Localisation challenges in usability and customer relationship management of e-commerce environments

With growing competition in the global E-Market place, the focus of E-Businesses is moving from customer acquisition to customer retention. Towards this, E-Businesses, in addition to providing a usable site, are integrating Customer-relationship Management (CRM) strategies into the design and usability of E-Commerce environments. These CRM strategies include personalisation, providing consistent customer service across different communication channels of the E-Business, meeting customers' expectations with regards to product information, giving cues for trustworthiness (e.g. security seals, data protection assurances), etc. However, CRM strategies employed in American and West European market places are aimed at an individual's (customer–s) self-interest and self-gratification and these might not be applicable in other cultures, for example, in Asia where, loyalty to family and clan, filial piety, delayed gratification, and connections and networks of trust and obligations via relatives and extended family, are valued. Through several examples, this position paper highlights the challenges that E-Businesses face in the global marketplace of localising not only the user interface design issues of the E-Commerce Web site such as colours, language, currency formats, etc., or the cultural attractors such as religious iconography, beliefs, national symbols, and so on, but also the CRM strategies of the E-Commerce environment. The issues, therefore, for discussion in the workshop arising from this paper are as follows: – Significance of integrating both HCI / Usability and CRM strategies into the design and usability of E-Commerce environments for customer retention and loyalty; – Localisation of CRM strategies in E-Commerce environments; – Are the usability and CRM strategies genre-specific, that is, specific to a particular domain of E-Commerce, such as banking, shopping, travel, and so on; – Which elicitation and usability evaluation techniques can be applied by designers and usability professionals in order to elicit values, attitudes, and expectations towards CRM of local customers? – Are patterns of on-line purchasing becoming standardised (as more and more Web retailers follow Amazon's retail processing business model)? Are people learning to lead two different lives: responding to such standardised E-Commerce environments as well as to localised interfaces that meet their local preferences and requirements

The pedagogical logics of arts-rich schools: a Bourdieusian analysis

© 2018, © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. The arts are under threat in English schools. But some schools and teachers work against the trend. To understand how they continue to offer rich arts experiences to students, we bring Bourdieusian thinking to arts teacher practices that were common across the 30 secondary schools we studied for three years. In addition to a flexible approach to the curriculum which encouraged independence, intellectual challenge and risk-taking, teachers also engaged in arts brokerage–embodiment of arts engagement, ensuring students regularly visit cultural events/institutions, using local cultural resources, organising visits from artists/cultural organisations, enabling students to exhibit and perform for wider audiences, connecting students with arts workplaces and enhancing community arts participation. We approach this as a logic of practice associated with arts broker dis/positions drawn from teachers simultaneously occupying two chiasmatic fields–art and education

She is author, with David Hall, of Practical Social Research (Macmillan, 1996) and Evaluation and Social Research: Introducing Small-Scale Practice

Abstract Student volunteering is currently being promoted through the Higher Education Contributor details David Hall is a Senior Lecturer in Applied Sociology and teaches and researches in the area of applied social research, volunteering and the voluntary sector, and learning and teaching in sociology. Together with Irene Hall, he is active in community-based learning and is programme director of the M.Sc. in Applied Social and Community Research. He is a partner in two European Framework 5 research programmes on science shops and university-community partnerships for knowledge transfer, and is the Chair of Interchange, the Liverpool science shop equivalent. David Hall, University of Liverpool, Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work Studies, Bedford Street South, Liverpool L69 7ZA Irene Hall is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology and also teaches and researches in applied social research, community and the voluntary sector. She was programme director of the HEFCE funded CoBaLT project in community-based learning, and is a partner in a European Framework 5 research programme on science shops and university-community partnerships. She is author, with David Hall, of Practical Social Research (Macmillan, 1996) Pat Green is a Principal Lecturer at Wolverhampton University, where she has taught Women's Studies for many years, and has published on the gendered experience of mature students in higher education. She has been active in curriculum development through projects with voluntary and community groups, and has recently been appointed the manager of the HEACF programme for coordinating volunteering opportunities at Wolverhampton University

Creativity in teaching: what can teachers learn from artists?

