Search results

The purpose of this paper is to introduce narrative distance as a phenomenon that can help create transformative learning experiences (TLEs). Narrative distance is defined as the cognitive or emotional space afforded by indirect communication that invites listeners to make sense of content. In ways similar to a book, movie or play, narrative distance invites participants to draw conclusions for themselves (Craddock, 2002).

After examining how other fields have discussed concepts related to narrative distance and its affordances, this paper illustrates how this phenomenon can satisfy many of Wilson and Parrish’s (2011) key indicators for TLEs.

Six principles are offered for incorporating narrative distance into instructional design.

Instructional design has not explored indirect communication that is similar to narrative in any significant way.

This study aims to analyze to what extent distance education is feasible and efficient with the limited technological infrastructure in Egypt. The study answers this question from the perspective of households' preparedness level regarding possessing information and communication technologies (ICTs). In addition, it assesses whether the pattern of students' ICT ownership is influenced by disability- and socioeconomic-based inequality in education and whether the pattern of ICT ownership exacerbates such biases.

A three-stage probit model with double sample selection (PMDSS) was applied to estimate the factors likely to influence ICT possession, considering the selection process for school enrollment and education continuation. The authors utilized nationally representative data from the Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey 2018.

About 40% of students aged 12–25 did not have ICTs. Most socioeconomically poor households, particularly those living in Upper Egypt, were the least likely to obtain ICTs and rely on distance education. In addition, female students, particularly those with disabilities, had the lowest chance of benefitting from distance learning.

The persistent structural deprivation of school enrollment and educational progression has led to the positive selection of well-off children in education, which is extended to ICT possession and internet use. Without addressing these structural biases, the study suggests that distance education will likely exacerbate educational inequalities.

The study analyzed the extent to which Egyptian families were prepared in 2018 regarding ICT possessions for distance education for their children, particularly those with disabilities. Furthermore, it investigated whether access to distance learning was influenced by disability- and socioeconomic-based inequalities in education.

This paper evaluates the feasibility and benefits of a local food distribution system, which connects farmers and restaurant owners from a logistics perspective. This paper considers a platform to improve operations and investigates various schemes for delivering locally produced food to restaurants using a food hub.

To compare distribution scenarios and derive managerial implications, a simulation model has been developed and executed in Matlab 2019a©. The model evaluates various settings of business connections between farmers and restaurateurs.

Results of computational experiments highlight great potentials of such a system, particularly to reduce travel distances. To obtain these positive externalities, the local system requires specific attention during the design of logistical aspects and needs to be planned following a specific structure.

The developed simulation model can be used to improve understanding of related short food supply chains by analyzing specific cases where the main actors involved differ in terms of type, number, and location.

The paper analyzes the feasibility and the effects of a new distribution system that can connect supply chain actors directly. The analyses focus on logistics aspects, a topic that is often neglected in sustainable consumption research. Furthermore, the paper does not focus of a single case study but develops a customizable model to be used in various settings.

Interorganizational collaboration has been a major source of exploratory innovation. Despite much research, the authors’ understanding about how partner cultural distance is harnessed for exploratory innovation is limited. The authors’ conceptual framework aims to address this gap by explaining the social-psychological processes between perceived partner cultural distance and exploratory innovation.

Drawing on research in organizational learning and culture mixing, the authors propose a multilevel model with two parallel processes – cultural brokering and cultural defense. If managers are engaged in the former and are protected from the latter, then the partnership will produce more exploratory innovation. Cultural brokering is encouraged by prompting a learning mindset, while cultural defense is preempted by dampening social categorization across organizational boundaries.

Cultural brokering can be encouraged by building operational-level managers' (OLMs') collaborative strength through developing a learning orientation, allowing them delivery for exploration, cultivating mutual trust with partners. Cultural defense can be preempted by protecting OLMs from intergroup anxieties through providing organizational support to the OLMs, bridging social categorization faultlines and setting shared collaborative goals. Whether an alliance can unleash its potential depends on not just how cultural brokering is enabled but also how cultural defense is curtailed.

This paper takes a microfoundational approach and considers micro-level processes in a partnership. Furthermore, the model takes the operational managers' perspective and defines culture at the organizational level. All these differences allow us to provide a nuanced picture of how diverse partnerships can be harnessed for exploratory innovation through a few easily-implementable measures.

