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The purpose of this study is to develop a practical method for training students how to conduct statistical analysis and do a course project in design of experiments (DOEs) course through the Web-based virtual catapult simulation.

A step-by-step sequential DOE process for investigating the effects of controllable factors on quality characteristic responses was presented as a guideline for conducting a DOE course project. Each team was assigned to create an innovative teaching material and work on the term report by following the recommended guidelines for designing experiments through the Web-based virtual catapult simulation. Hypothesis was defined to test whether doing a course project based on this approach would impact students’ learning outcome.

The Web-based virtual material was an alternative technique for interactive teaching that could improve students’ understanding and achievement in DOE course projects. There was a significant difference in student learning and understanding before and after doing on the course project through the Web-based virtual catapult simulation. The students had improved communication and teamwork skills after following the recommended procedure for practicing DOEs.

Most students could effectively conduct designing experiments, carry out designed experiments, analyze data and gain valuable teamwork experience. After learning the DOE approach based on the catapult simulation, they enjoyed working on their course projects deploying to the innovative toys and other real-life situations with real measurements.

The use of Web-based virtual material, including catapult simulation, was an alternative technique for interactive DOE teaching to improve the students’ understanding and achievement in DOE course projects.

Given the persistent receptive skills challenges faced by language learners and the numerous merits of using technologically-enhanced learning in the form of mobile-assisted language learning in language teaching, this study decides to incorporate a context-analysis-practice-exploration lesson-planning framework with mobile learning to improve the receptive skills of learners. This step is necessary on the recommendation by scholarly research that while implementing technology, teacher training, digital literacy and expertise, incorporating good teaching practices and lesson planning frameworks may assist in yielding positive results.

This study decides to utilize a mixed-method research design through an experimental approach to elicit information from 90 EFL students concerning the effectiveness of incorporating the context-analysis-practice-exploration framework in a mobile-leaning mode instructional delivery to improve their reading and listening skills.

After collecting and analyzing data, the study found that while the participants perceived enhanced-mobile learning to make lessons enjoyable, integrating this framework and m-learning improved their reading skills. This study used notable findings to make pedagogical conclusions on the objective of this study.

This study contributes through empirical evidence on the effectiveness of incorporating mobile learning and a responsive lesson planning framework towards improving English as a foreign language learners' learning outcome. Besides, this study is the first to probe and unpack the effectiveness of a responsive lesson-planning framework in language education.

Even though it has already been 25 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the regaining of independence for the Republic of Latvia, teacher education faces various and specific problems brought forth by the experience behind the ‘iron curtain’, spanning five decades. Ever since regaining its independence, Latvia has implemented ambitious education reforms. A new education reform has been launched in Latvia, which start to implement the competency approach in general education by 2018. A vital aspect of this reform is teacher education. In preparing teachers, universities have an extra task – to promote competency of the future teachers to implement the competency approach in schools, in a student-centred study process. The organisation process must change during the university study process in order to accommodate that the future teachers acquire actual competencies by using modern technologies and modern learning strategies, thus later promoting active involvement of students in the construction of their competencies.

This study carried out a survey of 170 students of the teacher education programme at the University of Latvia and revealed problem areas that should be changed in the teacher education process to ensure that the future teachers are able to implement the competency approach in schools. IBM SPSS Statistics 22 was used to analyse data. The research objective was to learn student-teachers’ ability to implement competency approach in their pedagogical work.

International students, who have a non-English speaking background (NESB), encounter many difficulties, in comparison to their local fellows of an English-speaking country. Literature demonstrates that leveraging various relational perspectives in a multicultural teaching environment has favourable implications to manage the NESB international students’ academic experience. Based on the observation and introspection approaches and a relevant literature review in relationship management, an ethnographic analysis is conducted to realise how such relational perspectives can be nurtured, in a way that the NESB international students expect and accept in a foreign country.

A literature review in relationship management and an ethnographic analysis based on observation and introspection methods was conducted.

Findings show that universities could assist the NESB international students by designing, delivering and monitoring innovative teaching and learning approaches and taking care of the associated academic and non-academic issues of the students, while leveraging the social, psychological and academic relational perspective(s).

