Robert A. Ellis, Nerida Jarkey, Mary Jane Mahony, Mary Peat and Stephen Sheely
This paper seeks to discuss the characteristics that shape a model to manage eLearning in a large, predominantly campus‐based university. It focuses on how such a model can…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper seeks to discuss the characteristics that shape a model to manage eLearning in a large, predominantly campus‐based university. It focuses on how such a model can provide a sustainable approach to supporting eLearning for more than 40,000 students while still managing basic quality assurance for the University executive and the individual disciplinary needs of faculties.
Design/methodology/approach
Prior research and theoretical issues related to a generalised course development and teaching process are discussed followed by an analysis of a case‐study from a large metropolitan Australian university. The case‐study illustrates key aspects of the management model providing insights into how staff are empowered and supported to develop meaningful eLearning resources for students, how quality improvement is managed, and how organizational learning takes place.
Findings
Following the analysis of how key aspects of the model relate to the university discussed in the case study, several challenges for quality improvement at the level of both course and university are identified. The case‐study reveals the complexity of quality improvement strategies, which (mainly due to the fact that eLearning complements the face‐to‐face learning experience) require a relational and embedded approach. Key principles for managing eLearning development and evaluation for campus‐based universities are abstracted from the case‐study and offered as a guide to universities who face similar challenges
Research limitations/implications
Although not all aspects of the case‐study can be applied to other contexts, the key principles of the proposed management model are likely to apply to other campus‐based universities which share the same focus on integrating eLearning in sustainable ways but also wish to foreground quality assurance issues.
Originality/value
The paper integrates the discussion of theoretical approaches and models for eLearning management in higher education with the description of a case‐study from a large, diverse, campus‐based university, while highlighting the complexity and practical challenges of implementing such a model.
Details
Keywords
Looks at the 2000 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference held at the University of Cardiff in Wales on 6/7 September 2000. Spotlights the 76 or so presentations within and…
Abstract
Looks at the 2000 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference held at the University of Cardiff in Wales on 6/7 September 2000. Spotlights the 76 or so presentations within and shows that these are in many, differing, areas across management research from: retail finance; precarious jobs and decisions; methodological lessons from feminism; call centre experience and disability discrimination. These and all points east and west are covered and laid out in a simple, abstract style, including, where applicable, references, endnotes and bibliography in an easy‐to‐follow manner. Summarizes each paper and also gives conclusions where needed, in a comfortable modern format.
Details
Keywords
The following is an annotated list of materials dealing with orientation to library facilities and services, instruction in the use of information resources, and research and…
Abstract
The following is an annotated list of materials dealing with orientation to library facilities and services, instruction in the use of information resources, and research and computer skills that are related to retrieving and using information. This is the fourteenth review to be published in Reference Services Review and lists items in English published in 1987. A few items are not annotated because the compiler could not obtain copies of them for this review.
What proof have the public, independent of the assertions of the makers, that all the firms whose products are sold indifferently by the shopkeepers use only the best materials;…
Abstract
What proof have the public, independent of the assertions of the makers, that all the firms whose products are sold indifferently by the shopkeepers use only the best materials; or, indeed, that a large number of the articles sold are not mixtures more or less objectionable or fraudulent ? This, in effect, is the question put by a writer in a West of England newspaper, and it might be used as a text upon which to write a lengthy homily on the adulteration question and on the astonishing gullibility of the public. As a matter of fact the only evidence of the character and quality of food and other products, in regard to which there is no independent guarantee, is that which is afforded by the standing of the makers, and to some extent of the firms which offer them for sale. And this evidence cannot, under any circumstances, be looked upon as constituting proof. The startling allegations so commonly put forward by advertisers with respect to their wares, while they may be ineffective in so far as thinking people are concerned, must nevertheless be found pecuniarily advantageous since the expense involved in placing them under the eyes of the public would otherwise hardly be incurred. Many of these advertised allegations are, of course, entirely unjustifiable, or are incapable of proof. It may be hoped that the lavish manner in which they are set out, and their very extravagance, may, in time, result in producing a general effect not contemplated by the advertisers. In the meantime it cannot be too often pointed out that proof, such as that which is required for the satisfaction of the retailer and for the protection of the public, can only be obtained by the exercise of an independent control, and, in certain cases, by the maintenance of efficient independent inspection in addition, so that a guarantee of a character entirely different to that which may be offered, even by a firm of the highest eminence, may be supplied.
