Digital Commons Network^™

Normalizing Ai: The Evanishing Effect And Rethinking The Machine Heuristic, Bumju Jung, Cameron W. Piercy, Patric R. Spence

Human-Machine Communication

This study examines how people evaluate factual claims attributed to human journalists versus artificial intelligence (AI) news bots, and how these evaluations are shaped by individual endorsement of the machine heuristic. An online experiment (N = 233) used a 2 (Agent: human vs. AI) × 2 (Information Veracity: accurate vs. inaccurate) design in which participants viewed a short tweet embedded in either a human or AI profile and then rated perceptions of source credibility, objectivity, bias, and accuracy. Endorsement of an AI-focused machine heuristic was significantly associated with higher source credibility, perceived objectivity, and perceived accuracy, and lower perceived bias, …

Ai Humanizers, Pragmatists, Skeptics: A Cluster Analysis Of Normative Attitudes For Ai’S Capabilities And Roles, Kate K. Mays, Ekaterina Novozhilova

Human-Machine Communication

This study explores people’s attitudes about artificial intelligence’s (AI) capabilities through a normative lens. Drawing from literature on phenomenological, ontological, and heuristic judgments about machines, we aim to better understand what capabilities people think AI should be able to have and how that relates to enthusiasm about having AI take certain roles in their lives. Survey participants (N = 601) were grouped via two-step clustering based on their attitudes, revealing three clusters: AI humanizers, who expect empathy and social interaction from AI; AI pragmatists, who expect cognitive capabilities; and AI skeptics, who prefer AI with limited human-like traits and emphasize …

Explain. Write. Edit. Summarise: An Exploratory Study On Agency Negotiations In Student-Chatbot Conversations, Árni Már Einarsson Mr, Ekaterina Pashevich

Human-Machine Communication

LLM-based chatbots such as ChatGPT have given technologies that traditionally operated on the back end a user-friendly, conversational interface. Their rapid adoption among students has prompted universities worldwide to issue guidelines and re-examine existing practices. Supplementing prior research based on discourse analysis and self-reported measures (e.g., surveys and interviews), we propose an approach for analyzing naturally occurring student–chatbot interactions, rooted in conversation analysis of chats (n = 503) donated by eight current Danish university students. The analysis identifies conversational patterns across three main types of activities and examines how agency is negotiated across the structural dimensions of signification, domination, and …

Two Years To Madness: A 30-Month Journal Of Human–Machine Communication And Second-Hand Reality, Andrew Prahl

Human-Machine Communication

Drawing on a 30-month analytic-autoethnography of the first author’s journal as an earlyaccess OpenAI user, this study examines how sustained communication with generative AI affects everyday lived experience and identity. Inductive content analysis of 166 entries by independent coders is followed by theory-driven coding with the extended-mind and sensemaking frameworks. Three interlocking themes emerge. Enabled and Degraded captures the tension between new capabilities and efficiency versus creeping skill atrophy. Scary New World charts rising anxiety as productivity gains erode competitive and relational distinctiveness. The findings also show a growing, pervasive doubt about the human authorship of texts, images, and other …

The Material Condition: A Practice Theory-Oriented Infrastructural Turn To The Ethics Of Human-Ai Communication, Anne Mollen, Sigrid Kannengießer

Human-Machine Communication

This paper calls for an infrastructural turn in human–AI communication, centered on the materiality of generative AI. We argue that a nuanced understanding of ethical implications of generative AI necessitates examining the socio-technical infrastructures that constitute these systems. These infrastructures encompass not only technological artifacts but also human actors (developers, users, data subjects, etc.) and their practices as well as social contexts in designing, developing, implementing, and maintaining AI. Therefore, we propose to adopt a practice theory approach, to analyze how ethical concerns materialize within these infrastructures. This perspective reveals how infrastructures are contested spaces in global production chains, highlighting …

Whole Earth Machines: Human-Machine Communication For A Green Transition, Klaus Bruhn Jensen

Human-Machine Communication

The climate crisis of the 21st century represents an existential risk to humanity and biodiversity, posing essential questions of how communication may serve to coordinate mitigation of and adaptation to climate change. One recent response has been massive investments by governments and corporations in systems providing feedback on the state of Earth— Whole Earth Machines (WEMs). For human-machine communication (HMC) studies, WEMs invite sustained engagement with communication infrastructures as a key constituent of research agendas, beyond the interface encounters at the center of many HMC studies to date. The article presents a conceptualization and operationalization of WEMs as critical infrastructures …

One Story High, Audrey Sprenger, Ashley Vaughan

Fast Capitalism

Full Issue can be found here.

From Clicks To Clarity: Advanced Searching In Cinahl, Tracy Ashby, Jennifer Stockton

Library Class: Lunch & Learn

Take your CINAHL search to the next level. Learn practical techniques for combining Subject Headings, keywords, and filters to create strong, effective search strategies that support your evidence-based research.

