Can a Technology Teach Meditation? Experiencing the EEG Headband InteraXon Muse as a Meditation Guide

Mobile and wearable technology now offers new avenues for technology-supported meditation practice and learning. Through a qualitative-dominant con-vergent parallel design, this study explored new empirical findings on the human perception of such technology-guided meditation training. A purposive sample of six participants trialled the device in several sessions during three weeks. Post-use, they commend the device for prompting self-guided learning. They highlight the importance of personalisation and adaptivity in educational technology, befit-ting Western pedagogical thought. Though these are guiding principles in current technology development, as they are believed to improve learning efficiency, they also prove crucial to user satisfaction and continued use of these technologies of the self

ISLAMIC MARKETER ETHICS AND ITS IMPACT ON CUSTOMER SATISFACTION IN THE ISLAMIC BANKING INSTITUTION: A CASE STUDY OF BANK MUAMALAT INDONESIA

The aim of this study is to know the influence of Islamic marketer ethics to customers’ satisfaction of Bank Muamalat Indonesia (BMI). These ethics principally concern on Qur’an and Hadith which are the basic foundation of Islamic values in Islam. Through this study we also can use another perspective of giving customer satisfaction in Islamic way and find out that there is a causal relation between Islamic marketer ethics and customer satisfaction. The research method used is survey method with sampling method using purposive sampling. Data analysis using multiple linear regression. From the results, it is found that Islamic marketer ethics as independent variables simultaneously effect on customer satisfaction, while partially some of variables refuse the hypothesis

Agency and Amplification: A Comparison of Manual and Computational Thematic Analyses by Public Health Researchers

© Gauthier, Pelletier, Carrier, Dionne, Dube, Meyer, Wallace | ACM, 2023. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive Version of Record was published in Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, https://doi.org/10.1145/3567552.Computational techniques offer a means to overcome the amplified complexity and resource-intensity of qualitative research on online communities. However, we lack an understanding of how these techniques are integrated by researchers in practice, and how to address concerns about researcher agency in the qualitative research process. To explore this gap, we deployed the Computational Thematic Analysis Toolkit to a team of public health researchers, and compared their analysis to a team working with traditional tools and methods. Each team independently conducted a thematic analysis of a corpus of comments from Canadian news sites to understand discourses around vaccine hesitancy. We then compared the analyses to investigate how computational techniques may have influenced their research process and outcomes. We found that the toolkit provided access to advanced computational techniques for researchers without programming expertise, facilitated their interaction and interpretation of the data, but also found that it influenced how they approached their thematic analysis.NSERC, Discovery Grant 2015-06585 || Canadian Immunization Research Network, Grant FRN\#15194

The Computational Thematic Analysis Toolkit

As online communities have grown, Computational Social Science has rapidly developed new techniques to study them. However, these techniques require researchers to become experts in a wide variety of tools in addition to qualitative and computational research methods. Studying online communities also requires researchers to constantly navigate highly contextual ethical and transparency considerations when engaging with data, such as respecting their members' privacy when discussing sensitive or stigmatized topics. To overcome these challenges, we developed the Computational Thematic Analysis Toolkit, a modular software package that supports analysis of online communities by combining aspects of reflexive thematic analysis with computational techniques. Our toolkit demonstrates how common analysis tasks like data collection, cleaning and filtering, modelling and sampling, and coding can be implemented within a single visual interface, and how that interface can encourage researchers to manage ethical and transparency considerations throughout their research process.NSERC Discovery, Grant 2015-0658

Language switching among Malay undergraduates in an English as a second language writing

This research focuses on the influence of language switching on the second language writing performance of Malay engineering undergraduates. Specifically, this research addresses the use of Bahasa Melayu by these undergraduates while undertaking an English writing task and the function of Bahasa Melayu in the completion of the English writing task. This research also seeks to find out the undergraduates’ perceptions on the use of Bahasa Melayu in writing English compositions. This research is of mixed-method: utilizing questionnaire for quantitative method and interview, observation and text analysis for the qualitative part. The respondents of this study were 620 Malay engineering undergraduates selected through simple random sampling. Twenty-four (out of 620) undergraduates were selected using purposive sampling for the qualitative study and they represented different levels of proficiency based on the respondents’ Malaysia University English Test (MUET) scores. Research findings revealed that majority of the participants in this study agrees that they use Bahasa Melayu as they were completing the writing task in English. This research showed that Bahasa Melayu was used to serve different purposes at different stages of the writing process. Three most significant functions of Bahasa Melayu identified were: 1) generating ideas in Bahasa Melayu and later translate them into English; 2) looking up in the bilingual dictionary for the appropriate English words to use; and 3) making notes (e.g. mind maps) in Bahasa Melayu and later translate them into English. Bahasa Melayu was used extensively during the pre-writing stage compared to the other stages of writing, followed by the writing stage and the post-writing stage. Bahasa Melayu was also utilized to serve these purposes: 1) to enable them to think of what to write; 2) to clarify ideas; and 3) to enable them to find suitable English words to be used when writing. Majority of the undergraduates agree that Bahasa Melayu has helped them in producing quality written texts in English. This research indicates that using Bahasa Melayu significantly contributes to producing good and quality essays. Based on these findings, a framework for the teaching of writing to Malay students was developed

