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Book smarts vs street smarts : do business schools value business experience?
Get PDFMRU Discovery Snapshot #1. The first of a series of Knowledge Mobilization projects to promote MRU Scholarship.Business Schools in Canada — Today business schools educate one in five university students who have the primary goal to develop the business skills and knowledge to support career success. To be able to deliver on this requires business schools' faculty to have the expertise to blend theory and practice
Sustainable decision making for emerging educational technologies in libraries
Get PDFPurpose: The purpose of this article is to discuss approaches to sustainable decision-making for integrating emerging educational technologies in library instruction while supporting evidence-based practice (EBP)
Design/methodology/approach: This article highlights recent trends in emerging educational technologies and EBP and details a model for supporting evidence informed decision-making. This viewpoint article draws on an analysis of recent literature, as well as experience from professional practice.
Findings: Authors discuss the need for sustainable decision-making that addresses a perceived lack of evidence surrounding emerging technologies, a dilemma that many library educators and practitioner-researchers will have faced in their own library instruction. To support the evidence-informed selection and integration of emerging educational technologies, a two-pronged model is presented, beginning with an articulation of pedagogical aims, alignment of technological affordances to these aims and support of this alignment via hard evidence available in the research literature, as well as soft evidence found in the environmental scan.
Originality/value: This article provides an outline and synthesis of key issues of relevance to library practitioners working within a challenging and ever-changing landscape of technologies available for learning and instruction. The proposed approach aims to create a sustainable model for addressing problems of evidence and will benefit academic librarians considering emerging educational technologies in their own pedagogy, as well as those who support the pedagogy of others
Recreational Access Management Planning: Understanding Perceptions Regarding Public Forest Lands in SW Alberta
No full textManagement of recreational access on public forest lands is a complex issue of growing global importance. The provision of public recreation opportunities is part of the suite of ecological goods and services that must be considered by many forest managers. Effective access management is predicated on understanding the attitudes and perceptions of recreation users in order to predict and influence visitor behaviour and gauge the acceptance of new management strategies. Potential access management strategies vary given the nature of recreation activities and include: restricting the amount, type, and spatial distribution of use, visitor education, temporal restrictions and enhancing site durability. In this research we examined the views of recreation users on public lands in southwestern Alberta, Canada through implementation of an online survey (n = 945) with a focus on access management options. The results indicate a strong belief that the quality of the recreation experience is declining and that increased management and enforcement are required. More detailed analysis indicates that demographic and user-type variables strongly influence ideas about appropriate management. Forest managers need to engage with, understand, and respond to a wide variety of recreation user needs and preferences
University Rankings: How Well Do They Measure Library Service Quality?
Get PDFUniversity rankings play an increasingly large role in shaping the goals of academic
institutions and departments, while removing universities themselves from the evaluation process.
This study compares the library-related results of two university ranking publications with
scores on the LibQUAL+™ survey to identify if library service quality—as measured within the
LibQUAL+™ dimensions affect of service, information control, and library as place—is related
to the standings. The results suggest that some indicators used to rank universities favor libraries
with more highly rated physical facilities, while largely ignoring the impact that other services
have on library qualit
2015 Symposium on Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Conference Program
No full text6th Annual Symposium on Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Banff, Alberta Canada
November 12 - 14, 2015.
