Ungerer, L. M. (2016). Digital Curation as a Core Competency in Current Learning and Literacy: A Higher Education Perspective. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 17(5). https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v17i5.2566
Dunaway (2011) suggests that learning landscapes in a digital age are networked, social, and technological. Since people commonly create and share information by collecting, filtering, and customizing digital content, educators should provide students opportunities to master these skills (Mills, 2013). In enhancing critical thinking, we have to investigate pedagogical models that consider students’ digital realities (Mihailidis & Cohen, 2013). November (as cited in Sharma & Deschaine, 2016), however warns that although the Web fulfils a pivotal role in societal media, students often are not guided on how to critically deal with the information that they access on the Web. Sharma and Deschaine (2016) further point out the potential for personalizing teaching and incorporating authentic material when educators themselves digitally curate resources by means of Web 2.0 tools.
p. 24. Communities of practice. Lave and Wenger’s (as cited in Weller, 2011) concept of situated learning and Wenger’s (as cited in Weller, 2011) idea of communities of practice highlight the importance of apprenticeship and the social role in learning.
criteria to publish a paper
Originality: Does the paper contain new and significant information adequate to justify publication?
Relationship to Literature: Does the paper demonstrate an adequate understanding of the relevant literature in the field and cite an appropriate range of literature sources? Is any significant work ignored?
Methodology: Is the paper’s argument built on an appropriate base of theory, concepts, or other ideas? Has the research or equivalent intellectual work on which the paper is based been well designed? Are the methods employed appropriate?
Results: Are results presented clearly and analyzed appropriately? Do the conclusions adequately tie together the other elements of the paper?
Implications for research, practice and/or society: Does the paper identify clearly any implications for research, practice and/or society? Does the paper bridge the gap between theory and practice? How can the research be used in practice (economic and commercial impact), in teaching, to influence public policy, in research (contributing to the body of knowledge)? What is the impact upon society (influencing public attitudes, affecting quality of life)? Are these implications consistent with the findings and conclusions of the paper?
Quality of Communication: Does the paper clearly express its case, measured against the technical language of the field and the expected knowledge of the journal’s readership? Has attention been paid to the clarity of expression and readability, such as sentence structure, jargon use, acronyms, etc.
Stanton, K. V., & Liew, C. L. (2011). Open Access Theses in Institutional Repositories: An Exploratory Study of the Perceptions of Doctoral Students. Information Research: An International Electronic Journal, 16(4),
We examine doctoral students’ awareness of and attitudes to open access forms of publication. Levels of awareness of open access and the concept of institutional repositories, publishing behaviour and perceptions of benefits and risks of open access publishing were explored. Method: Qualitative and quantitative data were collected through interviews with eight doctoral students enrolled in a range of disciplines in a New Zealand university and a self-completion Web survey of 251 students. Analysis: Interview data were analysed thematically, then evaluated against a theoretical framework. The interview data were then used to inform the design of the survey tool. Survey responses were analysed as a single set, then by disciple using SurveyMonkey’s online toolkit and Excel. Results: While awareness of open access and repository archiving is still low, the majority of interview and survey respondents were found to be supportive of the concept of open access. The perceived benefits of enhanced exposure and potential for sharing outweigh the perceived risks. The majority of respondents were supportive of an existing mandatory thesis submission policy. Conclusions: Low levels of awareness of the university repository remains an issue, and could be addressed by further investigating the effectiveness of different communication channels for promotion.
PLEASE NOTE:
the researchers use the qualitative approach: by interviewing participants and analyzing their responses thematically, they build the survey.
Then then administer the survey (the quantitative approach)
How do you intend to use a mixed method? Please share
Metaphors: A Problem Statement is like… metaphor — a novel or poetic linguistic expression where one or more words for a concept are used outside normal conventional meaning to express a similar concept. Aristotle l The DNA of the research l A snapshot of the research l The foundation of the research l The Heart of the research l A “taste” of the research l A blueprint for the study
digital object identifier (DOI) is a unique alphanumeric string assigned by a registration agency (the International DOI Foundation) to identify content and provide a persistent link to its location on the Internet. The publisher assigns a DOI when your article is published and made available electronically.
Why do we need it?
2010 Changes to APA for Electronic Materials Digital object identifier (DOI). DOI available. If a DOI is available you no longer include a URL. Example: Author, A. A. (date). Title of article. Title of Journal, volume(number), page numbers. doi: xx.xxxxxxx
Accodring to Sugimoto et al (2016), the Use of social media platforms for by researchers is high — ranging from 75 to 80% in large -scale surveys (Rowlands et al., 2011; Tenopir et al., 2013; Van Eperen & Marincola, 2011) .
