The reflective structuration of entrepreneurship : as contextualized to the Finnish university and polytechnics students’ narratives

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Out of step but stepping up? : following a group of students negotiating university and beyond.

Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg 2015.This study holistically explores the experiences at university and the effects of a university education for students at a South African university. Literature on students in higher education has generally been focused on ‘traditional’ students and graduates in the first world. This research advances understanding of students and graduates in a unique way. The study has used qualitative data generated from focus groups, extensive interviews, diaries and photographs of a small sample to uncover student narratives, which offer insights into the ways in which the participants negotiated their way through university, graduation and the early stages of their working lives. The participants showed evidence of remarkable resilience in navigating higher education and the job market without the requisite economic, cultural or social capital. Similar fortitude was also revealed in the attempts to fulfil the expectations of significant individuals and social groups. The findings from the research suggest that the impact of university education on social and economic mobility in the South African context is more complex than often assumed. The participants describe their unique positioning within inimical impulses of: progress and tradition, independence and belonging, conventional success and inner fulfilment. With regard to identity and emerging identities, the participants conveyed a need to create coherent links between their past, their present and their future selves. A sense of isolation emerged for the participants as a function of uneven and incomplete upward economic and social mobility, and the expectations of such mobility

Narrative Presence in Intelligent Learning Environments

Recent years have seen an emerging interest in narrativecentered learning, ushering in a wave of research on adaptive story-based systems for education and training. Among the aims of current narrative-centered learning work is the creation of environments that draw students into the story while simultaneously satisfying pedagogical goals in an enjoyable, motivating, and effective manner. In this paper, we seek to characterize this interaction by introducing the notion of narrative presence and grounding the discussion in research on presence conducted in the human factors and virtual reality communities. Contributing factors to narrative presence are discussed in the context of CRYSTAL ISLAND, a testbed narrative-centered learning environment. Methods for subjective and objective evaluation of narrative presence are introduced and reviewed. Finally, the design implications of narrative presence for interactive narrative-centered learning environments are considered