This gathering of teacher/scholars is a practitioner’s conference dedicated to developing teaching and learning research, sharing initial findings, going public with results of completed projects, and building an extended scholarly community. In its 6th year, the conference annually draws together faculty, students, educational developers, and administrators interested in the systematic inquiry into teaching and learning. This year's conference featured four pre-conference workshops, a day and a half of concurrent sessions, a poster session, reception, and two plenary keynote presentations. Sessions included work using a variety of data from images to surveys and there were a number of presentations on specific methodologies. Topics included students’ use of OER texts, student identity formation, service learning, and building supportive research communities
Exploration of interpersonal relationship development : finding the key to student engagement in blended delivery courses
Get PDFDiscovery snapshotBlended delivery of information involves a combination of face-to-face and online activities to create a unique learning environment with its own opportunities and challenges. While the interest and demand for this type of curriculum is increasing, the complexities of this learning context and keeping students engaged within it are not fully understood. This research highlights how instructors and adult learners interact with one another and develop interpersonal relationships in post-secondary through blended delivery learning environments and how this may be used to enhance student engagement
Thresholds of skin sensitivity are partially influenced by mechanical properties of the skin on the foot sole
No full textAcross the foot sole, there are vibration and monofilament sensory differences despite an alleged even distribution of cutaneous afferents. Mechanical property differences across foot sole sites have been proposed to account for these differences. Vibration (VPT; 3 Hz, 40 Hz, 250 Hz), and monofilament (MF) perception threshold measurements were compared with skin hardness, epidermal thickness, and stretch response across five foot sole locations in young healthy adults (n = 22). Perceptual thresholds were expected to correlate with all mechanical property measurements to help address sensitivity differences between sites. Following this hypothesis, the MedArch was consistently found to be the thinnest and softest site and demonstrated the greatest sensitivity. Conversely, the Heel was found to be the thickest and hardest site, and was relatively insensitive across perceptual tests. Site differences were not observed for epidermal stretch response measures. Despite an apparent trend of elevated sensory threshold at harder and thicker sites, significant correlations between sensitivity measures and skin mechanical properties were not observed. Skin hardness and epidermal thickness appeared to have a negligible influence on and minor influence on within this young healthy population. When normalized (% greater or smaller than subject mean) to the subject mean for each variable, significant positive correlations were observed between MF and skin hardness (R2 = 0.422, P < 0.0001) and epidermal thickness (R2 = 0.433, P < 0.0001) providing evidence that skin mechanics can influence threshold. In young healthy adults, differences in sensitivity are present across the foot sole, but cannot solely be accounted for by differences in the mechanical properties of the skin. Skin mechanical properties (thickness and hardness) were found to have a meaningful influence on monofilament perception threshold and a negligible influence on vibration perception threshold across the foot sole. Less sensitive sites were found to be the thickest and hardest, however significant correlations between these measures was not observed. In young healthy adults, differences in sensitivity are present across the foot sole, but cannot solely be accounted for by differences in the mechanical properties of the skin
Integrating Global Citizenship through Local Teaching Practices
No full textAs university and nursing programs place more emphasis on global perspectives in their strategic plans and goals, it is frequently unclear how these perspectives are integrated into curricula and pedagogical practices. With globalization processes impacting health and education throughout the world, it is timely to understand the current context and expertise in order to move ahead to promote the development of professional nurses as global citizens.
This interpretive descriptive study explored the characteristics and qualities of global citizenship and global health from the perspective of 12 expert informant nursing education leaders from undergraduate nursing programs within Canada. The study also examined curricular and pedagogical directions that would promote the integration of global citizenship education within nursing programs. In addition to the interviews, field notes and reflective journaling were also used in data gathering. The findings are presented as qualitative description and were analyzed using the interpretive description method
Thresholds of cutaneous afferents related to perceptual threshold across the human foot sole
No full textPerceptual thresholds are known to vary across the foot sole, despite a reported even distribution in cutaneous afferents. Skin mechanical properties have been proposed to account for these differences; however, a direct relationship between foot sole afferent firing, perceptual threshold, and skin mechanical properties has not been previously investigated. Using the technique of microneurography, we recorded the monofilament firing thresholds of cutaneous afferents and associated perceptual thresholds across the foot sole. In addition, receptive field hardness measurements were taken to investigate the influence of skin hardness on these threshold measures. Afferents were identified as fast adapting [FAI (n = 48) or FAII (n = 13)] or slowly adapting [SAI (n = 21) or SAII (n = 20)], and were grouped based on receptive field location (heel, arch, metatarsals, toes). Overall, perceptual thresholds were found to most closely align with firing thresholds of FA afferents. In contrast, SAI and SAII afferent firing thresholds were found to be significantly higher than perceptual thresholds and are not thought to mediate monofilament perceptual threshold across the foot sole. Perceptual thresholds and FAI afferent firing thresholds were significantly lower in the arch compared with other regions, and skin hardness was found to positively correlate with both FAI and FAII afferent firing and perceptual thresholds. These data support a perceptual influence of skin hardness, which is likely the result of elevated FA afferent firing threshold at harder foot sole sites. The close coupling between FA afferent firing and perceptual threshold across foot sole indicates that small changes in FA afferent firing can influence perceptual thresholds