The authors argue that the mainstream scholarly discourse on hybridity and accounting is thus far primarily interested in the use and effects of accounting “in” hybrid organizations. Consequently, the literature has to a lesser extent explored how accounting mediates hybrid settings (while also being mediated), and the role of disentanglements in such processes. In hybrid settings, objects are difficult to define, and measures and tools difficult to agree upon. However, the literature on hybrid accounting is inconclusive and indicates that accounting can potentially both stabilize and de-stabilize relations in a hybrid setting. The authors address the research question of how accounting emerges and manifests itself in a process of entangling and disentangling in a heterogeneous emerging hybrid setting.

The paper is based on a longitudinal qualitative case study of the implementation of social investments, a public sector calculative framework based on the logic of measuring long term and social and economic impact of prevention. Methodologically, the study was guided by actor-network theory. In total, 18 observations and 48 interviews were conducted.

The observation the authors make in their case study is that much effort was spent on both keeping things apart and tying elements together. What the authors add to the literature is an illumination of how the interplay between entanglements and disentanglements facilitated the design idea of social investments to be enacted as multiple semi-integrated and purified hybridizations. The authors describe different translation points, each representing a specific hybridization where elements were added, recombined and disentangled. Still, the translation points were not completely compartmentalized, but rather semi-integrated where associations were facilitated through active mediation, likeness and productiveness for each other.

One limitation is the single case approach. A second limitation arises from the ANT approach to hybridity.

A practical implication of this paper is that in hybrid settings, the semi-integrated character may be interpreted as a strength because it allows the mobilization of heterogenous actors. However, this may also come at the cost of governability and raises further questions of managerial practices in hybrid settings.

The paper suggests the potentially productive role of disentanglements in allowing multiple hybridizations to evolve in hybrid accounting settings.

The paper suggests the potentially productive role of disentanglements in allowing multiple stabilized hybridizations to evolve in hybrid accounting settings.

This paper is a corpus-driven study of written electronic texts, particularly the “About Us” sections in the university websites of 41 members of the Asian Association of Open Universities (AAOU). This inquiry is important because it will provide an insight as to how AAOU members describe and portray themselves in the World Wide Web, a platform which is highly utilized in the field of distance education. This will also lead to the understanding of conventional knowledge among AAOU members during the period of study. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Guided by Swales’ (1990) seminal work on genre analysis, the researchers conducted a three-part genre analysis which involved identification and analysis of moves, keywords, and concordance lines.

Results of the keyword analysis were conducted using the AntConc application. Anthony (2017) found that the top 100 keywords with positive keyness exemplified inherent characteristics of open and distance learning institutions as well as characteristics common to higher education institutions and their thrusts. The analysis also found that the use of adjectives and verbs with positive denotations is common in the “About Us” sections. Concordance for several keywords related to the overarching theme of the AAOU 2017 Conference then revealed that the AAOU members are active in the discourse about accessibility, assessment, and quality, while there is not much discourse on openness, inclusivity, and justice. Meanwhile, subscribing to equality and equity could still be a point of discussion among the AAOU members as the concordance analysis revealed more discourse on equality than equity as a goal and principle. Overall, results of the genre analysis resonated with previous studies of the academic genre as the “About Us” sections are promotional in both authoritarian and inclusive ways.

The inquiry will provide the members of the AAOU with an overview of their common communicative purposes, overused or underused keywords, and their usage of these words which they may opt to work on in the future.

The purpose of this two-part research was to investigate the effect of remote learning on student progress in elementary education. Part one, presented in this paper, examined achievement differences between learners in a fully remote learning environment and those in a hybrid setting.

A quantitative, quasi-experimental study with factorial design was used to investigate group differences in student achievement between the different learning environments. Ex-post-facto data from standardized test scores were utilized to examine in which ways the learning environment may have affected learner progress in two distinct subject areas crucial to elementary education: English language (ELA) and math.

Findings revealed a significant difference between the two learning environments in both subject areas. While preexisting group differences, selection biases and testing inconsistencies could be effectively ruled out as potential causes for the observed differences, other factors such as developmental and environmental differences between the learning environments seemed to be influential. Therefore, the follow-on research aimed at further investigating and confirming the influence of such factors and will be presented in a Part 2 paper.

Knowledge of the observed differences in learning achievements between the different environments, as well as the factors likely causing them, may aid educators and school administrators in their decision processes when faced with difficult circumstances such as during the pandemic.

