Linking client and employee perceptions of the organization: A study of client satisfaction with health care services

Client satisfaction with health care services has usually been researched in terms of socio-demographic and predispositional characteristics associated with the client. The present study included organizational characteristics as predictors of client satisfaction with health care services. Participants in the research were clients and employees of an Australian public-sector health care organization who responded to separate client and employee questionnaires. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that, after controlling for a number of client characteristics, organizational characteristics, as perceived by employees, accounted for a significant proportion of additional variance in client satisfaction with health care services. Results of the present study provided some support for the proposition that employee perceptions of the working environment should be considered in a more comprehensive understanding of client satisfaction with health care services. Limitations of the study highlight practical difficulties in the assessment of client outcomes and methodological complexities in linking individual and organizational processes.

Contextual constraining of student design practices

Background Engineering design is of significant interest to engineering educators. As yet, how the higher education context shapes student outcomes in engineering design courses remains underexplored. Since design courses are the primary way students are taught the critical topic of design, it is important to understand how the institutional and organizational contexts shape student outcomes and how we could improve design projects, given the context. Purpose We sought to answer two questions: What aspects of the design education process are salient, or important, for students? How do these salient aspects affect their design practices? Design/Method We used a qualitative case study approach to address the research questions because of our emphasis on understanding process-related aspects of design work and developing an interpretive understanding from the students’ perspective. Results Using a nested structuration framework, we show that the context of design practices shaped students’ outcomes by constraining their approach to the project and by providing a framework for their design process. We provide recommendations for design educators to help students overcome impediments to achieving learning objectives for design activities. Our research questions the efficacy of teaching engineering design when a design problem lacks a context beyond the classroom. Conclusions The institutional and organizational contexts influence student design practices. Engineering educators should carefully consider the potential effects of the design projects they implement within a higher education context.

A longitudinal investigation of coping processes during a merger: Implications for job satisfaction and organizational identification

This study tested the utility of a stress and coping model of employee adjustment to a merger. Two hundred and twenty employees completed both questionnaires (Time 1: 3 months after merger implementation; Time 2: 2 years later). Structural equation modeling analyses revealed that positive event characteristics predicted greater appraisals of self-efficacy and less stress at Time 1. Self-efficacy, in turn, predicted greater use of problem-focused coping at Time 2, whereas stress predicted a greater use of problem-focused and avoidance coping. Finally, problem-focused coping predicted higher levels of job satisfaction and identification with the merged organization (Time 2), whereas avoidance coping predicted lower identification.

Acting, accidents and performativity: Challenging the hegemonic good student in secondary schools

Current educational practice tends to ascribe a limiting vision of the good student as one who is well behaved, performs well in assessments and demonstrates values in keeping with dominant expectations. This paper argues that this vision of the good student is antithetical to the lived experience of students as they negotiate their positionality within complex power games in secondary schools. Student voices in focus group research nominate six rationales of the good student that inform their ‘performances’ of the good student. Understanding the multiplicity and dynamism of the good student is an educational imperative as schools seek to meet the changing needs of society in the new millennium.

School connectedness: Student voices examine power and subjectivity

Ideally, school would be a place where all students felt that they belonged. However, the reality is that many students feel as though they do not belong to their school community. Alienated or disaffected students are an endemic problem in schools in Australia, affecting the whole school community, as well as life chances for the students themselves after school. The crux of this matter, we believe, are the tensions between the desire to connect to the school community, and the frustration experienced by some students as a result of their subjectification by the school system. Perhaps students that we tend to identify as alienated or disaffected in their schools may be resisting the accepted negotiations of power that underpin the school system.

