Microworld Writing: Making Spaces for Collaboration, Construction, Creativity, and Community in the Composition Classroom

In order to create a 21st century pedagogy of learning experiences that inspire the engaged, constructive, dynamic, and empowering modes of work we see in online creative communities, we need to focus on the platforms, the environments, the microworlds that host, hold, and constitute the work. A good platform can build connections between users, allowing for the creation of a community, giving creative work an engaged and active audience. These platforms will work together to build networks of rhetorical/creative possibilities, wherein students can learn to cultivate their voices, skills, and knowledge bases as they engage across platforms and genres. I call on others to make, mod, or hack other new platforms. In applying this argument to my subject, teaching writing in a college composition class, I describe Microworld Writing as a genre that combines literary language practice with creativity, performativity, play, game mechanics, and coding. The MOO can be an example of one of these platforms and of microworld writing, in that it allows for creativity, user agency, and programmability, if it can be updated to have the needed features (virtual world, community, accessibility, narrativity, compatibility and exportability). I offer the concept of this MOO-IF as inspiration for a collaborative, community-oriented Interactive Fiction platform, and encourage people to extend, find, and build their own platforms. Until then and in addition, students can be brought into Microworld Writing in the composition classroom through interactive-fiction platforms, as part of an ecology of genre experimentation and platform exercise

Exploring the influence of spirituality in the initial development of authentic leadership identity

The goal of this study was to explore the connection between authentic leadership, spirituality, and human development theory to determine if spirituality contributes to the emergence or formation of an authentic leadership identity. An interdisciplinary research approach was conducted by reviewing literature on authentic leadership, spirituality, and human development. A sequential explanatory mixed method design was used to collect and analyze the personal beliefs and life experiences of individuals who were nominated as authentic leaders. Sixty-one participants completed a questionnaire and a subset of eleven participants completed semi-structured interviews. Quantitative findings identified that nearly 94% of participants considered themselves to be spiritual (n = 57). Most participants (90%) believe that spirituality influences their beliefs about leadership and their behaviors as leaders (n =55). Similarly, most participants (90%) affirmed that their spirituality influences their authenticity and self-awareness as a leader (n =55). Qualitative findings from semi-structured interviews identified that spirituality, or spiritual influences, experienced during the formative years, influenced participants’ values and beliefs, defined their principles and ethics, and provided a framework for how to live and behave. For most participants, these values and beliefs were informed by religious parents and/or a religious upbringing. When a participant did not reference a religious parent or religious upbringing, a sense of God, or higher power, or a strong sense of service was acknowledged instead. Findings also credit spirituality, or the belief in a higher power or God with having encouraged a participants’ journey or purpose. Participants acknowledged that spirituality has helped and continues to help define who they are, who they want to be, and how they want to live and work. Based on these findings, this study offers evidence that values and beliefs link spirituality to the emergence of an authentic leadership identity. While an individual\u27s identity continues to be shaped and influenced across a person\u27s lifespan, core values which influenced their emergence as an authentic leader were established during the early formative years, informed by parental and spiritual (religious) influences. As such, spirituality may be a mediating variable which influences the emergence of authentic leadership identity, as well as, encourages a sense of purpose, life-direction, and/or self-actualization

Developing Literary Glasgow: Towards a Strategy for a Reading, Writing and Publishing City

Since the 1990s, urban cultural policy in the UK has been bound to the cause of urban regeneration. Much has been written in examination and critique of this relationship, but what happens when the direction of strategic attention is reversed and civic leadership seeks to regenerate culture itself? The city of Glasgow, having made capital of culture over many decades, has moved towards a strategy for the development of literary Glasgow. This thesis documents a search for those factors crucial to that strategy. The research focuses on literary Glasgow as one aspect of the city’s cultural sector; identifies and examines gaps in the relationship between the civic cultural organisation and literary communities; and highlights those elements vital to the formation of a strategy for development of the literary in Glasgow. An extended period of participatory ethnographic research within the Aye Write! book festival and Sunny Govan Community Radio, is supplemented with data from interviews conducted across the literary sector and analysis of organisational documentation. Through these a gap has been identified between the policies and operations of a civic cultural organisation, and the desires of those engaged within the literary community. This gap is caused, in part, by the lack of a mechanism with which to reconcile contrasting narratives about the cultural essence of the city, or to negotiate the variations in definitions of value in relation to cultural engagement. The interdisciplinary approach builds upon insights from existing work within publishing studies, cultural policy, complexity theory and organisational studies to construct an understanding of the dynamics of Glasgow’s literary sector. This reveals the need for a framework in support of a landscape of practice, a desire for the placement of boundary objects to facilitate engagement, and the significance of value in relation to participation in literary activity. This work informs a strategy for literary Glasgow and contributes to conversations on strategies for cultural development in other cities

