Reducing Hardships: Student Motivations, Educational Workflows, and Technology Choices in Academic Settings

Objective – This study examines The University of Manitoba student attitudes toward technology’s role in University study spaces and in their own educational workflows. Methods - A series of semi-structured group interviews were conducted with current undergraduate and graduate students at The University of Manitoba. Three group interviews were conducted with questions about individual technology and space use while studying in the library, and three group interviews were conducted with questions about group collaboration using technologies and tools in group study spaces. Transcripts were coded iteratively and separately by the researchers, analyzed for interrater reliability, categorized, and reviewed using axial coding to identify major themes. Through continued examination of these themes, a single theory emerged. Results - The participants expressed a strong need for independence and feelings of control over their workflows, technological tools, and environments. They discussed how interpersonal concerns and anxieties motivated their workflow choices and acknowledged the (often conflicting) motivational forces of personal necessity and personal preference. When examining the motivations behind the selection of technologies and work practices, it became clear that the respondents make technology and workflow decisions in an attempt to minimize their experience of perceived hardships. These perceived hardships could be social, emotional, educational, environmental, or temporal in nature, and the weight of any one hardship on decision making varied according to the individual. Conclusions - Libraries should be aware of this foundational user motivation and make choices accordingly - identifying and minimizing hardships whenever possible, unless they are necessary to achieve learning or service-specific goals. Additional research is required to help articulate the nuances experienced by particular student demographics. Librarians and future researchers should also consider investigating the potential disconnect between librarian and user attitudes toward technology, the prioritization of user-centered decision-making, and whether or not systematically disadvantaged social groups have different attitudes toward technology and its place in library spaces and academic work.https://journal.lib.uoguelph.ca/index.php/perj/article/view/545

The constitution of risk communication in advanced liberal societies

This article aims to bring to the fore some of the underlying rationales that inform common conceptions of the constitution of risk communication in academic and policy communities. ‘Normative’, ‘instrumental’ and ‘substantive’ imperatives typically employed in the utilisation of risk communication are first outlined. In light of these considerations a theoretical scheme is subsequently devised leading to the articulation of four fundamental ‘idealised’ models of risk communication termed the ‘risk message’ model, the ‘risk dialogue’ model, the ‘risk field’ model and the ‘risk government’ model respectively. It is contended that the diverse conceptual foundations underlying the orientation of each model suggest a further need for a more contextualised view of risk communication that takes account not only of the strengths and limitations of different formulations and functions of risk communication, but also the underlying knowledge/power dynamics that underlie its constitution. In particular it is hoped that the reflexive theoretical understanding presented here will help to bring some much needed conceptual clarity to academic and policy discourses about the use and utility of risk communication in advanced liberal societies

Ethical Leadership in Intercollegiate Athletics

Ethical leadership and a values-based culture should be two sides of the same coin in intercollegiate athletics. Needed are ethical leaders serving as role models of integrity, trustworthiness, honesty, fairness, and respect for others. Ethical leaders model how values should guide actions and decisions as well as implement reward systems that hold others accountable for ethical conduct. Athletic directors and other athletic administrators with the moral courage to do what is right regardless of circumstances can nurture values-based cultures as they shape and develop the lives of athletes and colleagues they influence. The purposes of this theoretical work are to explicate ethical leadership, explain the connection between ethical leadership and a values-based culture, and propose a model for developing and sustaining ethical leadership in a values-based culture

Performance Indicators for Natural Resource and Environmental Policy: Contributions from American Institutional Law and Economics

Article published in the Duke Environmental Law & Policy Forum

The appeal of the international Baccalaureate in Australia's educational market: a curriculum of choice of mobile futures

In Australia there is growing interest in a national curriculum to replace the variety of matriculation credentials managed by State Education departments, ostensibly to address increasing population mobility. Meanwhile, the International Baccalaureate (IB) is attracting increasing interest and enrolments in State and private schools in Australia, and has been considered as one possible model for a proposed Australian Certificate of Education. This paper will review the construction of this curriculum in Australian public discourse as an alternative frame for producing citizens, and ask why this design appeals now, to whom, and how the phenomenon of its growing appeal might inform national curricular debates. The IB’s emergence is understood with reference to the larger context of neo-liberal marketization policies, neo-conservative claims on the curriculum and middle class strategy. The paper draws on public domain documents from the IB Organisation and newspaper reportage to demonstrate how the IB is constructed for public consumption in Australia

