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Coping self-efficacy mediates the influence of generalized control beliefs on physical activity behavior and intentions to be active: A population based sample
No full textGeneralized beliefs about one’s control are thought to affect behaviors and behavioral intentions (BI). We sought to examine how a sense of mastery and constraints contribute to a specific control belief, exercise self-efficacy (SE), as well as BI and physical activity (PA) behavior in the Alberta population. We thought SE would partially mediate the effect of mastery and constraints on exercise and BI, with constraints showing a direct influence on PA. A random digit dialing survey of 1210 Albertans was conducted in Calgary, Edmonton and elsewhere. Participants were asked about control beliefs (mastery and constraints) and SE for coping with barriers to PA as well as their PA behavior and their BI to engage in PA. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the role of mastery and constraints on SE and BI and then on behavior. Mastery was positively related to SE and those reporting higher constraints were less confident in the ability to cope with the demands of exercise. Coping SE fully mediated the relationship between mastery and constraints and behavior, as well as BI. Standardized direct effects between SE and PA behavior and BI were .47 and .21, respectively. General beliefs people hold about the extent to which they can control their lives influences specific beliefs, such as coping self-efficacy. Perceiving broader barriers in one’s life lead to less confidence in one’s ability to cope with the demands of regular PA, and consequently less PA. Broader beliefs about one’s control may serve as a target to influence behavioral specific control beliefs such as coping SE for exercise, in future interventions to improve SE
Working Anytime Anywhere: Mobile Knowledge Workers
No full textI made the presentation entitled “Mobile knowledge workers working anytime anywhere?” to an audience with various disciplinary backgrounds from around the world at the 2nd World Social Sciences Forum in Montreal, Quebec, on October 15, 2013. The theme of the Forum was Social Transformations and the Digital Age, covering a wide range of topics such as big/open data, research libraries’ role in data stewardship, intergenerational communication, and privacy and surveillance. My presentation was part of a symposium on New Forms of Work. The other presentations at the symposium ranged from understanding work, family, and technology figurations in the home, corporate crisis management in times of social media, to immaterial labour, monetization, commodification and the political in social media. The international audience showed general interest in telework and mobile work as changes in the world of work. My presentation was received well, with several colleagues sharing related work or requesting for a copy of my presentation and related papers for use in their teaching and research. Participation in other sessions at the Forum provided further food for thought for my teaching and research as our society is being transformed in many ways in this digital age.Recent advances in mobile technologies and the popular use of mobile devices in our daily lives suggest that knowledge worker can now work from anywhere at any time, or while on the move. Is this true? Research suggests that only a small percentage of teleworkers work full-time from home; most teleworkers work from multiple sites including their organizational workspace, their home, and other public and private spaces (e.g., client’s offices and “third places”). While growing research efforts have been on the impact of teleworking from home on knowledge workers’ family and personal life, productivity, and job satisfaction, research on understanding working from multiple sites, “mobile work”, is just beginning. The proposed paper will review research and theoretical perspectives that explore mobile work performed by knowledge workers in organizations. Who are these mobile teleworkers? Where, when, and how do they work? The focus will be on the inter-relationships between the physical and social environment of a diversity of workplaces, particularly “third spaces” – public and private spaces that had not been considered as workplaces -- and work behaviours and well-being. How do they transform the physical environment of these public spaces to accommodate their work activities? Future research and practical implications for the design of these spaces and organizational policies will be discussed
Accidental Plagiarism in Higher Education, Part II
No full textAlarming numbers published in academia and in the media produce the perception that plagiarism is a widespread and urgent problem (e.g., Briggs, 2009). This project explores the potential extent of accidental plagiarism by assessing Canadian distance education students’ knowledge of the concept. Four pieces of evidence are analyzed: (1) students’ attempts to select plagiarised passages from a number of choices; (2) paraphrases these students produced; (3) results from a simple exercise aiming to improve plagiarism understanding; (4) the types of errors made in identifying and writing paraphrases.
Two different groups of university students were asked to recognize plagiarised work in which wording from the original had been changed in various ways. Students from the online Psychology course received feedback on their recognition attempts and then were asked to paraphrase a passage. The prediction is that with feedback and practice, this group should improve over time. A second group of more diverse students was tested to see if the results generalize. For the second group, undergraduate and graduate students were selected from throughout the university rather than from a single course. All four multiple choice scenarios included a proper citation.
This study found that almost half of the students in a third-year psychology course did not recognize plagiarised material consistently. The evidence does not support the prediction that student scores would improve over time given feedback and practice, as more students got the first question correct than the fourth question. Furthermore, the majority of these students did not correctly paraphrase a passage they were asked to write in their own words, even after they had received feedback on their recognition quizzes. This suggests more extensive instruction is needed.
