Reasoning, argumentative interaction and idea life cycles during group product ideation in higher education

Abstract. This study presents the analysis of the use of argument in group ideation process in higher education settings. The need for such analysis is dictated by the fact that students in higher education are one step away from joining wider professional communities, where the ability to engage in joint brainstorming and evaluating new products is in high demand. The study data consists of transcripts of ideation discussions of two groups of master’s degree students. The task for both groups was to imagine and formulate a future AI-based teaching/learning assistant, prepare a short verbal presentation of the product, and present it to the whole class. The analysis is arranged in three steps. First, frequency and quality of grounded claims is evaluated using Toulmin’s Argumentation Pattern. Then, the type of talk is determined using the indicators of exploratory, cumulative and disputational talk (Mercer, 1996), the interplay between types of talk is examined. Finally, idea life cycles and reasoning behind idea demotion is investigated. The results indicate that 1) arguments are provided rarely, but when provided, most of them (2/3) are complete; 2) exploratory talk manifests mostly in elaborations on peers’ ideas, whereas reasoning (justifications) to own ideas and critical evaluation is less frequent; these factors characterise the discussions more as co-constructive interaction rather than exploratory talk; 3) dominance of elaborative comments on an idea leads to inclusion the idea in group solution; reasoning for idea demotion varies remarkably between the two groups (56% vs. 80%). These outcomes indicate that students might benefit from enhancing their reasoning to be ready for workplace ideation in groups. From task design view, clear product metrics should be set, and a line drawn between brainstorming and evaluation phase, to prevent unreasoned idea demoting in brainstorming and stimulate questioning and reasoning in evaluation

Where’s the validation? Role of emotion work and validation for doctoral students

This article presents an original engagement with research into emotions in the PhD to ask ‘Where’s the validation?’ by using emotion work as a theoretical foundation. We develop a focus on emotional dissonance in the PhD journey to explore challenges around managing emotion. We explore how PhD students manage emotions around their projects and their PhD communities. Our focus in this paper is on the lived experiences of six PhD students, using reflective methods and interviews. In our analysis of the challenges PhD students face, we find that validation is a key part of the doctoral learning journey, and the emotion work that takes place. By aligning analysis of PhD emotion work with the theme of ‘validation theory’, we pinpoint how instances of validation are key to identity formation for PhD students. We argue that validation is crucial for PhD students’ wellbeing and conclude that unless identity formation as a PhD student coincides with processes of external validation, then emotional dissonance occurs

Where's the validation? Role of emotion work and validation for doctoral students

This article presents an original engagement with research into emotions in the PhD to ask ‘Where’s the validation?’ by using emotion work as a theoretical foundation. We develop a focus on emotional dissonance in the PhD journey to explore challenges around managing emotion. We explore how PhD students manage emotions around their projects and their PhD communities. Our focus in this paper is on the lived experiences of six PhD students, using reflective methods and interviews. In our analysis of the challenges PhD students face, we find that validation is a key part of the doctoral learning journey, and the emotion work that takes place. By aligning analysis of PhD emotion work with the theme of ‘validation theory’, we pinpoint how instances of validation are key to identity formation for PhD students. We argue that validation is crucial for PhD students’ wellbeing and conclude that unless identity formation as a PhD student coincides with processes of external validation, then emotional dissonance occurs

Economic Proximity and Technology Flows: South Africa?s Influence and the Role of Technological Interaction in Botswana?s Diversification Effort

In less than a decade after the end of the apartheid, South Africa has intensified its economic ties with its African neighbours to become one of the top-ten investors and trading partners of many African countries, displacing companies from the former colonial powers in Europe. Among such South Africa?s closest trade partners, Botswana has enjoyed one of the highest growth rates in the world for several decades, thanks to its rich mineral reserves, but its diamonds-dominated export structure has barely changed over this growth period. In a national endeavour to reduce its dependence on diamond exports, Botswana recognizes the importance of adopting foreign technologies and deploys sustained efforts to move to high value-added activities in other industries. Since the successful adoption of new technologies requires active technological learning, this paper takes the national innovation systems (NIS) approach and uses industry level panel data to analyse the role played by the proximity and interactions ...innovation systems, technological learning, diversification

