Everyone Knows that Everyone Knows:Gossip Protocols for Super Experts

A gossip protocol is a procedure for sharing secrets in a network. The basic action in a gossip protocol is a telephone call wherein the calling agents exchange all the secrets they know. An agent who knows all secrets is an expert. The usual termination condition is that all agents are experts. Instead, we explore protocols wherein the termination condition is that all agents know that all agents are experts. We call such agents super experts. Additionally, we model that agents who are super experts do not make and do not answer calls. Such agents are called engaged agents. We also model that such gossip protocols are common knowledge among the agents. We investigate conditions under which protocols terminate, both in the synchronous case, where there is a global clock, and in the asynchronous case, where there is not. We show that a commonly known protocol with engaged agents may terminate faster than the same protocol without engaged agents

EXTENSION AND MISSIONARY ADULT EDUCATOR COMMITMENT CALLING, EXPERIENCES, AND ATTITUDES AND THEIR INFLUENCE ON CAREER COMMITMENT OF EXTENSION AGENTS AND PROTESTANT MISSIONARIES

This qualitative case study focused on career commitment in two types of professional adult educators, extension agents and missionaries. Past research studying extension agents and missionaries had documented decades of early career attrition. Research documented the issues, explored causes, and proposed solutions. Yet, the problem persists. Much of the research has been quantitative. This comparative case study maximized the differences between participants within and across the two professions; conducted in depth semi-structured interviews with participants; and had participants create a drawing of their career commitment attitudes and experiences and describe the drawing during the interview. Extension agents and missionaries were selected because they both provide non-formal adult education by embedding in communities, building trust, identifying needs, and working and learning with community members; all for the purpose of improving the lives of individuals and the community. There are differences as well: the educational foundations are different, missionaries almost always work cross-culturally, missionaries in this study experience a calling where extension agent may or may not, and their funding streams are different in source and stability. This research established two cases, one for each profession, and conducted semistructured interviews to determine how participants entered their profession, the relevant experiences they had and the resulting attitudes, and how career commitment was impacted. Special attention was given to the presence, absence, and strength of a calling and its impact on career commitment. The results indicate participants in both cases thrive on helping people become more successful and to have a better life. They get discouraged when their organization is topdown, overly bureaucratic, or omits them from any part of the educational process. They also became frustrated when interpersonal conflict cannot be resolved. All participants identified their role as a calling, or between a career and calling. However, extension agents’ callings were personal and more temporal and originated from within themselves. Missionaries’ calling was also personal. Their calls originated before they entered their roles. Their calling was spiritual and from God. This deeper calling resulted in different attitudes about difficulty on the job. Missionaries were confident they could work through or withstand the difficulties they faced because they were called of God

“BLUFF” WITH AI

The goal of this project is to build multiple agents for the game Bluff and to conduct experiments as to which performs better. Bluff is a multi-player, non-deterministic card game where players try to get rid of all the cards in their hand. The process of bluffing involves making a move such that it misleads the opponent and thus prove to be of advantage to the player. The strategic complexity in the game arises due to the imperfect or hidden information which means that certain relevant details about the game are unknown to the players. Multiple agents followed different strategies to compete against each other. Two of the agents tried to play the game in offense mode where they tried to win by removing the cards from the hand efficiently and two other agents in defense mode where they try to prevent or delay other players from winning by calling Bluff on them when they have few cards left. In the experiments that we conducted with all four agents competing against each other, we found that the best strategy was to not Bluff and play truthfully. Playing the right cards, gave the most wins to any player. Also we found out that calling Bluff on a player even if we have more than one card of the same rank would prove risky, since there is a chance that the player was actually playing the correct cards and we could lose the bet as shown by the Anxious AI. We conducted an interesting experiment to find out the best defense strategy and which agent would catch the most number of bluffs correctly. The Anxious AI was the winner. We also try to “teach” an agent how to play the game effectively and experiments show that the agent did learn the strategy very well. We also found that the Smart AI was the evolutionary stable strategy among the four agents

Managerial Work in a Practice-Embodying Institution - The role of calling, the virtue of constancy

