Search results

This chapter compares student and facilitator perceptions of what supports learning in teams in online environments. The authors (one Italian and one British) draw on their experiences facilitating modules in a UK-based online international professional doctorate of Higher Education with students from across the globe, as well as a two-year research project on developing best practice in supporting online international graduate students to engage in virtual learning teams. The theories underpinning the educational use of learning teams are those of constructivism and social learning, all of which suggest a facilitative role for the tutor. However, there is disagreement about what this looks like and what it means for student autonomy and facilitator presence. Many students expect greater tutor involvement, especially when teams are not functioning at an optimal level. The chapter offers both an in-depth discussion of the literature that looks at student and tutor perspectives on virtual team learning,and a summary of findings from a mixed methods research project on students’ needs and tutors’ practice while working in dispersed learning teams. Finally, the chapter draws out implications for the development of e-pedagogy to support learning and engage international learners in online contexts at the graduate level.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between disclosure quality, measured by the readability of the board of directors’ report and cost of capital (CoC), and, second, attempt to investigate the moderating effect of earnings quality on the relationship between readability and CoC.

The sample includes the Egyptian EGX 100 companies, listed from 2013 to 2015, and the study runs two ordinary least square models to test the two main hypotheses. The study applies the LIX formula to calculate the readability level of board of director’ reports and uses the weighted average CoC to calculate CoC. Moreover, the performance-adjusted modified Jones model is used to measure earnings quality.

The results indicate that in the Egyptian context the readability of board of director’ reports does not impact on CoC. In addition, after moderating by earnings quality, there is a significant association between readability and CoC. The interaction between earnings quality and readability has a significant impact on CoC. This finding is consistent with the notion that, conditional on earnings quality, the benefits of easy writing style in the annual reports, prepared by the company’s managers, are reflected in the reduction of CoC.

Based on the limited literature relating to developing countries’ capital markets, this study contributes to the accounting literature by providing empirical evidence on the conditional effect of earnings quality and of the consequences of linguistics style in the emerging market.