Leveraging relational perspectives offers global implications. The implications of relational perspectives can be used from any setting. However, the relational appeal should be focused on the presented circumstances of a targeted setting only (e.g. the issues of a particular multicultural classroom).

This study aims to examine the development of a social enterprise in China’s tourism industry by analyzing the coevolution of the social entrepreneur and the social system.

Purposeful sampling was used to select 1kg.org as a single-case study. Semistructured in-depth interviews of three informants were conducted to obtain organization-specific insights. Interview data were analyzed following structuration theory. Secondary data and interviews of other social entrepreneurs and experts were used to support the findings. Research findings were validated using triangulation and member-checking methods.

Because of the institutional environment, most nonprofit organizations in China do not have resource independence and clear legal identity. Meanwhile, social enterprise has emerged as a new organizational form with the objective of creating social value through profitable business operations.

Social enterprise is still in its infancy in China, particularly in the tourism field. This study reveals an innovative and sustainable model for nonprofit organizations in China facing institutional challenges and competitive funding environments. It provides recommendations to policymakers for improving mechanisms to increase social services through social enterprises.

This study proposes a new conceptual framework for studying social entrepreneurship by adapting structuration theory to address contemporary social and business issues.

This paper aims to report a case history delivered to MBA students that developed their understanding of corruption and also enhanced their ability to be able to contribute to the anti-curriculum agenda. This case history method selected was innovative, as it was constructed from multi-disciplinary archival sources. The case focus was the egregious affinity fraud of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities (BLMIS), with court documents taken from “United States V. Bernard L. Madoff And Related Cases USAO-SDNY”, including court sentencing records, victim impact statements and the defendant’s “Plea Allocution”. The case study aimed to enhance students’ ability and inclination to recognise and oppose corrupt practices. The longer-term ambition of the case was to contribute to developing the students’ moral awareness, character and facility for self-reflection, in terms of responding to corruption. The case study exercise also addressed rising societal expectations for more robust responses to corruption, in terms of illustrating how business school pedagogy can be expanded to emphasise the centrality of ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR) to economic life. The case history was analysed within Carroll’s CSR pyramid and also with themes derived from the developing area of behavioural ethics, including a deontological, justice for its own sake and focus.

This research used the qualitative case method (Stake, 2000; Yin, 2004, 2010, 2011) to investigate lived experience from the viewpoint of those being studied and to provide the case history “experience”, using an analytical lens developed from Carroll’s CSR pyramid (1991) and from behavioural ethics research. Furthermore, following Chell’s recommendation, the case history of the BLMIS fraud was chosen – “[…] for analytical purposes to produce insight into the phenomena in question” (2008). The case was constructed from archival sources, including court records of the sentencing of Bernie Madoff.

The findings of the research are that students gained knowledge and understanding of the nature and practice of corruption, as well as developing their understanding of the anti-corruption agenda. The case also facilitated students to develop their moral awareness, character and facility for self-reflection with reference to corruption. In sum, the findings are that case histories, using archival sources, in this instance taken from the court records, have the potential to enhance teaching and learning in business ethics and responsible management education.

A limitation of this research is that it is reporting on one instance of a classroom delivery of the case study. In consequence, a recommendation for future research is for CSR and ethics focussed educationalist to conduct similar case study teaching to add to and complement the conclusions reached in this paper.

This paper is original in detailing and reflecting on a case history teaching example of global corruption. This case history teaching method was innovative, as it was constructed from archival sources taken from court records to include victim impact statements and the defendant’s “Plea Allocution”.

