Career shock: the profound effect of COVID-19 on four Australian middle managers

The pandemic’s effects on our ways of working are widely discussed. But the impact it has had on careers has been missing from this conversation. Steve McKenna interviews four Australian middle managers who have had to grapple with the stress (and sometimes renewal) that the pandemic caused in their professional identities and career trajectories

INQUIRE: a case study in evaluating the potential of online MCQ tests in a discursive subject

There has been a wealth of investigation into the use of online multiple-choice questions as a means of summative assessment, however the research into the use of formative MCQs by the same mode of delivery still remains patchy. Similarly, research and implementation has been largely concentrated within the Sciences and Medicine rather than the more discursive subjects within the Humanities and Social Sciences. The INQUIRE (Interactive Questions Reinforcing Education) Evaluation Project was jointly conducted by two groups at the University of Oxford-the Said Business School and the Academic Computing Development Team to evaluate the use of online MCQs as a mechanism to reinforce and extend student learning. This initial study used a small set of highly focused MCQ tests that were designed to complement an introductory series of first-year undergraduate management lectures. MCQ is a simple and well-established technology, and hence the emphasis was very much on situating the tests within the student experience. The paper will cover how the online MCQs are intended to fit into the Oxford Undergraduate study agenda, and how a simple evaluation was executed and planned to investigate their usage and impact. The chosen method of evaluation was to combine focus groups with automated online methods of tracking, and the paper discusses the findings of both of these

Mutual Expectations: The Relationship of the President to the Student Personnel Officer

This article is a transcription of an address presented by Dr. David McKenna at a recent pre-conference workshop at an ACPA conference. The workshop was sponsored by ACSD in conjunction with the annual prayer breakfast. Dr. McKenna shared insights gleaned from his more than thirty years of service in Christian higher education including three presidential posts. The article focuses on two areas. They are one, what a president expects from a senior student affairs officer and two, what the SSA can expect from a president

Surveyor: Mobile Highway Inventory and Measurement System

Surveyor is a mobile highway data collection system designed to collect measurement data about objects, features, structures, and landmarks located along highways and roadways for highway planning, management, and maintenance. It creates classified inventories annotated with object dimensions, object position relative to the road, and global position reference. The mobile data collection part of the system consists of a high-speed multifunction vehicle with minimum complement of a right-of-way video system with a precisely calibrated high-resolution video camera, a distance-measuring instrument for spatial positioning, a gyroscopic geometries system, and an ultrasonic grade system for precise measurement of vehicle attitude. Data acquisition is facilitated by multiple on-board computers, and the right-of-way video uses a time code for synchronization to the geometric and position databases. The interactive (postprocessing) part of the system uses a workstation to retrieve and buffer the video for the user to identify targets by using point and click with a mouse, to classify them, and to request position or size measurements. The software can make measurements on multiple images by using triangulation or on single images by using the idealized plane of the highway as a reference

A Polyphonic Approach to the \u27Dark Side\u27 of Making Video Games

This paper considers the video game industry and how it is represented through social media blogs and tweets. It aims to disentangle the polyphony of voices communicating through different stories about what it means to work in the gaming industry. The multiple voices found within the blogs and tweets weave a complex and contested narrative about the carnivalesque way in which video games are made, poignantly illustrating the good, the bad, and the ugly. Using the work of the Russian literary theorist and philosopher, Mikhail Bakhtin (1984, 1993), and particularly his notions of monologic and dialogic stories and narratives (McKenna, 2010), the paper seeks to understand what these voices are communicating within the anecdotes, stories and descriptions contained in blogs and tweets. It uses components of literary theory associated with Bakhtin (1984, 1993) to connect the monological dimension of what is communicated (the micro-level world of the blogger) with the dialogical dimension (the industry, socio-political, ideological and other voices) which are communicated through the blogs and tweets

Proliferation Security Initiative \u2714

In September 2013 Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Rebecca Hersman requested that the Naval War College conduct a PSI table top game in May 2014 in conjunction with a meeting of the PSI Operational Experts Group (OEG). It was specifically requested that the game explore critical challenges and opportunities in counter- proliferation interdiction, and identify capacity building tools that may be shared with the broader PSI community

The impact of Covid-19 on human resource management: avoiding generalisations

Many organisations are using remote working for the first time. HR professionals are having to improvise daily, write Eileen Aitken-Fox, Jane Coffey, Kantha Dayaram, Scott Fitzgerald, Chahat Gupta, Steve McKenna, and Amy Wei Tia

Towards an understanding of social networks among organizational self-initiated expatriates: a qualitative case study of a professional services firm

Drawing on a qualitative case study of 51 organizational self-initiated expatriates (OSIEs) in a professional services firm, this article investigates the role of networks during expatriation and, specifically, in the development of learning that is beneficial to both the individual expatriate and the global operations of the firm. First, we investigate the extent to which individual motivations to engage in OSIE impact on the development of networks. Second, we investigate individual’s experiences of network development. Third, we investigate individual perceptions of the benefits of networks for both organizations and individual actors. The paper will report that professionals initiating their own expatriation develop continually expanding and composite networks such that mobility and networks evolve in a seemingly symbiotic relationship. In doing so, it contributes to our understanding of the role of agency in network development and extends our understanding of organizational self-initiated expatriation as a relatively under-researched phenomenon

An endemic hantavirus in field voles in northern England

We report a PCR survey of hantavirus infection in the extensive field vole (Microtus agrestis) populations occurring in the Kielder Forest, northern England. A Tatenale virus-like lineage was frequently detected (~ 15% prevalence) in liver tissue. Such lineages are likely to be endemic in northern England

Faculty experiences and motivations in design thinking teaching and learning

IntroductionDesign thinking (DT) is a creative, iterative approach to generating solutions that are desirable, feasible, and viable. Given its role in fostering creativity and innovation, a growing number of higher education instructors are teaching DT. Exploring how and what instructors know about DT and why they might teach it could provide critical insight into the ways in which DT is operationalized in higher education teaching and learning.Materials and methodsA convergent parallel mixed methods design was used for data collected from online surveys administered to faculty teaching DT. The survey included items about DT practices, outcomes from DT, demographic characteristics, and course characteristics. Five open-text survey items queried participants about their definition of DT, why they teach DT, and what additional outcomes they observed. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze quantitative items and thematic analysis was used to analyze qualitative items.ResultsParticipants (n = 49) represented various academic ranks, disciplines, types of institutions, and geographic locations. Analyses indicated clear congruence between quantitative and qualitative data. Definitions of DT aligned with well-known models of DT. Motivations for teaching DT included the promotion of personal development, DT proficiency, impact, and interpersonal skill development. Other positive student outcomes observed included increases in enthusiasm, self-awareness, empowerment, optimism, and a sense of belonging. Negative student outcomes included time constraints, teamwork conflicts, and student frustration.ConclusionFaculty believe that DT leads to highly valuable social innovation skill sets for students. This cross-institutional, multi-disciplinary study provides critical insight into faculty experiences and motivations for teaching DT, offering various strategies for instructors and institutions interested in fostering the uptake of DT within higher education