Brand ambidexterity and commitment in higher education: an exploratory study

The study investigates a university’s brand ambidexterity-strategy and its effects on brand image, reputation, and commitment in higher education. A research model integrates the determinants of university-specific brand performance, and proposes that commitment towards a particular university is influenced by: (a) brand ambidexterity, that is, exploratory and exploitative orientations; and (b) student level responses, these being the students’ perceptions with brand image and reputation leading to increased commitment with the university. Findings suggest that when students choose to commit for the study of a postgraduate degree, a variety of factors influence their decision, of which the brand performance and brand image constructs play major roles; interestingly, brand reputation is less important. The framework helps university managers in designing appropriate strategies to influence students’ commitment towards the university to, for example, continue their post-graduate studies. Implications exist for broader brand management and customer management approaches that include up and cross-selling schemes

Collaboration scripts - a conceptual analysis

This article presents a conceptual analysis of collaboration scripts used in face-to-face and computer-mediated collaborative learning. Collaboration scripts are scaffolds that aim to improve collaboration through structuring the interactive processes between two or more learning partners. Collaboration scripts consist of at least five components: (a) learning objectives, (b) type of activities, (c) sequencing, (d) role distribution, and (e) type of representation. These components serve as a basis for comparing prototypical collaboration script approaches for face-to-face vs. computer-mediated learning. As our analysis reveals, collaboration scripts for face-to-face learning often focus on supporting collaborators in engaging in activities that are specifically related to individual knowledge acquisition. Scripts for computer-mediated collaboration are typically concerned with facilitating communicative-coordinative processes that occur among group members. The two lines of research can be consolidated to facilitate the design of collaboration scripts, which both support participation and coordination, as well as induce learning activities closely related to individual knowledge acquisition and metacognition. In addition, research on collaboration scripts needs to consider the learners’ internal collaboration scripts as a further determinant of collaboration behavior. The article closes with the presentation of a conceptual framework incorporating both external and internal collaboration scripts

Exponential Family Hybrid Semi-Supervised Learning

We present an approach to semi-supervised learning based on an exponential family characterization. Our approach generalizes previous work on coupled priors for hybrid generative/discriminative models. Our model is more flexible and natural than previous approaches. Experimental results on several data sets show that our approach also performs better in practice.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure