Scaling up a learning technology strategy: Supporting student/faculty teams in learner‐centred design

Many post‐secondary institutions are experiencing the challenge of scaling up their learning technology initiatives without a matching increase in staff resources. This mismatch is particularly acute at the design stage of projects, where both domain knowledge and instructional design expertise are needed. To address this, we are developing structures and tools for a small cadre of instructional design experts to support a growing number of learning technology projects developed by student/faculty teams. One of these tools, the Learner‐Centred Design Idea Kit, is an interactive WWW‐based resource now in a fourth iteration of use in an undergraduate course, Designing Learning Activities with Interactive Multimedia. The course and the LCD Idea Kit which supports it are part of a larger institutional strategy to introduce technology‐enabled change in the learning process, working ‘bottom‐up’ with individual faculty and using the LCD Idea Kit to scale up the course across multiple university departments. In this paper, we describe the course and the Kit in detail and provide and overview of our current status and lessons learned

An Exploratory Study into the Factors Impeding Ethical Consumption

Although consumers are increasingly engaged with ethical factors when forming opinions about products and making purchase decisions, recent studies have highlighted significant differences between consumers’ intentions to consume ethically, and their actual purchase behaviour. This article contributes to an understanding of this “ethical purchasing gap” through a review of existing literature, and the inductive analysis of focus group discussions. A model is suggested which includes exogenous variables such as moral maturity and age which have been well covered in the literature, together with further impeding factors identified from the focus group discussions. For some consumers, inertia in purchasing behaviour was such that the decision-making process was devoid of ethical considerations. Several manifested their ethical views through post-purchase dissonance and retrospective feelings of guilt. Others displayed a reluctance to consume ethically due to personal constraints, a perceived negative impact on image or quality, or an outright negation of responsibility. Those who expressed a desire to consume ethically often seemed deterred by cynicism, which caused them to question the impact they, as an individual, could achieve. These findings enhance the understanding of ethical consumption decisions and provide a platform for future research in this area

Thinking Beyond Credit

Credit is often seen as an indispensable vehicle for the poor to get out of poverty, or as the tool that allows farmers to get access to new technologies, to increase productivity and their incomes. But many existing credit programmes often undermine farmers’ independence, tie them into dependency relationships, and oblige them to take all the risk. There are better ways to help farmers build their own resource base and independenc

Implementing CSR through partnerships: Understanding the selection, design and institutionalisation of nonprofit-business partnerships

Partnerships between businesses and nonprofit organisations are an increasingly prominent element of corporate social responsibility implementation. The paper is based on two in depth partnership case studies (Earthwatch-Rio Tinto and Prince’s Trust-Royal Bank of Scotland) that move beyond a simple stage model to reveal the deeper level micro-processes in the selection, design and institutionalisation of business-NGO partnerships. The suggested practice-tested model is followed by a discussion that highlights management issues within partnership implementation and a practical Partnership Test to assist managers in testing both the accountability and level of institutionalisation of the relationship in order to address any possible skill gaps. Understanding how CSR partnerships are implemented in practice contributes to the broader CSR and partnership literatures a context specific level of detail in a systematic way that allows for transferable learning in both theory and practice

Measures that can be used to teach critical thinking skills in nurse prescribers

Critical thinking is a pervasive skill that involves scrutinizing, differentiating, and appraising information and reflecting on the information gained in order to make judgements and inform clinical decisions. Studies inform us of the need for agreement on the approaches used to teach and measure critical thinking. Nurse prescribers undertake an advanced role that encompass the need to be able to make clinically based decisions about the appropriateness of a specific medication. This requires critical thinking attributes. A variety of teaching and learning approaches are offered which can be used by nurse educators to develop critical thinking skills in nurse prescribers