Effective teaching,student engagement and student satisfaction during the Covid-19 pandemic: Evidence from business students' qualitative survey evaluations

We investigate the influence of unanticipated prolonged disruption on effective teaching, student engagement and student satisfaction during campus lockdown due to COVID-19. Qualitative comments provided by undergraduate business students in the university end-of-semester survey were analysed using a variety of methods, including sentiment analysis. Our findings indicate that effective teaching through the characteristics of the instructor, can lead to enhanced student engagement and higher levels of student satisfaction in an emergency remote teaching environment. Our findings highlight the critical role of the instructor in providing cognitive and affective support to students, along with clear communication, during times of substantial change.     

Learning from young people’s image of the future: a case study in Taiwan and the US

An image of the future that an individual holds determines what attitude he/she holds towards the future and how he/she behaves in the present. These in turn would increase the probability to make the image realized as imagined in the future. As young people will be the builders of a society in the future, investigating their images of the future has significant implications for the future. With a survey of two groups of university students in Taiwan and the U.S., this study looked into various aspects of images, explored message sources influencing the formation of the images, identified values embedded in the images, and explored the relationship between the images and the students’ understanding of the present.     

文化繁荣背景下对高校校园文化建设的思考

《中共中央关于深化文化体制改革推动社会主义文化大发展大繁荣若干重大问题的决定》,为社会主义文化的发展也为校园文化建设指明了方向。高校校园文化建设对于形成良好的学校氛围、形成学生良好的人生观和世界观有着举足轻重的作用。在当今多元文化的视野之下,大学精神的弘扬应当是校园文化建设的核心所在;高校校园文化应当注重培养学生社会主义核心价值观;要以人为本,加强校园文化的隐性育人功能,提升学生的科学精神和人文精神,突出校园文化的育人功能。     

Information congestion

Unsolicited advertising messages vie for scarce attention. “Junk” mail, “spam” e‐mail, and telemarketing calls need both parties to exert effort to generate transactions. Message receivers supply attention according to average message benefit, while the marginal sender determines congestion. Costlier transmission may improve average message benefit so more messages are examined. Too many (too few) messages may be sent, or the wrong ones. A Do‐Not‐Call policy beats a ban, but too many individuals opt out. A monopoly gatekeeper performs better than personal access pricing if nuisance costs to receivers are moderate. The welfare results still hold when messages are presorted (triage).     

普通高校大学生艺术团现状与建设

高校大学生艺术团在培养社会所需的、全面发展的高素质人才方面起到了相当重要的作用,学生在学习专业知识之余更要注重普及和提高艺术修养。但艺术团在发展中又面临着诸多问题和困难,本文旨在通过对内蒙古财经大学艺术团在校园文化建设中的发展现状、存在问题及未来建设三方面进行阐述,提出应提高认识,综合管理,组建一个机构健全、制度完善、排练演出运作规范的大学生艺术团,这对促进高校大学校园文化建设具有重要意义。     

Of warnings and waiting: an examination of the path of information for two communities hit by Typhoon Haiyan

Abstract

Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines in 2013, causing billions in damage, and taking thousands of lives. Media and researchers claimed that people did not have enough information about the storm, or did not understand the information given to them, and therefore did not evacuate. This research departs from the assumption of a knowledge deficit: it asks how people understood warnings and how information flowed from the government. This research focuses on Guiuan, a municipality that sustained heavy damage and loss of life, and the entry point of many typhoons in the Philippines. Guided by Stuart Hall’s Encoding-Decoding Theory, the researcher carried out focus group discussions with citizens and interviews with local government officials from one coastal and one inland village. Through systematic qualitative analysis of interviews and discussions, the researcher found that participants from different locations in the same municipality understood warning information differently, based on unique epistemological frames. While local government framed people as deficient in knowledge, the citizens actually called upon their previous experiences with storms in order to make evacuation decisions. However, they could not project worse scenarios from previous experience and needed a phenomenon to match an experience in real time before making an evacuation decision. These findings imply that disaster imagination, disaster memory, and disaster knowledge are all distinct concepts, and future research should examine how specific contexts frame risk. Early warning systems for storms must also take into account unique epistemological frames as a means to localize communication and engage communities in the decision-making process.     