There is one more reason, and, as much as you want to dwell on the fact that you are practitioners and research is not the most important part of your job, to a great degree, you may be judged also by the scientific output of your office and/or institution.
In that sense, both social media and altimetrics might suddenly become extremely important to understand and apply.
Shortly altmetrics (alternative metrics) measure the impact your scientific output has on the community. Your teachers and you present, publish and create work, which might not be presented and published, but may be widely reflected through, e.g. social media, and thus, having impact on the community.
How such impact is measured, if measured at all, can greatly influence the money flow to your institution
For EVEN MORE information, read the entire article:
Sugimoto, C. R., Work, S., Larivière, V., & Haustein, S. (2016). Scholarly use of social media and altmetrics: a review of the literature. Retrieved from https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.08112
Thelwall, M., & Wilson, P. (2016). Mendeley readership altmetrics for medical articles: An analysis of 45 fields. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 67(8), 1962–1972. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23501
Todd Tetzlaff is using Mendeley and he might be the only one to benefit … 🙂
Here is some food for thought from the article above:
Doctoral students and junior researchers are the largest reader group in Mendeley ( Haustein & Larivière, 2014; Jeng et al., 2015; Zahedi, Costas, & Wouters, 2014a) .
Studies have also provided evidence of high rate s of blogging among certain subpopulations: for example, approximately one -third of German university staff (Pscheida et al., 2013) and one fifth of UK doctoral students use blogs (Carpenter et al., 2012) .
Social data sharing platforms provide an infrastructure to share various types of scholarly objects —including datasets, software code, figures, presentation slides and videos —and for users to interact with these objects (e.g., comment on, favorite, like , and reuse ). Platforms such as Figshare and SlideShare disseminate scholars’ various types of research outputs such as datasets, figures, infographics, documents, videos, posters , or presentation slides (Enis, 2013) and displays views, likes, and shares by other users (Mas -Bleda et al., 2014) .
Frequently mentioned social platforms in scholarly communication research include research -specific tools such as Mendeley, Zotero, CiteULike, BibSonomy, and Connotea (now defunct) as well as general tools such as Delicious and Digg (Hammond, Hannay, Lund, & Scott, 2005; Hull, Pettifer, & Kell, 2008; Priem & Hemminger, 2010; Reher & Haustein, 2010) .
qualitative research
“The focus group interviews were analysed based on the principles of interpretative phenomenology”
if you are not podcast fans, I understand. The link above is a pain in the behind to make work, if you are not familiar with using podcast.
Here is an easier way to find it:
1. open your cell phone and go find the podcast icon, which is pre-installed, but you might have not ever used it [yet].
2. In the app, use the search option and type “stuff you should know”
3. the podcast will pop up. scroll and find “How the scientific method works,” and/or search for it if you can.
Once you can play it on the phone, you have to find time to listen to it.
I listen to podcast when i have to do unpleasant chores such as: 1. walking to work 2. washing the dishes 3. flying long hours (very rarely). 4. Driving in the car.
There are bunch of other situations, when you may be strapped and instead of filling disgruntled and stressed, you can deliver the mental [junk] food for your brain.
Earbuds help me: 1. forget the unpleasant task, 2. Utilize time 3. Learn cool stuff
Here are podcasts, I am subscribed for, besides “stuff you should know”:
TED Radio Hour
TED Talks Education
NPR Fresh Air
BBC History
and bunch others, which, if i don’t go a listen for an year, i go and erase and if i peruse through the top chart and something picks my interest, I try.
If I did not manage to convince to podcast, totally fine; do not feel obligated.
However, this podcast, you can listen to on your computer, if you don’t want to download on your phone.
It is one hour show by two geeks, who are trying to make funny (and they do) a dry matter such as quantitative vs qualitative, which you want to internalize:
1. Sometimes at minute 12, they talk about inductive versus deductive to introduce you to qualitative versus quantitative. It is good to listen to their musings, since your dissertation is going through inductive and deductive process, and understanding it, can help you control better your dissertation writing.
2. Scientific method. Hypothesis etc (around min 17).
While this is not a Ph.D., but Ed.D. and we do not delve into the philosophy of science and dissertation etc. the more you know about this process, the better control you have over your dissertation.
