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The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of podcasting and webcasting, and to examine student preferences between the different delivery richness of communication media.

Background information regarding podcasting and webcasting is discussed. A conceptual model, based on media richness theory, is developed to explain student's perceptions. For the testing of the model, a survey metric is introduced, and a research methodology is explained. Finally, a conclusion and research limitations are discussed.

The conceptual model of the motivations to use podcasting was adopted from media richness theory. It was proposed that six factors are related to future media use; immediacy of feedback, personal focus, transmission of cues, functionality, usability, and ease of use. The methodology relied heavily on logistic regression analysis for testing the various hypotheses. The authors collected data for hypothesis testing. The results of the study were inconclusive. This may be due to the lack of user experience with podcasting.

Some instructors have even adopted such techniques as their primary means (within the classroom or outside classroom) of communicating to students. However, the selection of appropriate communication media requires an understanding of the students' perceptions, preferences and receptiveness of these new technologies.

The findings from this exploratory research will be valuable for podcasting users.

This study is the first kind of empirical research in this area. With this study, the authors examined the perceived value of podcasting.

There are calls for greater regulation of online content related to self-harm and suicide, particularly that which is user-generated. However, the online space is a source of support and advice, including an important sharing of experiences. This study aims to explore what it is about such online content, and how people interact with it, that may confer harm or offer benefit.

The authors undertook a systematic review of the published evidence, using customised searches up to February 2021 in seven databases. The authors included empirical research on the internet or online use and self-harm or suicide content that had been indexed since 2015. The authors undertook a theoretically driven narrative synthesis.

From 4,493 unique records, 87 met our inclusion criteria. The literature is rapidly expanding and not all the evidence is high quality, with very few longitudinal or intervention studies so little evidence to understand possible causal links. Very little content online is classifiable as explicitly harmful or definitively helpful, with responses varying by the individual and immediate context. The authors present a framework that seeks to represent the interplay in online use between the person, the medium, the content and the outcome.

This review highlights that content should not be considered separately to the person accessing it, so online safety means thinking about all users. Blanket removal or unthinking regulation may be more harmful than helpful. A focus on safe browsing is important and tools that limit time and diversify content would support this.

The main purpose of this paper is to document the first author's experience of using institutional ethnography (IE) to “take sides” in healthcare research. The authors illustrate the points with data and key findings from a study of cardiovascular disease prevention.

The authors use Dorothy E Smith's IE approach, and particularly the theoretical tool of “standpoint”.

Starting with the development of the study, the authors trouble the researcher's positionality, highlighting tensions between institutional knowledge of “prevention” and other locations where knowledge about patients' health needs materialises. The authors outline how IE's theoretically and methodologically integrated toolkit became a framework for “taking sides” with patients. They describe how the researcher used IE to take a standpoint and map institutional relations from that standpoint. They argue that IE enabled an innovative analysis but also reflect on the challenges of conducting an IE – the conceptual unpicking and (re)thinking, and demarcating boundaries of investigation within an expansive dataset.

This paper illustrates IE's relevance for organisational ethnographers wishing to find a theoretically robust approach to taking sides, and suggests ways in which the IE approach might contribute to improving services, particularly healthcare. It provides an illustration of how taking a patient standpoint was accomplished in practice, and reflects on the challenges involved.

This study explored the impact of emphasis on the group development process on the perceived importance of and confidence in group work skills and students’ perception of group work use in the collegiate classroom as developed by Tuckman and Jensen (1977). The purposive sample utilized in this study included 33 undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory leadership and service course at a southern, land-grant institution. Knowledge of the group development process enhances a student’s perceived importance and confidence in group work skills. The emphasis on group development process also positively impacted students’ perception of group work being utilized in the collegiate classroom. The importance of group work skills continues to be reflective of the demand from employers; therefore, educators must continue to develop these transferable skills in today’s students. Although relevant across disciplines, leadership educators should take a leading role in developing such skills in students.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how educators can harness the natural momentum of learning to create a dramatic and exciting hero’s learning journey. Given the importance of motivation, educators can borrow ideas from game designers by using gamification – a process to re-frame a real life goal to be more appealing and achievable. A series of learning activities, developed to meet both cognitive and emotional needs, results in an engaging learning journey.

The concept presented, based on PSI Theory, OCEAN Big Five character traits and player/learner archetypes, is that learners are motivated by three basic needs: affiliation, competence or certainty (assuming other physiological needs are met).

