The effect of consumer education on unit price usage : an early exploratory study

Consumer awareness and usage of Unit Price (UP) information continues to hold academic interest. Originally designed as a device to enable shoppers to make comparisons between grocery products, it is argued consumers still lack a sufficient understanding of the device. Previous research has tended to focus on product choice, effect of time, and structural changes to price presentation. No studies have tested the effect of UP consumer education on grocery shopping expenditure. Supported by distributed learning theories, this is the first study to condition participants over a twenty week period, to comprehend and employ UP information while shopping. A 3x5 mixed factorial design was employed to collect data from 357 shoppers. A 3 (Control, Massed, Spaced) x 5 (Time Point: Week 0, 5, 10, 15 and 20) mixed factorial analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed to analyse the data. Preliminary results revealed that the three groups differed in their average expenditure over the twenty weeks. The Control group remained stable across the five time points. Results indicated that both intensive (Massed) and less intensive (Spaced) exposure to UP information achieved similar results, with both group reducing average expenditure similarly by Week 5. These patterns held for twenty weeks, with conditioned groups reducing their grocery expenditure by over 10%. This research has academic value as a test of applied learning theories. We argue, retailers can attain considerable market advantages as efforts to enhance customers’ knowledge, through consumer education campaigns, can have a positive and strong impact on customer trust and goodwill toward the organisation. Hence, major practical implications for both regulators and retailers exist.

Exploring the experiences of embedding Indigenous knowledge and perspectives on teaching practicum through interpretive phenomenology

In this paper, we discuss interpretive/hermeneutic phenomenology as a theoretical approach to explore the experiences of three stakeholder groups in embedding Indigenous knowledge and perspectives on teaching practicum, a project sponsored by ALTC. We begin by asking the phenomenological question ‘what is your experience of practice teaching?’ An open, explorative, phenomenological framework seeks the meanings of experiences, not truths, from the participants’ words themselves. Interpretive phenomenology is particularly suitable to explore educational experiences (Grumet, 1992; M. van Manen, 1990), as it provides rich ground for listening to the stakeholders’ lived experience and documenting it for interpretation. In an interpretive process, perspectives on lifeworlds, worldview and lenses get highlighted (Cunningham & Stanley, 2003). We establish how through various project stages, interpretive phenomenology gets to the essence of practice teaching experience creating a pedagogical ‘understanding’ of the essential nature of shared experience as lived by the participants (M van Manen, 2002). Thereby, it foregrounds voices of agency, dissent, acceptance and resistance. We consider how our research study focuses on the pedagogic voice of Indigenous pre-service teachers and the recognition of complex pedagogic fields in Indigenous education. We explain how this study seeks insights into their evaluation of pedagogic relations with two other education stakeholders – their practicum supervising teachers at schools and university staff involved practicum experience. As such, our study aims to support and develop long term, future-oriented opportunities for Indigenous pre-service teachers to embed Indigenous knowledge in the curricula. We conclude with some projections into the discourse on how Indigenous knowledge (IK) and perspectives might be diversely exemplified in pre-service teachers’ professional works (particularly E-portfolios). We speculate how this change could in turn maximise opportunities for Indigenous pre-service teachers, their supervising teachers and university staff to demonstrate leadership in their field through the creation of future tangible products such as units of work, resources, assessment and reflection tools. The processes contextualising the cultural interface of competing knowledge systems (Nakata, 2007) provide important analytical tools for understanding issues affecting student-teacher-mentor relationships occurring on practicum.

Evaluating the use of online synchronous communication to enhance learning in statistics

According to social constructivists, learners are active participants in constructing new knowledge in a social process where they interact with others. In these social settings teachers or more knowledgeable peers provide support. This research study investigated the contribution that an online synchronous tutorial makes to support teaching and learning of undergraduate introductory statistics offered by an Australian regional university at a distance. The introductory statistics course which served as a research setting in this study was a requirement of a variety of programs at the University, including psychology, business and science. Often students in these programs perceive this course to be difficult and irrelevant to their programs of study. Negative attitudes and associated anxiety mean that students often struggle with the content. While asynchronous discussion forums have been shown to provide a level of interaction and support, it was anticipated that online synchronous tutorials would offer immediate feedback to move students forward through ―stuck places.‖ At the beginning of the semester the researcher offered distance students in this course the opportunity to participate in a weekly online synchronous tutorial which was an addition to the usual support offered by the teaching team. This tutorial was restricted to 12 volunteers to allow sufficient interaction to occur for each of the participants. The researcher, as participant-observer, conducted the weekly tutorials using the University's interactive online learning platform, Wimba Classroom, whereby participants interacted using audio, text chat and a virtual whiteboard. Prior to the start of semester, participants were surveyed about their previous mathematical experiences, their perceptions of the introductory statistics course and why they wanted to participate in the online tutorial. During the semester, they were regularly asked pertinent research questions related to their personal outcomes from the tutorial sessions. These sessions were recorded using screen capture software and the participants were interviewed about their experiences at the end of the semester. Analysis of these data indicated that the perceived value of online synchronous tutorial lies in the interaction with fellow students and a content expert and with the immediacy of feedback given. The collaborative learning environment offered the support required to maintain motivation, enhance confidence and develop problemsolving skills in these distance students of introductory statistics. Based on these findings a model of online synchronous learning is proposed.

The knowledge translation pathway for timely diagnosis of dementia

There has been significant debate about the value of screening for dementia, and the need for early diagnosis. Options include Gene testing, early risk assessment, screening, case finding and review when a patient or carer identify that they have symptoms. This paper is not focused on these early approaches to identifying people with dementia. It is focused on the period when a patient or a carer has recognised that there are some memory problems and they are seeking assistance with a diagnosis or explanation in relation to memory loss.