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This article presents lessons from social experiments in the US over 30 years testing employment and training, welfare reform and social service programmes and systems. It discusses the challenges in implementing a random assignment study and strategies to overcome them, and also sets out lessons for ensuring that an experiment informs and affects policy. In laying out the ingredients for success, the article argues that creative and flexible research design skills are essential, but that just as important in a complex, real‐world context are operational and political skills, applied both to marketing the experiment in the first place and to helping interpret and promote its findings down the line.

The purpose of this study was to explore local and international business students' perceptions of their intercultural group work experience as a mechanism for developing intercultural competence and group work skills.

Using qualitative interviews, the group work experiences of 11 final-year undergraduate local and international students in a business program in a large Australian university were analysed.

The findings suggest that international and local students working together on group assignments create social and academic situations that result in “at best” limited positive intercultural learning and relationships. Differences in expectations, motivations, language fluency, trust and relationship issues were evident when students collaborated on group assignments. Thus, it appears that group assignments are potentially flawed mechanisms for delivering the goals of intercultural competence and group work skills in business students.

Although this exploratory study is limited in scope, the research has implications for pedagogical strategies, in particular, the use and design of group assignments and the preparation of students for working on group tasks in intercultural groups. It also has implications for developing effective learning mechanisms that lead to improved student intercultural competence, greater socio-cultural engagement and the academic success of international and local business students, as well as positive learning experiences for all.

The findings of this study are likely to be a useful resource for university staff considering the use of group work assignments for the development of intercultural understanding and competence and collaborative skills.

This paper reports a study conducted longitudinally to investigate group communication media choice and the use of a web‐based learning tool, as well as other types of communication media, such as e‐mail, telephone, and face‐to‐face, for communication and collaboration to complete given tasks.

This study was designed following the case study research methodology and design of Yin. Longitudinal observation was made on groups in their naturalistic research setting. Twenty‐three groups of four or five students working on five similar tasks were selected as the unit of analysis.

The findings showed that groups' choice‐making process of communication media evolved over a period of time. A pattern of group communication emerged, namely face‐to‐face, virtual, and mixed (the use of both face‐to‐face and virtual communication). The three group communication categories were significantly different in performance, with the mixed category performing the highest in terms of grade.

The limitations of this study are related to the case study methodology and the subjectivity of some interpretations.

The findings should assist in the design of both on‐campus and distance learning course modules to facilitate learning through group project or assignment. The findings should also assist the design and implementation of the e‐learning systems and tools that are acceptable to users.

The study provides insight into how such ICT applications can be made useful and effective, and why, when given the freedom to choose, the use of a web‐based tool is the least attempted for communication.

This paper aims to introduce matching in propensity score analysis (PSA) as an alternative statistical approach for researchers looking to make causal inferences using intact groups.

An illustrative example demonstrated the varying results of analysis of variance, analysis of covariance and PSA on a heuristic data set. The three approaches were compared by results and violations of statistical assumptions.

Through the illustrative example, it is demonstrated how different statistical approaches can produce varied results. Only PSA mitigated pre-existing group differences without violating the assumption of independence.

This paper attempts to answer calls in the literature for more robust statistical methodologies to better inform human resource development practice and theory.

As US business organizations continue to use more expatriates in international locations, the reasons for high failure rates of these assignments need to be examined. Selection and training may be the key inadequacies. Intercultural anxiety plays an important role in productive expatriate assignments. By determining personnel with lower intercultural anxiety levels, successful assignment completions should increase. Examines attributional complexity, stereotyping, ethnocentrism and acquaintance with host‐country nationals to determine the relationship of these variables to reduced intercultural anxiety. A group considering assignments to Japan, consisting of business and education executives and their families, were surveyed before and after an intensive study visit. Findings indicate that stereotyping and ethnocentrism have a negative association with decreased intercultural anxiety. Attributional complexity and acquaintances have a positive effect on reduced anxiety levels. Suggestions for organizations making expatriate selection decisions include screening potential candidates for these traits. Also provides areas for further research.

This paper aims to present recently published resources on library instruction and information literacy, providing an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering various library types, study populations and research contexts.

This paper introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations, reports and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2019.

The paper provides a brief description of all 370 sources and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians, researchers and anyone interested as a quick and comprehensive reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

In this paper we present an account of an undergraduate team‐based assignment designed to facilitate, exhibit and record team‐working skills in an e‐mediated environment. By linking the student feedback received to Hofstede’s classic model of cultural dimensions we aim to show the assignment’s suitability in revealing the student’s multi‐cultural context. In addition to anecdotal evidence we also present a quantitative analysis that shows that the desired learning outcomes have been met. In a further discussion we show how the qualitative data collected can be used to quantitatively determine a cultural fingerprint of the groups that is useful to predict the team’s suitability for a given task in a real‐world project.

The senior seminar is a seminar that places emphasis on small problem‐solving groups as an effective approach to executive development. It concentrates on combining management knowledge and skill development in an intense two‐week experience. Small groups have been a part of management development programmes for some time but they are not always used effectively or appropriately. Using the change process of unfreezing, changing and refreezing as a frame of reference, it is demonstrated how small groups play an important role in climate building for peer learning, integration of content and process, and providing for practice in using new skills. Guidelines are offered for applying and adapting the senior seminar approach.

This paper aims to present results of a study which examined students’ collaborative information behavior (CIB) in comparison with behavioral patterns illustrated in Wilson’s (1996) model of information behavior.

A total of six groups of undergraduate students; four from Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA) and two from Ardhi University (ARU) were purposively selected. Data were collected using semi participant observation, critical incident interviews and focus group discussion methods.

Results indicate that students’ CIB is mainly shaped by collaborative learning environment, learning tasks objectives and requirements. Despite its wider applicability in different domains and contexts, Wilson’s (1996) model is partially appropriate in modeling students’ group-based learning information behavioral activities. Person(s) in context and active and passive information seeking are aspects of the model which are observed to be relevant in students’ CIB.

The study has implications on teaching and learning practices in higher learning institutions.

The study provides new insights on how students exhibit different information behavioral patterns during collaborative learning. The study fills a gap on how solitary models of information behavior can be used to model students’ information behavior in team-based learning.

This paper advocates for and describes the use of provocative statements as a leadership assignment to foster critical thinking. Critical thinking is an essential competency for leaders who must analyze issues and convince others of their point of view as they compete for scarce internal resources. The provocative statement assignment incorporates common elements from long-established practices of Socratic questioning, debate, argumentation analysis, and rhetoric. It challenges students to develop and advocate their point of view on the controversial issues of their field. Preliminary findings of student perceptions of the assignment in a graduate leadership class are presented which suggest the assignment can be a powerful learning tool.