The quasi-experimental study reported in the present article is aimed at increasing the understanding of the effects of long-term contract employees participating in wellness programs. The reported study examines the effect (if any) that a wellness program has on workplace stress, absenteeism, and presenteeism for long-term contract employees participating in a wellness program. A one group pretest-posttest design was used. Convenience sampling was conducted in a hospital in the New York City Metro area. Data was collected from 19 participants. Paired sample t-test and a Wilcoxon signed-rank test were used to determine if there was a significant statistical difference before and after a dance aerobic exercise intervention. The instruments used to gather data were the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) and the World Health Organization Health Performance Questionnaire (HPQ). The results indicated a statistical difference for workplace stress, but no statistical difference for absenteeism and presenteeism.
This article presents a model that is based on Eyler and Giles' Five Elements of Citizenship, where students learn about Volunteer UCF through marketing strategies, participate in one-time service or educational events, and then pursue continuous involvement based on their positive experiences. Students transition to leadership roles by serving on a social topic committee and move up to social topic director managing their own committee. Some students aspire to be an administrative student leader and incorporate large-scale institutional projects and events. The final stage for students is committing to lifelong community engagement opportunities post-graduation. The results will inform where the touch points are at the higher education institution, so administrators can apprise bureaucracy and cultural barriers to help students progress through the scale for service within the continuum.
The aim of this article is to connect transformative learning theory with the practice of teaching in higher education. Connecting theory to effective active learning pedagogy is good practice in teaching adults, andragogy. Using transformative learning theory as a guide, this article describes the historical evolution of transformative learning theory and describes specific application in higher education using Chickering and Gamson's principles of undergraduate education. The discussion of teaching and learning examples from face-to-face, online, service-learning, and short-term study abroad contexts provide the reader with concrete applications.
This article reports the findings from a study aimed at assessing the challenges of evening educational programs for working children and young people. A descriptive research design and mixed research approach were employed. The design helped to obtain information concerning the current status of the phenomena and to describe "what exists" with respect to conditions in a situation. A total of 367 students participated in the study. The findings of the study revealed that majority of the evening students are females. There are ongoing access issues for disadvantaged children and young people who cannot attend school on a regular basis, despite the provision of evening educational programs. Challenges include deficits in policy framework and the adopted curriculum, political drivers, teacher motivation, and facilities. Due to a lack of time, some courses are excluded from the evening programs. As a result, children and young people who are enrolled in this program achieve low academic performance as compared to the students in the regular program.
The study proposes strategies to reorient higher education institutions toward lifelong learning to serve lifelong adult learners in Thailand. The Ethnographic Delphi Futures Research (EDFR) approach was used for data collection. Additional research instruments used were in-depth interviews, a questionnaire "Measurable Performance Indicators [MPI] for Lifelong Learning," SWOT Analysis form, focus group discussions, and a strategic assessment form. The results revealed five national and seven institutional strategies with several sub-details for each strategy. Finally, the suggested strategies could help higher education institutions world-wide to strengthen the policies, processes, and change apparatuses.
In the 21st century economic landscape, many argue the importance of a college degree, as entry into many occupations now requires advanced credentials. Pursuing a college degree costs time and money, often presenting barriers to those pursuing the dream. Prior learning assessment (PLA) offers a solution to spend less time and money earning a college degree by documenting outside learning. PLA shortens time-to-degree, reduces tuition costs, supports student persistence, and boosts degree completion, particularly for adult learners (non- and post-traditional students) and underserved populations. The purpose of this article was to examine PLA within an award-winning degree completion program primarily serving adult learners in order to improve practice. Aligned with the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning's (CAEL) standards for assessing learning, this article discusses the degree completion program, PLA course and competency portfolio, block credit competency model and block credit competency model and portfolio assessment, program administration, and implications.
The goal of training is to improve employee performance, and ultimately support organizational success. However, training does not always effectively transfer to workplaces to positively affect work practices, particularly because of disconnect between behaviourist approaches and contemporary work arrangements. The transfer of training to the workplace remains problematic. The present article is motivated by the need to challenge the status quo of training design and draw greater attention to learning design, beyond the confines of behaviourism. The aim of the article is to provoke critical discussion around learning theories and training design. We propose Knowles' adult learning principles and Mezirow's transformative learning theory, useful guide for the learning design of training. The learning design of a university-based safety management systems training course in aviation is discussed from the vantage point of the proposed guiding philosophy. Six specific strategies are presented supported by the evaluation of the course effectiveness conducted after the first iteration.