When the SARS-CoV-2 virus started to rapidly spread around the globe, educators across the world were looking for alternatives to classroom instruction. Remote learning became an essential tool. However, in contrast to e-learning in postsecondary education, for which an abundance of research has been conducted, relatively little is known about the efficacy of such approaches in elementary education. Lacking this type of information, it seems that educators and administrators are facing difficult decisions when trying to align the often conflicting demands of public health, local politics and parent pressure with what may be best for student learning.

The purpose of the study is to examine the relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic and international student mobility from an alternative perspective and to reveal descriptive findings.

This study follows qualitative research methodology. In accordance with the purpose of the study, the data were collected by the literature review and then it was analyzed by the descriptive analysis method. The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on international student mobility and the relationships between these variables are explained by tables and classifications.

According to the findings obtained, the restrictions in physical student mobility and shutdown are observed as the biggest challenges that occurred in higher education during the COVID-19. On a global scope, international student mobility has experienced a major break. Physical campus life is still on standby. Online higher education does not give any campus life as before. Students cannot benefit form city's or country's facilities when studying online at home country. The collaboration between university and business has been declined and this is even more discouraging for international students. The hybrid education model produced an intermediate solution in this period. On the other hand, the rise of online education has created new techniques for higher education. University students who cannot go abroad attend different countries lectures and education programs. But also a new challenge has come as the access of online platforms in under developing countries university students. Online education system also discussed in terms of creating inequality in higher education.

This study focused on student mobility and not focused about academic mobility.

It is seen that the traditional higher education system has been adapted into online distance higher education system since COVID-19 crises began globally. On the other side, it is observed that most of studies have focused the effect of COVID-19 on university students based on the transition to online education. When considering the effect of pandemic process on the mobility of international students and higher education, the authors can suggest policy makers to develop new higher education protocols and teaching models supporting key issues (economic, social, health, education and equalization) in the long-term. Higher education institutes have been able to produce creative and innovative solutions for both education and communication during the pandemic process.

University students who cannot go abroad attend different countries lectures and education programs. But also a new challenge has come as the access of online platforms in under developing countries university students. Online education system also discussed in terms of creating inequality in higher education.

This study provides a new perspective for international student mobility in the context of COVID-19 pandemic. This is an emerging issue for the literature. This study is original with its approach to the subject from a global perspective through reviewing the studies of different countries. This study points out key variables for determining the effect of COVID-19 on international student mobility for future studies. When employing quantitative research models, the current key variables can guide them.

This study aims to identify to what extent the economic factor effect is more salient in shaping inward foreign direct investment (IFDI) than are institutional factors in G-20 inflow patterns.

Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method was applied using the World Bank Governance and Development Indicators, followed by a panel data technique over the period 2005-2015 to estimate the connections between the different dimensions of economics, institutions and IFDI in the G-20.

Results showed that countries with better economic performance contrasting with the governance indicators are more effective at attracting IFDI. However, the correlation between FDI intensity and governance indicators has been found relatively weak, which may suggest a more controversial role of institutions as determinants of IFDI.

This quantitative approach uses a country-level set of variables; therefore, the authors suggest the development of more firm-level analysis of the impact of institutions. Also, the limitation of the TOPSIS method itself is based on heuristic assumptions.

The main findings point to a relatively low impact of institutions on IFDI. The authors suggest that the global financial crisis has changed the rationale of decision-making by multinational companies.

The originality of the present study was to apply a multi criteria decision-making technique on FDI’s analysis combined with institutional data.

The study aims to analyze the different types of risks related to the use of technology and determine their positive or negative influence on teachers' motivation and behavioral intention to use digital tools.

The research is based on survey data from 200 teachers in the Romanian preuniversity education system. The data analysis followed a four-step approach, using a partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) model for hypothesized relationships among research concepts and a PLS prediction-oriented segmentation (POS) procedure.

This study showed that increased risk awareness influences both motivation and, consequently, the intention to adopt digital tools in the preuniversity education system.

The scope of research remains constrained with regard to the examined population, considering the substantial number of teachers within the preuniversity education system. Another limit lies in the basic classification of identified risk types.

School managers should design a strategy to increase the level of motivation for integrating digital tools in the educational process.

Little scholarly attention has been devoted to investigating the risks associated with digitalization in the preuniversity education system. In addition, no prior research has been conducted to assess the influence of risk perception on people's motivation and intention to use digital tools in preuniversity education.