Undergraduate and graduate students from throughout the university also failed to recognize many plagiarised passages that included word strings, reversals, substitutions, additions, and deletions. The poor ability of students to identify plagiarised passages may imply poor understanding of the concept (Hochstein et al., 2008). Therefore, when these students write their course essays, they may not be able to recognize their own tendency toward plagiarism and thus engage in it accidentally.
Rather than perceiving plagiarism as a type of cheating, it may be more appropriate to identify it, particularly poor paraphrasing, as a weakness in skills. The remedy for committing plagiarism should be sending students to tutorials or other methods of learning to read, write, and reference at the level required for the discipline (Briggs, 2009).
References available from author.Earlier research found only about half of 423 university psychology students correctly answered four questions involving recognizing plagiarism, and only a minority was able to rephrase a passage without producing plagiarized content. A more representative study of 125 undergraduates and 103 graduate students reported similar difficulties. The most common mistakes involved the presence of citations and word reversals. Results suggest many cases of plagiarism are inadvertent, so skill development rather than punishment may be appropriate
Introduction: Copyright Concerns All Academics
No full textIntellectual property (IP) is a subject of concern to all academics because it is the legal-economic infrastructure of all academic work. The long-increasing, now accelerating, and multilateral strengthening of IP regulation does not necessarily serve and in many ways opposes the interests of academics, who are well positioned to intervene critically in the copyfight that embroils their work, a copyfight with implications that extend far beyond academia, from the structure of the Internet to freedom of expression
IES (Intelligent Enterprise and Education Systems) Research Group
No full textContent of the retired IES (Intelligent Enterprise and Education Systems) Research Group website
Location-Based Learning Management System for Adaptive Mobile Learning
Full text linkE-learning and distance learning are all forms of learning that take place outside of a traditional learning environment and can be alternatives for learners who are not able to study in a traditional environment for various reasons. With advancement in technologies and increased use of smart phone, mobile learning has gained popularity as another form of learning and has enabled learners to learn anywhere and anytime. Ubiquitous learning takes mobile learning to another level by providing contents that are context and location aware. There is therefore the need to provide mobile devices with the right learning contents for the right users. The right learning contents should be adaptive to the learner’s location, as well as learning style and device etc. To be able to implement the learning, learning management systems play the important role in creating, managing, and delivering the learning contents. In this paper, a location-based Learning Management System for adaptive and personalized mobile learning is presented. The systems makes use of 5R Adaptation Framework for Location based Mobile learning, the location-based dynamic grouping algorithm, and concepts of the IMS Learning Design model to produce a location-based adaptive mobile learning setting
Vorkuta: Three Chapters in the Making of a Working Class
No full textSince 2010, I have been engaged in a research project under the heading “Self-emancipation: Work, Organization and Resistance in the Global Workplace,” research which from 2010 until 2013 was facilitated by a Research Incentive Grant from Athabasca University. One aspect of this research focused on North America, resulting in several conference papers and a peer-reviewed article on the 1990s-era “Days of Action” in Ontario. Another aspect of this research focused on Latin America and the Caribbean, and resulted in several conference papers and a book contract on the 21st century emergence of Regional Integration Initiatives in Latin America and the Caribbean. The third aspect of this research focused on the decomposition and recomposition of class relations in the territories formerly known as the Soviet Union. It was this third aspect of my research which was facilitated by the Academic and Professional Development Fund.
The research focuses on three moments or chapters in the history of an Arctic city in the Komi Republic (formerly part of the Soviet Union), a city known as Vorkuta. In the 1930s, Vorkuta was the site of the most extreme moments in the decomposition of the old working class – through first internment and then execution, by Stalin’s secret police, of the working class activists who had opposed the rise of Stalinism. Before their liquidation, these activists engaged in a very long, very arduous hunger strike, a strike which became the stuff of whispered legend in the following decades.
In the 1950s, Vorkuta again emerged to prominence. It had, in the 1940s and 1950s as part of the “gulag” system of camps in the Soviet Union, been transformed from a concentration/execution camp to a forced labour camp. The forced labourers worked primarily in several enormous coal mines, the coal from which becoming a crucial component in the energy supply of the Soviet Union. In 1953, after the death of Stalin, these forced labourers overcame many internal divisions, and launched a strike movement against conditions in the camps. Without question, this strike movement played a central role in the dismantling of the bulk of the forced labour camps in the years which followed.
In the 1980s, Vorkuta was still producing coal, but now employing “free” labour as opposed to forced labour. In 1989, 1990 and 1991, these coal miners engaged in mass strike actions. From these strikes, new trade unions emerged – trade unions independent of the Stalinist state. Without question, these strikes and the emergence of independent trade unionism, played a crucial role in the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of Stalinism in 1991.
