Institutional policy process improvement: using structurating activity theory to inform practice     

Heather E. Canary  Kris May  Marc D. Rinehart  Jahn B. Barlow 《Journal of Applied Communication Research》2018,46(2):202-222

Organizational communication scholars are increasingly called upon to use theoretical knowledge to address problematic processes in public institutions. This article reports a process improvement project focused on a university conflict of interest (COI) policy as an example of how scholars can engage theory to improve ongoing policy processes. The project team included communication scholars and research administration staff who designed, implemented, and evaluated the mixed-methods project guided by structurating activity theory. Baseline survey results were used to design the process improvement project. Results of the follow-up survey indicate that researchers who participated in some aspect of the process improvement project (i.e. attending a policy café, using the redesigned website, or reading the new Quick Reference Guide) reported higher levels of policy communication and knowledge and more positive attitudes toward the COI policy than researchers who had not engaged with process improvement efforts. We offer theoretical and practical implications of results for organizational communication scholars and practitioners.  相似文献   

Russian Science Citation Index: Areas for Development Identified by Active Users     

I. V. Zibareva  L. Yu. Ilina  B. L. Alperin 《Scientific and Technical Information Processing》2018,45(2):106-109

The current state of the Russian Science Citation Index is analyzed. Several areas for its further development identified by long-standing active users, such as data searching, refinement, and storage; current user alerts; data input with the Science Index license; patent information; and the application programming interface (API) are investigated.  相似文献   

Why Users Share the News: A Theory of Reasoned Action-Based Study on the Antecedents of News-Sharing Behavior     

Veronika Karnowski  Larissa Leonhard  Anna Sophie Kümpel 《Communication Research Reports》2018,35(2):91-100

Social media have become an integral part of online news use, affecting how individuals find, consume, and share news. By applying the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), this study investigates the effects of motives, attitude, and intention on news-sharing behavior among German social media users (n = 333). Findings show that news-sharing attitude and subjective norms have a positive effect on news-sharing intention, which in turn has a positive effect on actual news-sharing behavior. Taken together, we see that a new media behavior in the early phases of its societal diffusion—like social media news sharing in Germany in 2015—can mainly be explained by a rational choice logic and is rooted in the motives of socializing and information seeking. This finding thus reflects the double nature of social media as a means for both information retrieval and social grooming.  相似文献   

Out of Sight, (Not Yet) Out of Mind: The Impact of Tie Strength on Direct Interaction and Social Surveillance Among Geographically Close and Long-Distance Facebook Friends     

Kevin Koban  Sophie Krüger 《Communication Research Reports》2018,35(1):74-84

Social networking sites are considered a valuable resource to maintain existing friendships even over considerable distances. The present study emphasizes tie strength as a crucial determinant for the use of interactive and passive features among 302 active Facebook users and friends of different relational closeness (close friends vs. casual friends vs. acquaintances) as well as a moderator for the impact of physical distance. As expected, tie strength affected direct interaction linearly, whereas social surveillance followed a quadratic trend. Furthermore, moderation analyses revealed less frequent direct interaction between close friends and stronger surveillance of casual friends’ profiles as physical distance increases. These results indicate different functions in relationship maintenance for both behaviors as direct interaction aims at nurturing current relationships, while surveillance serves as a catalyst for promising future communications. As a consequence, physical distance influences direct interaction adversely due to emerging constraints but also contains informational value encouraging information-seeking behaviors.  相似文献   

Alexa,Siri, Cortana,and More: An Introduction to Voice Assistants     

Matthew B. Hoy 《Medical reference services quarterly》2018,37(1):81-88

Voice assistants are software agents that can interpret human speech and respond via synthesized voices. Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Google’s Assistant are the most popular voice assistants and are embedded in smartphones or dedicated home speakers. Users can ask their assistants questions, control home automation devices and media playback via voice, and manage other basic tasks such as email, to-do lists, and calendars with verbal commands. This column will explore the basic workings and common features of today’s voice assistants. It will also discuss some of the privacy and security issues inherent to voice assistants and some potential future uses for these devices. As voice assistants become more widely used, librarians will want to be familiar with their operation and perhaps consider them as a means to deliver library services and materials.  相似文献   