3. Methods and how you prove (Chapter 3) is discussed around min 35
4. dependent and independent variables and how do you do your research in general (min ~45)
Shortly, listen and please do share your thoughts below. You do not have to be kind to this source offering. Actually, be as critical as possible, so you can help me decide, if I should offer it to the next cohort and thank you in advance for your feedback.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are no longer fantastical prospects seen only in science fiction. Products like Amazon Echo and Siri have brought AI into many homes,
Kelly Calhoun Williams, an education analyst for the technology research firm Gartner Inc., cautions there is a clear gap between the promise of AI and the reality of AI.
Artificial intelligence is a broad term used to describe any technology that emulates human intelligence, such as by understanding complex information, drawing its own conclusions and engaging in natural dialog with people.
Machine learning is a subset of AI in which the software can learn or adapt like a human can. Essentially, it analyzes huge amounts of data and looks for patterns in order to classify information or make predictions. The addition of a feedback loop allows the software to “learn” as it goes by modifying its approach based on whether the conclusions it draws are right or wrong.
AI can process far more information than a human can, and it can perform tasks much faster and with more accuracy. Some curriculum software developers have begun harnessing these capabilities to create programs that can adapt to each student’s unique circumstances.
For instance, a Seattle-based nonprofit company calledEnlearn has developed an adaptive learning platform that uses machine learning technology to create highly individualized learning paths that can accelerate learning for every student. (My note: about learning and technology, Alfie Kohn in https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2018/09/11/educational-technology/)
GoGuardian, a Los Angeles company, uses machine learning technology to improve the accuracy of its cloud-based Internet filtering and monitoring software for Chromebooks. (My note: that smells Big Brother).Instead of blocking students’ access to questionable material based on a website’s address or domain name, GoGuardian’s software uses AI to analyze the actual content of a page in real time to determine whether it’s appropriate for students. (my note: privacy)
serious privacy concerns. It requires an increased focus not only on data quality and accuracy, but also on the responsible stewardship of this information. “School leaders need to get ready for AI from a policy standpoint,” Calhoun Williams said. For instance: What steps will administrators take to secure student data and ensure the privacy of this information?
in December 1944: Nazi troops were still resisting the Allies, which were making slow progress in Italy and being pushed back in the Ardennes faced with the Wehrmacht’s final counter-offensive. Yet the “bands” here targeted by Churchill were not groups of collaborators, but the partisans of the great National Liberation Front (EAM), which had for three years mounted mass resistance against the German occupiers.
Throughout the nineteenth century, the eastern Mediterranean had been the center of a rivalry between Britain and Russia. The Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917 having put an end to the latter country’s ambitions in the region, in the early 1940s, Greece was under unchallenged British influence. In this context, the country was of some strategic importance.
during the Quadrant Conference with Roosevelt in Quebec (August 17-24, 1943), Churchill saw his last hopes of an Allied landing in Greece vanish. Meanwhile, the Red Army’s advance beyond the USSR’s own frontiers was no longer in doubt. Churchill now took matters directly in hand, despite his advisers’ reticence, blocking off any possibility of negotiation and sending the EAM delegates home. At the same time, in a note to his high command, he drafted what would later become the MANNA plan: namely, to send an expeditionary corps to Greece after the German troops’ withdrawal.
The EAM-ELAS nonetheless succeeded in liberating a large part of the country. It established popular institutions which formed a counter-state. The worries among the British peaked in March 1944, when a “government of the mountains” was created that organized elections. Conversely, this approach awakened the enthusiasm of the Greek armed forces in Egypt, who immediately demanded that the Resistance be included in the exile government. Churchill replied with pitiless repression. He had “rebellious” elements deported to camps in Africa, and set up a praetorian guard prepared to return to Greece with the King and the British troops upon Liberation.
Everything was set for the application of the MANNA plan, which had been prepared the previous year. The victorious Red Army offensive in Bulgaria in September 1944 forced the Wehrmacht to withdraw from Greece, under attack from ELAS partisans. It was after this retreat that the British expeditionary corps arrived, accompanied by Papandreou and Scobie. Establishing themselves in the capital on October 18, the two men demanded that ELAS lay down its weapons, even as they rejected the disarming of the praetorian guard that had been formed in Egypt and, conveniently enough, transferred to Athens in early November.
December 3, 1944, saw a monster demonstration in Syntagma Square to demand Papandreou’s resignation and the constitution of a new government. The massacre that followed — the police opened fire on unarmed civilians, leaving over twenty dead and more than a hundred wounded — triggered the insurrection of the people of Athens. This was the pretext that Churchill had sought in order to be able to break the Resistance.
