Immersive virtual reality in STEM: is IVR an effective learning medium and does adding self-explanation after a lesson improve learning outcomes?

Educational technology research and development - The goal of the current study was to investigate the effects of an immersive virtual reality (IVR) science simulation on learning in a higher...     

Influence of voluntary coffee certifications on cooperatives’ advisory services and agricultural practices of smallholder farmers in Costa Rica

ABSTRACT

Purpose: This article explores how voluntary certifications influence the way cooperatives provide advisory services to their members and the influence of these services on agricultural practices. Design/Methodology/Approach: Case studies were conducted in four representative Costa Rican cooperatives interviewing twenty interviewed cooperative administrators and members to determine changes in advisory services and farming practices over the past twenty years and factors which influenced those changes. Findings: Certifications induce cooperatives to offer new services to support farmers. Cooperatives form collaborations with new stakeholders or reconfigure existing collaborations to provide advisory services to their members. These services have helped to shape farmers’ attitudes about sustainable farming practices, though farm-level changes may be small. The main change at the cooperative level is adding new topics for group training, and certification issues are directly linked with practices such as maintaining a farm record book or wearing a mask when applying pesticides. Practices which compete with productivity are unlikely to change. Practical Implications: The results are useful to improve the advisory services provided by cooperatives by better identifying the key issues to be addressed to fulfill the certifications’ requirements. Theoretical implications: Cooperatives are a relevant player to induce more sustainable practices, by providing or coordinating advisory services, but their efforts cannot be seen disconnected from a broader institutional environment. Originality/Value: We demonstrate that certifications change the intensity and scope of advisory services and induce cooperatives to engage with a more diverse network of stakeholders.     

Post-Industrial Cultural Criticism

Integrating perspectives from research into cultural and post-industrial journalism, this article presents a pilot study of websites with reviews of arts and culture conducted by amateurs. Such websites constitute a popular space for cultural criticism, and one that challenges traditional hierarchies within journalism. The article maps which Danish websites conduct arts and culture reviews, asks what features these websites have that facilitate public discourse, and measures the actual discussion on the websites. While academic diagnoses of the state of the online public sphere have generally been discouraging, this article argues that this is partly due to a strong focus on politics rather than on culture and illustrates how the cultural public sphere of online reviews constitutes a heterogeneous space for a public discussion about arts and culture. Furthermore, it shows that some amateur reviewers have highly specialized knowledge of culture and, on that basis, argues that the emergence of this type of critic might represent a qualitative strengthening of cultural criticism.