82837 research outputs found
Sort by
Beyond the Tool Belt: How Schools Can Guide Students to Craft Careers That Fit
No full textThis paper examines how K–12 schools in Alberta can better support students in choosing skilled trades that truly fit who they are. It begins with a personal story and then proceeds to use two theories, Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) and Career Construction Theory (CCT), to establish how interest, beliefs, and identity influence and shape students’ decisions. From the various literature reviewed, it was revealed that most students choose skilled trades as fallback options rather than intentional choices. This is mainly because of stigma, insufficient information, and uneven access to effective guidance.
The paper argues that labour market information alone is not enough to aid students in making the right choices. They need relational, reflective guidance and real opportunities to try different trades and test their personal fit. To help address this issue, the paper makes some practical recommendations, such as reframing trades as creative and respected pathways, expanding hands-on learning, building mentoring relationships with diverse tradespeople, and engaging families to challenge negative perceptions. Taken together, these changes can help students enter trades with confidence, alignment, and a sense of purpose
Three Essays on Employees as Strategic Stakeholders: Rethinking Value, Well-Being, and Competitive Advantage in Human Capital Systems
No full textThis dissertation investigates how human capital systems contribute to competitive advantage by focusing on how employees experience, interpret, and respond to organizational practices. Adopting a pluralist, employee-centered perspective with a stronger strategic focus, the three studies in this dissertation explore the psychological and behavioral conditions under which employee well-being and its potential to contribute value to the organization is influenced. Study 1 examines how high-performance work systems (HPWS) influence employee well-being through dual climate signals—support and pressure—that simultaneously enhance engagement and increase burnout. The findings challenge the unitarist assumption that HR systems exclusively produce mutual gains and highlight the role of employee interpretation in shaping outcomes. Study 2 explores how perceived organizational support (POS) and organizational identification (OID), treated as organizational behavior resources, interact to influence facades of conformity (FOC). Results reveal that the risk of high levels of FOC exists under conditions of both high and low OID. With respect to the former, it is highest when combined with low levels of POS, and with the latter, under conditions of moderate POS. Study 3 focuses on the strategic tension between human capital development and retention. It shows how proactive employees gain generalizable capabilities through promotion- and prevention-focused work environments, but also become more likely to exit when relational trust is lacking. Organizational trust emerges as a foundation for embedding organizational learning and protecting the value created through capability development. Together, these studies advance a stakeholder-aware, strategically grounded theory of human capital by emphasizing the role of employee experience, well-being, and discretion in shaping the conditions of competitive advantage
Playing against the unlivable: an exploration of trans game art
No full textWe are at a pivotal moment in gaming culture. From the playground to the Olympic arena, games and play are at the epicenter of an international wave of legal, physical, and legislative violence against transgender people. Over the last two years, hundreds of anti-trans bills have been filed and passed in state legislatures across the United States (Redfield et al., 2024) and, more recently, Canada (Smith et al., 2024), many of which focus on restricting young athletes’ participation in sports. These playground laws—in addition to alienating trans youth and creating a scapegoat for online transphobia and racism—are representative of the ways in which games themselves can be technologies of exclusion.
This moment of extreme political violence coincides with an ongoing artistic reckoning: games—both digital and analog—are quickly becoming one of the single most important mediums for trans storytelling, art, personal expression, and even
activism (Pow, 2024; Pozo, 2018; Ruberg, 2020, 2022). Designers create games out of oppressive “gender detection” algorithms, zines (small, community-published game collections) and charity game bundles regularly raise hundreds of thousands for mutual aid funds and trans advocacy groups, and indie developers create experimental “anti-games” that challenge our foundational understandings of interactive media, play, and art. In the face of these circumstances, the game has changed, and media scholars are rallying to understand how game makers, technologists, and educators can create space for trans play in game design and culture. By examining how gender diverse makers create selfimmolating and self-destructing games, anti-surveillance games that resist informational capture, and other “unplayable” works, this project will develop new theoretical interventions and provide remixable tools for gamemakers
Madison Dewart - Abstract 59 - Innovate Conference 2025
No full textGlobally, nearly three billion people live with a neurological condition (Global Burden of Disease, 2024). Improving their care in and out of hospital would significantly impact the health system. Amidst Alberta Health Services’ restructuring, we must optimize patient care and outcomes across acute neurosciences care
Shaista Meghani - Abstract 48 - Innovate Conference 2025
No full textHospitalization in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) can have long-term physiological and psychological impacts, significantly affecting functional recovery and quality of life post-discharge. Although music interventions have gained recognition as non-pharmacological approaches during acute critical illness, their potential benefits for post-ICU recovery remain underexplored
Manal Kleib - Abstract 34 - Innovate Conference 2025
No full textNurses informaticists (NI) integrate and optimize technology to enhance the quality and safety of care, support evidence-based practice, quality improvement, staff and patients’ use of technology (Anderson et al., 2020). Currently, it is not known what NI employment opportunities are available to nurses in Western Canada
Yixing Li - Abstract 77 - Innovate Conference 2025
No full textSexual reproductive health and rights (SRHR) significantly impact the education, development, health, and well-being of Canadian children and adolescents. Positive parental involvement in SRHR education could be key to addressing the SRHR challenges faced by immigrant children and adolescents. This scoping review explores the parental knowledge and information needs regarding immigrant children and adolescents (age 5-19 years) SRHR. We used the Joanna Briggs Institute scoping review method to conduct this review
The Development of Native Mass Spectrometry-based Techniques for the Study of Glycolipid Interactions in Biological Systems
No full textThis work explores the development of two novel techniques for the study of glycolipid interactions in biological systems using native mass spectrometry (nMS), albeit in two very divergent ways. Chapter 2 explores the development of the membrane anchor-assisted native mass spectrometry (MEAN-nMS) assay, which allows for the detection of low-affinity of glycan-binding protein/glycosphingolipid complexes. This is accomplished by means of a covalently-linked anchor between the surface of a model membrane or intact cell surface and a glycan-binding protein, thereby serving to localize the glycan-binding protein on the membrane surface and promote glycosphingolipid binding by effectively increasing the concentration of the glycan-binding protein at the surface. The addition of the membrane anchor allowed for the detection of interactions normally hidden under false negatives, and no false positives were yielded by the membrane-anchor assisted measurements. The MEAN-nMS assay was able to natural libraries created from glycosphingolipids extracted from cells and tissue, and later the MEAN-nMS was applied directly to the surface of intact cells – a novel and exciting result that allows for shotgun glycomics to be conducted directly using intact cells for the first time. Chapter 3 examines the development of a native mass spectrometry-based technique for the determination of the activity of the enzyme β-Glucocerebrosidase (GCase, which catalyses the hydrolysis of the glycolipid glucosylceramide) in human cerebrospinal fluid samples in order to test the efficacy of the drug ambroxol for upregulating the production of GCase. This has applications to Parkinson’s disease, where dysfunction of the gene producing GCase results in the accumulation of glucosylceramide and the formation of clusters of α-synuclein