Eliciting student feedback for course development: the application of a qualitative course evaluation tool among business research students

Student evaluations of teaching and learning are playing an increasingly important role in the delivery of high-quality, student-centred education. Insights into student perceptions of their learning experience provide important information that can be used to inform course design and development. The majority of course evaluations take the form of quantitative surveys, but research suggests that a reliance on survey data alone can be problematic from a teaching and learning perspective. Qualitative course evaluations have been cited as a viable alternative to quantitative evaluations, but less research has been conducted into their efficacy when compared to quantitative evaluations. The study on which this article reports attempted to contribute to addressing this shortcoming by describing and assessing a novel approach to eliciting qualitative feedback from students in a research methodology course at a higher education institution in South Africa. Conventional content analysis was used to analyse the qualitative feedback received from students. The qualitative course evaluation approach was then appraised in terms of the degree to which it has the potential to overcome the shortcomings associated with quantitative course evaluations and the extent to which the information gathered could be used to improve the design and delivery of the academic programme

Is there a subjective well-being premium in voluntary sector employment?

Previous studies have found that employment in the voluntary sector offers a so-called ‘job satisfaction premium’: despite lower salaries, voluntary sector employees are more satisfied with their jobs than workers in other sectors. This paper examines whether voluntary sector employees also experience a subjective well-being premium. Using data from the UK Annual Population Survey 2012/2013, we find that voluntary sector employees do have higher levels of subjective well-being but this subjective well-being premium is not evenly distributed between men and women. Men score higher on happiness and life satisfaction. However, women in the voluntary sector have lower levels of life satisfaction compared with their counterparts in the public sector. We discuss the implications of our findings for policy and practice in the voluntary sector in the UK

Entrepreneurial Orientation Rhetoric in Franchise Organizations: The Impact of National Culture

This study examines the role of national culture on the entrepreneurial orientation (EO) rhetoric contained within franchisee recruitment promotional materials, where EO rhetoric is defined as the strategic use of words in organizational narratives to convey the risk taking, innovativeness, proactiveness, autonomy, and competitive aggressiveness of the firm. The sample comprised 378 franchise organizations, in five different countries (Australia, France, India, South Africa, and the UK). The results indicate that franchise systems operating in high uncertainty avoidance and feminine cultures use less entrepreneurially oriented rhetoric, suggesting that EO rhetoric in franchise organizations varies according to different national cultural contexts

Doing what they say or saying what they do? Australian organizations' signals of performance and attitudes

The analysis; of voluntary disclosure by a corporation's management has become an increasingly important area of research in finance and accounting. Voluntary disclosure is the revelation of information above and beyond that required by formal accounting and regulatory standards. This paper follows in the tradition of the voluntary disclosure literature, with a new twist. Instead of analysing the voluntary disclosure of financial or operational data, we investigate the more subtle use of words in the company's annual report as representing a specific strategic orientation--in this case, how a firm's reference to activities reflects current and future investment and performance. More specifically, we address the question of what do an organisation's verbal mentions of a region signal about its investment and performance in that region