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21 – 30 of over 7000Bonnie McBain, Liam Phelan, Anna Ferguson, Paul Brown, Valerie Brown, Iain Hay, Richard Horsfield, Ros Taplin and Daniella Tilbury
The aim of this paper is to outline the collaborative approach used to craft national learning standards for tertiary programs in the field of environment and sustainability in…
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this paper is to outline the collaborative approach used to craft national learning standards for tertiary programs in the field of environment and sustainability in Australia. The field of environment and sustainability is broad and constituted by diverse stakeholders. As such, articulating a common set of learning standards presents challenges.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors developed and used a staged collaborative curriculum design methodology to engage more than 250 stakeholders in tertiary environmental education, including discipline scholars, students, professional associations and employers and other environmental educators. The approach was adaptive, to ensure underrepresented stakeholders’ perspectives were welcomed and recognised. The project was commissioned by the Australian Council of Environmental Deans and Directors (ACEDD) and funded by the Federal Government’s Office for Learning and Teaching.
Findings
The collaborative approach developed and used for this work facilitated an inclusive process that valued diversity of perspectives, rather than marginalise diversity in favour of a perspective representing a minimum level of agreement. This is reflected in the standards themselves, and is evidenced by participant feedback, piloting of the standards and their subsequent application at multiple universities. Achieving this required careful planning and facilitation, to ensure a democratisation of the stakeholder consultation process, and to build consensus in support of the standards. Endorsement by ACEDD formalised the standards’ status.
Originality/value
Collaborative curriculum design offered the opportunity to foster a shared sense of common purpose amongst diverse environmental education stakeholders. This approach to curriculum design is intensive and generative but uncommon and may be usefully adapted and applied in other contexts. The authors note one subsequent instance where the approach has been further developed and applied in transforming a generalist science program, suggesting the methodology used in this case may be applied across other contexts, albeit with appropriate adjustments: the authors offer it here in the spirit of supporting others in their own complex curriculum design challenges.
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A.J. George and Julie-Anne Tarr
To increase university–industry collaboration and research commercialisation, the Australian government recently introduced the Intellectual Property (IP) Framework, a set of…
Abstract
Purpose
To increase university–industry collaboration and research commercialisation, the Australian government recently introduced the Intellectual Property (IP) Framework, a set of online standard contracts. This follows a predecessor standard contract initiative, the IP Toolkit, which has not previously been evaluated. This paper aims to examine standard contracting in the innovation sector, tracing the policymaking behind the IP Toolkit using the lens of Macneil’s relational contract theory, to assess prospects of success for the new IP Framework, and similar initiatives in other jurisdictions.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a disciplined-configurative case study, drawing on qualitative secondary data analysis and applying Macneil’s relational contracting theory to guide case construction and generate hypotheses around likely success of standard contracting initiatives (stakeholder sentiment, stakeholder adoption). Within-case analysis process-traces development of the IP Toolkit, to discover what the policymakers wanted, knew and computed – and to detail observable implications Macneil’s theory predicts. Its themes are triangulated with multiple sources.
Findings
The case study, via Macneil’s theory, confirms the first hypothesis (resistant stakeholder sentiment) and partly validates the second hypothesis (low levels of adoption), demonstrating limited suitability of standard contracting in the dynamic and highly uncertain space of university–industry collaboration.
Research limitations/implications
The study provides insights into the limited role that standard contracts can play in improving national collaborative research and development performance.
Originality/value
This is a novel theory-driven case study triangulated with previously unpublished data on the IP Toolkit’s website usage, and data from recent consultations on the new IP Framework. It has broader implications for other jurisdictions considering adoption of the standard contract model.
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Melina Lesus and Andrea Vaughan
This study aims to explore how youth poets wrote in a community of practice and how their out-of-school poetry writing contributed toward developing disciplinary literacy.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore how youth poets wrote in a community of practice and how their out-of-school poetry writing contributed toward developing disciplinary literacy.
