Search results

The purpose of this paper is to discover how many of the authors' own university students own internet-enabled mobile devices and how they use them. That information will be incorporated into the design of a user-centered library mobile web site.

SurveyMonkey was used to create a web based survey which was distributed through a stable URL hosted on the Hunter College Libraries' web site.

This study illustrates that Hunter College students are increasingly using their mobile devices for educational purposes. Students are reliant on these devices even when other internet-enabled devices such as laptops and desktops are available.

The principal tool used, SurveyMonkey, did not enable high level restrictions on potential participants. As a result, multiple demographic questions were used to establish a respondent profile.

The findings of this study provide a framework for the creation of a mobile survey to discover users' habits and preferences. The data collected may also give an indication of what users may desire in a mobile library web site. Further investigation is needed to explore the relationship between commuting and how students use their mobile devices.

This is the only study which provides data on the devices urban college student library users own, and how they utilize these devices.

The purpose of this paper is to examine a bold and ambitious scheme known as the North East transformation system (NETS). The principal aim of the NETS is the achievement of a step-change in the quality of health services delivered to people living in the North East region of England. The paper charts the origins of the NETS and its early journey before describing what happened to it when the UK coalition government published its proposals for unexpected major structural change in the NHS. This had a profound impact on the leadership and direction of the NETS and resulted in it taking a different direction from that intended.

The research design took the form of a mixed methods, longitudinal 3.5-year study aimed at exploring transformational change in terms of content, context, process and outcomes. The sample of study sites comprised 14 NHS trusts in the North East region chosen to provide geographical coverage of the area and to reflect the scale, scope and variety of the bodies that formed part of the NETS programme. The qualitative component of the research, which the paper draws upon, included 68 semi-structured interviews, observational studies and focus groups. Data analysis made use of both deductive and inductive frameworks. The deductive framework adopted was Pettigrew et al.’s “receptive contexts for change” and four of the eight factors stood out as especially important and form the basis of the paper.

The fate of the NETS was shaped and influenced by the eight factors comprising the Pettigrew et al. receptive contexts for change framework but four factors in particular stood out as being especially significant: environmental pressure, quality and coherence of policy, key people leading change, supportive organisational culture. Perhaps the most significant lesson from the NETS is that achieving whole systems change is particularly vulnerable to the vicissitudes of politics especially where that system, like the UK NHS, is itself subject to those very same pressures. Yet, despite having an enormous influence on health policy, the political context is frequently avoided in research or not regarded as instrumental in determining the outcomes in respect of transformational change.

The chief limitation is the credibility and authenticity of the interviews captured at particular points in time. These formed the datebase for subsequent analysis. The authors sought to guard against possible bias by supplementing interviews with observational studies and focus groups as well as running two dissemination events at which emerging findings from the study were subjected to independent external scrutiny and comment. These events provided a form of validation for the key study findings.

The research findings demonstrate the importance of context for the likely outcome and success of complex transformational change initiatives. These require time to become embedded and demonstrate results especially when focused on changing culture and behaviour. But, in practice, allowing sufficient time during which the organisation may remain sufficiently stable to allow the change intervention to run its course and become embedded and sustainable is highly problematic. The consequence is that bold and ambitious efforts like the NETS are not given the space and stability to prove themselves. Too often, politics and external environmental pressures intrude in ways that may prove dysfunctional and negative.

Unless a different approach to transformational change and its leadership and management is adopted, then changing the NHS to enable it to appear more responsive to changing health care needs and expectations will remain a cause for concern. Ultimately the public will be the losers if the NHS remains insensitive to changing needs and expectations. The patient experience was at the centre of the NETS programme.

The study is original insofar as no other has sought to evaluate the NETS independently and over a reasonable time period. The research design, based on a mixed-methods approach, is unusual in evaluations of this nature. The study’s conclusions are not so original but their value lies in largely confirming and reinforcing the findings from other studies. It perhaps goes further in stressing the impact of politics on health policy and the negative consequences of constant organisational change on attempts to achieve deep change in the way the NHS is organised and led.

Seeks to assess how new research and progress about how libraries and institutional web sites can adapt a range of distinct search tools using the portlet standards to achieve improved access.

Locally integrated web search tools help users to navigate through web sites without needing to go to multiple sites.

Search tools should be created with delivery via a portlet in mind. Compliance to CREE defined standards suggest good results as proven by several partners. This set of procedures suggests a very good future for locally integrated web search tools.

Examples of experiences with different partners suggest rather remarkable promise for portlet standards that can be applied to searching web sites The CREE project has proven easy adapability and now a significant amount of testing and experience confirms the operations it can perform with the JSR 168 and WSRP portlet standards and other Java‐based tools.