Evaluating the social and cultural implications of the internet

Since the Internet's breakthrough as a mass medium, it has become a topic of discussion because of its implications for society. At one extreme, one finds those who only see great benefits and consider the Internet a tool for freedom, commerce, connectivity, and other societal benefits. At the other extreme, one finds those who lament the harms and disadvantages of the Internet, and who consider it a grave danger to existing social structures and institutions, to culture, morality and human relations. In between one finds the majority, those who recognize both benefits and harms in the Internet as it currently exists and who recognize its usefulness while worrying about some of its negative impacts.As an example of a positive appraisal of the Internet, consider what Esther Dyson, one of the early enthusiasts for the Internet, states in her book Release 2.0. There, she claims: "The Net offers us a chance to take charge of our own lives and to redefine our role as citizens of local communities and of a global society. It also hands us the responsibility to govern ourselves, to think for ourselves, to educate our children, to do business honestly, and to work with fellow citizens to design rules we want to live by." (Dyson, 1997). Dyson argues that the Internet offers us the chance to build exciting communities of likeminded individuals, enables people to redefine their work as they see fit, fosters truth-telling and information disclosure, helps build trust between people, and can function for people as a second home.For a negative appraisal, consider the opinion of the Council of Torah Sages, a group of leading orthodox rabbis in Israel who in 2000 issued a ruling banning the Internet from Jewish homes. The Council claimed that the Internet is "1,000 times more dangerous than television" (which they banned thirty years earlier). The Council described the Internet as "the world's leading cause of temptation" and "a deadly poison which burns souls" that "incites and encourages sin and abomination of the worst kind." The Council explained that it recognized benefits in the Internet, but saw no way of balancing these with the potential cost, which they defined as exposure to "moral pollution" and possible addiction to Internet use that could quash the motivation to learn Torah, especially among children. ( See Ha'aretz, January 7, 2000.)Even the greatest critics of the Internet, like the Council of Torah Sages, see benefits in the technology, and even the greatest advocates recognize that there are drawbacks to the medium. People have different opinions on what the benefits and disadvantages are and also differ in the way in which they balance them against each other. Underlying these different assessments of the Internet are different value systems. Esther Dyson holds a libertarian value system in which the maximization of individual freedom, property rights and free market capitalism are central values. Her positive assessment of the Internet is based on the potential she sees in this technology to promote these values. In contrast, the values Council of Torah Sages are values of Hareidi, a variety of orthodox Judaism, according to which the highest good is obedience to God's law as laid out in the Torah, and they concluded, based on these values, that the Internet is harmful.Yet, it is not just differences in value systems that determine one's appraisal of a technology like the Internet. Such an appraisal is also determined by one's empirical understanding of how the technology works and what its consequences or implications are. People often come to unduly positive or negative appraisals of technology because they assess its consequences wrongly. For instance, some people believe that Internet use increases the likelihood of social isolation, but empirical research could conceivably show that in fact the opposite is the case. Disagreements about the positive and negative aspects of the internet may therefore be either normative disagreements (disagreements about values) or empirical disagreements (disagreements about facts). Of course, it is not always easy to disentangle values and empirical facts, as these are often strongly interwoven.Next to contested benefits and harms of the Internet, there are also perceived harms and benefits that are fairly broadly acknowledged. For instance, nearly everyone agrees that the Internet has the benefit of making a large amount of useful information easily available, and nearly everyone agrees that the Internet can also be harmful by making dangerous, libelous and hateful information available. People have shared values and shared empirical beliefs by which they can come to such collective assessments.My purpose in this essay is to contribute to a better understanding of existing positive and negative appraisals of the Internet, as a first step towards a more methodical assessment of Internet technology. My focus will be on the appraisal of social and cultural implications of the Internet. Whether we like it or not, policy towards the Internet is guided by beliefs about its social and cultural benefits and harms. It is desirable, therefore, to have methods for making such beliefs explicit in order to analyze the values and empirical claims that are presupposed in them.In the next two sections (2 and 3), I will catalogue major perceived social and cultural benefits and harms of the Internet, that have been mentioned frequently in public discussions and academic studies. I will focus on perceived benefits and harms that do not seem to rest on idiosyncratic values, meaning that they seem to rest on values that are shared by most people. For instance, most people believe that individual autonomy is good, so if it can be shown that a technology enhances individual autonomy, most people would agree that this technology has this benefit. Notice, however, that even when they share this value, people may disagree on the benefits of the technology in question, because they may have different empirical beliefs on whether the technology actually enhanced individual autonomy.Cataloguing such perceived cultural benefits and harms is, I believe, an important first step towards a social and cultural technology assessment of the Internet and its various uses. An overview of perceived benefits and harms may provide a broader perspective on the Internet that could be to the benefit of both friends and foes, and can contribute to a better mutual understanding between them. More importantly, it provides a potential starting point for a reasoned and methodical analysis of benefits and harms. Ideas on how such an analysis may be possible, in light of the already mentioned facts that assessments are based on different value systems, will be developed in section 4. In a concluding section, I sketch the prospects for a future social and cultural technology assessment of the Internet

Advisor and Student Experiences of Summer Support for College-intending, Low-income high school graduates