While the ELAS was still present across the rest of Greece’s territory, its leaders dreaded imposing new trials on an exhausted and famished population: 1,770 villages had been burned, more than a million people did not have a roof over their heads, and grain production had fallen by 40 percent. Meanwhile, the Allies’ aid only reached those who collaborated with them. With the Varkiza accord signed on February 12, 1945, the ELAS agreed unilaterally to give up its weapons. At the same time at Yalta, Churchill, together with Roosevelt and Stalin, solemnly proclaimed “the right of all peoples in liberated Europe to choose their own form of government.”
In breaking the Greek Resistance, the British had precipitated a civil war that would last — in open or latent forms — for some thirty years, with a brief lull between 1963 and 1965. It would only end with the fall of the colonels’ dictatorship in 1974. This “coup in Athens” reminds us that through its history, modern Greece has only enjoyed a very limited sovereignty.
Kiwi enhances learning experiences by encouraging active participation with AR and social media. A student can use their smartphone or tablet to scan physical textbooks and unlock learning assistance tools, like highlighting, note creation and sharing, videos and AR guides—all features that encourage peer-to-peer learning. (my note, as reported at the discussion at the QQLM conference in Crete about Zois Koukopoulos, Dimitrios Koukopoulos Augmented Reality Dissemination and Exploitation Services for Libraries: https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2018/05/21/measuring-learning-outcomes-of-new-library-initiatives/
Street Smarts VR is a startup that is working to provide solutions for a major issue facing America’s communities: conflicts between police officers and citizens.
NYC Media Lab recently collaborated with Bloomberg and the augmented reality startup Lampix on a fellowship program to envision the future of learning in the workplace. Lampix technology looks like it sounds: a lamp-like hardware that projects AR capabilities, turning any flat surface into one that can visualize data and present collaborative workflows.
Calling Thunder: The Unsung History of Manhattan, a project that came out of a recent fellowship program with A+E Networks, re-imagines a time before industrialization, when the City we know now was lush with forests, freshwater ponds, and wildlife.
Arshad, M., & Akram, M. S. (2018). Social Media Adoption by the Academic Community: Theoretical Insights and Empirical Evidence From Developing Countries. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 19(3). Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/3500
Building on the social constructivist paradigm and technology acceptance model, we propose a conceptual model to assess social media adoption in academia by incorporating collaboration, communication, and resource sharing as predictors of social media adoption, whereas perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness act as mediators in this relationship.
According to the latest social media statistics, there are more than 2 billion Facebook users, more than 300 million Twitter users, more than 500 million Google+ users, and more than 400 million LinkedIn users (InternetLiveStats, 2018).
although social media is rapidly penetrating into the society, there is no consensus in the literature on the drivers of social media adoption in an academic context. Moreover, it is not clear how social media can impact academic performance.
Social media platforms have significant capability to support the social constructivist paradigm that promotes collaborative learning (Vygotsky, 1978).
Perceived usefulness (PU) – This was defined by Fred Davis as “the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would enhance his or her job performance“.
Perceived ease-of-use (PEOU) – Davis defined this as “the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would be free from effort” (Davis 1989).
proposing a Social Media Adoption Model (SMAM) for the academic community
Social media platforms provide an easy alternative, to the academic community, as compared to official communications such as email and blackboard. my note: this has been established as long as back as in 2006 – https://www.chronicle.com/article/E-Mail-is-for-Old-People/4169. Around the time, when SCSU announced email as the “formal mode of communication).Thus, it is emerging as a new communication and collaboration tool among the academic community in higher education institutions (Roblyer, McDaniel, Webb, Herman, & Witty, 2010). Social media has greatly changed the communication/feedback environment by introducing technologies that have modified the educational perspective of learning and interacting (Prensky, 2001).
the Theory of Reasoned Action (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975) and the Technology Acceptance Model (Davis, 1989) have been used to assess individuals’ acceptance and use of technology. According to the Technology Acceptance Model, perceived usefulness and perceived ease are the main determinants of an individual’s behavioral intentions and actual usage (Davis, 1989).
Perceived usefulness, derived from the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), is the particular level that an individual perceives that they can improve their job performance or create ease in attaining the targeted goals by using an information system. It is also believed to make an individual free from mental pressure (Davis, 1989).
