Michael O′Donoghue and William Dickey
Academic libraries′ attempts to react positively to changes take manyforms. Libraries have been adept at investing in new technology inattempts to cater for their users�…
Abstract
Academic libraries′ attempts to react positively to changes take many forms. Libraries have been adept at investing in new technology in attempts to cater for their users′ increasingly sophisticated information needs. In some cases, as with electronic mail for example, investment has been made without clear idea of applications or consequences. Looks at the nature of electronic mail, how it differs from other information technologies, and its role in bringing academic libraries into much closer contact with curriculum delivery as opposed to curriculum support. Describes some of the experiences of students and staff at Preston College within this area. Concludes that despite initial difficulties in managing this facility the investment has paid back in many unanticipated ways.
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The relationship between government expenditure and economic growth has been extensively studied both in public finance literature and in the literature dealing with macroeconomic…
Abstract
The relationship between government expenditure and economic growth has been extensively studied both in public finance literature and in the literature dealing with macroeconomic modelling.In public finance the issue dates back to Adolph Wagner (1890) or even before. But Wagner is known to have presented the idea in its modern form. Wagner essentially presented a behavioral statement about the growth of public expenditure which, after some refinements by others, has come to be known as the Wagner's hypothesis (WH). According to this, the growing importance of the state activity and therefore public expenditure is an inevitable feature of a progressive society. In modern literature, the proposition is formulated as follows: as per capita income rises, the share of the public sector increases because:(1) protective and administrative functions of the state expand,(2)state activities pertaining to culture and education expand, and (3) increasing tendency towards monopoly due to technological advancement and increasing returns to scale need to be offset by state actions.The WH is often considered to represent a long‐term relationship which is expected to apply to countries during their early stages of growth and development. The implication of WH is that the causation runs from economic growth to growth in government expenditure. A more important implication of this hypothesis, however, is that government expenditure does not qualify as development finance because it plays no role in economic growth.
Anurag Tiruwa, Rajan Yadav and Pradeep Kumar Suri
Social networking sites (SNSs), especially Facebook, have made deep inroads in the teaching-learning process worldwide. The purpose of this paper is to understand the key factors…
Abstract
Purpose
Social networking sites (SNSs), especially Facebook, have made deep inroads in the teaching-learning process worldwide. The purpose of this paper is to understand the key factors which influence a students’ intention to use Facebook for academic usage.
Design/methodology/approach
A web-based questionnaire survey was administered among 218 students enrolled in higher education programme of universities/institutions in National Capital Territory of Delhi. The relationship among the proposed variable were tested through structural equation modelling and neural network (NN) approach. SEM is used to identify and validate the factors significant to influence the intention to use Facebook among students. To further find which of the factors are more influential, factors NN with tenfold cross-validation was used to identify the factors which are more influential among the ones proposed in this study.
Findings
The results suggested that the proposed framework has a good fit and the five relationships hypothesized were found to be significant; thus, establishing that the antecedent factors have a positive influence on the intention of users (student) to actively use Facebook as an academic medium for collaborative learning.
Originality/value
This study establishes that the antecedent factors identified in the course of this study have a positive influence on the intention to use Facebook for higher academics and collaborative learning by the students. This paper suggests and supports the adoption and usage of Facebook as a learning tool for higher academics.
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Bernadett Koles and Peter Nagy
The purpose of this paper is to explore teenagers' and young adults' use of social networking sites (SNS), in light of certain personal, social and educational outcomes and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore teenagers' and young adults' use of social networking sites (SNS), in light of certain personal, social and educational outcomes and attitudes.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were gathered on the basis of surveys, and were analyzed through a series of multivariate models.
Findings
It was found that participants' reasons and motivations for online presence varied as a function of gender and age. Different degrees of Facebook usage were linked with different school‐related attitudes. More specifically, more extensive usage was associated with more negative school and peer attitudes; more so for females and for college students. Furthermore, greater reliance on online interactions for social and emotional support was found disadvantageous for college students, while neutral or in some cases beneficial for high school students.
Research limitations/implications
Gender and educational level appear to be important factors explaining some of the variation in school‐related attitudes, and thus should be explored separately.
Practical implications
The differential impact of online presence on school attitudes for college and high school students highlights the need for teachers and student advisors to be sensitive to such transitional groups.
Social implications
The authors found that more popular students, those often viewed as “opinion leaders”, tended to show more negative school outcomes than less popular students in general; a relevant point for organizations.
Originality/value
Facebook usage and school‐related attitudes were observed simultaneously in high school and college populations studying in Budapest, Hungary.
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Mahmood Hajli, Hatem Bugshan, Xiaolin Lin and Mauricio Featherman
The emergence of Web 2.0 opened a new route for education to use the values derived from this development. The future of e-learning is social learning, where individuals can learn…
Abstract
Purpose
The emergence of Web 2.0 opened a new route for education to use the values derived from this development. The future of e-learning is social learning, where individuals can learn online due to the facility of social media. Social media such as online communities are places for social interactions between users. These social interactions are the way forward and can drive social support in an online context. This paper aims to explore the impact of these interactions
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses social support theory to explore the impact of social interactions on the internet on learning and education. The research uses a case study and investigates the health industry.
