Mental tactility: the ascendance of writing in online management education

A qualitative study of online management education and the role of writing as an indicative measure of thinking and learning. Established educational models, such as Dale\u27s Cone of Experience, are expanded and redeveloped to illustrate the central role of writing as a critical thinking process which appears to be increasing, rather than decreasing, with the advent of online multimedia technology. In an environment of increasing reliance on audiovisual stimulus in online education, the authors contend that tertiary educators may witness an ascendance or re-emergence of writing as central to the academic experience. This may be both supply and demand driven. Drawing on a study of two undergraduate units in the Bachelor of Commerce and applying hermeneutics to develop challenging insights, the authors present a case for educators to remain conversant with the art of teaching writing, and to promote writing to improve educational outcomes. <br /

Use of paratextual devices in broadcast promotion: a content analysis of season three of Glee on Facebook, The

Includes bibliographical references.2015 Summer.This study analyzed all Facebook posts during the third season of the Fox Broadcast Network television show Glee (n=763), from August 2011 to May 2012. The study illustrated that Facebook posts can be considered valuable paratextual devices (Gray, 2010b) that can be used in the promotion of a television program. The program’s promoters, who served as Facebook Page administrators, used Facebook for three purposes: build viewership, enhance the live-viewing experience, and build brand awareness and engagement. Visual paratexts, such as images and videos, were used more widely than text-based paratexts. Some of the most frequently employed paratexts included previews/sneak peeks/promos, cast-member specific posts, spoilers or teasers, and music video clips. Posts were about equally split in terms of being related to specific episodes versus the show in general. Almost half of the overall posts displayed high interactivity, which prompted the users to leave the Facebook platform. These posts can be valuable if the show is interested in building brand awareness and enhancing the viewing experience, not just increasing post and Page likes. Surprisingly, posts contained about an equal number of explicit and implicit calls-to-action. Explicitness did not vary based upon the interactivity level, except for low-interactive posts, which had more implicit commands. The average number of Facebook “likes” for a post was roughly 10 times the number of “comments” or “shares,” a finding that was not surprising, because “liking” a post is intrinsically simpler than commenting or sharing. Posts that were episode-specific tended to have more likes, comments, and shares overall. Of those posts that were episode-specific, posts published before and after an episode received more feedback than posts published during an episode. The study also found that longer text could discourage feedback, as posts with longer word counts received fewer likes and comments. In today’s digital world, it is easy for users to access, replicate, and share content. Thus, paratexts become the promotional currency used by promoters and the audiences they enlist to help promote a text. It’s a trend that society can expect to be continued in the context of entertainment television as well as in other cultural and artistic art forms. The research suggests that additional exploration is needed to analyze the role of Facebook (and other social media) in television viewership and engagement. As the television landscape shifts more to the online and mobile realms, advertisers and broadcasters need to understand the effect that social platforms can have on the understanding of the text

Evaluating Complex Online Technology-enabled Course Delivery: A Contextualized View of a Decomposed IS Success Model

In this paper, we focus on understanding the factors that influence whether online courses that involve complex technologies succeed. In particular, we conducted a study on SAP software as the complex technology that students learned online via several course-management platforms (e.g., Blackboard). We hypothesized the antecedent variables system quality, information quality, and service quality to influence students’ perceived learning outcomes, satisfaction, and intention to continue using online learning. Grounded on the information systems (IS) success model, we decomposed core constructs into contextual factors. We surveyed business students from four mid-sized state universities in the United States that had membership in the SAP university alliances program, and the students had taken at least one online SAP-enabled course. We used structural equation modeling with partial least squares (PLS-SEM) to analyze data. The findings indicate that system quality, information quality, and service (instructor) quality were all significant antecedents of student satisfaction, system quality and information quality were significant antecedents of perceived learning outcomes, and only system quality was a significant antecedent of students’ intention to continue using online learning

Exploring narrativity in data visualization in journalism

Many news stories are based on data visualization, and storytelling with data has become a buzzword in journalism. But what exactly does storytelling with data mean? When does a data visualization tell a story? And what are narrative constituents in data visualization? This chapter first defines the key terms in this context: story, narrative, narrativity, showing and telling. Then, it sheds light on the various forms of narrativity in data visualization and, based on a corpus analysis of 73 data visualizations, describes the basic visual elements that constitute narrativity: the instance of a narrator, sequentiality, temporal dimension, and tellability. The paper concludes that understanding how data are transformed into visual stories is key to understanding how facts are shaped and communicated in society

