Isolation and distinctiveness in the design of e-learning systems influence user preferences

When faced with excessive detail in an online environment, typical users have difficulty processing all the elements of representation. This in turn creates cognitive overload, which narrows the user's focus to a few select items. In the context of e-learning, we translated this aspect as the learner's demand for a system that facilitates the retrieval of learning content – one in which the representation is easy to read and understand. We hypothesized that the representation of content in an e-learning system's design is an important antecedent for learner preferences. The aspects of isolation and distinctiveness were incorporated into the design of e-learning representation as an attempt to promote student cognition. Following its development, the model was empirically validated by conducting a survey of 300 university students. We found that isolation and distinctiveness in the design elements appeared to facilitate the ability of students to read and remember online learning content. This in turn was found to drive user preferences for using e-learning systems. The findings provide designers with managerial insights for enticing learners to continue using e-learning systems.     

Teacher–student interaction in contemporary science classrooms: is participation still a question of gender?†

We show that boys still have a greater access to the space for interaction in science classrooms, which is unexpected since in Sweden today girls perform better in these subjects than boys. Results from video-recorded verbal communication, referred to here as interaction, show that the distribution of teacher–student interaction in the final year of lower secondary school follows the same patterns as in the 1980s. The interaction space for all kinds of talk continues to be distributed according to the two-thirds rule for communication in science classrooms as described by previous research. We also show that the overall interaction space in science classrooms has increased for both boys and girls when talk about science alone is considered. Another finding which follows old patterns is that male teachers still address boys more often than girls. This holds true both for general talk and for talk about science. If a more even distribution of teacher–student interaction is desirable, these results once again need to be considered. More research needs to be undertaken before the association between girls’ attitudes and interest in science in terms of future career choice and the opportunity to participate in teacher–student interaction is more clearly understood.     

Testing Criterion Correlations With Scale Component Measurement Errors Using Latent Variable Modeling

A latent variable modeling method for testing criterion correlations with measurement error terms in multicomponent measuring instruments is outlined. The approach is based on an application of the Benjamini–Hochberg multiple testing procedure and can be used when assumptions of validity estimation related procedures need to be examined. The method also allows studying the extent to which criterion validity coefficients might be due to the relationship between a presumed underlying latent construct evaluated by a psychometric scale and a criterion variable, or could be a consequence of the relation between measurement error in the overall scale score and the criterion. The discussed procedure is widely applicable with popular latent variable modeling software, and is illustrated using a numerical example.     

Staff student partnership in assessment: enhancing assessment literacy through democratic practices

In recent years, research and practice focused on staff and students working in partnership to co-design learning and teaching in higher education has increased. However, within staff–student partnerships a focus on assessment is relatively uncommon, with fewer examples evident in the literature. In this paper, we take the stance that all assessment can be oriented for learning, and that students’ learning is enhanced by improving their level of assessment literacy. A small study in a Scottish university was undertaken that involved a range of different adaptations to assessment and feedback, in which students were invited to become partners in assessment. We argue that a partnership approach, designed to democratise the assessment process, not only offered students greater agency in their own and their peers’ learning, but also helped students to enhance their assessment literacy. Although staff and students reported experiencing a sense of risk, there was immense compensation through increased motivation, and a sense of being part of an engaged learning community. Implications for partnership in assessment are discussed and explored further. We assert that adopting staff–student partnership in assessment and more democratic classroom practices can have a wide range of positive benefits.     

Promoting university–industry collaboration in Malaysia: stakeholders’ perspectives on expectations and impediments

University–Industry Collaboration (UIC) has been identified as an essential item on Malaysia’s agenda for transforming itself into knowledge and innovation-based economy. However, despite the efforts, most initiatives have had limited results. This paper reports on an explorative study that sought to understand the contemporary realities of UIC in the Malaysian context. In particular, the study identified the expectations and impediments to UIC, from the perspectives of three groups of stakeholders – the academics, the industry players and policymakers. The findings reveal a number of barriers, including cultural differences, perceived lack of academic expertise and reputation, an inadequacy of institutional policies and regulations, lack of trust, issues of intellectual property rights, and the lack of an appropriate reward system. This paper concludes by proposing policy recommendations and strategies that could be used by the government, university, and the industry to promote further and foster university-industry collaborative opportunities and initiatives.     

Embodied engagements with online pornography

Even though sexual arousal is a central feature in browsing online pornography, embodiment has largely gone unexamined in much of the research on pornography in information studies and human–computer interaction. Through existential phenomenology, which emphasizes a synthesis of cognitive reflection and embodied experience, this article examines how our embodied engagements with the technological apparatus of the computer help reconstitute the way we feel time, objects of desire, and pleasure in the process of browsing online pornography.     