Perceived ease of use can be defined as the level to which an individual believes that using a specific system will make a task easier (Gruzd, Staves, & Wilk, 2012) and will reduce mental exertion (Davis, 1989). Venkatesh (2000) posits this construct as a vital element in determining a user’s behavior toward technology. Though generally, there is consensus on the positive effect of perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness on users’ attitude towards social media, it is not yet clear which one of these is more relevant in explaining users’ attitude towards social media in the academic community (Lowry, 2002). Perceived ease of use is one of the eminent behavioral beliefs affecting the users’ intention toward technology acceptance (Lu et al., 2005). The literature suggests that perceived ease of use of technology develops a positive attitude toward its usage (Davis, 1989).
Collaborative learning is considered as an essential instructional method as it assists in overcoming the communication gap among the academic community (Bernard, Rubalcava, & St-Pierre, 2000). The academic community utilizes various social media platforms with the intention to socialize and communicate with others and to share common interests (Sánchez et al., 2014; Sobaih et al., 2016). The exchange of information through social media platforms help the academic community to develop an easy and effective communication among classmates and colleagues (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Social media platforms can also help in developing communities of practice that may help improve collaboration and communication among members of the community (Sánchez et al., 2014). Evidence from previous work confirms that social media platforms are beneficial to college and university students for education purposes (Forkosh-Baruch & Hershkovitz, 2012). Due to the intrinsic ease of use and usefulness of social media, academics are regularly using information and communication technologies, especially social media, for collaboration with colleagues in one way or the other (Koh & Lim, 2012; Wang, 2010).
!*!*!*!*! — this article was pitched by Mark Vargas in the fall of 2013, back then dean of LRS and discussed at a faculty meeting at LRS in the same year—- !*!*!*!
New Roles for New Times: Transforming Liaison Roles in Research Libraries
(p. 4) Building strong relationships with faculty and other campus professionals, and establishing collaborative partnerships within and across institutions, are necessary building blocks to librarians’ success. In a traditional liaison model, librarians use their subject knowledge to select books and journals and teach guest lectures.
“Liaisons cannot be experts themselves in each new capability, but knowing when to call in a colleague, or how to describe appropriate expert capabilities to faculty, will be key to the new liaison role.
six trends in the development of new roles for library liaisons
user engagement is a driving factor
what users do (research, teaching, and learning) rather than on what librarians do (collections, reference, library instruction). In addition, an ALA-accredited master’s degree in library science is no longer strictly required.
In a networked world, local collections as ends in themselves make learning fragmentary and incomplete. (p. 5)
A multi-institutional approach is the only one that now makes sense.
Scholars already collaborate; libraries need to make it easier for them to do so.
but they also advise and collaborate on issues of copyright, scholarly communication, data management, knowledge management, and information literacy. The base level of knowledge that a liaison must possess is much broader than familiarity with a reference collection or facility with online searching; instead, they must constantly keep up with evolving pedagogies and research methods, rapidly developing tools, technologies, and ever-changing policies that facilitate and inform teaching, learning, and research in their assigned disciplines.
In many research libraries, programmatic efforts with information literacy have been too narrowly defined. It is not unusual for libraries to focus on freshman writing programs and a series of “one-shot” or invited guest lectures in individual courses. While many librarians have become excellent teachers, traditional one-shot, in-person instructional sessions can vary in quality depending on the training librarians have received in this arena; and they neither scale well nor do they necessarily address broader curricular goals. Librarians at many institutions are now focusing on collaborating with faculty to develop thoughtful assignments and provide online instructional materials that are built into key courses within a curriculum and provide scaffolding to help students develop library research skills over the course of their academic careers.
And many libraries stated that they lack instructional designers and/or educational technologists on their staff, limiting the development of interactive online learning modules and tutorials. (my note: or just ignore the desire by unites such as IMS to help).
(p. 7). This move away from supervision allows the librarians to focus on their liaison responsibilities rather than on the day-to-day operations of a library and its attendant personnel needs.
effectively support teaching, (1.) learning, and research; (2.) identify opportunities for further development of tools and services; (3.) and connect students, staff, and faculty to deeper expertise when needed.
At many institutions, therefore, the conversation has focused on how to supplement and support the liaison model with other staff.