Curious Objects: Form And Feeling In Mary Leapor's Thing Poems, James Metcalf

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Mary Leapor (1722–1746) has long been recognized as something of a curiosity: a Northamptonshire kitchen maid with a rudimentary education who died at the age of 24, but who also wrote two volumes of poetry. In this essay I read Leapor’s “thing poems” to show how curiosity is also a supervening affective regime in her poetics. Minor and marginal, fixated by perverse objects which tend more to derail than deepen the production of knowledge, curiosity is an unsettling mode of inquiry because of its imaginative attachment to the strange stuff lurking within the ordinary as a diminished site of aesthetic …

Student Input Confusion And Unintentional Bias: A Note On Teaching The Capital Asset Pricing Model

Journal of Economics and Finance Education

Finance textbooks include the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) as a method to estimate the required return on equity capital. The graphical depiction of the Security Market Line (SML) can be used to examine risk-reward trade-offs for both security analysis and capital investment proposals. In attempts to apply the CAPM in practice, students often confuse the expected return on the market with the market risk premium. This paper provides teaching examples that clarify how changes in the risk-free rate should be made in concert with the market risk premium to avoid the introduction of bias in the resulting investment process.

The Minimum Variance Portfolio, The Tangency Portfolio, And The Associated Matrix Algebra

Journal of Economics and Finance Education

The matrix algebra associated with finding minimum variance portfolio weights and tangency portfolio weights is greatly simplified by using an Excel presentation. A further simplification of the tangency portfolio weights process is also presented using excess returns for the risky securities. The lesson drawn from this presentation is readily performed online by sharing or recording an Excel screen with students.

Beyond The Romance: Teaching Financial Regulation With Public Choice And Austrian Economics

Journal of Economics and Finance Education

Money and banking students typically begin class assuming that markets fail routinely and that government regulation can prevent (or resolve) crises. We show that there is at least a reasonable doubt that financial intervention causes more harm than good. We then share a successful pedagogical approach to examining financial regulation, through the lens of three models of political economy: public interest, Austrian economics, and public choice theory. We examine nine categories of financial regulation using the standard public interest approach, integrated with Austrian and public choice critiques, to guide students through a critical assessment of financial regulation.

Affordit Raises Private Equity: The Choice Between Venture Capitalists Or Business Angels

Journal of Economics and Finance Education

Affordit, a fintech startup, was raising private equity and needed to choose between raising capital from a venture capital firm or from business angels through a private placement memorandum. Accepting the terms from a venture capital firm would allow the founder to focus on running Affordit. Raising equity through a private placement would be more time intensive, as it required building a network of accredited investors aligned with founder's vision for growth. The case offers students an opportunity to compare the terms of a private placement memorandum to a venture capital term sheet for an early-stage, high­ growth company.

Improving Student Learning In International Finance Using An Alternative Currency Quotation Paradigm

Journal of Economics and Finance Education

International fmance textbooks assume direct term quotations as a basis for all exchange rates. All equations, including bid-ask choice, currency conversion, parity equations, options, futures hedging, and percentage change, rely on that assumption to calculate the result. This assumption is unnecessary and limits the usefulness of the above formulas. Ignoring indirect and cross-rate quotes can cause misunderstanding and confusion. This paper proposes a more general approach using a base currency vs. quote currency framework that works for all currency quotation methods. This new method generates significantly higher learning outcomes when compared to the traditional method.

An Example Of A Student-Run Financial Literacy And Mentoring Program

Journal of Economics and Finance Education

This paper describes a student-run financial literacy program for a local middle school which is managed by students in Xavier University's student investment fund. The paper's purpose is to describe a program that could be implemented with minimal resources at many universities. From a hierarchy of learning progression, this program gives university students the opportunity to teach basic business and finance concepts while giving back to the community. The program has the additional benefit of providing financial literacy skills to an underserved, middle school community.

A Managerial Perspective On Underbanked Entrepreneurs: Barriers To Lending And Community Partnership Solutions

Journal of Economics and Finance Education

The unique barriers confronting entrepreneurs in low-income communities in obtaining debt capital in the United States remain unclear. Through in-depth interviews with financial lenders and technical assistance providers representing startup support organizations, two sets of barriers to financial lending are identified: 1) limited loan applications, possibly due to distrust in traditional financial lenders, and loan denials related to low financial stability and literacy, and 2) systemic challenges with the U.S. traditional financial lending system, and its startup support system. Community-based partnership solutions for these barriers are presented with theoretical and practical implications.