Expected future earnings,taxation, and university enrollment

Taxation changes the expectations of prospective university students about their future level and uncertainty of after-tax income. To estimate the impact of taxes on university enrollment, we estimate a structural microeconometric model, in which a high-school graduate decides to enter university studies if expected lifetime utility from this choice is greater than that anticipated from starting to work right away. We estimate the ex-ante future paths of the expectation and variance of after-tax income for German high-school graduates, accounting for nonrandom selection. The enrollment model takes into account university dropout and unemployment risks. Consistently with expectations, the estimation results indicate that higher expected returns to a tertiary education increase the probability of university enrollment, whereas higher uncertainty among graduates decreases enrollment rates. A simulation based on the estimated model indicates that a revenue-neutral, flat-rate tax reform with an unchanged basic tax allowance would increase enrollment rates for men in Germany.     

论高校校园文化对大学生价值观的影响

虽然在现代社会经济发展的过程中,大学生的价值观受多方面因素的影响,但大学期间是大学生价值观形成的重要时期,越来越多的教育者意识到校园文化可以作为一种重要的教育力量,成为大学生价值观教育的重要载体,是影响大学生价值观最直接的要素。为了使研究更具有针对性、说服性,笔者设计了校园文化对大学生价值观影响的调查问卷,以问卷的形式进行了实证研究,从而分析出大学生对校园文化的价值认可度和校园文化对大学生价值观的影响力。     

新时期对大学生进行爱国主义教育的路径选择

爱国主义教育是教育领域永恒的主题,坚持以校园文化活动为载体对大学生进行爱国主义教育,是行之有效的教育途径。针对青年学生的心理特点,采用寓教于乐方式,将爱国主义教育融入丰富多彩的校园文化活动之中。对大学生进行爱国主义教育路径选择时应注意以下三方面:首先,爱国主义教育活动的立意设计。其次,显性与隐性教育活动并举。最后,从大教育着眼,从小教育着手。     

新时期高校校园谣言透析与治理反思

谣言是一种特殊的社会心理现象,学术界虽已有研究,但针对校园谣言的研究还较少涉及。校园谣言因学生群体的同质性、高密度性特点,更值得特别关注。从其成因来看,校园谣言的内容表达具有迷惑性,同时校园谣言的生成与传播离不开特定的社会环境。此外,校园谣言的特殊性在于：人际渠道是其主要的传播形态;校园谣言的传播既有利益诉求的一面,也有娱乐性的一面;群体因素是影响谣言传播效果的重要因素。在对待校园谣言的问题上,要跳出非对即错的惯性思维,认识到谣言治理背后的信任因素,努力推进信息公开,治理谣言时要掌握最佳时间。     

Vegetarian Utopias: Visions of dietary patterns in future societies and support for social change

The current study draws on the collective futures framework to examine how visions of future societies where most people consume plant-based, vegetarian or vegan diets are related to current support for social change towards plant-based diets. Participants were 506 university students in Aotearoa New Zealand invited to imagine a society in 2050 where most individuals consume a plant-based, vegetarian, or vegan diet. A thematic analysis was conducted on responses to an open-ended item asking how these future societies would be different to today. Participants reported a variety of potential positive and negative outcomes for individuals and wider society. Subsequent analyses of attitudes scales investigated the relationships between the collective dimensions of plant-based future societies and support for policies to promote plant-based diets. For a vegetarian future, the strongest predictor of current support for social change was the expectation that widespread vegetarianism would reduce societal dysfunction. For a vegan future, the strongest predictor of support for social change was an expectation of increased warmth in a vegan society. Implications for theory and advocacy are discussed.     