At many institutions, therefore, the conversation has focused on how to supplement and support the liaison model with other staff.
the hybrid exists within the liaison structure, where liaisons also devote a portion of their time (e.g., 20% or more) to an additional area of expertise, for example digital humanities and scholarly communication, and may work with liaisons across all disciplinary areas. (my note: and at the SCSU library, the librarians firmly opposed the request for a second master’s degree)
functional specialists who do not have liaison assignments to specific academic departments but instead serve as “superliaisons” to other librarians and to the entire campus. Current specialist areas of expertise include copyright, geographic information systems (GIS), media production and integration, distributed education or e-learning, data management, emerging technologies, user experience, instructional design, and bioinformatics. (everything in italics is currently done by IMS faculty).
divided into five areas of functional specialization: information resources and collections management; information literacy, instruction, and curriculum development; discovery and access; archival and special collections; scholarly communication and the research enterprise.
E-Scholarship Collaborative, a Research Support Services Collaborative (p. 8).
p. 9. managing alerts and feeds, personal archiving, and using social networking for teaching and professional development
p. 10. new initiatives in humanistic research and teaching are changing the nature and frequency of partnerships between faculty and the Libraries. In particular, cross-disciplinary Humanities Laboratories (http://fhi.duke.edu/labs), supported by the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded Humanities Writ Large project, have allowed liaisons to partner with faculty to develop and curate new forms of scholarship.
consultations on a range of topics, such as how to use social media to effectively communicate academic research and how to mark up historical texts using the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) guidelines
p. 11. Media literacy, and facilitating the integration of media into courses, is an area in which research libraries can play a lead role at their institutions. (my note: yet still suppressed or outright denied to IMS to conducts such efforts)
Purdue Academic Course Transformation, or IMPACT (http://www.lib.purdue.edu/infolit/impact). The program’s purpose is to make foundational courses at Purdue more student-centered and participatory. Librarians are key members of interdepartmental teams that “work with Purdue instructors to redesign courses by applying evidence-based educational practices” and offer “learning solutions” that help students engage with and critically evaluate information. (my note: as offered by Keith and myself to Miguel, the vice provost for undergrads, who left; then offered to First Year Experience faculty, but ignored by Christine Metzo; then offered again to Glenn Davis, who bounced it back to Christine Metzo).
p. 15. The NCSU Libraries Fellows Program offers new librarians a two-year appointment during which they develop expertise in a functional area and contribute to an innovative initiative of strategic importance. NCSU Libraries typically have four to six fellows at a time, bringing in people with needed skills and working to find ongoing positions when they have a particularly good match. Purdue Libraries have experimented with offering two-year visiting assistant professor positions. And the University of Minnesota has hired a second CLIR fellow for a two-year digital humanities project; the first CLIR fellow now holds an ongoing position as a curator in Archives and Special Collections. The CLIR Fellowship is a postdoctoral program that hires recent PhD graduates (non-librarians), allowing them to explore alternative careers and allowing the libraries to benefit from their discipline-specific expertise.
Researchers have studied managerial derailment — or the dark side of leadership — for many years. The key derailment characteristics of bad managers are well documented and fall into three broad behavioral categories: (1) “moving away behaviors,” which create distance from others through hyper-emotionality, diminished communication, and skepticism that erodes trust; (2) “moving against behaviors,” which overpower and manipulate people while aggrandizing the self; and (3) “moving toward behaviors,” which include being ingratiating, overly conforming, and reluctant to take chances or stand up for one’s team. The popular media is full of examples of bad leaders in government, academia, and business with these characteristics.
Absentee leadership rarely comes up in today’s leadership or business literature, but research shows that it is the most common form of incompetent leadership.
Absentee leaders are people in leadership roles who are psychologically absent from them. They were promoted into management, and enjoy the privileges and rewards of a leadership role, but avoid meaningful involvement with their teams. Absentee leadership resembles the concept of rent-seeking in economics — taking value out of an organization without putting value in. As such, they represent a special case of laissez-faire leadership, but one that is distinguished by its destructiveness.
Having a boss who lets you do as you please may sound ideal, especially if you are being bullied and micromanaged by your current boss. However, a 2015 survey of 1,000 working adults showed that eight of the top nine complaints about leaders concerned behaviors that were absent; employees were most concerned about what their bosses didn’t do.
Research shows that being ignored by one’s boss is more alienating than being treated poorly. The impact of absentee leadership on job satisfaction outlasts the impact of both constructive and overtly destructive forms of leadership. Constructive leadership immediately improves job satisfaction, but the effects dwindle quickly. Destructive leadership immediately degrades job satisfaction, but the effects dissipate after about six months. In contrast, the impact of absentee leadership takes longer to appear, but it degrades subordinates’ job satisfaction for at least two years. It also is related to a number of other negative outcomes for employees, like role ambiguity, health complaints, and increased bullying from team members. Absentee leadership creates employee stress, which can lead to poor employee health outcomes and talent drain, which then impact an organization’s bottom line.