Technology: Servant or Master of the Online Teacher?

published or submitted for publicatio

Translation Analysis: Syntactic, Semantic, and Pragmatic Strategies Used in Translating A Website of an Academic Institution

This research aims to discover the emerging translation strategies and the types of translation strategies most frequently used on a website of an academic institution. In finding the data, the researcher employs the descriptive qualitative method by applying the translation strategy theory proposed by Andrew Chesterman in the form of syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic strategies on a website of an academic institution such as the Universitas Hasanuddin website. There are 11 emerging translation strategies on the website; 4 Syntactic Strategies (Literal, Loan/Calque, Transposition, and Phrase Structural Change), 4 Semantic Strategies (Synonymy, Hyponymy, Distribution Change, and Pharaprase), and 3 Pragmatic Strategies (Explicitness Change, Information Change, and Transediting). The result shows that the most frequently used translation strategy is Syntactic Strategies (Literal 60% or 44 data, Loan/Calque 23% or 17 data, Transposition 8% or 6 data, and Phrase Structural Change also 8% or 6 data). Then the second one is Semantic Strategies (Synonymy 7% or 1 datum, Hyponymy 7% or 1 datum, Distribution Change 64% or 9 data, and Pharaprase 21% or 3 data), and last is Pragmatic Strategies (Explicitness Change 8% or 1 datum, Information Change 85% or 11 data, and Transediting 8% or 1 datum)

Synthetic interaction and focused activity in sustainment of the rational task-group

"A control of natural interaction (36 groups), a technique of simple synthetic interactivity (distributed processing - 36 groups), and a technique of synthetic interactivity which focuses individual contribution through facilitated knowledge elicitation (braided - 36 groups) were compared in the collaboration of three-member task-groups facing a complex discovered problem (Getzels, 1982). Additional structure tested factors of coactivity (same vs. separate locations) and communication modality (written vs. oral). The task involved management (public policy) of a simulated city facing the onset of a health epidemic (Doerner, Schaub & Badke-Schaub, 1990). Several measures of group performance were obtained both from raw group output and resulting simulation values. Results indicate: 1.) no important differences between communication modalities or coactivity level, 2.) freely collaborating groups (control) performed similarly to randomized baseline trials of the simulation, and 3.) collaborative structure enabled large performance elevation with braided groups outperforming distributed groups and both techniques outperforming the control." (author's abstract

JointZone: users' view of an adaptive online learning resource for rheumatology

This paper describes an online learning resource for rheumatology that was designed for a wide constituency of users including primarily undergraduate medical students and health professionals. Although the online resources afford an informal learning environment, the site was pedagogically designed to comply with the general recommendations of the Standing Committee on Training and Education of EULAR (European League Against Rheumatism) for a rheumatology core curriculum. Any Internet user may freely browse the site content with optional registration providing access to adaptive features that personalize the user’s view, for example, providing a reading history and targeted support based on scores from completed case studies. The site has now been available since early 2003, and an online survey of site registrants indicates that well structured pedagogical materials that reflect a learners’ dominant ‘community of practice’ appear to be a successful aid to informal learning

What Motivates People to Share Online Rumors? Deconstructing the Ambiguity of Rumors from a Perspective of Digital Storytelling

With the proliferation of social networks and the development of digital technology, the content structure and propagation mode of rumors have become more complicated with ambiguity, which has greatly influenced people’s behaviors when facing digitalized rumors. Based on the digital storytelling theory, this study takes an early initiative by deconstructing and identifying the basic components of online rumors and revealing the conditions under which people’s sharing behaviors in a social environment. A data set of health-related rumors related to Covid-19 was used to test the research hypotheses. The results indicated that causality explicitness, element integrality and source explicitness have different influences on rumor sharing behavior. And rumor vividness plays a negative moderating effect during the sharing process. This research offers insight to viewers and website authorities on ways to monitor and debunk online rumors

Reviews

500 Computing Tips for Teachers and Lecturers by Phil Race and Steve McDowell, London: Kogan Page, 1996. ISBN: 0–7494–1931–8. 135 pages, paperback. £15.99