Since the turn of the century, there have been frequent expressions of concern about a perceived lack of creativity in UK schools, in both curriculum content and in teaching. Recently, as the emphasis on mathematics, science and technology has strengthened, serious concerns have also been expressed about the marginalisation of the arts and creativity in schools. In the light of these concerns, this paper reports in-depth, qualitative research into the pedagogies of practising artists experienced in working with young people and highly valued by the schools that employ them. We use the notion of ‘signature pedagogies’ to argue that the artist–teachers adopted a particular stance and set of pedagogic practices that are coherent and distinctively different to those that are currently officially promoted in UK schools, and that this distinctive pedagogy enhanced both creative practice and engagement in the arts in the schools in which the artists worked. In this paper, we identify the signature pedagogies of the artists, theorise their stance and argue that the findings of our study provide a heuristic which can be valuable to all teachers who are interested in expanding their teaching repertoires and fostering students’ creativity

Proceedings of the 7th Semiannual Meeting of the Nozzle Initiative Industry Advisory Committee on Standardization of Carbon-Phenolic Test Methods and Specifications

The application of carbon fibers and fabrics (CF) for producing rocket nozzles is discussed. These materials which are essential for fabricating the carbon composites used in aerospace systems gasify when exposed to high temperatures and the mechanical properties of the composites degrade. The oxidation kinetics under isothermal (IC) and non-isothermal (NIC) conditions are examined and a comparison is made between the characteristics of IC and NIC oxidation. Several CF, chars, and carbon blacks were examined, including a microporous char, a graphitized rayon fabric, and several carbonized rayon fabrics. A summary is given of the advantages and drawbacks of isothermal and non-isothermal oxidation of carbons. The proceedings are assembled in the form of a roundtable discussion

An Interactive Multimedia Software House Simulation for Postgraduate Software Engineers

Abstract: The Open University's M880 Software Engineering is a postgraduate distance education course aimed at software professionals. About half of the course is taken up with standard teaching materials, and about half involves case studies which complement the standard materials. The case study element of the course (approximately 80 hours of study) explores various aspects of software engineering and is presented through an innovative interactive multimedia simulation of a software house Open Software Solutions (OSS). The student `joins' OSS as an employee and performs various tasks as a member of the company's project teams. In this paper, we present the background to the development, describe the multimedia and its use by students, and present the results of two evaluation efforts to date. Editors: Patrick McAndrew (Open U., UK). Reviewers: Yunwen Ye (U. Colorado, USA) and Demetrios Sampson (U. of Piraeus, Greece)

Special Section Introduction: Mass Observation as Method

Since Mass Observation's foundation in 1937, the organisation has played witness to the great and the small events of everyday life during the last eight decades, recording people's opinions, beliefs and experiences, and making them available for researchers to develop new interpretations of British social life. Although the data produced is often messy and unwieldy and apparently contradicts many sociological assumptions about methodological rigour, the Archive is uniquely placed to offer detailed and exceptionally rich accounts of the fibre of everyday life and to reveal the deep complexities of family, personal and intimate life. As Mike Savage notes in Identities and Social Change in Britain since 1940, 'Mass-Observation is the most studied, and arguably the most important, social research institution of the mid-twentieth century' (Savage 2010: 57). He situates this significance in it providing the focus for the emergence of a new intellectual class in late 1930s Britain of people who identified with a social scientific outlook. Until that point in time, the main point of entry into intellectual circles for newly educated classes was through literary culture, which was often implicitly elitist and hierarchical in its attitude to wider society

Aquilegia, Vol. 25 No. 1-2, January-February 2001: Newsletter of the Colorado Native Plant Society

https://epublications.regis.edu/aquilegia/1183/thumbnail.jp

‘The way I know is by looking back’: English primary school children’s views of making progress in arts subjects

Educators are concerned that children make progress in their learning. While there are both policy and professional debates about how progress should be monitored and assessed, the views of children are rarely considered. Grounded in the ‘voiced ‘ research tradition, this paper reports on 158 focus group interviews with upper primary school students in purposefully selected arts rich schools in England. Children were asked about what they thought progress in arts subjects was, and how it was achieved. No children talked about grades or marks and only a handful mentioned rewards schemes. Their own evaluations and those of significant others, teachers, friends and family were very important. Children saw progress as supported and shaped by teacher pacing, scaffolding and feedback. Their own commitment to practice, use of feedback, persistence and self-belief were also highly significant. We suggest that these children’s understandings have implications for the work that arts teachers do, and in particular on the ways in which children use feedback and develop their own criteria for self-evaluation

The science calibration challenges of next generation highly multiplexed optical spectroscopy: the case of the Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer

MSE is an 11.25m telescope with a 1.5 sq.deg. field of view. It can simultaneously obtain 3249 spectra at R=3000 from 360-1800nm, and 1083 spectra at R=40000 in the optical. The large field of view, large number of targets, as well as the use of more than 4000 optical fibres to transport the light from the focal plane to the spectrographs, means that precise and accurate science calibration is difficult but essential to obtaining the science goals. As a large aperture telescope focusing on the faint Universe, precision sky subtraction and spectrophotometry are especially important. Here, we discuss the science calibration requirements, and the adopted calibration strategy, including operational features and hardware, that will enable the successful scientific exploitation of the vast MSE dataset.Comment: Proceedings of SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation 2018; Observatory Operations: Strategies, Processes, and Systems VI