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Online learning is developing rapidly in higher education. As a result, in the Initial Teacher Education Division at The University of Northampton, UK, academics have experimented with methods to embed blogs and online communities into courses to enhance learning for staff and students. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This paper critically analyses the approach used to examine media-rich multimodal content that was shared through these tools.

The paper models how blogs and communities have enhanced interdisciplinary subject teaching, staff development and student engagement. This is achieved by sharing case studies from the courses which model the strengths and limitations of practices adopted.

Focused discussion demonstrates how reflexivity, communities of practice and experimentation with technological teaching strategies fuel the learning that occurred.

The emerging material flows of recycled goods have effects on roles, responsibilities and positions of a range of industrial actors, but also on the consumer as a part of the industrial recycling process. The purpose of the paper is to discuss the changing role and position of the final‐product customer, the consumer, as recycling is introduced into the supply chain.

This is a conceptual paper, building on theory and concepts from literature on marketing channels, industrial actors and material flows. Those concepts were developed basically for traditional forward material flows, while recycling complicates their application and further development.

Through recycling the consumer is given a new role; as a supplier, however, not as a seller in traditional terms. This new nature of its role complicates the conception of the consumer's position, vis‐à‐vis the recycler. It also addresses the consumer seen as an economic entity vis‐à‐vis other actors.

Including recycling in the concept of material flow structures and the consumer as an actor in industrial processes becomes more and more vital; both for theory development where this is still novel, and for practice, as the mechanisms of recycling and consumer behaviour need to be better described and understood for both industry and authorities.

The purpose of this paper is to develop the value concept for recycling contexts.

The paper is a conceptual discussion supported by empirical illustrations of value development for recycled paper and electric and electronics products.

Demonstrates the fundamental effects of applying the economic value concept for recycling. Suggests that value can be seen as negative and decreasing, besides positive and increasing. The end customer actually and voluntarily pays in both monetary terms and own work in order to help another actor further along the supply chain to exploit the value created.

Any supply chain analysis including recycling must also consider the consumption of value. Traditional models and concepts are based on the end customer as the endpoint. In striving for a societal development towards “closing the circles” this more holistic understanding of value development becomes crucial.

Recycling is traditionally seen as a cost‐adding activity, for firms and also for consumers in terms of direct and indirect costs and time consumption. As industrial firms are supposed to include recycling of their products in their total business offering (e.g. product stewardships), the value creation and consumption mechanisms regarding recycling need to be better understood.

The value concept has been widely researched in different settings, however the value development of products and material in supply chains including recycling has not been addressed. The inclusion of the end‐customer among industrial actors in a supply chain provides a new complexity, which this paper addresses.

A theater/drama perspective is used to gain insights into the participatory nature of service creation and to assess the relative importance of service elements across service scenarios.

Drama production principles are applied to situations where customers co‐create the service offering. Using a theater arts model, elements in service settings can be delineated into director, lead actor, set designer, scriptwriter, supporting cast member, and/or traditional audience roles. To understand the relative importance of the service provider, the customer, and other service encounter elements, three variations of a service setting (educational services) in which the consumer's participatory role moves from passive to proactive are compared.

As the service context became more participatory‐based, service provider roles significantly decreased in importance rankings while customer roles significantly increased, supporting the paper's hypotheses. The ranking of other service setting elements followed a similar pattern with greater importance being placed on elements as they became more central to the participatory experience.

The model is tested in only one service setting and the procedure for assigning theater roles to a service setting needs further refinement.

By merging theories from theater and services literature, a means of assessing the relative importance of service components across service scenarios is illustrated. Principles in theater arts provide the tactical detail needed to fit service creation elements into analogous roles in a drama setting. The model provides insights on the importance of service creation elements when transitioning from a spectator‐based to a participatory‐based service environment.

On April 2, 1987, IBM unveiled a series of long‐awaited new hardware and software products. The new computer line, dubbed the Personal Systems 30, 50, 60, and 80, seems destined to replace the XT and AT models that are the mainstay of the firm's current personal computer offerings. The numerous changes in hardware and software, while representing improvements on previous IBM technology, will require users purchasing additional computers to make difficult choices as to which of the two IBM architectures to adopt.

Life studies are a rich source for further research on the role of the Afro‐American woman in society. They are especially useful to gain a better understanding of the Afro‐American experience and to show the joys, sorrows, needs, and ideals of the Afro‐American woman as she struggles from day to day.

This paper reports on the dissemination strategies of researchers in the MAFF food acceptability and choice programme, and contrasts these with the problems faced by practitioners in gaining access to relevant health‐related research findings. The paper proposes solutions, one of which is to publish research findings in the form of short summaries, more easily accessible by practitioners.