The Senator And The Philosopher: What Liberalism Might Have Been, Charles Lemert

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

Class Observations: "Intimate" Technologies And The Poetics Of Reality Tv, Irmi Karl

Fast Capitalism

For some of us, one of the biggest surprises of the 2006 Big Brother show was not the winner, Pete Bennett, but, according to The Guardian newspaper, the fact that “[a]fter seven years, the BB brand is stronger than ever” (Lawson 2006:3). The fact that cultural critics are wishing the show away at the point at which it has reached its popular cultural zenith of mass appeal is significant in that it is indicative of a widely held position, which readily equates (mass) media culture with bad or low culture, frightening, out of bounds, vulgar and excessive (Skeggs 2005a). At …

William Leiss, Hera, And The Fate Of Science, Hans Kellner

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

Excerpt From: Hera, Or Empathy, William Leiss

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

Modern Science, Enlightenment, And The Domination Of Nature: No Exit?, William Leiss

Fast Capitalism

"The disease of reason is that reason was born from man’s urge to dominate nature." —Max Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason (1947)

In the fuller passage from which this extract is taken, Horkheimer locates the origins of the ‘collective madness’ of modern times in ‘in primitive objectification, in the first man’s calculating contemplation of the world as prey’ (176). Perhaps all one can say in response is, if this diagnosis is correct, there is certainly no cure, so we might as well get on with our lives.

In the early sections of this paper I will first note briefly the argument …

The Killing Fields Of South Africa: Eco-Wars, Species Apartheid, And Total Liberation, Steve Best

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

Corporate Power, Ecological Crisis, And Animal Rights, Carl Boggs

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

Full Issue, Fast Capitalism Editorial Team

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

On The Importance Of Teaching Real Estate In The Finance Curriculum: An Applied Project For Basic Finance Courses

Journal of Economics and Finance Education

Real estate is the world's largest asset class. It plays an important role in the economy as a whole and in the portfolios of many individuals around the world. However, most business and even finance students have little exposure to real estate concepts. This paper discusses the importance of real estate and presents a series of exercises that can be assigned in introductory finance classes. Through these exercises, students enhance their overall finance knowledge and learn concepts not usually covered by introductory textbooks, such as choosing a mortgage, refinancing decision, and house affordability.

#Econ1950: Integrating Twitter And A Learning Management System To Reach Students Outside The Classroom

Journal of Economics and Finance Education

A course-specific Twitter hashtag can be used to categorize tweets related to course material. Embedding a Collection of these tweets within a Learning Management System course page is an easy way to share this information with students. A guide to embedding a twitter feed within Moodle, Canvas, and Blackboard Learn is provided. Examples of how Twitter can be used to share information to students in a Macroeconomics course are provided. Student survey results indicate that most students agreed that the Twitter feed helped connect the course material to examples, was worthwhile, and stimulated their interest in economics.

Options Trading Strategies With Bloomberg: A Practical Guide For The Undergraduate Classroom

Journal of Economics and Finance Education

Today more business schools are investing in Bloomberg terminals to provide an experiential learning environment designed to better prepare students for industry. This paper illustrates how Bloomberg terminals can be incorporated in today's financial derivatives curriculum resulting in a merger between theory and practice. Through the illustration of six options trading strategies and the functionality of the Bloomberg System, both instructors and students will have a better comprehension of the uses and benefits of this system in the classroom today. In doing so, students will be better prepared for future careers in the finance industry.

Student Reaction To Online Learning During Covid-19

Journal of Economics and Finance Education

This paper explores student adaptation to online learning as a result of higher education courses moving into distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. We conduct surveys of students enrolled in fully asynchronous online Introductory Corporate Finance classes and find that student effort plays a significant role in student perception of online courses. We also find that those studying a lot are happy with online courses and will take more online courses after the pandemic, but others expect to enroll in fewer or the same number of online courses post­ pandemic.

Multi-Stage Stock Pricing Techniques For The Classroom

Journal of Economics and Finance Education

A process for multi-stage stock pricing is presented with evidence of improved classroom performance. The technique is expanded for more advanced class presentations and for potential fmtech applications by taking advantage of present value annuity and future value annuity due structures. Although advanced, the expanded technique can be performed iteratively on a financial calculator.

Metacognition And Performance: Evidence From Intermediate Corporate Finance Students

Journal of Economics and Finance Education

We examine whether metacognitive skills are important for finance students. We find that students with better metacognitive skills perform better in intermediate corporate finance courses. We find a statistically significant and positive relationship between students' achievements and their metacognitive awareness even after controlling for performance in the introductory finance course, major, time spent on assignments, senior status, and gender. We overcome the literature's concerns regarding capturing metacognitive abilities by focusing on students' low stakes self-learning assignments and utilizing metacognitive data collected by the McGraw-Hill LearnSmart platform. We find evidence that teaching metacognitive skills may benefit students in higher education.