An analysis of student engagement when taught in classes of different sizes in rural, regional and metropolitan campuses of an Australian university

This study investigates the impact of class size on student engagement and student performance. It is based on an analysis of student university enter scores, student grades and student evaluations in metropolitan, regional and rural campuses of an Australian universityduring trimester 1 of years 2008, 9 & 10. Past literature appears to support the predominant influence of the class size effect on learning, though some findings are mixed and inconclusive. Contrary to the accepted view that higher entry level scores result in higher grades and, conversely, lower entry level scores result in lower grades, the findings suggest that factorsother than entry level scores, contribute to student outcomes and student engagement. The study reveals that student satisfaction of teaching quality is higher in the rural and regional campuses where the cohorts are smaller than at the metropolitan campus. This may be an indication that class size seems to have a predominant influence on student engagement and learning outcomes.

Strong spiritual engagement and subjective well-being : a naturalistic investigation of the Thaipusam festival

The existence of a positive relationship between spiritual engagement and well-being is currently based on weak correlational evidence, generally in Western contexts. This study advances understanding through a naturalist, longitudinal study of 226 people, including Malays, Chinese, and Indians, experiencing the Hindu Thaipusam festival in Malaysia. We measured the subjective well-being of people with varying levels of engagement—from nonobservance or simply observing the festival to extreme engagement. Each person was assessed 3 months before, 2 weeks before, 2 weeks after, and 4 months after the festival. We found that the subjective well-being of those with the most extreme level of engagement was permanently higher than other groups. The well-being of those with a strong, but less extreme engagement rose at the time of the festival and remained elevated. The findings are discussed in relation to homeostatic theory of well-being and the potential benefits of spiritual engagement.

Designing online role plays with a focus on story development to support engagement and critical learning for higher education students

Online role plays, as they are designed for use in higher education in Australia and internationally, are active and authentic learning activities (Wills, Leigh & Ip, 2011). In online role plays, students take a character role in developing a story that serves as a metaphor for real-life experience in order to develop a potentially wide range of subject-related and generic learning outcomes. The characteristics of these stories are rarely considered as factors in the design―and success―of these activities. The unspoken cultural assumptions, norms and rules in the stories that impact on the meanings students make from their experiences are also rarely scrutinised in the online role play literature. This paper presents findings from a case study of an asynchronous text-based online role play involving politics and journalism students from three Australian universities. The findings highlight the centrality of students’ collaborative story-building activity to their engagement and learning, including their development of critical perspectives. The study underlines the importance of certain aspects of the role play's design to support students' story-building activity.

Engagement and learning through social software in finance : a retrospective on the Trading Room experience

The introduction of a social software blog space called the Trading Room in an undergraduate finance unit generated a great deal of activity to support student learning. A subsequent evaluation of this innovation, viewed through the lens of Activity Theory, demonstrated that students perceived high value in the opportunity it provided for them to reaffirm theories, obtain individualised feedback and benchmark their work against others. While assessment is generally seen as the carrot and the stick of learning; students in the study reported that they would still participate in reading and posting to the Trading Room even if there was no assessment requirement. Students did not see any value in the environment as a purely social space, reporting that they saw it primarily as a professional educational community. It would appear that just as there are different communities in the real world social space, there are also different types of communities in the online space.

Social media in disaster response : Queensland Police Service - public engagement during the 2011 floods

Social Media, particularly Microblogging services, are now being adopted as an additional tool for emergency service agencies to be able to interact with the community at all stages of a disaster. Unfortunately, no standard framework for Social Media adoption for disaster management exists and emergency service agencies are adopting Social Media in an ad-hoc fashion. This paper seeks to provide a general understanding of how Social Media is being used by emergency service agencies during disasters, to better understand how we might develop a standardised framework of adoption. In this study of the 2010/11 Queensland Flood event, Facebook broadcast messages from the Queensland Police Service to the general public, were analysed by genre. Findings show that these Microblogging activities were mostly about information distribution and warning broadcasts and that the strength of Social Media for two-way communication and collaboration with the general public, was under-utilised during this event.