Design/methodology/approach
In this qualitative case study, the authors studied youth’s writing by drafting narrative field notes, collecting student writing and process drawings and interviewing participants.
Findings
The authors found that the poets in this study maintained ownership of their writing and engaged in writing processes in ways that reflected Behizadeh’s (2019) conception of authenticity as writing that connects both to students’ experiences, and to the purposes and audiences of their writing context.
Practical implications
This out-of-school context provides implications for how English Language Arts teachers can rethink what disciplinary literacy looks like in classroom writing instruction.
Originality/value
By maintaining ownership of their writing, the youth agentively positioned themselves not only as students accumulating disciplinary knowledge but also as participants in a community of practice.
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Susana Fonseca and Joana Lobo Fernandes
Providing higher education institutions (HEIs) with a tool for self-assessing their social responsibility (SR) that generates the information and knowledge necessary to a…
Abstract
Purpose
Providing higher education institutions (HEIs) with a tool for self-assessing their social responsibility (SR) that generates the information and knowledge necessary to a strategic approach to adopting the Green Paper recommendations about the SR of HEIs. Setting out the collaborative policy development process to construct the tool “Indicators of SR of HEIs” (ISRHEI).
Design/methodology/approach
After a literature review, including self-assessment (SA) tools and leading guidelines, a working group of 24 Portuguese HEIs was created to co-construct the ISRHEI tool, which was then subject to validation in a pilot study.
Findings
There are 34 indicators in the ISRHEI tool, structured by sequential levels according to the HEI alignment with SR (policies, procedures, practices and monitoring along a strategic continuum) hoping to achieve impacts on the organisational, educational, cognitive and social level.
Originality/value
This is an innovative and national policy development process for SR in Portugal. It gives insights into guiding documents, SA indicators for SR and the process of developing consensus on this topic amongst 24 HEIs in Portugal. The ISRHEI tool is tailored to the specific characteristics and level of development of HEIs.
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The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of multi‐drafting among college students according to demographic characteristics and measure its impact on students'…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of multi‐drafting among college students according to demographic characteristics and measure its impact on students' achievements.
Design/methodology/approach
The research was conducted in two stages. First, a preliminary research based on data from the Highlearn web‐based content learning environment, analyzing the correlations between the number of drafts submitted and the final grade per assignment. Second, a questionnaire based and designed to evaluate the influence of the demographic background of students on multi‐drafting traits. The variables influencing the utilization of multi‐drafting for a given assignment were examined using a 23‐item Likert scale questionnaire.
Findings
The results indicate that students tend to regard multi‐drafting as a positive usage of time; they appreciate it as an opportunity to improve their grades; and they value its advantage for fairness of grading. The research establishes the fact that marital status and gender influence students' attitudes toward multi‐drafting.
Practical implications
Web‐based content learning environments are becoming part of the academic learning environment. Thus, the prospect of shifting from summative to formative evaluation in order to enhance meaningful learning can be achieved through a number of teaching techniques, of which one of them is multi‐drafting. Understanding the variables influencing the way students utilize multi‐drafting will help incorporating it with a maximum benefit.
Originality/value
The paper's findings connect multi‐drafting teaching technique to a variety of variables which may hinder its implementation. These findings are of value to practitioners and researchers.
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Frederick R. Post and Rebecca J. Bennett
To speak of collective bargaining as a collaborative process seems a contradiction. Since 1935 when collective bargaining was institutional‐ized in the Wagner Act, the process has…
Abstract
To speak of collective bargaining as a collaborative process seems a contradiction. Since 1935 when collective bargaining was institutional‐ized in the Wagner Act, the process has assumed that the disputing par‐ties are enemies, competing for scarce resources with different objec‐tives. This article explains the implementation of a new theory of col‐lective bargaining which encourages truthfulness, candor, and the acknowledgement of shared goals and avoids the negative and self‐defeating power plays of the adversarial collective bargaining process. As a result of this process, grievances in the observed company declined from 40 per year under previous contracts, to 2 in 18 months under the current contract; anger and hostility have been nearly eliminated; and there is a real spirit of cooperation present in the plant.