Summer melt occurs when students who have been accepted to college and intend to enroll fail to matriculate in college in the fall semester after high school. A high rate of summer melt contributes to the lower postsecondary attainment rates of low-income students, in particular. This article presents qualitative findings from two interventions intended to reduce summer melt among low-income, urban high school graduates who had been accepted to college and indicated their intention to enroll. Results from student and counselor surveys, interviews, and focus groups point to a web of personal and contextual factors that collectively influence students' college preparation behaviors and provide insight into the areas of summer supports from which students like these can benefit. The data fit an ecological perspective, in which personal, institutional, societal, and temporal factors interact to affect students' behaviors and outcomes. A model of summer intervention shows that obstacles in completing college financing and informational tasks can lead college-intending students to re-open the question of where or whether to attend college in the fall after high school graduation. Given the pressure of concerns about how to actualize their offer of admission, students rarely engage in the anticipatory socialization activities that might help them make optimal transitions into college

Money, politics and a future for the international financial system

In developing the architecture for a financial system, the challenge is to combine deregulation and safety nets against systemic failure with effective prudential regulation and oversight. The author analyzes three approaches to choosing an adequate regulatory framework for a financial system. a) Those most worried about panic and herd behavior tend to favor relatively extensive controls on financial institutions'activities, including controls on interest rates and on the volume and direction of lending. b) Those most concerned about moral hazard advocate abolishing controls and safety nets, seeing the solution is stronger market discipline and reduced powers and discretion for regulators. c) Mainstream opinion advocates a mix of measures, to both strengthen market discipline and improve regulatory oversight. The approach a county opts for depends on 1) which monetary and exchange rate regime it chooses, 2) whether it is more concerned about moral hazard or about panic and herd behavior, and 3) how the politics of reform shape its solutions. The author suggests a scenario for development of the global financial system over the next two or three decades that assumes that the final outcome will resemble the market solution - not because that is the optimal policy choice but because of how political weakness will interact with advances in settlement technology. In the author's scenario, the world moves toward a monetary system in which fixed exchange rate systems or de facto currency competition limit the power of central banks. This limits options for discretionary and open-ended liquidity support to help deal with systemic financial crises. The costs of inflexible exchange rates are moderated by new types of wage contracts, using units of account that are correlated with the shocks a particular industry or kind of contract faces -- thus maintaining the positive aspects of monetary systems with flexible nominal exchange rates. Mistrust in monetary authorities and the emergence of private settlements lead to a return of asset-backed money as the means of payment. The disciplines on financial systems come to resemble somewhat those of historical"free banking"systems, with financial institutions requiring high levels of equity and payments systems protected only by limited, fully funded safety nets.Banks&Banking Reform,Fiscal&Monetary Policy,Financial Intermediation,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Theory&Research,Macroeconomic Management,Financial Intermediation,Financial Economics

The Communicative Character of Capitalistic Competition: A Hayekian response to the Habermasian challenge

"Ideal speech situations", "domination-free discourse" or "deliberative communities" describe political ideals proudly cherished by many sociologists. The sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit, motivation is to mobilise political discourse as an instrument to tame or transform the capitalistic "system" according to alleged needs of "society". Most economists and defenders of capitalistic competition, in return, don?t care about communicative communities. The individual market actor is assumed or demanded to be free to choose among given alternatives satisfying given preferences subject to given constraints. Why, then, should homo oeconomicus argue (van Aaken 2003)? There is no "communicative action" among the individuals that populate economic textbooks, there is only "commutative action". Only a few, mostly "Austrian", economists realised that the exchange of goods and services within the spontaneous order of "catallaxy" involves an exchange of knowledge, ideas, opinions, expectations, and arguments – that markets are indeed communicative networks (e.g. Hayek 1946/48; Lavoie, ed. 1991; Horwitz 1992). In fact, and this will be my major claim, market competition is more "deliberative" than politics in the sense that more information about available social problem solutions and their comparative performance, about people's preferences, ideas and expectations is spontaneously created, disseminated and tested. This very idea is anathema for followers of Habermasian discourse ethics. The intellectual thrust and political clout of their vindication of deliberative politics critically seems to depend on a mostly tacit assumption that markets fail to address social needs and regulate social conflicts. Political discourse therefore ?steps in to fill the functional gaps when other mechanisms of social integration are overburdened? (Habermas 1996: 318). I will claim that the argument should be very much the other way around: politics and public deliberations are overburdened mechanisms – unable to deal with an increasingly complex and dynamic society. Moreover, the requisites of ideal speech communities are so enormous that functional gaps are inevitable. Partly, these gaps can be closed if market competition steps in. Partly, reorganisations of the political system are needed. Hence, I am not arguing that Habermas is wrong by stressing the need for open discourse in order to reach informed agreement among citizens who seek to realise mutual gains from joint commitment by contributing to common (public) goods and submitting to common rules of conduct (s.a. Vanberg 2003). I am challenging his neglect of capitalistic competition as a communicative device and his disdain for the classical liberal conception of bounded democracy that respects individual property rights (e.g. Habermas 1975; 1998). --