How ‘should’ the majority group acculturate? Acculturation expectations and their correlates among minority- and majority-group members

Do minority-group members welcome or reject that majority-group members adopt other cultures? Acculturation is commonly defined as a process of mutual accommodation. Yet, the acculturation of majority-group members has only recently received research attention. To date, we do not know the extent to which minority-group members expect majority-group members to adopt the culture of minority groups and/or to maintain their mainstream culture. Knowledge is also lacking about how these expectations relate to minority-group members’ own acculturation orientations and symbolic and realistic threat perceptions. We further do not know whether such associations are similar among minority- and majority-group members. To address these gaps, we surveyed 246 Muslim minority-group members and 247 White Christian majority-group members in the United Kingdom. Muslim minority-group members’ acculturation expectations towards majority-group members were normally distributed around the midpoint of the scale, suggesting that they did not reject majority-group acculturation on average. Acculturation expectations were correlated with symbolic and realistic threat perceptions among majority-group members but not among minority-group members. Cluster analyses showed that integrated Muslim minority-group members found it relatively important for majority-group members to adopt minority-group culture and to maintain their own culture. In sum, the results support the idea that minority-group members, at least in some contexts and settings, view acculturation as a mutual cultural change rather than as cultural appropriation.     

Examining motivation of IT vendors to share knowledge with clients

To reduce information technology (IT) development costs, more firms have begun to outsource IT-related activities by partnering with IT vendors. As knowledge is a valuable asset in IT development, knowledge sharing between vendors and business clients becomes critical. However, the motivation behind IT vendors’ willingness to share knowledge with client firms is not sufficiently understood. To shed light on the nature of knowledge sharing within vendor–client partnerships, we examine the influence of performance feedback and managerial mindset on vendors’ motivation to share knowledge with their clients. We adopt a multi-method approach involving both a scenario-based field experiment with 164 vendor managers (Study 1) and a field survey of 112 vendor managers involved in IT development (Study 2). We find that when vendors’ performance exceeds their aspiration levels, they are motivated to share knowledge with clients. Such motivational effects are more pronounced for vendor managers exhibiting abstract mindsets. Our study is of significant value to researchers and practitioners, affording both groups a keener, deeper, and more robust appreciation for how knowledge sharing in vendor–client partnerships can be managed more effectively.     

The dualistic view of challenge-hindrance technostress in accounting information systems: Technological antecedents and coping responses

Owing to the pervasive use of accounting information systems (AIS), financial workers are experiencing increased levels of technostress. While technostress has been conceptualized as overwhelmingly harmful in the IS literature, the challenge–hindrance stressor model suggests that employees can also experience “good stress”. This study instantiates the challenge–hindrance stressor model and coping theory in the AIS context using a two-step mixed-method approach. A qualitative study was first conducted to conceptualize the AIS characteristics associated with technostress appraisals. This study then builds a research model that posits perceived challenge and hindrance technostressors and coping responses as key mechanisms linking AIS characteristics and job burnout. The model was tested by collecting longitudinal data from 285 accountants. The results revealed that several AIS characteristics are associated with technostressor appraisals, and such appraisals lead to proactive and reactive coping responses, which further influence job burnout. The theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.     

Unifying knowledge iterative dissemination and relational reconstruction network for image–text matching

Image–text matching is a crucial branch in multimedia retrieval which relies on learning inter-modal correspondences. Most existing methods focus on global or local correspondence and fail to explore fine-grained global–local alignment. Moreover, the issue of how to infer more accurate similarity scores remains unresolved. In this study, we propose a novel unifying knowledge iterative dissemination and relational reconstruction (KIDRR) network for image–text matching. Particularly, the knowledge graph iterative dissemination module is designed to iteratively broadcast global semantic knowledge, enabling relevant nodes to be associated, resulting in fine-grained intra-modal correlations and features. Hence, vector-based similarity representations are learned from multiple perspectives to model multi-level alignments comprehensively. The relation graph reconstruction module is further developed to enhance cross-modal correspondences by constructing similarity relation graphs and adaptively reconstructing them. We conducted experiments on the datasets Flickr30K and MSCOCO, which have 31,783 and 123,287 images, respectively. Experiments show that KIDRR achieves improvements of nearly 2.2% and 1.6% relative to Recall@1 on Flicr30K and MSCOCO, respectively, compared to the current state-of-the-art baselines.