The study’s organizing framework is that provided by E.P. Thompson, who insisted that classes are not automatic products of the economy, but that in fact classes “make themselves” through struggle, debate and organization.In the 1930s, Vorkuta in Siberia emerged as one of the Soviet Union’s principle sources of coal. It was also the principal site of the final horror of Stalin’s extermination of the politicized workers who had raised the Bolsheviks to power in 1917. Before their extermination, the prisoners at Vorkuta, followers of Leon Trotsky, organized a magnificent hunger strike, which became the stuff of whispered legend in the years which followed.
By the 1950s Vorkuta was the principal supplier of coal to Leningrad – and the miners who dug that coal were almost all forced labourers. In 1953, several thousand of these forced labourers organized a massive strike against the slave labour system, serving in large measure as the final blow ending forced labour in the Soviet Union.
By the late 1980s, the mines of Vorkuta were operated by “free” wage labourers, and in 1989 a series of strikes by these miners – some of them the grandchildren of the 1930s Vorkuta workers –accelerated the collapse of “communism” and served as a buttress against the return of the old regime during the attempted coup in 1991.
The paper will suggest that a) the 1930’s era of strikes revealed clearly the class nature of the Soviet Union; b) the 1950’s era of strikes were shaped by and helped to end the moment of “primary accumulation” in the Soviet Union; and c) the 1980’s and early 1990’s era strikes were harbingers of the 21st century Russian working class, emergent in an era of neoliberalism
Representing Race in the Public Sphere – Contrasting the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) with research presented via Edmonton Public Library Theatre
No full textThe purpose of this paper is to explore the ways in which “race” or ethnicity has been, and can be, represented in Canada and to make a number of other observations that challenge the “Central/Eastern” representation of the formation of “two-nations” Canada. Therefore this is not just a critique of how the CBC ignored ethnicity in a major piece of “public pedagogy” but a lament for a missed opportunity to present the multi-ethnic, multicultural origins of Canadian experience – a missed opportunity which is sadly repeated almost daily. Finally, we will discuss how community engagement as “public pedagogy” can be a major component of university research.
The paper discusses the failure of the CBC to use a black actor to portray Sir James Douglas (known as a “Scotch-West Indian”) and sets this failure within the history of racialization in Canada. The paper also discusses “race” theory, identity, and culture together with the social, civil and educational intersections that can be explored through research and public representation – all of which can help illuminate issues of hybridity and complexity when considering community and nation-building.
The latter section of the paper explores how educators can engage community in developing a play about their experience in coming to Canada, forming a community, and becoming Canadians of Caribbean descent (African Canadians). It also records the success of the 3 performances of the play before a total audience of 400 – a local example of an alternative public pedagogy portraying race and representation
Dubjection: A Node (Reflections on Web-Conferencing, McLuhan, and Intellectual Property)
Full text linkFrom the editors' introduction to the book in which this chapter appears, _McLuhan's Global Village Today_ (Pickering & Chatto, 2014): "Mark A. McCutcheon’s contribution, ‘Dubjection: A Node (Reflections on Web-Conferencing, McLuhan and Intellectual Property)’, offers a more practical take on contemporary media theory. It is very McLuhanesque for several reasons: first, it comments on McCutcheon’s contribution to our McLuhan conference via the internet, probably the most typical way of communicating in the global village of the twenty-first century. But in addition to insightful technological remarks, McCutcheon also comments on the development of media communication on the web and its legal and copyright repercussions. He creates the innovative term dubject in order to refer to the new situation of the subject in twenty-first-century communication networks such as Twitter and Facebook, and in internet teaching and web-conferencing set-ups" (3).Athabasca Universit
The “F” in Group Work: Managing the Free Rider Problem.
No full textWe have all heard about the benefits of group work leading to a better product. However, we have also all experienced group work that has been frustrating, involved productivity losses and undermined teamwork. The literature refers to this as “group hate”. This presentation is based on our initial literature review of free riding, social loafing, and the sucker effect. The common denominator between these concepts involves withholding effort. The free rider phenomenon involves a balance between personal interests (individual utility) and collective interest (social utility). Faculty has an important role to play in addressing the free rider problem in relation to coursework because they control the contextual variables as well as technical and organizational aspects of group work. By the end of this session, participants will have an understanding of the concepts of free riding, social loafing, and the sucker effect. Participants will also be able to reflect on the free rider problem in the context of their courses and appreciate why some individuals withhold effort. This session will also involve discussion on practices to minimize the free rider problem