Netmodern: Interventions in Digital Sociology

The techno-economic grid of the Internet looks set to fulfil its autopoietic potentials as a global and multi-dimensionally immersive knowledge and memory archival network. This research project moves through a series of Digital Sociology case studies that mimic the changes in paradigms of the WWW from 2005-2010 in the forms of Web 1.0 to 2.0 and beyond to augmented reality and the cloud. Netmodern social theory is an emergent and speculative product of the research findings of this thesis and the subjective experiences of the researcher in experiencing and explaining digital realities in the research. All of the case studies employ practice-based approaches of original investigation through digital interventions completely immersed in particular waves of innovation and change. The role of the researcher shifts from administrator to mediator and observer as the very fabric of the social web transforms and evolves. The suggestion of the research findings is that you need to actually look at everything differently in order to study the research objects of emergent social agency and forms in digital media. Existing forms of critical analysis and methodological frameworks, particularly those concerned with conceptual models of media literacy or collective intelligence are insufficient as explanatory methods. Studying media literacy is most concerned with ‘how’ we create and interact in online social life beyond issues of simple accessibility. The focus of collective intelligence research is ‘what’ knowledge is available for interaction and a canvas for relationships between agency and knowledge forms. All of the case studies in this research project speak to and critique the intersections and relationships of emergent social agency and forms prevalent in Digital Sociology. The collective case studies explore online academic communities (BlogScholar), agency and popularity in the Twitter social network (Twae) and a variety of representations of collective intelligence in action (Web 2.0 cases studies). The research results suggest that the Internet is not so much intersecting with as it is being culture, economy, and technology

BOBCATSSS 2016 : Information, Libraries, Democracy. Proceedings & Abstracts

Actes du congrès BOBCATSSS 2016 qui s\u27est déroulé à Lyon du 27 au 29 janvier 2016 sur le thème : Information, bibliothèques, démocratie

The social relevance of research to practice : a study of the impact of academic research on professional subtitling practitioners in Europe

The relevance of research to practice has long been debated and in recent years, the topic has returned to prominence as academics are increasingly required to demonstrate the impact of their scholarly activity outwith the academy. As the field of Audiovisual Translation is now firmly established as a sub-discipline of Translation Studies and digitalisation has fundamentally transformed subtitling practice, it is timely to explore the contribution that academic endeavours in subtitling make to its professional practice. Work to date has been based on argumentation, with scant empirical evidence and lacking the practitioner’s perspective. This study aims to investigate the extent to which academic research in subtitling impacts on professional practice. This mixed method, participant-oriented research surveyed subtitling practitioners in Europe to generate empirical data on the topic for the first time. Drawing on the sociology of the professions and the emerging field of Research Impact, this thesis deconstructs the relationship between research and practice to provide a systematic analysis of the impact of research on practice, based on the professional reality of subtitling practitioners. It highlights shortcomings in previous conceptualisations of research relevance to practice and the findings move the debate from a falsely dichotomous ‘theory versus practice’ argument towards a revised definition which accounts for a wider, more nuanced understanding of impact. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for academia, practice, industry and pedagogy

The social relevance of research to practice : a study of the impact of academic research on professional subtitling practitioners in Europe

The relevance of research to practice has long been debated and in recent years, the topic has returned to prominence as academics are increasingly required to demonstrate the impact of their scholarly activity outwith the academy. As the field of Audiovisual Translation is now firmly established as a sub-discipline of Translation Studies and digitalisation has fundamentally transformed subtitling practice, it is timely to explore the contribution that academic endeavours in subtitling make to its professional practice. Work to date has been based on argumentation, with scant empirical evidence and lacking the practitioner’s perspective. This study aims to investigate the extent to which academic research in subtitling impacts on professional practice. This mixed method, participant-oriented research surveyed subtitling practitioners in Europe to generate empirical data on the topic for the first time. Drawing on the sociology of the professions and the emerging field of Research Impact, this thesis deconstructs the relationship between research and practice to provide a systematic analysis of the impact of research on practice, based on the professional reality of subtitling practitioners. It highlights shortcomings in previous conceptualisations of research relevance to practice and the findings move the debate from a falsely dichotomous ‘theory versus practice’ argument towards a revised definition which accounts for a wider, more nuanced understanding of impact. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for academia, practice, industry and pedagogy

Four Passages to Information Use Related Phenomena in Bachelor Theses at the Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences

Peer reviewe