the transitional period from pre-K to school as well as between gender and family language background. There were small but significant associations between the HLE measures and cognitive and behavioural developmental outcomes. We recommend that other measures of HLE could be similarly validated to assess their suitability for use in longitudinal research on learning environments. Recommendations are made for the future development of measures of broader constructs of the HLE.