Designing Adaptive Instruction for Teams: a Meta-Analysis

The goal of this research was the development of a practical architecture for the computer-based tutoring of teams. This article examines the relationship of team behaviors as antecedents to successful team performance and learning during adaptive instruction guided by Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs). Adaptive instruction is a training or educational experience tailored by artificially-intelligent, computer-based tutors with the goal of optimizing learner outcomes (e.g., knowledge and skill acquisition, performance, enhanced retention, accelerated learning, or transfer of skills from instructional environments to work environments). The core contribution of this research was the identification of behavioral markers associated with the antecedents of team performance and learning thus enabling the development and refinement of teamwork models in ITS architectures. Teamwork focuses on the coordination, cooperation, and communication among individuals to achieve a shared goal. For ITSs to optimally tailor team instruction, tutors must have key insights about both the team and the learners on that team. To aid the modeling of teams, we examined the literature to evaluate the relationship of teamwork behaviors (e.g., communication, cooperation, coordination, cognition, leadership/coaching, and conflict) with team outcomes (learning, performance, satisfaction, and viability) as part of a large-scale meta-analysis of the ITS, team training, and team performance literature. While ITSs have been used infrequently to instruct teams, the goal of this meta-analysis make team tutoring more ubiquitous by: identifying significant relationships between team behaviors and effective performance and learning outcomes; developing instructional guidelines for team tutoring based on these relationships; and applying these team tutoring guidelines to the Generalized Intelligent Framework for Tutoring (GIFT), an open source architecture for authoring, delivering, managing, and evaluating adaptive instructional tools and methods. In doing this, we have designed a domain-independent framework for the adaptive instruction of teams

Uncertain Futures : Adaptive capacities to climate variability and change in the Lake Victoria Basin

The Lake Victoria basin (LVB) in East Africa can be considered a climate change hotspot because of its large rural population dependent on rain-fed farming. Drawing on extensive fieldwork (2007-2011) in rural communities along the shores of Lake Victoria in Kenya and Tanzania, I explore adaptive capacities to climate variability and change and discuss how they interrelate in situ. Using multiple methods, tools and techniques, including survey and rainfall data, individual and group interviews, interactive mapping of seasonal calendars and a multi-stakeholder workshop, I locate the place-based effects and responses to a number of converging climate induced stressors on smallholder farmers’ wellbeing and natural resources. Research findings show that adaptive capacities to climate variability and change in the LVB are complex, dynamic and characterized by high location-specificity, thereby signifying the value of using an integrative and place-based approach to understand climate vulnerability. Specifically, the study demonstrates how increased unpredictability in rainfall causes chronic livelihood stress illustrated by recurring and worsening periods of food insecurity, growing cash dependency and heavy disease burdens. The study also reveals that food and income buffers increase when and where farmers, particularly women farmers, collectively respond to climate induced stressors through deliberate strategies rooted in a culture of saving and planning. Nevertheless, the study concludes that smallholders in the LVB are facing a highly uncertain future with discernible, yet differentiated adaptation deficits, due to chronic livelihood stress driven by unequal access to fundamental adaptive capacities such as land, health, cash and collective networks

The spiritual organization: critical reflections on the instrumentality of workplace spirituality

Authors' draft of article. Final version published by Routledge in Journal of Management, Spirituality and Religion available online at: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/14766086.aspThis paper offers a theoretical contribution to the current debate on workplace spirituality by: (a) providing a selective critical review of scholarship, research and corporate practices which treat workplace spirituality in performative terms, that is, as a resource or means to be manipulated instrumentally and appropriated for economic ends; (b) extending Ezioni’s analysis of complex organizations and proposing a new category, the ‘spiritual organization’, and; (c) positing three alternative positions with respect to workplace spirituality that follow from the preceding critique. The spiritual organization can be taken to represent the development of a trajectory of social technologies that have sought, incrementally, to control the bodies, minds, emotions and souls of employees. Alternatively, it might be employed to conceptualize the way in which employees use the workplace as a site for pursuing their own spiritualities (a reverse instrumentalism). Finally, we consider the possible incommensurability of ‘work organization’ and ‘spirituality’ discourses

Transforming lands and livelihoods in the Awach River Basin of Lake Victoria, western Kenya