Budgeting for legitimacy: The case of an Australian university

This paper reports a case study of budgeting at an Australian university to understand how accounting is involved in processes of legitimation. The university had been much enlarged and diversified in its educational offerings through a series of mergers. A response to the changes on the part of the vice-chancellor was to introduce a new budget system borrowed from the institutional environment. The intent was to convey to a key funding agency and to staff that the newly merged entity would be governed appropriately. We analyze a set of sequential and interlinked processes in which these aspirations were challenged repeatedly by senior academic and administrative staff. Finding the budget system to be inconsistent with their values and expectations for the university, staff undermined it through patterns of under- and over-spending. We show how these behaviors jeopardized the vice-chancellor’s efforts to legitimate the organization’s financial management practices for a key funding agency. A core contribution of our paper is to analyze empirically the importance of the institutional demands that an organization’s internal constituents may make of its accounting practices. We argue that managers, staff and other internal constituents should be seen as significant legitimating agents. We show how attention to their demands becomes all the more relevant when budget and accounting systems for internal use are loosely coupled from those used for external reporting. In such circumstances, conflicting demands by internal and external constituents may not be dealt with through the development of separate and compartmentalized systems. This makes it problematic to assume that adoption of accounting systems from an institutional field will result in a steady-state of organizational legitimacy.     

Modeling the relationships among emotional intelligence,sensation-seeking and risk-taking attitudes of university students in Hong Kong

This study investigated the risk-taking attitudes of 305 Chinese university students in Hong Kong by the prediction of sensation-seeking. To further understand the prediction of sensation-seeking, emotional intelligence (EI) was applied. First, the 30-item DOPSERT scale was used to examine the risk-taking attitude of students in different domains (ethical, financial, health/safety, social, and recreational). Then, a 12-item sensation-seeking subscale taken from the UPPS Impulsive Behavior Scale was applied to examine the participants’ levels of sensation-seeking. In this study, sensation-seeking was divided into the categories of exciting activities seeking and novel activities seeking (NAS). Finally, the 16-item Wong and Law’s Emotional Intelligence Scale was applied to examine participants’ use of self-emotion appraisal, others’ emotion appraisal, use of emotion, and regulation of emotion. The results of this study showed that for this group of Chinese university students, the use of emotion and regulation of emotion could significantly predict exciting activities seeking. NAS, however, could predict recreational risk-taking attitude and health and safety risk-taking attitude. Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model was applied to understand the relationships among EI, sensation-seeking and risk-taking attitudes. The variables of EI and sensation-seeking were considered as factors within an ontogenic system of the ecological model. Few studies to date have focused on the relationship between EI and risk-taking. The results of this study provided support for a clear relation between EI and risk-taking. To be more specific, the use of emotion and the regulation of emotion had an effect on exciting activities seeking. This study also indicated how educators and counselors can make use of the findings to better control the risk-taking attitudes of young people, so they will be less likely to engage in risky behaviors.     

Conceptions of Learning and Approaches to Learning—A Phenomenographic Study of a Group of Overseas Accounting Students from Sri Lanka

This study explores conceptions of learning (SCL) and approaches to learning (SAL) of a group of Sri Lankan students studying accounting in an Australian university. The focus is on how cultural background and home country learning experiences shape SCL and SAL of these students. This research is based on the phenomenographic method, and semi-structured interviews are used for data collection. The results indicate that the interviewed students have lower-order conceptions of learning, and show characteristics of surface learning. Although the social approval motive was dominant in these students, it was not manifested in an achieving approach. Students in this study embrace the pedagogical tradition of the West, and engage in deep learning when they are exposed to research or practice-based assessments. Remnants from years of secondary education and aspects of a collectivist culture play a vital part in the ways in which these students perceive and approach learning. In addition, preconceptions of accounting as a vocation and a discipline strongly embedded in practice, drive learning conceptions and learning approaches.     

Promotional messages in multichannel banking: Attractive or annoying?

