Strategies and challenges to facilitate situated learning in virtual worlds post-Second Life

Virtual worlds can establish a stimulating environment to support a situated learning approach in which students simulate a task within a safe environment. While in previous years Second Life played a major role in providing such a virtual environment, there are now more and more alternative—often OpenSim-based—solutions deployed within the educational community. By drawing parallels to social networks, we discuss two aspects: how to link individually hosted virtual worlds together in order to implement context for immersion and how to identify and avoid “fake” avatars so people behind these avatars can be held accountable for their actions

Dangerous work: The gendered nature of bullying in the context of higher education

This paper discusses results from a research project which set out to investigate gender differences in the nature and experience of bullying within the higher education sector. Gender differences emerged in the form and perception of bullying as well as in target response. Results also indicate that, irrespective of gender, bullies can capture and subvert organizational structures and procedures (official hierarchies, mentoring systems, probationary reviews) to further their abuse of the target and to conceal aggressive intent. These outcomes are discussed in relation to gendered assumptions behind management practices and in relation to the masculinist ethic that underpins many higher education management initiatives. Overall, results indicate that bullying cannot be divorced from gender and that such behaviour needs to be seen in a gendered context

The transformation of the business angel market: empirical evidence and research implications

Business angel investing – a key source of finance for entrepreneurial businesses – is rapidly evolving from a fragmented and largely anonymous activity dominated by individuals investing on their own to one that is increasingly characterised by groups of investors investing together through managed angel groups. The implications of this change have been largely ignored by scholars. The paper examines the investment activity and operation of angel groups in Scotland to highlight the implications of this change for the nature of angel investing. It goes on to argue that this transformation challenges both the ongoing relevance of prior research on business angels and current methodological practices, and raises a set of new research questions

The geographies of access to enterprise finance: the case of the West Midlands, UK

The geographies of access to enterprise finance: the case of the West Midlands, UK, Regional Studies. Whilst there is a long history of credit rationing to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the UK, the financial crisis has seen banks retreat further from lending to viable SMEs due to a reassessment of risk and lack of available capital. In so doing, the credit crunch is thought to be creating new geographies of financial exclusion. This paper explores the financial inclusion of enterprise through community development finance institutions (CDFIs) which provide loan finance to firms at the commercial margins in the West Midlands, UK. The paper concludes that CDFIs could partially address the financial exclusion of enterprise as an additional, alternative source of finance to that of mainstream banks

Defining urban clusters to detect agglomeration economies

Agglomeration economies are a persistent subject of debate in regional science and city planning. Their definition turns on whether or not larger cities are more efficient than smaller ones. Here, we complement existing discussions on agglomeration economies by providing a sensitivity analysis of estimated externalities to the definitions of urban agglomeration. We regress wages versus population and jobs over thousands of different definitions of cities in France, based on an algorithmic aggregation of spatial units. We also search for evidence of larger inequalities in larger cities. This paper therefore focuses on the spatial and economic complexity of the mechanisms defining agglomeration within and between cities

Critical Innovations in the UK Peer-to-Peer (P2P) and Equity Alternative Finance Markets for Small Firm Growth

© The Author(s) 2016. The final, definitive version of this paper has been published in The International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation by Sage Publications Ltd. All rights reserved. It is available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/1465750316655906This paper examines the disruptive nature of financial innovations available to small firms by the growing range of online platforms that have emerged in the UK since the financial crisis. It is unveiled that finance provided to small firms via such mechanisms is not identical to more traditional sources and its adoption therefore cannot be said to be simply a question of direct substitution based, for example, on a price comparison. These offer a series of important advantages over more traditional sources of early-stage capital for entrepreneurs seeking funding. Service innovations around security, flexibility of terms, speed of access and transparency of pricing are as important as price considerations for many users, as are innovations made possible by the way these online markets are structured and in particular in the way these innovative structures allow important types of risk to be dispersed and mitigated.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Heritage Quay: What Will You Discover? Transforming the Archives of the University of Huddersfield, Yorkshire, UK

The Heritage Quay project is changing how archive services at the University of Huddersfield are delivered. This article examines how the Staff/Space/Collections dependency model and Customer Service Excellence framework have been used, and what lessons can be drawn for other archives

Tourism income and economic growth in Greece: Empirical evidence from their cyclical components

This paper examines the relationship between the cyclical components of Greek GDP and international tourism income for Greece for the period 1976–2004. Using spectral analysis the authors find that cyclical fluctuations of GDP have a length of about nine years and that international tourism income has a cycle of about seven years. The volatility of tourism income is more than eight times the volatility of the Greek GDP cycle. VAR analysis shows that the cyclical component of tourism income is significantly influencing the cyclical component of GDP in Greece. The findings support the tourism-led economic growth hypothesis and are of particular interest and importance to policy makers, financial analysts and investors dealing with the Greek tourism industry