Barrett compared the perceptions of female management students and senior female managers about effective and probable workplace communication strategies, and the extent to which…
Abstract
Purpose
Barrett compared the perceptions of female management students and senior female managers about effective and probable workplace communication strategies, and the extent to which each group's perceptions were influenced by gender norms in communication. The purpose of this paper is to compare male students' perceptions of the strategies to those of female students and female managers.
Design/methodology/approach
In total, 255 second‐year male management students evaluated strategies for the same dilemmas as the two female groups.
Findings
Overall, male students resemble female students rather than senior female managers. They reject some stereotypically male strategies, seeing them as more effective for women. Yet, male students regard an ineffective but probable approach to getting credit for ideas as even less effective for men than for women, and an effective, but feminine, strategy for getting noticed for promotion as more effective for women. Male students may believe using overtly feminine strategies penalizes men. Like female students, male students' confidence affects their personal choice of strategy.
Research limitations/implications
The study used a limited number of dilemmas and demographic factors, limiting the results' generalizability. “Paper” scenarios, even if drawn from typical workplace dilemmas, may not reflect the work world. Nevertheless, the findings suggest language ideologies at work are changing for both genders.
Originality/value
This paper describes the first study comparing students' and senior women managers' reactions to classic workplace communication problems. In addition, it investigates the perceptions of young men rather than stereotypical males.
Nirit Pariente and Dorit Tubin
This article explores the contribution of mentoring to the professional development of novice principals. Based on Abbott’s (1988) framework, the authors suggest that effective…
Abstract
Purpose
This article explores the contribution of mentoring to the professional development of novice principals. Based on Abbott’s (1988) framework, the authors suggest that effective mentoring depends on the extent it develops professional core knowledge, which includes the skills of diagnosis, intervention and inference that are heavily based on academic knowledge, practical experience, self-awareness and reflective ability.
Design/methodology/approach
An exploratory qualitative methodology was applied to discover principals’ perceptions of their mentoring. The authors interviewed 15 novice principals about their mentoring events and conducted a category-based analysis to find out how these events reflect contributions to their diagnosis, intervention and inference skills.
Findings
The study found that most of the mentoring events provided support for the intervention skill, while ignoring the skills of diagnosis and inference. We suggest that to develop novice principals professionally, mentors should place similar emphasis on all three skills.
Research limitations/implications
The small research population and its possible bias toward positive mentoring experience may present only part of the picture. Still, the data provided important insights into how mentoring supports (or not) professional skills development, even in the best cases. Using professional skills in a large sample survey of effective and less effective mentoring relationships would help to validate this framework.
Practical implications
First, the findings serve as a guideline for mentor training programs to help develop mentors’ ability to support all three professional skills. Second, the findings may help novice principals to evaluate their mentoring relationships and their contribution to developing professional core knowledge skills.
Originality/value
The professional skills framework adds to the principal mentoring literature by emphasizing the importance of diagnosis, intervention and inference skills, in addition to certain content and specific conditions.
