From multiple perspectives to shared understanding

The aim of this study was to explore how learners operating in a small group reach shared understanding as they work out joint research questions and build a theoretical framework and to identify the resources and tools they used in the process. The learners’ own interpretations of their group activities and learning were also taken into account. The data, consisting of group discussions and the documents produced by the group, were subjected to a qualitative content analysis. The group members employed a variety of resources and tools to exchange their individual perspectives and achieve shared understanding. Summaries of relevant literature laid a foundation for the group’s theoretical discussions. Reflective comparisons between their book knowledge and their personal experiences of online interaction and collaboration were frequent, suggesting that such juxtapositions may have enhanced their learning by intertwining the content to be mastered and the activities entailed by this particular content

Symbolic meanings and e-learning in the workplace: The case of an intranet-based training tool

This article contributes to the debate on work-based e-learning, by unpacking the notion of ‘the learning context’ in a case where the mediating tool for training also supports everyday work. Users’ engagement with the information and communication technology tool is shown to reflect dynamic interactions among the individual, peer group, organizational and institutional levels. Also influential are professionals’ values and identity work, alongside their interpretations of espoused and emerging symbolic meanings. Discussion draws on pedagogically informed studies of e-learning and the wider organizational learning literature. More centrally, this article highlights the instrumentality of symbolic interactionism for e-learning research and explores some of the framework’s conceptual resources as applied to organizational analysis and e-learning design. </jats:p

A Tailorable Collaborative Learning System That Combines OGSA Grid Services and IMS-LD Scripting

This paper presents Gridcole, a new collaborative learning system that can be easily tailored by educators in order to support their own CSCL scenarios, using computing services provided by third parties in the form of OGSA grid services. Educators employ scripts in order to describe the sequence of learning activities and required tools, with standard IMS-LD notation. Thus, through the integration of coarse-grained tools, that may even offer supercomputing capabilities or use specific hardware resources, educators do not depend on software developers to easily configure a suitable environment in order to support a broad range of collaborative scenarios. An example of a learning scenario for a Computer Architecture course is described to illustrate the capabilities of Gridcole

Searching for relevance:NGO–donor relationships in a geographically isolated community

This study investigates the practice of NGO (nongovernment organizations)–donor relationships in a geographically isolated community in Alaska and explores the role of social capital in NGO sustainability. We employ the following parameters to apply social capital concepts to the needs of practitioners: study design centered on variables that are relevant for practitioners, nonlinear production of knowledge, attention to specifics of the context within which agents operate, and transfer of knowledge through the practitioners’ frame of reference. This study reveals that NGOs’ bonding social ties are of primary importance for assuring active donor commitment, while bridging ties serve to secure continuing commitment and support from passive donors. The structural, relational, emotional, and behavioral social capital dimensions shape both bonding and bridging ties, though they differ in their nature. Active donor commitment is increased by strengthening and extending the circle of bonding ties

Race, colonial history and national identity: Resident Evil 5 as a Japanese game

Resident Evil 5 is a zombie game made by Capcom featuring a White American protagonist and set in Africa. This paper argues that approaching this as a Japanese game reveals aspects of a Japanese racial and colonial social imaginary that are missed if this context of production is ignored. In terms of race, the game presents hybrid racial subjectivities that can be related to Japanese perspectives of Blackness and Whiteness where these terms are two poles of difference and identity through which an essentialised Japanese identity is constructed in what Iwabuchi calls “strategic hybridism” (Iwabuchi, 2002). In terms of colonialism, the game echoes structures of Japanese colonialism through which Japanese colonialism is obliquely memorialised and a “normal” Japanese global subjectivity can be performed

Maintenance of cross-sector partnerships: the role of frames in sustained collaboration

We examine the framing mechanisms used to maintain a cross-sector partnership (XSP) that was created to address a complex long-term social issue. We study the first eight years of existence of an XSP that aims to create a market for recycled phosphorus, a nutrient that is critical to crop growth but whose natural reserves have dwindled significantly. Drawing on 27 interviews and over 3,000 internal documents, we study the evolution of different frames used by diverse actors in an XSP. We demonstrate the role of framing in helping actors to avoid some of the common pitfalls for an XSP, such as debilitating conflict, and in creating sufficient common ground to sustain collaboration. As opposed to a commonly held assumption in the XSP literature, we find that collaboration in a partnership does not have to result in a unanimous agreement around a single or convergent frame regarding a contentious issue. Rather, successful collaboration between diverse partners can also be achieved by maintaining a productive tension between different frames through ‘optimal’ frame plurality – not excessive frame variety that may prevent agreements from emerging, but the retention of a select few frames and the deletion of others towards achieving a narrowing frame bandwidth. One managerial implication is that resources need not be focussed on reaching a unanimous agreement among all partners on a single mega-frame vis-à-vis a contentious issue, but can instead be used to kindle a sense of unity in diversity that allows sufficient common ground to emerge, despite the variety of actors and their positions