Enhanced and conventional project-based learning in an engineering design module

Engineering education focuses chiefly on students’ ability to solve problems. While most engineering students are proficient in solving paper questions, they may not be proficient at providing optimal solutions to pragmatic project-based problems that require systematic learning strategy, innovation, problem-solving, and execution. The present study aims to determine whether an enhanced Project-based learning (PBL) with appropriate innovative interventions leads to increased students’ ability to achieve better learning and project outcomes. The interventions refer to incorporating added learning and facilitating methods, namely, (1) use of mind-maps; (2) employment of analogies; and (3) use of round-table discussions. The study was conducted with a total number of 60 first-time PBL students equally divided into two classes with one serving as an experimental class and another as a control class. In addition, one class of students had a lower academic standing compared to the other (control). The rubric for the project-based module included a written knowledge test and a scenario-based oral examination to test knowledge and problem-solving skills, a artefact demonstration to evaluate artefact’s performance. A major finding of this study was that there were significant differences in knowledge scores, problem-solving ability and artefact performance between students undergoing conventional and enhanced PBL methods. It could also be inferred from this study that students who had undergone enhanced PBL method designed better systems and had better performing artefacts than those who were subjected to the conventional PBL approach. Finally, it was concluded that incorporating enhanced learning and facilitating methods to group-centric, project-based driven education provided a more fertile environment to promote better learning experience and improved problem-solving ability which could eventually lead to developing innovative and pragmatic solutions to real-world engineering problems.     

Social Media as a New Play in a Marketing Channel Strategy: Evidence from Taiwan Travel Agencies' Blogs

With social media playing an increasingly important role in marketing strategies for travel agencies, this study explores travel agencies that develop their own travel blogs as a marketing channel in order to differentiate their products or services and their strategic performances. The paper herein adopts a two-stage research design, with the first stage developing a three-round Delphi research. According to this research, Taiwanese travel agencies consider four external environment forces, five internal motivations for investment, four developing differentiated strategies, and four channel performance measurement indicators for managing travel agencies' own blogs as a marketing channel. The second stage explores a quantitative survey, Structural Equation Modeling, with the structural equation testing the business model of a travel blog marketing channel strategy. Finally, the findings provide innovative approaches for effectively exploiting differentiated marketing channel strategies when targeting maximum profits.     

Country and consumer segmentation: multi-level latent class analysis of financial product ownership

The financial services sector has internationalized over the last few decades. Important differences and similarities in financial behavior can be anticipated between both consumers within a particular country and those living in different countries. For companies in this market, the appropriate choice between strategic options and the resulting international performance may critically depend on the cross-national market structure of the various financial products. Insight into country segments and international consumer segments based on domain-specific behavioral variables will therefore be of key strategic importance. We present a multi-level latent class framework for obtaining simultaneously such country and consumer segments. In an empirical study, we apply this methodology and several alternative modeling approaches to data on ownership of eight financial products. Information is available for 15 European countries, with a sample size of about 1000 consumers per country. We find that both country segments and consumer segments are highly interpretable. Also, consumer segmentation is related to demographic variables such as age and income. Our conclusions feature implications, both academic and managerial, and directions for future research.     

Alternative approaches to tertiary tourism education with special reference to developing countries

The diversity of tourism education programmes makes well considered choice of appropriate training and education in tourism particularly difficult for developing countries. This article distills guidelines for programme choice from examining two main approaches to tourism—the demand- and supply-oriented approaches—and outlines the main components of an ‘ideal’ system, paying particular attention to the needs of developing countries and the problems that are likely to be encountered in this regard. Keywords: education, tourism development curricula choice, developing countries.     

