Embedding information skills training on student learning: making a difference

This article was first published in the Wolverhampton Intellectual Repository and E-Theses (WIRE). There is no printed version.This embedding project builds on one that was delivered in 2001, headed by Oliver Pritchard, Dudley Learning Centre Manager, leading a research team with staff working from different Learning Centres in the University. In the 2001 project, sessions on information skills were run in three differing subject areas for second and third years and their impact on student learning was assessed using questionnaires and focus groups for students and in-depth interviews with academic staff. Findings were encouraging. Skills and experience gained within the sessions were taken on and applied within assignment work to good effect. Within this small study there is evidence of a progression in student awareness, confidence and skills and Information Skills sessions bring a longer-term, practical and tangible element to the learning experience and are a valuable part of helping students to become more effective learners

Older UK sheltered housing tenants’ perceptions of wellbeing and their usage of hospital services

The aim of this study was to examine sheltered housing tenants’ views of health and wellbeing, the strategies they adopted to support their wellbeing and their use of health and social care services through a Health Needs Assessment. Sheltered housing in the UK is a form of service-integrated housing for people, predominantly over 60. The study used a parallel, three-strand mixed method approach to encompass the tenants’ perceptions of health and wellbeing (n=96 participants), analysis of the service’s health and wellbeing database and analysis of emergency and elective hospital admissions (n= 978 tenant data sets for the period January to December 2012). Tenants’ perceptions of wellbeing were seen to reinforce much of the previous work on the subject with strategies required to sustain social, community, physical, economic, environmental, leisure, emotional and spiritual dimensions. Of the tenants’ self-reported chronic conditions, arthritis, heart conditions and breathing problems were identified as their most common health concerns. Hospital admission data indicated that 43% of the tenant population was admitted to hospital (886 admissions) with 53% emergency and 47% elective admissions. The potential cost of emergency as opposed to elective admissions was substantial. The mean length of stay for emergency admissions was 8.2 days (median 3.0 days). While elective hospital admission had a mean length of stay of 1.0 day (median 0.0 days). These results suggest the need for multi-professional health, social care and housing services interventions to facilitate sheltered housing tenants’ aspirations and support their strategies to live well and independently in their own homes. Equally there is a need to increase tenants’ awareness of health conditions and their management; the importance of services which offer facilitation, resources and support and the key role played by prevention and reablement

Simple guide to starting a research group

Conducting cutting-edge research and scholarship becomes more complicated with each passing year; forming a collaborative research group offers a way to navigate this increasing complexity. Yet many individuals whose work might benefit from the formation of a collaborative team may feel overwhelmed by the prospect of attempting to build and maintain a research group. We propose this simple guide for starting and maintaining such an enterprise

PRODUCING TRADITION: INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS AND DEVELOPMENT IN JORDANIAN OLIVE OIL

This dissertation project examines how value is changed and created through organic certification and the universalizing ideas of capacity building within the olive oil industry in Jordan and how these shifts affect the social and material processes of production. I approach organic olive oil production in Jordan as one method that producers use in accessing markets and capacity building. By shifting from looking strictly at organic certified farms to examining the larger context of capacity building and international standards, I identify how organic is just one strategy in a larger effort to diversify Jordanian agricultural production and to access global markets. However, more work needs to be done to elucidate how development shapes organic and other ‘alternative’ initiatives differently than in European and North American contexts. In order to do this, I incorporate postcolonial critiques of GPN and critical development studies to further our understanding how of these certifications and standards are taken up, challenged, and sometimes abandoned in favor of other production methods in local spaces of the Global South. The local embeddedness of olive oil production and the relative recent history of export provide a unique opportunity for examining how producers, organizations, governments, and universities create new export industries. In order to trace how these capacities are built, this dissertation examines the following questions: how is value redefined as producers try to access distant consumers? What are the material and social strategies? In answering these questions, I examine three types of value: taste/sensory, organic/environmental, and gendered tradition. Through the examination of these values, I found that they were each built through a mechanism: re-asetheticizing local taste, creating a new commodity network, and pushing domestic labor into the public sphere. Each mechanism has intended and unintended consequences for the social relations of production. In summary, this dissertation explores the use (and abandonment) of organic certification within the larger context of development and capacity building in Jordan. In order to explore how value is being created in new ways, the three empirical chapters examine extra virginity, organic certification, and women’s rural organizations. By looking beyond a singular commodity chain, this dissertation examines the processes through which institutional assemblages are formed and destabilized. Therefore, each of the three empirical chapters covers a different aspect of the institutions that are defining value within the larger network of the olive industry. This approach will further our understanding of how quality and conventions function in systems under transition. (Higgins, Dibden, and Cocklin 2008a). Together these findings provide a broad picture of efforts in Jordan to improve and expand the Jordanian olive oil industry. A large aspect of this effort is to produce exportable olive oil. While only a small percentage of producers are exporting, governmental and development networks want to build the capacity of the olive industry so that more farmers are producing to international standards. Through this broad initiative, traditional ideas of quality and the best practices of production are being challenged. These shifts create new networks and products through which rural producers try to capture value. While the overall ramifications of this shift for the average farmer are small now, with further government standardizing, production and its associated social relations could be significantly changed. The traditional farmers who were able to sell within their personal networks may lose their ability to sell flexibly, and simultaneously larger irrigated producers may flourish, having larger environmental impacts