Structuring social and environmental management control and accountability: behind the hotel doors

Purpose: This study sets out to investigate the construction of social and environmental strategies and the related implementation of management control by a key organization located in a pivotal Asian location in the global hospitality industry. In doing so it sets out to elucidate the forms and processes of strategic social and environmental control as well their relationship to the traditional financial control system. Design/methodology/approach: The study employs field based case study of a single case operating in both a regional and global context. Drawing upon documentary, survey and interview sources, the study employs structuration theory to inform its design and analysis. Findings: The findings reveal the interaction of top-down global corporate framing and bottom-up local level staff initiatives that combine to develop a locally focussed and differentiated social and environmental program and expedite an associated management control and accountability system. The study also reveals the dominance of the traditional financial control system over the social and environmental management control system and the simultaneously enabling and constraining nature of that relationship. Practical implications: Signification and legitimation structures can be employed in building social and environmental values and programs which then lay the foundations for related discourse and action at multiple levels of the organisation. This also has the potential to facilitate modes of staff commitment expressed through bottom-up initiatives and control, subject to but also facilitated by the dominating influence of the organisation’s financial control system. Originality/value: The paper offers an intra-organisational perspective on social and environmental strategising and control processes and motivations that elucidates forms of action, control and accountability and the relationship between social/environmental control and financial control agendas. It further reveals the interaction between globally developed strategic and control frameworks and locally initiated bottom up strategic initiatives and control

Authenticity framing and market creation for meta organisations: The case of the Swartland Independent Producers in the South African wine field

This PhD thesis studies the Swartland Independent Producers (SIP) meta-organisation, located in the Western Cape wine region of South Africa, and asks: how and why the collective rendering of authenticity creates markets? Seventy-one interviews were realised with producers making “authentic wine” and other market participants active in the South African wine industry between 2010 and 2016. How and why businesses create markets by rendering authenticity through collective action organised within meta-organisations has not been fully explored in the organisational authenticity literature. The framework developed through a qualitative analysis of the SIP case, contributes to filling this gap by showing that authenticity can be constructed, and new markets created for meta-organisations, via the interplay of two sets of intersecting meta-framings: authenticity work and authentication work, and hot and cool authenticity framing. This thesis demonstrates that authenticity work may comprise three meso-framings: claiming purity, performing charisma and meta-organisational tethering. Simultaneously, this study conceptualises how market participants purposively engage in authentication work through meso-framings of polarising evaluation, valorising status, and reframing meaning. The theoretical framework refines the current scholarly explanation of why rendered authenticity creates markets. By bridging the sociology and organisational literatures dedicated to authenticity, this PhD developed four novel authenticity meta-framing constructs: hot and cool authenticity work and hot and cool authentication work. Through further theorising their interactions, this study advances current academic knowledge on how and why rendering authenticity is a central concern for businesses intending to create markets through meta-organisational collective action

The Relationship Between Adopting and Utilizing a Centralistic Management Control System in Indonesian Local Government: Impacts on Organisational Learning

This thesis has examined the adoption and implementation of a centralistic management control system in Indonesian Local Governments (ILGs). A theoretical model of the adoption of SAKIP in ILGs and the relationship between the diagnostic and interactive use of SAKIP and ILGs' organizational learning capabilities was developed and tested empirically within an institutional theory framework. The findings highlight the complexity and dynamic process of adopting and implementing a MCS such as SAKIP in a highly bureaucratic environment

The 1990 progress report and future plans

This document describes the progress and plans of the Artificial Intelligence Research Branch (RIA) at ARC in 1990. Activities span a range from basic scientific research to engineering development and to fielded NASA applications, particularly those applications that are enabled by basic research carried out at RIA. Work is conducted in-house and through collaborative partners in academia and industry. Our major focus is on a limited number of research themes with a dual commitment to technical excellence and proven applicability to NASA short, medium, and long-term problems. RIA acts as the Agency's lead organization for research aspects of artificial intelligence, working closely with a second research laboratory at JPL and AI applications groups at all NASA centers