Agri-environmental policies in the EU and United States: A comparison

Agri-environmental policies (AEPs) in the United States and the European Union are examples of payments for environmental services that pay farmers to reduce the negative externalities of agricultural production, while serving as a means to transfer public funds to farmers. We show that despite similar origins, AEPs in the two regions differ both in their specific objectives and in their implementation. For example, AEPs in most member states of the EU-15 have the additional objective of using agriculture as a driver for rural development. This objective is achieved by compensating farmers for the private delivery of positive public goods, such as attractive landscapes, produced by agriculture. The rationale is market failure, and there is empirical evidence that Europeans are willing to pay for such positive externalities. No comparable provision exists in U.S. policy. By contrast, U.S. AEPs focus almost entirely on reducing agriculture's negative externalities, such as soil erosion. Second, we find that U.S. programs are more targeted than their EU counterparts, and take opportunity cost into account. The EU programs, on the other hand, address a wider range of externalities, and are focused more on the paying for a particular farming process than reducing specific negative externalities. The EU takes a broader view of AEPs than does the United States, both in terms of type of activity that can be funded, and by using less targeting by land characteristics, and so the European program could be more easily used as a mechanism for transferring income to producers. Despite this, we find evidence that many of the amenities targeted by the programs are demanded by the population.     

Is dynamic general equilibrium a theory of everything?

Should we interpret the contributions of Edward C. Prescott and his collaborators, especially Finn Kydland and Rajnish Mehra, to dynamic general equilibrium as just a mathematical restatement of pre-Keynesian business cycle theory in the language of Arrow and Debreu? This essay advances the contrary view that Prescott has been laying the foundations for a theory of everything in macroeconomics that will stretch well beyond the frictionless environments treated in its early version. A theory of everything is an attempt to explain key empirical observations in nearly every subfield of macroeconomics from a simple, logically coherent conceptual platform with a minimum of institutional detail. After reviewing the current state of Prescott’s agenda, we examine several examples of dynamic equilibrium in economies with constant returns to scale, complete markets, idiosyncratic productivity shocks, and limited capital mobility. These examples suggest that the Solow residual controls the entire path of aggregate output if redefined more broadly to include financial, distributional and institutional variables; that the discount factor used in pricing streams of income will shift autonomously over time in response to endogenous changes in the set of unconstrained asset traders; and that a dynamic general equilibrium model with substantive frictions in financial markets goes some distance towards a joint account of well-known empirical anomalies in growth, business cycles, and asset returns.     

Combining LCA and RA for the integrated risk management of emerging technologies

Emerging risks of innovative technologies, like for instance nanotechnology, require proactive assessments in order to guarantee that their future materials and products will not result in adverse effects on health, safety and the environment. The combination of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Risk Assessment (RA) offers a systematic approach to identify and assess potential impacts. LCA is a well-known analytical tool, standardised in ISO 14040-14044, to assess the environmental impact of the entire life-cycle of a product or service. Its strengths are the systematic approach to analyse all life-cycle stages of complex systems. Integrated risk management can benefit in various ways from LCA. Firstly, LCA offers a new dimension to the safety paradigm, exploring the principles and synergies between LCA and RA. Secondly, LCA offers a systematic approach to analyse the risks of innovative technologies along their entire life-cycle (from design, building, maintenance, operation to decommissioning). Thirdly, LCA offers an analytical tool to quantify the environmental impact of emerging technologies. In combination with RA, LCA can provide scientifically sound information for the early assessment of potential impacts on health, safety and the environment.     

Formal Participation in the IASB's Due Process of Standard Setting: A Multi-issue/Multi-period Analysis

This paper sets out to enquire about the nature of constituents' participation in the IASB's due process in terms of representation (constituents' diversity and characteristics) and drivers to participate. We choose to adopt a multi-issue/multi-period approach to investigate constituents' formal participation. An analysis of comment letters sent directly to the IASB over the period 2002–2006, reveals that preparers sent most letters followed by the accounting profession and standard setters. With regard to timing, we find that preparers concentrate their participation efforts at a later stage in the process compared to the other constituents, who react earlier. Formal indirect participation in the IASB's due process by submitting comment letters to EFRAG is infrequently used by European constituents. In those cases where constituents exert influence to both IASB and EFRAG, they often use exactly the same comment letter. Concentrating on the drivers to participate, the data reveal that preparers, accountants and standard setters react significantly more when proposals have a major impact on the accounting numbers of a company. Users, stock exchanges and their supervisory authorities write significantly more comment letters when disclosure issues are at stake. Finally, participating preparers in the IASB's due process are larger and more profitable than non-participating preparers.