The significance of understanding the relationships between land degradation and livelihoods in developing countries has become a worldwide concern because of its importance to human food security, environmental quality and biodiversity. In sub-Saharan Africa, estimates indicate that 73% of the land is degraded as a result of erosion, soil compaction, nutrient depletion and deforestation. This degradation had caused a decline in quality of life or livelihoods. To understand the dynamic interaction between land degradation and livelihoods, a cross-cultural study was conducted among the Luo and Kipsigis people of western Kenya. The study adapted DFID\u27s sustainable rural livelihood framework and investigated the following questions. (1) What livelihood capitals are rural people drawing upon in their everyday lives? (2) What livelihood strategies are rural people pursuing with regard to quality of their capitals? (3) What feedback relationships exist between capitals and livelihood strategies with special focus upon the role of land and culture? and (4) What is the appropriate research framework and methodology for studying land degradation and livelihoods?;Results suggest that a dynamic relationship exists between land and livelihoods that is rapidly transforming the lives of people of Awach River catchment, western Kenya albeit in different directions. Among the Luo people negative natural and cultural capital synergies exist, which in turn, are triggering downward spiral of other capitals. The negative interaction is rendering them unable to not only withstand internal and external shocks, but rebuild their capitals. As the land continues to degrade, the people seem to lack the needed will power, self confidence and determination to break away from deeply embedded cultural practices and reorganize their livelihood assets into more productive systems. Instead, they are escaping from their village problems, and in turn, their land and livelihoods are collapsing. The end result is escalating land degradation and increasing unsustainable livelihoods. On the other hand, the Kipsigis are experiencing positive capital synergies that enable them to adapt and utilize a range of capital management strategies. They are able to take advantage of internally changing capitals and external opportunities to build a somewhat healthy and resilient agrarian community that is linked to asset intensification and diversification. In conclusion, the study showed that the ability to make a meaningful livelihood in rural Africa is dependent not only on the quality and quantity of capitals that homestead members possess, but the capability to use and transform the capitals as well

Barrio libre (the free 'hood): transnational policing and the 'contamination' of everyday forms of subaltern agency at the neoliberal U.S.-Mexico border from way, way, below

textThis study analyzes a group of severely marginalized Mexican young people, and their vexing subject formation of Barrio Libre (the Free ‘Hood), along the Arizona-Sonora border in the 1990s and early in the 2000s. The young people’s survival strategies included occasionally living in a sewer system, which runs way, way, below the U.S.-Mexico border, incarnating a transnational subjectivity as inhabitants of an ethnically Mexican neighborhood of Tucson, Arizona, also called Barrio Libre, mugging other immigrants, and practicing substance abuse. The young people spoke of these practices in an idiom of freedom; they were crystallizations of living Barrio Libre. Processes of deterritorialization, desires for reterritorialization, the dematerialization of capitalist relations, and sporadic, sometimes brutal, border policing, particularly by the Mexican authorities, configure this subject formation. In the context of the displacement of millions of Mexicans as result of the consolidation of neoliberal economic policies in Mexico in the early 1990s, popular regions for undocumented crossings of the border like Brownsville, El Paso, and San Diego, were rendered inaccessible. Immigrants were funneled to southern Arizona. By 1998, a local version of the intensification campaign was forcing immigrants to adopt dangerous border-crossing tactics. Indeed, since 1995, more than 2,300 immigrants have died trying to circumvent immigration controls. Notably, this has coincided with a similar, though largely undocumented, upsurge in policing practices on the Mexican side of the border, as is evident in Nogales, Sonora. I maintain that this regime of transnational governmentality, or the regulation of immigrant bodies, generates intensities informing the young people’s subject formation of Barrio Libre. This manuscript reflects a two-part study. The first part “studies up.” It historicizes this nascent regime of transnational policing within the political economic history of Mexico-US relations and then renders my ethnographic research on border surveillance and policing and their effects on the everyday lives of the young people of Barrio Libre. The second part thickly describes the young people’s “contaminating” agency, from way, way, below. It then explores contemporary scholarly writings on agency and resistance; finding them reluctant to grapple with politically confounding or “contaminating,” exercises of agency.Anthropolog