The purpose of this paper is to discuss learning experiences, mutual benefits and possible drawbacks from collaborative writing and presentation of scientific papers at Bobcatsss…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to discuss learning experiences, mutual benefits and possible drawbacks from collaborative writing and presentation of scientific papers at Bobcatsss international library conferences.
Design/methodology/approach
A web‐based questionnaire was sent to participants who co‐authored and presented papers at the Bobcatsss 2012 conference. The results are measured against the viewpoints and experiences of five Norwegian students, who have collaborated with the author of this paper, at four Bobcatsss conferences, in 2006, 2009, 2010 and 2012.
Findings
Responses from the survey and the student interviews indicate that collaborative writing is a superior strategy for learning LIS subjects. None of the interviewees and few of the respondents had attended a writing course to improve their writing skills. Many had not read literature of the type: “How to write a scientific paper”.
Practical implications
The study may be useful for future LIS students who arrange Bobcatsss conferences and for those who plan to write and present a scientific paper. Contributors could benefit from a study that highlights the theoretical, didactic and practical problems in the field of collaborative writing.
Originality/value
While the data are exclusively from Bobcatsss, the findings may be more widely relevant. There are few studies on Bobcatsss, except for the annual reports. This paper explores the educational rewards, the complexity and difficulties of collaborative writing.
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Daniele Massa, Massimo Callegari and Cristina Cristalli
This paper aims to deal with the problem of programming robots in industrial contexts, where the need of easy programming is increasing, while robustness and safety remain…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to deal with the problem of programming robots in industrial contexts, where the need of easy programming is increasing, while robustness and safety remain fundamental aspects.
Design/methodology/approach
A novel approach of robot programming can be identified with the manual guidance that permits to the operator to freely move the robot through its task; the task can then be taught using Programming by Demonstration methods or simple reproduction.
Findings
In this work, the different ways to achieve manual guidance are discussed and an implementation using a force/torque sensor is provided. Experimental results and a use case are also presented.
Practical implications
The use case shows how this methodology can be used with an industrial robot. An implementation in industrial contexts should be adjusted accordingly to ISO safety standards as described in the paper.
Originality/value
This paper presents a complete state-of-the-art of the problem and shows a real practical use case where the approach presented could be used to speed up the teaching process.
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Abstract
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Maria Claudia Solarte Vasquez, Mait Rungi and Katrin Merike Nyman-Metcalf
This paper aims to report on signs of public awareness and empowerment among the general public that are presumed to determine the viability of the smart contracting (SC) approach…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to report on signs of public awareness and empowerment among the general public that are presumed to determine the viability of the smart contracting (SC) approach and identifies prevailing concerns regarding individual transactional experiences.
Design/methodology/approach
A mixed approach was followed to explore perceptions of self-regulation and transaction friendliness by using an interpretative multiple case study method and by presenting a descriptive summative analysis of the data.
Findings
On self-regulation, the study reveals spread awareness, empowerment, contractual competences and responsibility. Regarding transaction friendliness, subject matter influences transaction experiences the most, and trust and engagement are the most problematic factors. The findings support the viability of SC, endorsing the application of proactive perspectives in legal and managerial practice.
Research limitations/implications
The study confirms the foundational assumptions of SC, identifies key transactional issues that should be further addressed to improve the functionality of digital trade environments and contributes to the consolidation of the legal design research field on transaction usability.
Practical implications
The findings point to the viability of SC. Organizations and practitioners are given indications on transaction upgrade priorities and invited to adopt and help disseminate the proposal.
Social implications
The expansion of a collaborative transactional culture can reduce legal disputes, improving the legal environment of business and strengthening private governance regulatory models.
Originality/value
This is the first empirical study on the viability conditions of the SC-approach, identifying transactional usability testing and intervention priorities.
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