In the competitive world of recruiting, the better an applicant can apply what has already been learned to a new environment, the greater the career opportunity. This study captured the transformative learning experience of students, guided by their instructors and industry partners, related to learning and executing Lean Six Sigma principles in a variety of environments. Lean Six Sigma principles which seek to reduce inefficiencies and thus improve the customer experience have long since been associated with manufacturing. Expanding the application of Lean Six Sigma from blue-collar settings to include white-collar and green-collar work provides students additional problem-solving approaches to process challenges in all-collar environments. Additionally, the experience aided students in viewing customers from both internal and external lenses, linked customer loyalty to organization success, and demonstrated the value such skills were to both personal career growth. Suggestions for faculty and recommendations for future studies are included.
AbstractThis article presents a model that is based on Eyler and Giles' Five Elements of Citizenship, where students learn about Volunteer UCF through marketing strategies, participate in one-time service or educational events, and then pursue continuous involvement based on their positive experiences. Students transition to leadership roles by serving on a social topic committee and move up to social topic director managing their own committee. Some students aspire to be an administrative student leader and incorporate large-scale institutional projects and events. The final stage for students is committing to lifelong community engagement opportunities post-graduation. The results will inform where the touch points are at the higher education institution, so administrators can apprise bureaucracy and cultural barriers to help students progress through the scale for service within the continuum.
This article examines the "great transformation" of Canadian women's self-understanding and identity in the period from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century. It argues that women's individual and collective energy was canalized through the creation of voluntary associations and social movements. It also explores a select few of the persons and innovative pedagogical projects and experiments in communicative action. Civil society expands significantly to accommodate women's needs, demands and dreams.
Organizational success is directly related to the ability of leaders to influence followers in support of strategic goals. Leaders utilize interpersonal skills to communicate goals, brainstorm actions, create collaboration, and move followers in desired directions. Successful leaders must be astute at recognizing key characteristics in followers, characteristics that may help or hinder meeting performance expectations. Hence, the ability to generalize and predict behaviors was paramount to leaders adapting to the work environment. Ultimately, leaders who use DISC systems to predict and influence the behavior of followers were more effective when the leaders can generalize distribution data to groups of followers as they recruit, hire, set work expectations and provide training. This article provides a meta-review of organizational initiatives in which DISC assessments were used as tools for leaders. The article includes a distribution study of 100 respondents in leadership development programs intended to aid leaders in predicting follower populations and behaviors.
Customer relationship management (CRM) is a core business strategy for most organizations. In today's global economy, it is essential for organizations to find ways of increasing their productivity. This article discusses the operations management's decision of customer relationships management. It is vital for a business to motivate its employees and use the best strategies to facilitate customer relations. The CRM-enabled strategy focuses on two organizations in the NE Ohio area: Progressive Corporation and KeyCorp Bank. The structure of this chapter is reflective of the qualitative business case study using best practices. Initially, a description of the companies' current strategies and software that promotes CRM is followed by some of its major strategic initiatives to foster the development of CRM. This basic case study approach aims to provide an understanding of the transitions, challenges, and the implementation of CRM in these organizations.
Due to a perception that the quality of their certificates was in question, students of the Gaborone Technical College (GTC), along with their counterparts in similar institutions, went on a strike in 2016. Based on a subsequent case study of the college, completed in 2018, this article examines the quality question in technical education in Botswana. The study set out to assess the implementation of policies guiding teaching and learning; examines the quality of resources for teaching and learning; appraises the nature and use of support systems for teaching and learning; investigates the views of lecturers and students on the quality of teaching and learning and identifies the factors which inhibit the quality of teaching and learning. Using a mixed method approach, the study collected data from students, lecturers and college managers through questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. The results show the absence of a specific teaching and learning policy, thus questioning the quality of the implementation of the policy itself. The study shows that the availability of resources for enhancing quality teaching is questionable, and the general perception by staff and students is that the overall quality of teaching and learning is average. However, most staff have the required qualifications for quality teaching, adequate support services exist, but a low utilization of the support services is observed. Factors inhibiting the quality of teaching and learning include inadequate library reference materials, the slow pace of internet connectivity, the absence of technical support for staff and inadequate resources in laboratories. In line with the literature, the article recommends a prioritization of quality teaching as a strategic objective, the establishment of a teaching and learning framework and the continuing professional development of staff, among others.
