Credibility, community college, and the closet: how students perceive a gay music instructor

It has been shown that credibility beliefs impact classroom relationships such that students are more likely to rate traditionally marginalized faculty members as less credible than others and are less likely to interact with faculty they find less credible. The purpose of this mixed-methods study, undergirded by Critical Realism (CR), was to examine students’ credibility beliefs about and perceived learning from a male community college music instructor whose sexual orientation was expressed differently in two quasi-experimental conditions. It is an extension of the work of Russ, Simonds, and Hunt (2002) and others (Boren & McPherson, 2018; De Souza & Olson, 2018). The participants for this study were students enrolled in eight class sections of Music Appreciation at a large Mid-Atlantic community college. The same male guest lecturer expressed either a homosexual or heterosexual identity by mentioning his husband or wife by name during each otherwise identical lecture. Participants were then asked to complete McCroskey and Teven’s (1999) Source Credibility Measure to evaluate the lecturer on the credibility domains of competence, character, and caring. Data showed that participants as a collective did not provide significantly different ratings on any dimension of credibility nor for perceptions of learning for the gay or straight instructor; however, additional analysis revealed deeper complexity with regard to participant beliefs. Specifically, younger participants provided higher ratings in the straight instructor condition and African American participants provided lower ratings in the gay instructor condition. Open-ended prompts and interview data largely supported the statistical findings; however, they also revealed the presence of some discomfort with gay instructors and an eagerness to support a marginalized instructor. Quantitized open-ended and interview response data also showed that participants in the straight lecturer condition may have attended more to competence while participants in the gay lecturer condition may have attended more to positive character and caring traits. Implications of these results are discussed as they pertain to student course evaluations and teaching demonstrations for gay instructors

A Re-examination of Question Classification

Proceedings of the 16th Nordic Conference of Computational Linguistics NODALIDA-2007. Editors: Joakim Nivre, Heiki-Jaan Kaalep, Kadri Muischnek and Mare Koit. University of Tartu, Tartu, 2007. ISBN 978-9985-4-0513-0 (online) ISBN 978-9985-4-0514-7 (CD-ROM) pp. 394-397

Portfolio managers’ attitudes towards policy regulations of environmental reporting

Attitudes towards policy regulations of environmental reporting were examined in a survey of 15 portfolio managers of stock funds lacking an explicit environmental strategy. The managers’ evaluated three regulative measures. They were most positive toward requirements for companies to report their environmental impacts in a standardized way, a measure that also was perceived to have the largest impact on social responsible investment. They were less positive toward a requirement for the funds to display in which way they themselves take environmental criteria into account in their investments. They were least positive to announce the proportion of companies in their portfolios that in a standardized way reports environmental performance.Socially; Responsible; Investments

Minoische Rhyta

Detta examensarbete har genomförts vid Institutionen för produktionsekonomi på Linköpings tekniska högskola. Uppdragsgivare har varit Svenskt Näringsliv och arbetet har utförts på Södersjukhuset i Stockholm. Syftet med arbetet har varit att kartlägga flödet av patienter med sökorsak höft genom sjukhusets akutmottagning och ortopediska verksamhet, för att därefter analysera detta och föreslå åtgärder som kan minska väntetider och öka genomflödet. På akutmottagningen har tre aktiviteter visat sig vara viktigare än de övriga, nämligen läkarundersökning, röntgen och inläggning på vårdplats. Anledningen till detta är att väntan till de aktiviteterna utgör cirka två tredjedelar av en patients tid på akutmottagningen. Därför har åtgärderna på akutmottagningen syftat till att reducera dessa väntetider och mildra dess konsekvenser. Ett led i detta är att akutmottagningen anpassar antalet läkare bättre efter de varierande behoven över dygnet. Röntgenavdelningen bör kontinuerligt utvärdera behoven från akutmottagningen för att på så sätt balansera sin kapacitet. Patienter som är färdiga på akutmottagningen placeras i en separat lokal under tiden de väntar på vårdplats. Inom den ortopediska verksamheten syftar åtgärdsförslagen till en förändrad hantering av resurser och ett bättre utnyttjande av desamma. De två resurser som arbetet koncentrerar sig kring är vårdplatser och operation, och avvägningen om dessa bör vara gemensamma eller dedicerade mellan elektiva och akuta patienter. Det betydande antalet operationer som drabbas av störningar, och därför ej kan genomföras, talar för en uppdelning av operationsresurser mellan akuta och elektiva patienter. Däremot bör vårdplatserna vara gemensamma eftersom de elektiva patienterna kan jämna ut den totala efterfrågan på vårdplatser. Genom att dessutom se över utskrivningsrutinerna från vårdavdelningar kan flödet förbättras ytterligare. Åtgärder som föreslagits för att åstadkomma detta är tidig planering av utskrivningar, utskrivningskoordinator och att inrätta en lokal i väntan på hemfärd