The good student: Subjectivities, power and schooling

Schools are places where student subjectivities are negotiated and contested in a variety of spaces. This paper argues that schools organise the possibilities for student subjectivities through a set of discourses that construct idealised notions of the good student. Whilst some discourses occur across educational sites, in practice these sets of discourses construct a unique vision of the good student in each specific school site. This vision is articulated in a variety of ways in each school, however, the result is that each student is enmeshed within a complex nexus of power relations that they can contest, negotiate or accept. Most of the time, students engage in a swirling set of subjectivities that encompasses these possibilities in various ways at various times. This paper problematises commonsense notions of the good student at one school site. One intent is to give voice to the lived experience of students who find themselves the site of these technologies of power. These technologies construct a set of commonsense expectations of schools - amongst which is the desire to produce the good student. Another is to use a Foucaultean analysis that rejects the good/bad binary that underpins many commonsense understandings of what students should be.

Do Students Not Care about Extra Credit Opportunities? Investigating Student Perceptions of Extra Credit Value vs. Effort

Giving “extra credit” work to students has been a controversial and hotly debated pedagogical issue for the last 20 years (Blood et al. 1993; Groves 2000; Muztaba Fuad and Jones 2012; Norcross et al. 1989; Weimer 2011). Previous work has focused on the faculty perspective discussing benefits and drawbacks associated with extra credit work (e.g. Hill et al. 1993; Norcross et al. 1989). Other scholars have investigated the use and effects of pop quizzes and other extra credit assignments on students’ final grades (Thorne 2000; Oley 1993). Some authors have criticized that the empirical exploration of understanding students’ motivational and performance efforts remains scarce and “rarely appears in the literature” (Mays and Bower 2005, p. 1). Besides a gap of empirical work it further appears that most existing studies stem from Psychology or Information Science. Yet it is surprising that, even though the topic of extra credit is considered a common practice in marketing education (Ackerman and Kiesler 2007), there is a wide gap within the marketing education literature. For example, a quick search in the Journal of Marketing Education for the keyword “extra credit” shows only 25 search results; yet none of those papers address motivational or performance effects of extra credit. A further search in Marketing Education Review yielded no results at all. To the authors’ knowledge, the topic has only been addressed once by Ackerman and Kiesler in the 2007 MEA Proceedings who conclude that for “such a common part of the marketing education curriculum, we know surprisingly little about its impact on students” (p. 123).

Who is the good high school student?

Schooling is one of the core experiences of most young people in the Western world. This study examines the ways that students inhabit subjectivities defined in their relationship to some normalised good student. The idea that schools exist to produce students who become good citizens is one of the basic tenets of modernist educational philosophies that dominate the contemporary education world. The school has become a political site where policy, curriculum orientations, expectations and philosophies of education contest for the ‘right’ way to school and be schooled. For many people, schools and schooling only make sense if they resonate with past experiences. The good student is framed within these aspects of cultural understanding. However, this commonsense attitude is based on a hegemonic understanding of the good, rather than the good student as a contingent multiplicity that is produced by an infinite set of discourses and experiences. In this book, author Greg Thompson argues that this understanding of subjectivities and power is crucial if schools are to meet the needs of a rapidly changing and challenging world. As a high school teacher for many years, Thompson often wondered how students responded to complex articulations on how to be a good student. How a student can be considered good is itself an articulation of powerful discourses that compete within the school. Rather than assuming a moral or ethical citizen, this study turns that logic on it on its head to ask students in what ways they can be good within the school. Visions of the good student deployed in various ways in schools act to produce various ways of knowing the self as certain types of subjects. Developing the postmodern theories of Foucault and Deleuze, this study argues that schools act to teach students to know themselves in certain idealised ways through which they are located, and locate themselves, in hierarchical rationales of the good student. Problematising the good student in high schools engages those institutional discourses with the philosophy, history and sociology of education. Asking students how they negotiate or perform their selves within schools challenges the narrow and limiting ways that the good is often understood. By pushing the ontological understandings of the self beyond the modernist philosophies that currently dominate schools and schooling, this study problematises the tendency to see students as fixed, measurable identities (beings) rather than dynamic, evolving performances (becomings). Who is the Good High School Student? is an important book for scholars conducting research on high school education, as well as student-teachers, teacher educators and practicing teachers alike.