Armed with insight into types of motivations at different phases, learner experience designers can create different learning journeys and user profiles. Learning activities can be planned for each need and phase based on changing motivations: collaborate and curate (affiliation), choice and ownership (certainty), challenge and accountability (competence).

Further research is needed in the area of gamification in education. A qualitative study should be conducted on preferred learning and assessment activities for each player archetype and, importantly, this research should represent broad samples and not be restricted to the online gaming community.

Rather than focussing on an isolated unit of study, and asynchronous eLearning modules, learning designers can use modern technologies to seed and nurture learning communities where each person has an appealing pathway to enable them to move from novice to expert at their own pace in a spiral of satisfying learning.

People with intellectual disability face extensive health inequality and premature mortality. Medical students have reported that they lack the skills, knowledge and confidence to work with those with intellectual disability and autism. This emphasises the need for tomorrow’s doctors to be adequately trained. This study aims to investigate students’ knowledge, skills and attitudes towards people with intellectual disability and autism, examining whether these outcomes change following curricula re-design and with implementation of an e-learning module.

The university curricula in intellectual disability and autism were re-designed and an e-learning module developed using co-production. This was delivered to fourth-year medical students with a subgroup receiving the additional e-learning. A controlled trial evaluated students’ knowledge, skills and attitudes using pre- and post-questionnaires. Statistical tests of difference were used to the scores obtained.

This study showed an improvement in knowledge, skills and attitudes with intellectual disability and autism after curricula engagement, with an incremental benefit observed for students also completing the e-learning module. There was significant difference in pre-and-post placement scores assessing student attitudes towards intellectual disability and autism teaching.

This study highlights the importance of a multi-faceted, co-produced curricula re-design in intellectual disability and autism. The benefit of the e-learning module holds hope that the newly introduced mandatory Oliver McGowan training will be beneficial in the development of tomorrow’s doctors. Effective training in intellectual disability and autism is vital to improve the care and support delivered and reduce unnecessary deaths.

Brand stories are often created around the company’s humble beginnings as an underdog. The authors explore the effects of who is telling the underdog story and thus draw attention to the nature of the brand source by differentiating between family and non-family firms. The authors expect that who is telling the underdog story impacts consumers’ attitude toward the brand in terms of brand authenticity and trustworthiness perceptions.

The authors conducted an online experiment with a 2 × 2 between-subject design and an overall sample size of 314 respondents.

Most importantly, the authors find that the family-firm nature of the brand storyteller significantly impacts the underdog effect. The positive effects of underdog biographies on brand attitude in terms of authenticity and trustworthiness loom significantly larger for family firms compared with non-family firms.

The authors find that the underdog effect is significantly stronger for family firms that tell the underdog story. Managers of family firms with underdog roots should take advantage of this finding by integrating underdog stories into their marketing concepts. The findings of this study show that the communication of a company’s roots can serve as a valuable tool to build and maintain a positive brand image and help to increase purchase intentions, which is particularly true for firms capitalizing on their family nature when telling the underdog story.

The authors combine research on brand stories using the underdog effect with research on the consumer’s perception of family firms, further exploring the role of the brand storyteller in underdog narratives, resulting in important theoretical as well as practical implications.

The purpose of this paper is to employ innovative methods to examine the associations between personal wellbeing, self-rated health and various aspects of social capital within a socio-economically disadvantaged town in northern England.

A survey was developed and administered with input from local stakeholders (including residents), using a participatory action research (PAR) approach. In total, 11 lay interviewers were trained to pilot and deliver the final survey, which was completed either in person or online. In total, 233 valid surveys were returned.

Respondents were aged between 17 and 87 years (mean 47.3, SD 17.4), 65.7 per cent were female and 46.2 per cent identified themselves as having a longstanding illness, disability or infirmity. Overall, respondents reported lower levels of personal wellbeing and social capital in comparison with UK averages, although free-text responses highlighted a strong sense of community spirit and pride in the town. Low wellbeing was strongly associated with poor health, social isolation and neighbourhood factors such as perceived lack of community safety and trust.

PAR appears to be an acceptable approach in generating estimates of population characteristics associated with personal wellbeing.

The findings of this study may be used by policymakers to design services and interventions to better meet the needs of communities characterised by indicators of poor health and wellbeing.

This work constitutes part of a global trend to measure personal and societal wellbeing. A novel methodology has been used to examine the factors that influence wellbeing at a neighbourhood level.