What can be learned from a small scale study of managerial work in a highly marginal and under-researched working community? This paper uses the ‘goods-virtues-practices-institutions’ framework to examine the managerial work of owner-directors of traditional circuses. Inspired by MacIntyre’s arguments for the necessity of a narrative understanding of the virtues, interviews explored how British and Irish circus directors accounted for their working lives. A purposive sample was used to select subjects who had owned and managed traditional touring circuses for at least 15 years, a period in which the economic and reputational fortunes of traditional circuses have suffered badly. This sample enabled the research to examine the self-understanding of people who had, at least on the face of it, exhibited the virtue of constancy. The research contributes to our understanding of the role of the virtues in organizations by presenting evidence of an intimate relationship between the virtue of constancy and a ‘calling’ work orientation. This enhances our understanding of the virtues that are required if management is exercised as a domain-related practice

New perspectives on language and gender: Linguistic prescription and compliance in call centres

Despite a shift to service-based economies, male-dominated, high-status workplaces have been the predominant focus of research into language and gender in the workplace. This study redresses this shortcoming by considering one female-dominated, low-status, highly regimented workplace that is emblematic of the globalized service economy: call centres. Drawing on 187 call centre service interactions, institutional documents, interviews, and observations from call centres in two national contexts, the study employs an innovative combination of quantitative and qualitative discourse-analytic techniques to compare rule compliance of male and female workers. Female agents in both national contexts are found to comply more with the linguistic prescriptions despite managers and agents emphatically denying the relevance of gender. The study offers a new perspective on language and gender, pointing to the need to expand the methodologies and theories currently favoured to understand how language perpetuates occupational segregation in twenty-first-century workplaces

Explaining Levels of Customer Satisfaction with First Contact with Jobcentre Plus: results of qualitative research with Jobcentre Plus Staff

This report is a follow up to the First Contact Customer Survey (Research Report 504). As a result of ongoing difficulties accessing data for sampling purposes, the initial plan to undertake qualitative follow-up research with customers was abandoned in favour of research with staff to explore process-related issues which might explain customer responses. The research was undertaken in September and October 2008 and included telephone interviews with senior staff combined with face-to-face interviews and structured observations with staff in Contact Centres, Jobcentres and Benefit Delivery Centres in four Jobcentre Plus regions. Findings relate specifically to staff perceptions of customer satisfaction with first contact

Christian Special Educators Responding to the Call to Serve: The Perception of Disability with a Christian Worldview Lens

Most Christian special education teachers respond to a call to teach children with disabilities and are inspired to share the plan, purpose, and perspective of Christ; in other words to have the mind of Christ (Tucker, 1996, p. 29). This paper examines how the Old and New Testament traditions permeate the way people with disabilities are perceived in Western culture. An examination of the Old Testament shows a perception of disability as connected with sin, a manifestation of God’s punishment and exclusion of people with disability from the temple (Winzer, 1993, p. 17). The New Testament provides narratives of compassion and inclusion of people with disabilities in the covenant of Christ. Christian special education teachers need to recognize their true calling as one of hope and compassion. Christian institutes of higher education are charged to ensure special education teacher candidates examine their own perceptions of disability with a Christian worldview lens in order to enable full participation of children with disabilities

User-centred design of a digital advisory service: enhancing public agricultural extension for sustainable intensification in Tanzania

Sustainable intensification (SI) is promoted as a rural development paradigm for sub-Saharan Africa. Achieving SI requires smallholder farmers to have access to information that is context-specific, increases their decision-making capacities, and adapts to changing environments. Current extension services often struggle to address these needs. New mobile phone-based services can help. In order to enhance the public extension service in Tanzania, we created a digital service that addresses smallholder farmers’ different information needs for implementing SI. Using a co-design methodology – User-Centered Design – we elicited feedback from farmers and extension agents in Tanzania to create a new digital information service, called Ushauri. This automated hotline gives farmers access to a set of pre-recorded messages. Additionally, farmers can ask questions in a mailbox. Extension agents then listen to these questions through an online platform, where they record and send replies via automated push-calls. A test with 97 farmers in Tanzania showed that farmers actively engaged with the service to access agricultural advice. Extension agents were able to answer questions with reduced workload compared to conventional communication channels. This study illustrates how User-Centered Design can be used to develop information services for complex and resource-restricted smallholder farming contexts

Agents of Hope

This paper considers the Christian teacher’s “place” in today’s increasingly diverse public school classrooms. Specifically, the paper explores the complexities of working as a Christian within educational systems which promote tolerance of all cultures and religious views. Is it possible for a Christian teacher to remain committed to The Way while employed in a system which encourages pluralism, equity, and diversity? Using insights and responses of participants in a Christian university education course on teaching in multicultural classrooms, a framework is provided to consider what it means to teach as a Christian in multicultural school settings