Because absentee leaders don’t actively make trouble, their negative impact on organizations can be difficult to detect, and when it is detected, it often is considered a low-priority problem. Thus, absentee leaders are often silent organization killers. Left unchecked, absentee leaders clog an organization’s succession arteries, blocking potentially more effective people from moving into important roles while adding little to productivity. Absentee leaders rarely engage in unforgivable bouts of bad behavior, and are rarely the subject of ethics investigations resulting from employee hotline calls. As a result, their negative effect on organizations accumulates over time, largely unchecked.
Constructive leadership creates high engagement and productivity, while destructive leadership kills engagement and productivity.
+++++++++++++++
more on what makes “great leader” in this IMS blog
Session Title: Measuring Learning Outcomes of New Library Initiatives Coordinator: Professor Plamen Miltenoff, Ph.D., MLIS, St. Cloud State University, USA Contact: pmiltenoff@stcloudstate.edu Scope & rationale: The advent of new technologies, such as virtual/augmented/mixed reality, and new pedagogical concepts, such as gaming and gamification, steers academic libraries in uncharted territories. There is not yet sufficiently compiled research and, respectively, proof to justify financial and workforce investment in such endeavors. On the other hand, dwindling resources for education presses administration to demand justification for new endeavors. As it has been established already, technology does not teach; teachers do; a growing body of literature questions the impact of educational technology on educational outcomes. This session seeks to bring together presentations and discussion, both qualitative and quantitative research, related to new pedagogical and technological endeavors in academic libraries as part of education on campus. By experimenting with new technologies such as Video 360 degrees and new pedagogical approaches such as gaming and gamification, does the library improve learning? By experimenting with new technologies and pedagogical approaches, does the library help campus faculty to adopt these methods and improve their teaching? How can results be measured, demonstrated?
Can We Please Stop Talking About Generations as if They Are a Thing?
Millennials are not all narcissists and boomers are not inherently selfish. The research on generations is flawed. DAVID COSTANZA
APRIL 13, 2018 9:00 AM
We spend a lot of time debating the characteristics of generations—are baby boomers really selfish and entitled, are millennials really narcissists, and the latest, has the next generation (whatever it is going to be called) already been ruined by cellphones? Many academics—and many consultants—argue that generations are distinct and that organizations, educators, and even parents need to accommodate them. These classifications are often met with resistance from those they supposedly represent, as most people dislike being represented by overgeneralizations, and these disputes only fuel the debate around this contentious topic.
In short, the science shows that generations are not a thing.
It is important to be clear what not a thing means. It does not mean that people today are the same as people 80 years ago or that anything else is static. Times change and so do people. However, the idea that distinct generations capture and represent these changes is unsupported.
What is a generation? Those who promote the concept define it as a group of people who are roughly the same age and who were influenced by a set of significant events. These experiences supposedly create commonalities, making those in the group more similar to each other and more different from other groups now and from groups of the same age in the past.
In line with the definition, there is a commonly held perception that people growing up around the same time and in the same place must have some sort of universally shared set of experiences and characteristics. It helps that the idea of generations intuitively makes sense. But the science does not support it. In fact, most of the research findings showing distinct generations are explained by other causes, have serious scientific flaws, or both.
Numerousbooks, articles, and pundits have claimed that millennials are much more narcissistic than young people in the past.
on average, millennials are no more narcissistic now than Xers or boomers were when they were in their 20s, and one study has even found they might be less so than generations past. While millennials today may be more narcissistic than Xers or boomers are today, that is because young people are pretty narcissistic regardless of when they are young. This too is an age effect.
Final example. Research shows that millennials joining the Army now show more pride in their service than boomers or Xers did when they joined 20-plus years ago. Is this a generational effect? Nope. Everyone in the military now shows more pride on average than 20 years ago because of 9/11. The terrorist attack increased military pride across the board. This is known as a period effect and it doesn’t have anything to do with generations.
Another problem—identifying true generational effects is methodologically very hard. The only way to do it would be to collect data from multiple longitudinal panels. Individuals in the first panel would be measured at the start of the study and then in subsequent years with new panels added every year thereafter, allowing assessment of whether people were changing because they were getting older (age effects), because of what was happening around them (period effects), or because of their generation (cohort effects). Unfortunately, such data sets pretty much do not exist. Thus, we’re never really able to determine why a change occurred.
