The impact of instructional development in higher education: effects on teachers and students

This paper reviews a range of challenges and tensions experienced when using portfolios for learning as well as for summative assessment in the context of continuing professional learning in academic development programmes. While portfolios are becoming increasingly prominent, the details of how they are used are under-examined; they are often simply assumed to be an appropriate tool. However, it is important that, as practitioners, we are able to justify our own assessment practices and convey our expectations to our participants, who may be unfamiliar with the demands of a reflective portfolio. In this paper we explore some of the appeal as well as the difficulties of using portfolios, many of which arise from the fact that portfolios are often simultaneously used for summative and formative purposes. We suggest how the challenges sometimes experienced with portfolio assessment can be addressed by course conveners.     

Tool-mediated authentic learning in an educational technology course: a designed-based innovation

This design-based research project is concerned with the design, development and deployment of interactive technological learning environments to support contemporary education. The use of technologies in education often replicates instructivist positions and practices. However, the use of Cultural Historical Activity Theory (C), authentic learning (A), and educational technologies as tools (T) to mediate learning provides an integrated CAT framework to design and use learning experiences that transform not only individuals but also their world view. The work reports on the design, redesign, and evaluation of an honors course on the use of information communication technologies in teaching and learning. Analyses identified a number of design principles useful in conceiving learning tasks to support the theoretical framework. The CAT framework fosters the use of learning mediation through the use of educational tools that support collective knowledge construction of individuals and their communities, rather than replicate the use of technology for instruction.     

The Rhetorical Work of YouTube’s Beauty Community: Relationship- and Identity-Building in User-Created Procedural Discourse

ABSTRACT

This study investigates YouTube’s beauty community, an online group of women who make videos about makeup products and techniques. The videos contain makeup application instructions and challenge ideas about what is “usable” procedural discourse. They sometimes defy conventions for high production quality. Moreover, storytelling and instruction are integral to the rhetorical work of these tutorials. For the diverse groups in this community, procedural discourse also serves as a means of establishing credibility not otherwise afforded to them, as well as opportunities for identity- and relationship building.     

Land of Linking

ABSTRACT

The electronic linking of scholarly materials has increasingly become both confusing and exciting. An understanding of the basics of linking technologies such as the OpenURL and the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) allows librarians to better serve their constituencies. Vendors also continue to offer linking alternatives to those libraries unable to purchase link resolvers, and a knowledge of these alternatives permits librarians to make informed decisions about a comprehensive and integrated linking plan for their libraries' electronic resources.     

EDITORIAL COMMENT

No abstract available for this article.     

My User is a Machine: Making Information Accessible to Disabled Users by Structuring for Machine Intermediaries

Abstract

Accessibility to information for disabled human users has increasingly become a legal and ethical concern for public education institutions. The Americans with Disabilities Act guarantees freedom from discrimination for disabled Americans, and recent lawsuits and formal complaints about inaccessible website content have propelled enforcement from an historically reactive stance to one that is proactive. Librarians pride themselves on providing information to all users, and the profession has long understood the need to structure data for other applications. However, many of us fail to use even the simple features built into software packages that can ensure accessible documents and presentations from the point of creation. This failure sets up a paradigm of perpetual effort required to remediate content for accessibility. Effective use of accessibility tools in document creation solves two accessibility problems for two audiences at once: humans and machines.     

The use of information technologies in dutch households

Abstract

In 1985 the Department of Household Sciences conducted research on Dutch households that use information technologies for domestic purposes. This research was part of a six‐nation research programme and was supported by the FAST‐II research activities of the EEC, and the Agricultural University of Wageningen. The use of three types of information technology was surveyed: home computer, Videotext, and Teletext. Analysis of the finding indicates the types of households likely to benefit from information technology in the future and groups households into three classes according to their attitudes to information technology—productivistic, hobbyist, and socially committed.     

Working for Barrier Removal in the ICT Area: Creating a More Accessible and Inclusive Canada

This article describes the rights-based approach to access to information and communications technologies (ICT) used by the Council of Canadians with Disabilities (CCD). This approach challenges the thinking of policymakers, those in industry, and others who argue that access to ICT can be achieved through a variety of economic, business, or market-based perspectives. It argues that these approaches have failed to deliver accessible ICT to people with disabilities, and that improved legislation, regulation, policy, and programs are required to remove the barriers to ICT experienced by people with disabilities in Canada.     

Always Articulating: Theorizing on Mobile and Wireless Technologies

Through this article we theorize on the nature and effects of articulation work relative to the take-up and use of information and communications technologies (ICT). Articulation work is “work that enables other work”: that which links people, processes, and technologies within organizations. Articulation work in organizations is both common and too often invisible from a managerial or budgetary perspective. Drawing on data from a study of the introduction and implementation of mobile computing technologies into criminal justice organizations, we highlight two findings: (1) There exist ongoing but unmet articulation needs present in any organization or work system. (2) Articulation is cumulative. We find, that as work becomes more complex (such as adding new work tasks and using new technologies), there is more articulation needed. These findings raise issues with assessing the costs of articulation on individuals, and making arrangements to accommodate explicit and implicit articulation in organizational work, particularly around the take-up and ongoing use of ICT-based systems.     

Consumer attitudes towards mobile marketing in the smart phone era

This exploratory online questionnaire-based study confirms the findings from earlier studies in the pre-smart phone era regarding consumers’ negative attitudes towards mobile marketing communications. This study shows that these attitudes persist despite increasing frequency of use and increased functionality of mobile phones in the smart phone era. Consumers perceive their mobile device to be for personal communication, and prefer to be able to exercise control over their interaction with organisations. Findings suggest that acceptance can be enhanced by permission marketing, trust-building, creating a sense of being in control, and useful and entertaining website content. Accordingly, pull technologies seem to hold particular promise for mobile marketing communications. This study, therefore, proceeds to explore use of and attitudes towards an important pull technology, QR codes. QR codes, two-dimensional bar codes, can be scanned to provide access to websites, information and applications. Despite their potential, uptake is low. Users in this study who had scanned a QR code had used them to access a variety of different content on different types of items and in different locations. The most frequently accessed type of content was information on a web site, the two most common locations for a scanned QR code were a newspaper or magazine advert, or outdoor advert or poster, and the two most common locations at which scanning was performed were in the street and at home. Ease of use, utility and incentives are drivers to continued use whilst lack of knowledge about how-to scan or of the benefits of QR codes may hinder adoption. Recommendations are offered for practice and for further research.