It is important to practice critical skills in the classroom in order to empower learners and to have a critical consciousness, such as critical thinking, dialogue, and problem solving. In the present study, undergraduate students' perceptions (by gender) of the practice of critical consciousness in the classroom at Taif University, Saudi Arabia is investigated. Freire's conceptualization of critical consciousness is used as the study's theoretical framework. That conceptualization is focused on critical thinking, dialogue, and problem-solving. A quantitative approach is utilized with a self-administered questionnaire in collecting data from the respondents. The results of this study indicated that Saudi undergraduate students' perspective was positive about the practice of the three elements of critical consciousness. Furthermore, there were statistically significant differences at α = 0.05 among undergraduate students' perspective on the practice of critical consciousness, including dialogue, critical thinking, and the total practice based on their gender. The direction of the differences was a benefit for females.
Workplace incivility is common in organizations across the world and can have negative effects on individuals and organizations. The purpose of the reported study is to examine the effects of supervisor and coworker incivility on job satisfaction and examines emotion management as a mediator of these relationships. Data from 268 working adults were collected by survey battery and analyzed via a number of multivariate techniques. The model was supported in that both supervisor and coworker incivility had strong direct negative effects on emotion management and job satisfaction, and emotion management partially mediated the incivility-job satisfaction relationship. With supervisor and coworker incivility, the participants reported lower levels of job satisfaction. However, the participants' emotion management mitigated the negative effect of incivility on job satisfaction partially. The findings suggest that organizations need to be aware of the unfavorable consequences of incivility. Organizations need to discover ways to reduce incivility and implement efforts to help employees develop positive emotional management strategies. These actions may help reduce the negative influences of incivility on important organizational outcomes like job satisfaction.
The modern student exists in a highly technical and digitally driven educational world. Online delivery of courses and interactions, with the primary purpose of enhancing learning, and access to learning opportunities is becoming almost mainstream. Yet, despite the broad availability of online education courses and systems, the completion rates and levels of student satisfaction with online courses remains comparatively low. Studies have indicated that online students are seeking personal engagement to drive their learning. This project looked at the importance of having a human face at the heart of the online course materials to help develop a more personal level of engagement. The project, carried out between 2016 and 2018, involved a randomized control trial of 84 students, and compared two sets of course materials, for a common course topic, one with human face-based resources, and one without. The results clearly showed a significant increase in student engagement with the human face-based resources, but the learning outcomes, for those who completed, were not significantly different between the two groups.
Founded on the need to help university students develop a greater academic metacognitive capacity, student-facing learning analytics are considered useful tools for making students overtly aware of their own learning processes, helping students to develop control over their learning, and subsequently supporting more effective learning. However, early research on the effectiveness of student-facing analytics is giving mixed results and is casting some doubt over the usefulness of student-facing learning analytics. One factor contributing to doubt over the value of student-facing learning analytics is that their design and implementation remains firmly rooted in the technical domain, with virtually no grounding in the knowledge base of learning and teaching. If the growing investment of resources into the development of student-facing learning analytics systems is to be fruitful, then there is an obvious, urgent need to re-position student-facing learning analytics within learning and teaching frameworks. With this in mind, we use Schraw & Dennison's model of metacognition and Vygotsky's zone of proximal development to unpack the ‘learning' in student-facing analytics and work towards an understanding of student-facing analytics that is more conducive to supporting metacognition and effective learning.
Flipped classrooms are an instructional strategy that is becoming popular in educational contexts, particularly higher education. The principle of Flipped Classroom is that events that have traditionally taken place inside the classroom now take place outside the classroom and vice versa. Various studies have reported increased student performance and satisfaction after switching to a flipped classroom. However, most of these studies are based on students' perceptions of their own learning, not based on teachers' assessment of students' achievements. This article presents the results of flipping a computer programming course. It first describes how this course was flipped, then it presents the results of comparing the average marks awarded to students between those that took the course offering in flipped mode and those that took the course in the traditional mode. The comparison showed an increase in student performance in a flipped mode. Furthermore, the increase in student performance was sustained for 3 years, which is the full duration of this study. The comparison of student satisfaction showed an increase in student satisfaction in one campus, while the student satisfaction remained steady in another campus.