Swings and round-abouts: Student connectedness in secondary schools

Connectedness is a complex idea that seems to mean different things for each individual. For the purposes of this dissertation, connectedness can best be understood as the ways that an individual feels an affiliation with the community of the institution that he/she experiences. This dissertation seeks to uncover the discourses that various stakeholder groups have within the site of a single school concerning connectedness. One of the precepts that this dissertation holds is that connectedness to school has benefits for the individual as learner, the school as a community and potentially the wider community in years to come. This is a theoretical position in the lineage of such theorists as Plato, Rousseau, and Dewey who have argued that education is a transformative practice that could be a tool for solving some of the issues that contemporary societies face. This work uses the theories of Foucault to extend the analysis to argue that connectedness is not a monolithic constant, but rather a complex set of converging and diverging discourses that students must contend with.

The impact of a self-development coaching programme on medical and dental students’ psychological health and academic performance: A randomised controlled trial

Background Psychological distress is well-documented worldwide among medical and dental students. Few studies have assessed the impact of self-development coaching programs on the students’ psychological health. The aim of the study was to evaluate the effect of a self-development coaching programme on the psychological health and academic performance of preclinical medical and dental students at Umm Al-Qura University, Saudi Arabia. Methods Four-hundred and twenty-two participants (n = 422, 20–22 years) fulfilled the study requirements and were invited into a parallel-randomised controlled trial that was partially blinded. Participants were stratified by faculty, gender, and academic year, and then randomised. A total of 156 students participated in the intervention group (IG) and 163 students participated in the control group (CG). The IG received the selfdevelopment programme, involving skills and strategies aimed to improve students’ psychological health and academic performance, through a two-day workshop. Meanwhile, the CG attended an active placebo programme focussing on theoretical information that was delivered through a five-hour workshop. Both programmes were conducted by the same presenter during Week 1 of the second semester of the 2012–2013 academic year. Data were gathered immediately before (T1), one week after (T2) and five weeks (T3) after the intervention. Psychological health was measured using the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS-21), the General Self-Efficacy (GSE), and the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS). Academic performance was measured using students’ academic weighted grades (WG). Student cognitive and emotional perceptions of the intervention were measured using the Credibility/Expectancy Questionnaire (CEQ). Results Data from 317 students, who completed the follow ups, were analysed across the three time periods (IG, n = 155; CG, n = 162). The baseline variables and demographic data of the IG and CG were not significantly different. The IG showed short-term significant reductions in depression and anxiety in compared to CG from T1 to T2. The short-term changes in stress, GSE and SWLS of the IG were not significantly different from those of the CG. While both groups showed a significant change on most of the psychological variables from T1 to T3, no significant differences were found between the groups in this period. In addition, no significant difference was found in WG between the IG and CG after the intervention. No harms relevant to the intervention were reported. Conclusion The investigated self-development coaching programme showed only a short-term improvement on depression and anxiety compared with an active control. There was no effect of the intervention on academic performance.

Teaching independent learning skills in the first year: A positive psychology strategy for promoting law student well-being

Empirical evidence in Australia and overseas has established that in many university disciplines, students begin to experience elevated levels of psychological distress in their first year of study. There is now a considerable body of empirical data that establishes that this is a significant problem for law students. Psychological distress may hamper a law student’s capacity to learn successfully, and certainly hinders their ability to thrive in the tertiary environment. We know from Self-Determination Theory (SDT), a conceptual branch of positive psychology, that supporting students’ autonomy in turn supports their well-being. This article seeks to connect the literature on law student well-being and independent learning using Self-Determination Theory (SDT) as the theoretical bridge. We argue that deliberate instruction in the development of independent learning skills in the first year curriculum is autonomy supportive. It can therefore lay the foundation for academic and personal success at university, and may be a protective factor against decline in law student psychological well-being.

Interaction design for tablet based edutainment systems for mathematical education of primary student

Mathematics has been perceived as the core area of learning in most educational systems around the world including Sri Lanka. Unfortunately, it is clearly visible that a majority of Sri Lankan students are failing in their basic mathematics when the recent grade five scholarship examination and ordinary level exam marks are analysed. According to Department of Examinations Sri Lanka , on average, over 88 percent of the students are failing in the grade 5 scholarship examinations where mathematics plays a huge role while about 50 percent of the students fail in there ordinary level mathematics examination. Poor or lack of basic mathematics skills has been identified as the root cause.