Details
Keywords
The Food and Drugs Bill introduced by the Government affords an excellent illustration of the fact that repressive legislative enactments in regard to adulteration must always be…
Abstract
The Food and Drugs Bill introduced by the Government affords an excellent illustration of the fact that repressive legislative enactments in regard to adulteration must always be of such a nature that, while they give a certain degree and a certain kind of protection to the public, they can never be expected to supply a sufficiently real and effective insurance against adulteration and against the palming off of inferior goods, nor an adequate and satisfactory protection to the producer and vendor of superior articles. In this country, at any rate, legislation on the adulteration question has always been, and probably will always be of a somewhat weak and patchy character, with the defects inevitably resulting from more or less futile attempts to conciliate a variety of conflicting interests. The Bill as it stands, for instance, fails to deal in any way satisfactorily with the subject of preservatives, and, if passed in its present form, will give the force of law to the standards of Somerset House—standards which must of necessity be low and the general acceptance of which must tend to reduce the quality of foods and drugs to the same dead‐level of extreme inferiority. The ludicrous laissez faire report of the Beer Materials Committee—whose authors see no reason to interfere with the unrestricted sale of the products of the “ free mash tun,” or, more properly speaking, of the free adulteration tun—affords a further instance of what is to be expected at present and for many years to come as the result of governmental travail and official meditations. Public feeling is developing in reference to these matters. There is a growing demand for some system of effective insurance, official or non‐official, based on common‐sense and common honesty ; and it is on account of the plain necessity that the quibbles and futilities attaching to repressive legislation shall by some means be brushed aside that we have come to believe in the power and the value of the system of Control, and that we advocate its general acceptance. The attitude and the policy of the INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON ADULTERATION, of the BRITISH FOOD JOURNAL, and of the BRITISH ANALYTICAL CONTROL, are in all respects identical with regard to adulteration questions; and in answer to the observations and suggestions which have been put forward since the introduction of the Control System in England, it may be well once more to state that nothing will meet with the approbation or support of the Control which is not pure, genuine, and good in the strictest sense of these terms. Those applicants and critics whom it may concern may with advantage take notice of the fact that under no circumstances will approval be given to such articles as substitute beers, separated milks, coppered vegetables, dyed sugars, foods treated with chemical preservatives, or, in fact, to any food or drug which cannot be regarded as in every respect free from any adulterant, and free from any suspicion of sophistication or inferiority. The supply of such articles as those referred to, which is left more or less unfettered by the cumbrous machinery of the law, as well as the sale of those adulterated goods with which the law can more easily deal, can only be adequately held in check by the application of a strong system of Control to justify approbation, providing, as this does, the only effective form of insurance which up to the present has been devised.
In the year 1900 Koch expressed the view that human and bovine tuberculosis were distinct diseases, that the bacillus of bovine tuberculosis could not produce this disease in the…
Abstract
In the year 1900 Koch expressed the view that human and bovine tuberculosis were distinct diseases, that the bacillus of bovine tuberculosis could not produce this disease in the human subject, and that the bacillus of human tuberculosis could not set it up in the bovine species. As is now well known. these conclusions have not received the slightest confirmation from other workers in the same field, and it may be said that the consensus of scientific opinion is now to the effect that the bacilli of human and bovine tuberculosis are identical—at any rate, so far as the effects attributed to them are concerned. The Royal Commission appointed in 1901, and consisting of the late Sir MICHAEL FOSTER, Drs. SIMS WOODHEAD, SIDNEY MARTIN, MACFADYEAN, and BOYCE, have issued a further interim report on their investigations. The first interim report was published in 1904, the conclusions stated in it being to the effect that the human and animal diseases were identical, and that no characteristics by which the one could be distinguished from the other had been discovered. The report now issued shows that these conclusions are confirmed by the results of a very large number of fresh experiments. The main conclusions set forth in the present report are as understated :—
Catherine Coy, Marni Ludwig and Kasey Jueds
In the words of Stanley Kunitz, poetry is not a single nation but a teeming nation of nations. With more than 1,300 new poetry titles to choose from each year, how can librarians…
Abstract
In the words of Stanley Kunitz, poetry is not a single nation but a teeming nation of nations. With more than 1,300 new poetry titles to choose from each year, how can librarians make the best acquisitions for their communities? The following resource materials from Poets House – a 35,000‐volume poetry library and literary center – offer a starting point. Highlights a wide variety of selections from Poets House’s annual exhibit of all the year’s new poetry books. The Directory of American Poetry Books provides complete bibliographic information and capsule reviews for more than 7,000 books published since 1991. These materials were originally distributed at the 1999 American Library Association Conference, where Poets House exhibited the entire 1999 Showcase and presented poetry readings and a panel discussion entitled “Making poetry come alive in community libraries”.