The purpose of this paper is to offer an exploratory investigation of students' use of informal learning spaces for their studies at the University of Sheffield. Previous research has mainly focused on formal learning spaces such as libraries and lecture theatres, but there is an increasing recognition of the value of informal learning spaces such as coffee bars.

Questionnaires, observations and interviews were the sources of data for the study. The research approach particularly looked at how students used informal learning spaces and what their perceptions of the spaces were.

Analysis showed that students found that the background atmosphere greatly influenced their choice of study location and that technological devices were only used sparingly. Students adapted their study habits to fit the learning spaces that they liked.

Although, attention is often paid to the furniture and colour schemes in libraries, this article makes librarians consider the importance of all sensual stimuli in making libraries warm, friendly and homely spaces. The “Model of Zengagement” was developed to show how stimuli from the background atmosphere influences' students' study experience.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate what sort of people become social entrepreneurs, and in what way they differ from business entrepreneurs. More importantly, to investigate in what socio‐economic context entrepreneurial individuals are more likely to become social than business entrepreneurs. These questions are important for policy because there has been a shift from direct to indirect delivery of many public services in the UK, requiring a professional approach to social enterprise.

Evidence is presented from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) UK survey based upon a representative sample of around 21,000 adults aged between 16 and 64 years interviewed in 2009. The authors use logistic multivariate regression techniques to identify differences between business and social entrepreneurs in demographic characteristics, effort, aspiration, use of resources, industry choice, deprivation, and organisational structure.

The results show that the odds of an early‐stage entrepreneur being a social rather than a business entrepreneur are reduced if they are from an ethnic minority, if they work ten hours or more per week on the venture, and if they have a family business background; while they are increased if they have higher levels of education and if they are a settled in‐migrant to their area. While women social entrepreneurs are more likely than business entrepreneurs to be women, this is due to gender‐based differences in time commitment to the venture. In addition, the more deprived the community they live in, the more likely women entrepreneurs are to be social than business entrepreneurs. However, this does not hold in the most deprived areas where we argue civic society is weakest and therefore not conducive to support any form of entrepreneurial endeavour based on community engagement.

The paper's findings suggest that women may be motivated to become social entrepreneurs by a desire to improve the socio‐economic environment of the community in which they live and see social enterprise creation as an appropriate vehicle with which to address local problems.

Following publication of a new vision for the English National Health Service (NHS) in 2014, known as the NHS Five-Year Forward View, a Vanguard programme was introduced by NHS England charged with the task of designing and delivering a range of new care models (NCMs) aimed at tackling deep-seated problems of a type facing all health systems to a greater or lesser degree. Drawing upon recent theoretical developments on the multilevel nature of context, we explore factors shaping the implementation of five NCM initiatives in the North East of England.

Data collection was based on semi-structured interviews (66 in total) between December 2016 and May 2017 with key informants at each site and a detailed review of Trusts' internal documents and policies related to the implementation of each NCM. Our analysis explores factors shaping the implementation of five NCM pilot sites as they touched on the multiple levels of context ranging from the macro policy level to the micro-level setting of workforce redesign.

It is far too early to conclude with any confidence that a successful outcome for the NCM programme will be forthcoming although the NHS Long-Term Plan seeks to build on the earlier vision set out in the Five-Year Forward View. Early indications show some signs of promise, especially where there is evidence of the ground having been prepared and changes already being put in place prior to the official launch of NCM initiatives. At the same time our findings demonstrate that all five pilot sites experienced, and were subject to, unrealistic pressure placed upon them to deliver outcomes.

Our findings demonstrate the need for a deeper understanding of the multilevel nature of context by exploring factors shaping the implementation of five NCMs in the North East of England. Exploring the wider national policy context is desirable as well as understanding the perceptions of front-line staff and service users in order to establish the degree of alignment or, conversely, to identify where policy and practice are at risk of pushing and pulling against each other.

The question of violence in hunter-gatherer society has animated philosophical debates since at least the seventeenth century. Steven Pinker has sought to affirm that civilization, is superior to the state of humanity during its long history of hunting and gathering. The purpose of this paper is to draw upon a series of recent studies that assert a baseline of primordial violence by hunters and gatherers. In challenging this position the author draws on four decades of ethnographic and historical research on hunting and gathering peoples.

At the empirical heart of this question is the evidence pro- and con- for high rates of violent death in pre-farming human populations. The author evaluates the ethnographic and historical evidence for warfare in recorded hunting and gathering societies, and the archaeological evidence for warfare in pre-history prior to the advent of agriculture.

The view of Steven Pinker and others of high rates of lethal violence in hunters and gatherers is not sustained. In contrast to early farmers, their foraging precursors lived more lightly on the land and had other ways of resolving conflict. With little or no fixed property they could easily disperse to diffuse conflict. The evidence points to markedly lower levels of violence for foragers compared to post-Neolithic societies.