Financial service providers possess a great deal of information about their customers. Customer information is used to serve customers and deliver the right messages to the right customer groups. Owing to the nature of financial services – that is, the need for credibility, long-term commitment and involvement of sensitive personal information – the planning and implementation of suitable marketing is extremely important. Financial services are offered through multiple channels, but electronic channels have increased in importance both for customer acquisition and retention purposes. In addition, electronic channels offer personalization possibilities that did not exist before. In this study, we examine, with the help of electronic focus group interviews, the kind of channels customers prefer when promotional messages include different types of personalization. In addition, the acceptance of promotional messages in the online banking context is explored. The results indicate that the channel preferences of customers diverge depending on the type of personalization used in the message. Furthermore, based on the opinions of customers concerning several authentic online banners, a personalization matrix was developed. The findings show that preference-matching personalization with informative content is accepted by the majority of customers. The article offers financial managers new perspectives on bank marketing in general, and online bank marketing in particular.     

Media risk communication – what was said by whom and how was it interpreted

The purpose of this paper is to provide some insight into the level and type of media coverage that food risks received and consider the translation of press releases into media articles. Past scientific messages dealing with two food risks (Salmonella and Genetically Modified (GM) potatoes) were collected from various Irish media sources over a defined period. In addition, press releases and helpline data were collected. All data pieces were subsequently coded. Based on the audit it is clear that island of Ireland journalists are generally balanced with regard to their reporting on Salmonella. In most cases where press releases could be linked to the newspaper articles, the press release was represented fairly accurately. This brings into clear focus the need by those issuing press releases to be very clear on the meaning of their message. Journalists are using the press releases as the basis for articles therefore vague terms and overemphasis on a particular finding can result in what may appear as a sensational article. In the case of GMs more sensational hooks were used to draw attention to the articles. Thus communicators need to be aware of the characteristics of the risk they are communicating about when designing and delivering a risk message.     

Predicting domain-specific risk-taking attitudes of mainland China university students: a hyper core self-evaluation approach

This study applied the framework of hyper core self-evaluation to examine the risk-taking attitudes, in the ethical, financial, health/safety, recreational, and social domains, of 437 university students from Harbin, China. Under the hyper core self-evaluation approach, overconfidence and hubristic pride were found to be significant predictors of risk-taking attitudes in the ethical, financial, and health/safety domains. The control variable of sensation seeking found in the Impulsive Behavior Scale was also significant in predicting risk-taking attitudes in certain domains. Different regression analysis models were run to generate these results. Limited studies have focused on Chinese university students’ risk taking attitudes in different domains, and most studies have merely applied sensation seeking and impulsivity in understanding risk-taking. However, this empirical study contributes to finding out whether a particular group of Chinese students had high levels of overconfidence and hubristic pride (as many young people do) and whether these common characteristics could contribute to the understanding of risk-taking attitudes in the five domains.     

Talking aggressively about GMOs? Examining the effect of aggressive risk communication with communicator’s facial expression and gender

Abstract

Two experiments (N = 229 and N = 268) assessed the effect of aggressive risk communication about GMOs by a scientist on respondents’ perceptions of message quality and writer (the scientist communicator) likability. We also considered two factors from the communicator that may influence how individuals process aggressive messages – facial expression (study 1) and the gender (study 2). Both studies showed that aggressive communication has a negative effect on both perceived message quality and writer likability, which is explained by the level of negative expectancy violation individuals perceived. Moreover, study 1 showed that smiling appeared to be a negative influence on the outcomes and study 2 showed that gender did not influence how people perceive aggressive messages. The findings provided both scholarly and practical implications for science and risk communication.     

An Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Anti‐money Laundering and Anti‐terrorism Financing Legislation: Perceptions of Bank Compliance Officers in Malaysia

The present study sought to ascertain the perceptions of anti‐money laundering and counter‐financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) compliance officers of banks in Malaysia in order to develop an understanding of how well they understand the risks and how well they have implemented the obligations imposed by the regime. We examine these issues for the first time in the literature via the theory of crying wolf. A structured questionnaire survey of compliance officers of banks in Malaysia was followed by focus group discussions held at the Malaysian Institute of Bankers. We expect that the industry would consider suitable steps to improve the compliance culture, particularly in Islamic banks, and the regulators would watch such banks more diligently. Banks considered avoiding penalties, improving brand image and improving customer perceptions to be the rationale for implementing the AML/CFT legislation. Most conventional bank officers considered their organisations’ compliance culture to be high or very high, while this was not found to be the case in Islamic banks.