Findings
The paper explains the development in e-learning through social media and the emerging concept of social learning.
Originality/value
The contribution of this research is to emphasise social relationships of individuals in the internet and social interaction in online communities which enhance their learning qualities. The research drawn on social support theory describes social learning as a future for e-learning.
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Georgios Dafoulas and Azam Shokri
The emergence of Education 2.0 enabled technology-enhanced learning, necessitating new pedagogical approaches, while e-learning has evolved into an instrumental pedagogy of…
Abstract
Purpose
The emergence of Education 2.0 enabled technology-enhanced learning, necessitating new pedagogical approaches, while e-learning has evolved into an instrumental pedagogy of collaboration through affordances of social media. Social learning networks and ubiquitous learning enabled individual and group learning through social engagement and social distribution of knowledge. Nevertheless, these developments have not been supported with extensive studies focusing on quantifying the impact of technology-enhanced learning on students’ progress and achievement. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how a quantitative overview of Facebook’s influence on students’ progress can be incorporated in a proposed e-moderation model of teaching and learning.
Design/methodology/approach
The approach is based on extending Salmon’s (2003) e-moderation model, which provides an emphasis on the theoretical perspectives that support socially situated learning environments of social networks such as Facebook. The findings revealed that students’ grades were positively influenced by the complementary use of Facebook on their courses of study.
Findings
The use of a social learning network also triggered a significant increase in student participation in learning activities delivered over Facebook.
Research limitations/implications
The main research limitations were due to the fact that a single social network was chosen for conducting the experiments. Furthermore, the investigation was narrowed down to a selected range of sessions offered to college and university students as part of their course.
Originality/value
The paper’s contribution is twofold, as it offers an original set of guidelines for conducting social learning network experiments and provides valuable quantifiable findings on the educational value of such networks.
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Rajan Yadav, Anurag Tiruwa and Pradeep Kumar Suri
The growing use of internet-based learning (IBL) platforms in institutions of higher education is producing profound changes in the traditional teaching learning process…
Abstract
Purpose
The growing use of internet-based learning (IBL) platforms in institutions of higher education is producing profound changes in the traditional teaching learning process worldwide. This paper aims to identify and understand the ways in which higher education institutions draw benefits by the use of such means, synthesizing the literature research.
Design/methodology/approach
The study synthesized the literature research by using a mixed method approach in which both Web of Science (WoS) and bibliographic techniques were used to retrieve the relevant data base.
Findings
The comprehensive review of the literature suggests that communication technology (CT), massive open online courseware (MOOCs), social networking sites (SNSs), blogs, real simple syndication (RSS) and YouTube are creating new possibilities and avenues of collaborative learning by transforming the traditional class and teacher-centric system.
Research limitations/implications
Multiplicity of the IBL platforms and rapid technological obsolesce are some of the limitations of this paper.
Originality/value
The findings of this study are highly useful in developing a strategic framework to accelerate the integration of IBL platforms to make teaching learning process more interactive and informative.
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WE note that Llandudno has appointed as librarian a lady whose principal qualifications appear to be that “during the war she served as a V.A.D. nurse at Llandudno and Bristol.”…
Abstract
WE note that Llandudno has appointed as librarian a lady whose principal qualifications appear to be that “during the war she served as a V.A.D. nurse at Llandudno and Bristol.” We have every admiration for the services rendered by the lady during the war. She may be a qualified nurse, but is she a qualified librarian? We make no further comment except to say that it is a pity that her nursing qualifications are given so much prominence and that her library abilities are secondary. Personally, we prefer a certificated librarian to a certificated nurse for a library, and vice versa for a hospital!
It is found that one unit root, common trend is shared by the quarterly auction price series of five frequently auctioned types of stamps. The common trends analysis provides…
Abstract
It is found that one unit root, common trend is shared by the quarterly auction price series of five frequently auctioned types of stamps. The common trends analysis provides specific, stationary linear combinations, or cointegrating portfolios, of the auction price levels. The quarterly returns for the system of cointegrated auction prices can be represented by an error correction model using past returns and cointegrating vectors. There is evidence of a positive relationship between changes in the common trend and leading changes in industrial production
Charley Xia and William Griffiths
A Monte Carlo experiment is used to examine the size and power properties of alternative Bayesian tests for unit roots. Four different prior distributions for the root that is…
Abstract
A Monte Carlo experiment is used to examine the size and power properties of alternative Bayesian tests for unit roots. Four different prior distributions for the root that is potentially unity – a uniform prior and priors attributable to Jeffreys, Lubrano, and Berger and Yang – are used in conjunction with two testing procedures: a credible interval test and a Bayes factor test. Two extensions are also considered: a test based on model averaging with different priors and a test with a hierarchical prior for a hyperparameter. The tests are applied to both trending and non-trending series. Our results favor the use of a prior suggested by Lubrano. Outcomes from applying the tests to some Australian macroeconomic time series are presented.