This conclusion raises serious caveats about the grand evolutionary theory asserted by Steven Pinker, Richard Wrangham and others. Instead of being “killer apes” in the Pleistocene and Holocene, the evidence indicates that early humans lived as relatively peaceful hunter-gathers for some 7,000 generations, from the emergence of Homo sapiens up until the invention of agriculture. Therefore there is a major gap between the purported violence of the chimp-like ancestors and the documented violence of post-Neolithic humanity.

This is a critical analysis of published claims by authors who contend that ancient and recent hunter-gatherers typically committed high levels of violent acts. It reveals a number of serious flaws in their arguments and use of data.

Drawing on entrepreneurship as a social process, the purpose of this paper is to proposes a model of entrepreneurial learning where contextual social and economic structures gain relevance through experiential learning. Concrete experience underpins the emotions, values and interests that support the cognitive and conative processes required to develop an entrepreneurial mind-set. Empirical study undertaken in Kenya and Tanzania explores perceptions of entrepreneurship education (EE) and identify approaches to a social perspective of entrepreneurial learning that is applicable.

The study uses a multi-phase approach consisting of desk research, semi-structured interview and a participatory workshop. Entrepreneurship programmes in 18 universities are benchmarked against accepted standards and 68 participants are purposively selected within key stakeholders for the semi-structured interviews and participatory workshop.

The findings indicate that entrepreneurship as a value creation process is a shared assertion but the social context informs a construct of learning outcomes, and specifically what characterises an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurial learning is multi-layered and its provision necessitates an engagement with the social context in order to gain relevance for the learners. The learning content should enable learners to develop an understanding of the world alongside knowledge of entrepreneurship. Learning tools should be flexible and action-based, to achieve learning for entrepreneurship as opposed to learning about the phenomenon of entrepreneurship. Ultimately, the value creation process can only happen when learning supports the individual and collective capabilities to transform the social context. Particularly in Kenya and Tanzania, meeting job creation and growth aspirations will require the providers such as universities to work closely with businesses of all sizes, including the informal sector, and the use of innovative learning techniques such as local languages where applicable. These findings have policy and practice implications for HEIs and policy-makers in curriculum design and inclusive learning methods.

The study comes short on entrepreneurial orientation and its impact on learning outcomes. Further investigation could establish if necessity entrepreneurs differ from opportunity entrepreneurs in the way they learn, so that national policy and curriculum can respond accordingly. With high levels of unemployment in countries such as Kenya and Tanzania, entrepreneurship often presents the only choice for employment or a paid job.

The study findings indicate the need for educators to develop learning approaches that are informed by the contextual realities of the learners. Policy-makers should also foster the development of curriculum informed by contextual realities, so that learners can make sense of their entrepreneurial world.

Through the adoption of action learning as essential for the process of creation and transformation, the study makes the case for individual motivations in exploring the realities of the local context.

The study contributes to a deeper understanding of EE from a social context, and proposes a model of entrepreneurial learning which could benefit learners and the community. The informal sector is brought to light as a significant actor in entrepreneurial learning and a considerable source of new knowledge.

Presents a brief account of the development of antibiotics so as to put such drugs in perspective. Then the issue of antibiotic resistance is considered and Tisdell’s economic analysis of the phenomenon is presented. Emphasis is placed on the inter‐generational trade‐off that is associated with this important social issue. The paper concludes by discussing Australia’s institutional arrangements for funding pharmaceutical, and hence antibiotic, expenditures.

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether some aspects of the distinctive Mayo Clinic care model could be translated into English National Health Service (NHS) hospital settings, to overcome the fragmented and episodic nature of non-emergency patient care.

The authors used a rapid review to assess the literature on integrated clinical care in hospital settings and critical analysis of links between Mayo Clinic’s care model and the organisation’s performance and associated patient outcomes.

The literature directly concerned with Mayo Clinic’s distinctive ethos and approach to patient care is limited in scope and largely confined to “grey” sources or to authors and institutions with links to Mayo Clinic. The authors found only two peer-reviewed articles which offer critical analysis of the contribution of the Mayo model to the performance of the organisation.

Mayo Clinic is not the only organisation to practice integrated, in-hospital clinical care; however, it is widely regarded as an exemplar.

There are barriers to implementing a Mayo-style model in English NHS hospitals, but they are not insurmountable and could lead to much better coordination of care for some patients.

The study shows that there is an appetite among NHS patients and staff for better coordinated, multi-specialty care within NHS hospitals.

In the English NHS integrated care generally aims to improve coordination between primary, community and secondary care, but problems remain of fragmented care for non-emergency hospital patients. Use of a Mayo-type care model, within hospital settings, could offer significant benefits to this patient group, particularly for multi-morbid patients.