According to one national-culture model, people from the United States are, on average, relatively individualistic, indulgent, and uncomfortable with hierarchical order. My note: RIchard Nisbett sides with Hofstede and Minkov: https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2016/06/14/cultural-differences/
Conversely, people from China are generally group-oriented, restrained, and comfortable with hierarchy. However, these countries are so large and diverse that they each have millions of individuals who are more similar to the “averages” of the other country than to their own.
Given these design and data issues, it is not surprising that researchers have tried a variety of different statistical techniques to massage (aka torture) the data in an attempt to find generational differences. Studies showing generational differences have used statistical techniques like analysis of variance (ANOVA) and cross-temporal meta-analysis (CTMA), neither of which is capable of actually attributing the differences to generations.
The statistical challenge derives from the problem we have already raised—generations (i.e., cohorts) are defined by age and period. As such, mathematically separating age, period, and cohort effects is very difficult because they are inherently confounded with one another. Their linear dependency creates what is known as an identification problem, and unless one has access to multiple longitudinal panels like I described above, it is impossible to statistically isolate the unique effect of any one factor.
Are some millennials narcissistic? Are some boomers selfish? Sure, but there are many who are not and whose profiles mirror othergenerations.
First, relying on flawed generational science leads to poor advice and bad decisions. An analogy: Women live longer than men, on average. Why? They engage in fewer risky behaviors, take better care of themselves, and have two X chromosomes, giving them backups in case of mutations. But if you are a man and you go to the doctor and ask how to live longer, she doesn’t tell you, “Be a woman.” She says eat better, exercise, and don’t do stupid stuff. Knowing the why guides the recommendation.
Now imagine you are a manager trying to retain your supposedly job-hopping, commitment-averse millennial employees and you know that Xers and boomers are less likely to leave their jobs. If you are that manager, you wouldn’t tell your millennial employees to “be a boomer” or “grow older” (nor would you decide to hire boomers or Xers rather than millennials—remember that individuals vary within populations). Instead, you should focus on addressing benefits, work conditions, and other factors that are reasons for leaving.
Second, this focus on generational distinctions wastes resources. Take the millennials-as-commitment-averse-job-hoppers stereotype. Based on this belief, consultants sell businesses on how to recruit and retain this mercurial generation. But are all (or even most) millennials job-hopping commitment avoiders? Survey research shows that millennials and Xers at the same point in their careers are equally likely to stay with their current employer for five or more years (22 percent v. 21.8 percent). It makes no sense for organizations to spend time and money changing HR policies when employees are just as likely to stick around today as they were 15 years ago.
Third, generations perpetuate stereotyping. Ask millennials if they are narcissistic job-hoppers and most of them will rightly be offended. Treat boomers like materialistic achievement seekers and see how it affects their work quality and commitment. We finally are starting to recognize that those within any specific group of people are varied individuals, and we should remember those same principles in this context too. We are (mostly) past it being acceptable to stereotype and discriminate against women, minorities, and the disabled. Why is it OK to do so to millennials or boomers?
The solutions are fairly straightforward, albeit challenging, to implement. To start, we need to focus on the why when talking about whether groups of people differ. The reasons why any generation should be different have only been generally discussed, and the theoretical mechanism that supposedly creates generations has not been fully fleshed out.
Next, we need to quit using these nonsensical generations labels, because they don’t mean anything. The start and end years are somewhat arbitrary anyway. The original conceptualization of social generations started with a biological generational interval of about 20 years, which historians, sociologists and demographers (for one example, see Strauss and Howe, 1991) then retrofitted with various significant historical events that defined the period.
The problem with this is twofold. First, such events do not occur in nice, neat 20-year intervals. Second, not everyone agrees on what the key events were for each generation, so the start and end dates also move around depending on what people think they were. One review found that start and end dates for boomers, Xers, and millennials varied by as many as nine years, and often four to five, depending on the study and the researcher. As with the statistical problem, how can distinct generations be a thing if simply defining when they start and when they end varies so much from study to study?
In the end, the core scientific problem is that the pop press, consultants, and even some academics who are committed to generations don’t focus on the whys. They have a vested interest in selling the whats(Generation Me has reportedly sold more than 115,000 copies, and Google “generations consultants” and see how many firms are dedicated to promulgating these distinctions), but without the science behind them, any prescriptions are worthless or even harmful
David Costanza is an associate professor of organizational sciences at George Washington University and a senior consortium fellow for the U.S. Army Research Institute. He researches, teaches, and consults in the areas of generations, leadership, culture, and organizational performance.