This chapter aims to contribute to research on standards and regulation in education, taking as a point of departure three sets of interrelated policies, core to the globalised educational agenda: policies on competencies and skills, school autonomy and performance-based accountability, representing a new governmental logic founded on the values of efficiency, quality, competitiveness and outcomes. The chapter has a double purpose: first, to make a theoretical contribution to the literature interrogating the new modes of governing schools and curricular knowledge. It does this, by explicating the relationship between the regulative dimension of global policy discourses, embodying the principle of performativity, and the discourses regulating pedagogic practices in local sites, where policies are enacted. Second, to present aspects of a study carried out in the Greek education context, in which policies towards a post-bureaucratic administration regime (school autonomy, national testing, accountability mechanisms) have failed to be institutionalised. Focusing on the Modern Greek Language curriculum and its enactments in demanding school settings, the study illustrates how discourses on inclusion, diffused within the educational field and invading the school space, exert strong control over teachers' instructional practices. It is argued that developments of Bernstein's theory of knowledge pedagogisation provide a language to describe the complex ways in which regulative discourses operate in global times, affecting the recontextualisations of curricular policies. The theory thus contributes to the literature on the enactments of globalised education policies and helps explain the diversity of national and institutional responses to such policies.

The paper explores the rapidly changing environment affecting universities and their research communities. It sets out to explore the effect of university corporatisation on research and teaching, and aims to identify likely coping strategies for researchers. The role of AAAJ in supporting research in this turbulent environment is then considered.

The paper employs a literature‐based analysis, critique and argument. The paper's scope includes the teaching and research by academic scholars in a corporate university environment.

Universities and their research are increasingly becoming revenue‐seeking, market driven corporatised university tools. Researchers are increasingly subject to pressures to accept higher workloads, pursue aggressive revenue targets, and to conduct and publish research that fits management imposed key performance indicators. This leads to a packaging and commodification of research with a short term, status‐seeking and fund‐raising emphasis.

Scholars need innovative but disciplined approaches to coping with such pressures in order to maintain pursuit of path‐breaking and significant additions to knowledge.

Personal values and commitment by individual scholars, as well as scholarly networks and support mechanisms will be the long‐term key to future research of value to the community.

The paper alerts researchers to the impact on their work on current institutional, economic and political forces surrounding universities, and highlights the consequent corporatisation and commercialisation of universities. It offers a realistic assessment of the current research environment and reinforces the need for individual researcher reassessments and strategies.

This case and its companion, UVA-F-1560, were awarded the 2012 Wachovia Award for Excellence in Teaching Materials - Innovative Case. In November 2006, Alec Berg, a successful hedge fund manager, must decide whether to invest in the initial public offering (IPO) of the Hertz Corporation. The IPO followed a leveraged buyout (LBO) of Hertz that was completed in December 2005 by three prominent private equity firms that had combined to purchase Hertz from the Ford Motor Company for $14.9 billion. The LBO sponsors had borrowed an additional $1 billion on top of the buyout financing to pay themselves a special dividend in June 2006. This loan would be repaid with the IPO proceeds and any remaining proceeds from the IPO would go to the sponsors. The IPO generated widespread criticism with respect to the speed with which the IPO was conducted and the payment of special dividends. In the face of this criticism, the demand for the Hertz IPO weakened, and the offer price was reduced from the initial file price range of $16–$18 to just $15. Berg must assess whether at $15 per share, Hertz offers an attractive investment for this fund. The case provides the necessary information for students to analyze the sponsors' returns on their investment in Hertz and the attractiveness of the $15 offer price to public shareholders. The case also offers an opportunity for students to discuss the controversy surrounding the payment of special dividends and the claim that private equity sponsors invest with a long-term perspective that creates value for the company.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the research trends in the field of open and distance learning (ODL) as reflected in journal articles.

It compares research articles published in 2005 and 2015. Content analysis was conducted on a total of 288 research articles published in seven peer-reviewed journals on ODL. The study covers research areas and keywords, research methodology and participant types, and author collaboration.

The results show that macro-level research on areas such as globalization and cultural aspects of ODL remain relatively scarce, and international collaboration appear uncommon in both 2005 and 2015. However, there was an increasing amount of international collaboration in developing macro-level research. Empirical research studies, especially those using quantitative methods, have become the dominant methodology. The data sources have also been broadened. Several new keywords which did not exist or were rarely used (e.g. massive open online courses) have become common in 2015.

The analysis offers insights for researchers into how they can develop their research effectively in the field and enhance the chances of their research outputs being accepted. Recommendations are also made for ODL researchers on the types of research that tend to be accepted for publication and will have a high potential impact in the future.