From Archive,to Access,to Experience––Historical Documents as a Basis for Immersive Experiences     

Jiawei Huang  Mahda M. Bagher  Heather Dohn Ross  Nathan Piekielek  Jan Oliver Wallgrün  Jiayan Zhao 《Journal of Map & Geography Libraries》2018,14(1):40-63

Libraries have been the key to preserving culture and historic legacy for centuries. One such treasure cataloged in The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) Libraries is a collection of over 33,000 Sanborn? Fire Insurance Maps. Originally kept safe in metal drawers, the library has embarked on a journey to digitize this abundance of information, combine it with other media such as photographs, and make it accessible through a web interface. Inspired by these efforts, we accessed this information and took it to the next level. Using state of the art 3D modeling and immersive technologies, we created a historic 3D model and immersive experiences of Penn State, exemplarily for the 1922 campus. The resulting experiences can be accessed through the web but also through head mounted displays (HMDs) and mobile phones in combination with VR viewers such as the Google Cardboard. Additionally, they can be used anywhere in the world or on the campus itself as a way to enable remote and in situ experiences and learning. Immersive experiences let us connect to the past, the present and the future, and as such offer value to digital cultural heritage efforts.  相似文献   

Critical communication pedagogy and service learning in a mixed-method communication research course     

C. Kyle Rudick  Kathryn B. Golsan  Jennifer Freitag 《Communication Teacher》2018,32(1):54-60

ABSTRACT

Course: Mixed-Method Communication Research Methods

Objective: The purpose of this semester-long activity is to provide students with opportunities to cultivate mixed-method communication research skills through a social justice-informed service-learning format. Completing this course, students will be able to: recognize the unique strengths of quantitative and qualitative research methods; locate, evaluate, and utilize scholarly literature for a literature review; conduct an original research project using quantitative and qualitative research methods to gather and analyze data; and raise self and community awareness about a social issue through collaboration with a community organization.  相似文献   

Concerns of some semiprofessionals working in professionally directed programs     

M J Fitch  R V Cadol  G Martinez  B Montgomery  L Lottie  B Smith 《Exceptional children》1971,37(8):587-591

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Along the Write Lines: a case study exploring activities to enable creative writing in a secondary English classroom.     

Audrey B. Wood 《English in Education》2016,50(2):130-147

This article arises from a four week study of a class of 14‐15 year old students. The study explored students’ perception of themselves as writers and the effects of a variety of teaching and learning strategies on their creative writing responses. The aim of the project was to enhance the students’ creative writing, whilst ascertaining whether there were particular activities or types of writing that would lead to students perceiving more satisfactory outcomes in their writing. It answers the research question: What do I observe, and what do my students say, about the experience of different classroom based creative writing tasks?  相似文献   

Rapid mask prototyping for microfluidics     

B. G. C. Maisonneuve  T. Honegger  J. Cordeiro  O. Lecarme  T. Thiry  D. Fuard  K. Berton  E. Picard  M. Zelsmann  D. Peyrade 《Biomicrofluidics》2016,10(2)

With the rise of microfluidics for the past decade, there has come an ever more pressing need for a low-cost and rapid prototyping technology, especially for research and education purposes. In this article, we report a rapid prototyping process of chromed masks for various microfluidic applications. The process takes place out of a clean room, uses a commercially available video-projector, and can be completed in less than half an hour. We quantify the ranges of fields of view and of resolutions accessible through this video-projection system and report the fabrication of critical microfluidic components (junctions, straight channels, and curved channels). To exemplify the process, three common devices are produced using this method: a droplet generation device, a gradient generation device, and a neuro-engineering oriented device. The neuro-engineering oriented device is a compartmentalized microfluidic chip, and therefore, required the production and the precise alignment of two different masks.  相似文献