Enhancing the Transformative Potential of Business Internships

Business internships involve students, sponsoring firms, and institutions of higher learning. As part of a program to enhance internships, we reviewed the experience of a small number of business interns working in Central Europe. Their experiences were characterized as essentially situation-specific learning, competence training, and affirmation of coursework. Student perceptions suggest prematurely defined boundaries that limit the theoretical advantages of internships. In order to enhance the internship experience, we suggest redesigning, sustaining, and evaluating internships emphasizing transferable learning, discovery of self in work, reflection and process, liminal experiences, and challenging espoused theory. We suggest that such redefined internships may optimize learning opportunities and the growth of human and social capital for all stakeholders, which are of particular benefit in the transforming business contexts of central and southern Europe.business internships, experiential learning, career, transitional economies, transforming education

Procedure for implementation of temperature-dependent mechanical property capability in the Engineering Analysis Language (EAL) system

A procedure is presented to allow the use of temperature dependent mechanical properties in the Engineering Analysis Language (EAL) System for solid structural elements. This is accomplished by including a modular runstream in the main EAL runstream. The procedure is applicable for models with multiple materials and with anisotropic properties, and can easily be incorporated into an existing EAL runstream. The procedure (which is applicable for EAL elastic solid elements) is described in detail, followed by a description of the validation of the routine. A listing of the EAL runstream used to validate the procedure is included in the Appendix

Social Influence of Competing Groups and Leaders in Opinion Dynamics

Publication history: Accepted - 11 September 2020; Published online - 19 September 2020.This paper explores the infuence of two competing stubborn agent groups on the opinion dynamics of normal agents. Computer simulations are used to investigate the parameter space systematically in order to determine the impact of group size and extremeness on the dynamics and identify optimal strategies for maximizing numbers of followers and social infuence. Results show that (a) there are many cases where a group that is neither too large nor too small and neither too extreme nor too central achieves the best outcome, (b) stubborn groups can have a moderating, rather than polarizing, efect on the society in a range of circumstances, and (c) small changes in parameters can lead to transitions from a state where one stubborn group attracts all the normal agents to a state where the other group does so. We also explore how these fndings can be interpreted in terms of opinion leaders, truth, and campaign

Opinion dynamics of social learning with a conflicting source

Publication history: Received in revised form - 17 September 2020; Published online - 27 October 2020.The way in which agents are influenced by the truth and/or a conflicting source can have a significant effect on the extent to which social learning is successful. We investigate these influences via several variations of the Hegselmann–Krause model of opinion dynamics. First, we compare two ways of modelling the influence of truth in the absence of a conflicting source and find that in a model where access to the truth is more restricted, increasing the proportion of truth seekers in the society has little effect on convergence to the truth. Second, we investigate the same models of truth in the presence of a conflicting source, which could represent the opinions of a radical group, opinion leader or media source. The results show that a consensus on the truth can be reached in certain cases in both models, but also that in a wide range of cases both models give rise to the same partition of the society into truth seekers and non-truth seekers

High-Stakes Testing and Student Achievement: Problems for the No Child Left Behind Act

Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), standardized test scores are the indicator used to hold schools and school districts accountable for student achievement. Each state is responsible for constructing an accountability system, attaching consequences -- or stakes -- for student performance. The theory of action implied by this accountability program is that the pressure of high-stakes testing will increase student achievement. But this study finds that pressure created by high-stakes testing has had almost no important influence on student academic performance