Developing new business strategies in a changing TV-industry

Problem Definition The TV landscape is changing, with technological progress the industry is moving to become a more personalised experience, where the consumer can choose what to watch and when. The entrance of on-demand video services and piracy are rewriting the way people consume their favourite series and movies, which opens up a new market with new opportunities. This new market is one where the traditional distributors might not have the natural advantages one might assume, and new players can enter the TV market. This new on-demand landscape enables the content owners to directly deliver their content to the end-consumer. However these content owners might not have the technical expertise to do so and a technical partner will be needed, like ATC, the company used for the case study for the thesis. One of the major problems in the video content market is that one content owner might not fill the full need of one consumer, who would prefer to gain access to the video content of multiple content owners. Purpose The purpose of the thesis is to describe and analyse the TV media industry and to identify new business concepts for a technical provider of OTT-video service. 2 Methodology The thesis has a descriptive goal as well as a goal to identify new business ideas. Therefore the data collected is of a qualitative nature. The primary data comes from interviews with stakeholders as well as a questionnaire conducted by potential customers. A lot of secondary data has been collected through industry reports and news papers. Conclusion Today the TV-industry, especially the online one, operate on an “allagainst- all” system, which is holding back the full potential of OTT-video. The industry will in the future be more heavily impacted by the customer, who will gain a stronger role in the value chain. To gain a stronger position for a technical provider and to ensure long term growth it is preferable to bundle different content owners. This will reduce churn rate and increase the revenue per user. Create equal partnerships between content owners, convince them that holding hands with competitors will help them beat their true competitors who are the substitutes like, piracy. The technical provider should create a neutral platform where content owners can add content, easily and quickly after release. In this platform the content owners should be given the possibility to tag their content with their brand

Social Influence in Stockmarkets: A Conceptual Analysis of Social Influence Processes in Stock Markets

This paper focuses on the role of social factors for booms-bubbles-busts cycles in stock markets. It is argued that indirect and direct social influences are important contributors by reinforcing stock investors’ cognitive biases exaggerated by affective influences. A review of herding research primarily undertaken by financial economists is followed by a demonstration that psychological theories of direct social influence (imitation) have bearings on the understanding of the herding phenomenon in stock markets. How to continue this research with relevance for regulations of stock markets is discussed.Social influence; stock investments; conceptual analysis

Revisiting the Users Award Programme from a Value Sensitive Design Perspective

The goal of the UsersAward (UA) programme is to develop and maintain a strategy for enhancing the quality of workplace software through on-going user-driven quality assessment. Key activities are development of sets of quality criteria, as the USER CERTIFIED 2002 and 2006 instruments, and performing large domain specific user satisfaction surveys building on these quality criteria. In 2005 we performed a first analysis of the values that inform the criteria and procedure making up the 2002 instrument, using the Value Sensitive Design methodology. This paper is a follow-up of that study. We report on new types of stakeholders having engaged with the UA programme and reflect on how the conceptual considerations and explicit values of the programme have shifted as a consequence.

An energy-dependent, transient peak in the minute range decay of luminescence, present in CO2-accumulating cells of Scenedesmus obliquus

AbstractPhotosynthetic O2 evolution in the green alga, Scenedesmus obliquus, was shown to be more sensitive to the uncoupler FCCP when assayed in a low Ci medium than in a high Ci medium, indicating the action of an energy-dependent mechanism for Ci uptake. Low Ci adapted algae exhibited characteristic luminescence decay kinetics with a transient peak 20–60 s after excitation. This peak was abolished by addition of FCCP and HCO−3. The effect caused by HCO−3 was partially reversed by methyl viologen. In view of the results obtained, a model is presented in order to discuss the origin of the transient luminescence peak