Identity and self-presentation : from a representational to a performative lens in studying social media engagement in organisations

Social media make fast inroads into organisations. This raises issues regarding self-presentation and locating experts in these new emerging communication spaces, as the basis for effective social media-enabled knowledge work. However, research on self-presentation and identity in organisational social media is only just emerging and has been founded on broader understandings from studies of public social media. In this literature study we demonstrate that the existing body of research on identity in social media is dominated by a ‘representational lens’. Based on an analysis of the historic foundations of this stream of research, we will expose limitations of this lens in capturing contemporary engagement in online spaces and advocate for a ‘performative lens’ in studying identity work in organisations. We contribute a detailed exposition of the evolution of identity studies in the context of public social media, and we offer an alternative lens for studying the topic in organisational contexts.

Applying King et al.'s taxonomy to frame the IS discipline's engagement in green IS discourse

This paper considers how the IS discipline can engage with discourse on the institutions and their interventions which influence and regulate green IS innovation. To consider possible responses, we apply King et al.’s (1994) taxonomy, based on Institutional Theory, to frame a research agenda to guide future exploration and debate on the interventions to facilitate green IS innovation. Through the application of the taxonomy, we derive several pertinent questions for the discipline to consider as part of this debate. We conclude that the IS discipline can, and indeed should, play a more prominent role both through traditional responses (e.g., descriptive studies of green IS methodologies, organisational best practice, maturity models, etc.), but also through more active engagement in the form of participation and advocacy in shaping future green policy and regulation.

Student attention, engagement and participation in a Twitter-friendly classroom

Guided by a participatory action research methodology, this paper outlines an approach to integrating the social media Twitter platform within a tertiary education course, based on a social, constructivist pedagogy. It explores the perceptions of students on the benefits of using this technology for enhancing attentiveness, engagement and participation in the classroom. Previous studies have shown that greater participation and communication can stimulate student learning and lead to better academic performance, increased motivation, and an appreciation of different points of views. The untested hypothesis is that social media tools like Twitter can foster this type of communication. Students posted their responses during classroom activities via Twitter and then were surveyed on their perceived benefits associated with using the social media platform. The preliminary findings of the qualitative study suggest that, while not without its challenges, social media tools like Twitter have the potential to be used effectively for education-based activities in the classroom to improve communication and engagement both amongst the students and with the instructor.

The influence of job, team and organizational level resources on employee well-being, engagement, commitment and extra-role performance : test of a model

Purpose – Worker well-being continues to be fundamental to the study of work and a primary consideration for how organizations can achieve competitive advantage and sustainable and ethical work practices (Cartwright and Holmes; Harter, Schmidt and Keyes; Wright and Cropanzano). The science and practice of employee engagement, a key indicator of employee well-being, continues to evolve with ongoing incremental refinements to existing models and measures. This study aims to elaborate the Job Demands-Resources model of work engagement (Bakker and Demerouti) by examining how organizational, team and job level factors interrelate to influence engagement and well-being and downstream outcome variables such as affective commitment and extra-role behaviour.

Design/methodology/approach – Structural equations modelling of survey data obtained from 3,437 employees of a large multi-national mining company was used to test the important direct and indirect influence of organizational focused resources (a culture of fairness and support), team focused resources (team climate) and job level resources (career development, autonomy, supervisor support, and role clarity) on employee well-being, engagement, extra-role behaviour and organizational commitment.

Findings – The fit of the proposed measurement and structural models met criterion levels and the structural model accounted for sizable proportions of the variance in engagement/wellbeing (66 percent), extra-role-behaviour (52 percent) and commitment (69 percent).

Research limitations/implications – Study limitations (e.g. cross-sectional research design) and future opportunities are outlined.

Originality/value – The study demonstrates important extensions to the Job Demands-Resources model and provides researchers and practitioners with a simple but powerful motivational framework, a suite of measures, and a map of their inter-relationships which can be used to help understand, develop and manage employee well-being and engagement and their outcomes.