Exploring an innovative educational approach to facilitating student nurses' clinical-reasoning skills in North Sulawesi Province, Indonesia

This study examined the effect of an educational intervention utilizing principles of cognitive apprenticeship on students’ ability to apply clinical reasoning skills within the context of a purpose-built clinical vignette. A quasi-experimental, non-equivalent control-group design was used to evaluate the effect of the educational intervention on students’ accuracy, inaccuracy and self-confidence in clinical reasoning. This study makes an important contribution to nursing education by providing evidence to understand how best to facilitate nursing students’ development of clinical reasoning.

An analysis of user engagement in student Facebook groups

Analysing the engagement of students in university-based Facebook groups can shed light on the nature of their learning experience and highlight leverage points to build on student success. While post-semester surveys and demographic participation data can highlight who was involved and how they subsequently felt about the experience, these techniques do not necessarily reflect real-time engagement. One way to gain insight into in-situ student experiences is by categorising the original posts and comments into predetermined frameworks of learning. This paper offers a systematic method of coding Facebook contributions within various engagement categories: motivation, discourse, cognition and emotive responses.

Effectiveness of on-line resources to enhance student learning and engagement

BACKGROUND For engineering graduates to be work-ready with marketable skills they must not only be well-versed with engineering science and its applications, but also able to adapt to using commercial software that is widely used in engineering practice. Hydrological/hydraulic modelling is one aspect of engineering practice which demands the ability to apply fundamentals into design and construction using software. The user manuals for such software are usually tailored for the experienced engineer but not for undergraduates who typically are novices to concepts of modelling and software tools. As the focus of a course such as Advanced Water Engineering is on the wider aspects of engineering application of hydrological and hydraulic concepts, it is ineffective for the lecturers to direct the students to user manuals as students have neither the time nor the desire to sift through numerous pages in a manual. An alternative and efficient way to demonstrate the use of the software is enabling students to develop a model to simulate real-world scenario using the tools of the software and directing them to make informed decisions based on outcomes. PURPOSE Past experience of the lecturer showed that the resources available for the students left a knowledge gap leading to numerous student queries outside contact hours. The purpose of this study is to assess how effective purpose-built video resources can be in supplementing the traditional learning resources to enhance student learning. APPROACH Short-length animated video clips comprising guided step-by-step instructions were prepared using screen capture software to capture screen activity and later edited to focus on specific features using pop-up annotations; Vocal narration was purposely excluded to avoid disturbances due to noise and allow different learning paces of individual students. The video clips were made available to the students alongside the traditional resources/approaches such as in-class demonstrations, guideline notes, and tips for efficient and error-free procedural descriptions. The number of queries the lecturer received from the student cohort outside the lecture times was recorded. An anonymous survey to assess the usefulness and adequacy of the courseware was conducted. OUTCOMES While a significant decline in the number of student queries was noted, an overwhelming majority of the survey respondents confirmed the usefulness of the purpose-developed courseware. CONCLUSIONS/RECOMMENDATIONS/SUMMARY The survey and lecturer’s experience indicated that animated demonstration video clips illustrating the various steps involved in developing hydrologic and hydraulic models and simulating design scenarios is an effective supplement for traditional learning resources. Among the many advantages of the custom-made video clips as a learning resource are that they (1) highlight the aspects that are important to undergraduate learning but not available in the software manuals as the latter are designed for more mature users/learners; (2) provide short, to-the point communication in a step-by-step manner; (3) allow students flexibility to self-learn at their own pace; (4) enhance student learning; and (5) enable time savings for the lecturer in the long term by avoiding queries of a repetitive nature. It is expected that these newly developed resources will be improved to incorporate students’ suggestions before being offered to future cohorts of students. The concept can also be expanded to other relevant courses where animated demonstrations of key modelling steps are beneficial to student learning.