Emotional safety and identity expression within online learning environments in higher education:Insights from a Canadian college

Assuring quality learning is increasingly important to higher education institutions (HEIs) in Canada, especially with continued e-marketplace, online enrolment growth, and programming internationalization. This thesis narrows the topic of quality assurance (QA) in learning to emotional safety and identity expression in online learning environments (OLEs). Creating and facilitating a safe OLE is imperative for many reasons, most notably because it can positively impact retention, learner satisfaction, and academic success. This thesis will argue that feeling safe within an OLE is a necessary condition for learners to express aspects of their identity, resulting in a perceived increase in grades. Identity expression is part of transformational learning and thus becomes important to teaching and learning. The conditions for expressing identity online, therefore, ought to be encouraged and enhanced, making the role of the instructor paramount in this aspect of quality. The study was conducted by gathering the thoughts and experiences of nine instructors and nine learners (n=18) using a single-site data gathering methodology. Through study findings, this thesis contributes to educational research in four ways. One, my theoretical framework is based on Illeris' (2007, 2014a, 2018a) learning and identity theory, which supports the emerging notion that identity is intrinsically connected to and centrally positioned within the overall learning process. Two, I gathered perspectives and experiences of both instructors and learners on this topic, which is uncharacteristic within educational research yet arguably critical when developing a comprehensive understanding of such topics and in the design and provision of HE supports and services. Three, this research study extends the sparsely researched area of emotional safety in conjunction with identity expression within HE OLEs and confirmed its importance and role in QA. Four, the findings support the importance of an emotionally safe OLE and such an OLE can positively impact learner grades and experience

Patient Safety As An Interactional Achievement: Conversational Analysis In The Trauma Center Of An Inner City Hospital

In this dissertation, I apply the methodology of Conversational Analysis to highlight the informal communication of an emergency room work group with the objective of discovering recurrent patterns of interaction and the inherent relational work necessary to accomplish the safe medical care of patients in a Trauma Code on a level of safety comparative to that of ultra-safe systems as described in the literature of High Reliability Organizations. The significance of relational elements of interaction on emerging social order is highlighted in processes of attunement, or the diminishing of difference of status in the use of mitigated speech and the co-construction of narrative. The use of mitigated speech and narrative serve as conversational moves of consequence, by which participants seek cooperation, coordination, and collaborate in face-to-face interaction, in a mutually constructed course of action; that is, in providing safe medical care in a highly complex and high risk environment

Reports to the President

A compilation of annual reports for the 1999-2000 academic year, including a report from the President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as reports from the academic and administrative units of the Institute. The reports outline the year's goals, accomplishments, honors and awards, and future plans

Dialectic tensions in the financial markets: a longitudinal study of pre- and post-crisis regulatory technology

This article presents the findings from a longitudinal research study on regulatory technology in the UK financial services industry. The financial crisis with serious corporate and mutual fund scandals raised the profile of compliance as governmental bodies, institutional and private investors introduced a ‘tsunami’ of financial regulations. Adopting a multi-level analysis, this study examines how regulatory technology was used by financial firms to meet their compliance obligations, pre- and post-crisis. Empirical data collected over 12 years examine the deployment of an investment management system in eight financial firms. Interviews with public regulatory bodies, financial institutions and technology providers reveal a culture of compliance with increased transparency, surveillance and accountability. Findings show that dialectic tensions arise as the pursuit of transparency, surveillance and accountability in compliance mandates is simultaneously rationalized, facilitated and obscured by regulatory technology. Responding to these challenges, regulatory bodies continue to impose revised compliance mandates on financial firms to force them to adapt their financial technologies in an ever-changing multi-jurisdictional regulatory landscape

The Prom Problem: Fair and Privacy-Enhanced Matchmaking with Identity Linked Wishes

In the Prom Problem (TPP), Alice wishes to attend a school dance with Bob and needs a risk-free, privacy preserving way to find out whether Bob shares that same wish. If not, no one should know that she inquired about it, not even Bob. TPP represents a special class of matchmaking challenges, augmenting the properties of privacy-enhanced matchmaking, further requiring fairness and support for identity linked wishes (ILW) – wishes involving specific identities that are only valid if all involved parties have those same wishes. The Horne-Nair (HN) protocol was proposed as a solution to TPP along with a sample pseudo-code embodiment leveraging an untrusted matchmaker. Neither identities nor pseudo-identities are included in any messages or stored in the matchmaker’s database. Privacy relevant data stay within user control. A security analysis and proof-of-concept implementation validated the approach, fairness was quantified, and a feasibility analysis demonstrated practicality in real-world networks and systems, thereby bounding risk prior to incurring the full costs of development. The SecretMatch™ Prom app leverages one embodiment of the patented HN protocol to achieve privacy-enhanced and fair matchmaking with ILW. The endeavor led to practical lessons learned and recommendations for privacy engineering in an era of rapidly evolving privacy legislation. Next steps include design of SecretMatch™ apps for contexts like voting negotiations in legislative bodies and executive recruiting. The roadmap toward a quantum resistant SecretMatch™ began with design of a Hybrid Post-Quantum Horne-Nair (HPQHN) protocol. Future directions include enhancements to HPQHN, a fully Post Quantum HN protocol, and more

Help-Seeking Decisions and Child Welfare. An exploration of situated decision making

Family support services aim to support parents and carers with the task of bringing up children; these services consistently report problems, however, in attracting helpseekers. Despite recent developments within child-welfare towards the provision of family-friendly services, self-referral rates remain low constituting at best 30% of all referrals. Agencies also report that families are reluctant to take up services following third party (frequently professional) referral. Despite these consistent findings the extant literature on help-seeking offers few insights into how social actors, in the face of family problems, make choices between the available sources of help. Within the extant literature studies consistently report that families prefer `informal' support but few insights are offered about how such decisions are made and how preference is organised in relation to diverse sources of support. In this thesis and focusing on talk about `help-seeking' in focus group and interview settings, analysis centres on exploring the accountable properties of situated decision-making. From analysis of situated talk, the study offers insights and raises questions for further research that may assist family support agencies to more appropriately tailor their services to meet the needs of service users. The present study is much inspired by the work of Harvey Sacks in particular his development of Membership Categorisation Analysis. In making use of Hester and Eglin's occasioned model of MCA (1997) it has been possible to explore practical reasoning in and through the local, sequential and categorical organisation of talk. Analysis of situated decision-making, in relation to the topic `help-seeking', finds decision-making a highly organised practical activity such that any social actor canmake an `educated' guess about who, another, would suggest as a first category for help. Research participants, in deciding who should hypothetically be approached first for help, constituted a socially sanctioned order to help-seeking characterised by first-position category pairs and last-position category pairs. Use of, or reference to, prior knowledge of help-seeking encounters was also identified as a key decision making resource. This thesis concludes with a policy discussion and raises a number of speculative comments arising from the study that are relevant for the development of child welfare services. A number of avenues are suggested for further research, in particular questions are asked about the continued practice and emphasis within child-welfare services on professional social diagnosis, with the attendant neglect of help-seeking as a socially organised activity. The study suggests that future research might centre on further analysis of how `family support' is organised within the family and prior to professional intervention. It is also suggested that further research examine the possibilities of response to requests for help as a better starting point for service delivery, rather than professional detection of `problems'