Digital Commons Network^™

Creating Breadth In Business Education Through Service-Learning, Paul C. Godfrey, Louise M. Illes, Gregory R. Berry

Faculty Publications

We argue service-learning pedagogy and the associated educational experiences provide a partial solution to the significant problem of narrowness in business education. Servicelearning pedagogy seeks to balance academic rigor with practical relevance, set in a context of civic engagement, which furnishes students with a broader and, we argue, richer, educational experience. We present four specific critiques of business education: (1) the business curriculum focuses on functional and discrete rather than cross-functional and holistic knowledge; (2) coursework emphasizes practical problem-solving “tool kits” rather than deep theoretical knowledge; (3) the underlying paradigm of business education views humanity and human interactions in purely …

Can Individual Investors Beat The Market?, Joshua D. Coval, David A. Hirshleifer, Tyler Shumway

Faculty Publications

We document strong persistence in the performance of trades of individual investors. The correlation of the risk-adjusted performance of an individual across sample periods is about 10 percent. Investors classified in the top performance decile in the first half of our sample subsequently outperform those in the bottom decile by about 8 percent per year. Strategies long in firms purchased by previously successful investors and short in firms purchased by previously unsuccessful investors earn abnormal returns of 5 basis points per day. These returns are not confined to small stocks nor to stocks in which the investors are likely to …

Deception Detection Through Automatic, Unobtrusive Analysis Of Nonverbal Behavior, Thomas O. Meservy, Matthew L. Jensen, John Kruse, Judee K. Burgoon, Jay F. Nunamaker Jr., Douglas P. Twitchell, Gabriel Tsechpenakis, Dimitris N. Metaxas

Faculty Publications

Every day, hundreds of thousands of people pass through airport security checkpoints, border crossing stations, or other security screening measures. Security professionals must sift through countless interactions and ferret out high-risk individuals who represent a danger to other citizens. During each interaction, the security professional must decide whether the individual is being forthright or deceptive. This task is difficult because of the limits of human vigilance and perception and the small percentage of individuals who actually harbor hostile intent. Our research initiative is based on a behavioral approach to deception detection. We attempted to build an automated system that can …

Are Empowerment And Education Enough? Underdiversification In 401(K) Plans, James J. Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian

Faculty Publications

At the end of 2000, current and former employees of the energy trading company Enron Corporation held $2.1 billion in the firm’s 401(k) retirement savings plan. Sixty-two percent of that money was invested in Enron stock, then trading at $83 a share. In October 2001 Enron’s finances began to unravel as its accounting improprieties came to light. Enron stock plummeted over the next several weeks, and on December 2, 2001, the company declared bankruptcy, rendering its shares worthless. Thousands of Enron employees lost their jobs and a large fraction of their retirement wealth simultaneously.

Pricing In The New Economy: Lessons From The Period Of The E-Commerce Bubble, Phillip J. Bryson

Faculty Publications

The New Economy increased U.S. productivity sharply after 1995. The latest economics literature on the topic, which generally forecasts a secure future for the information economy, is reviewed. The down side of the New Economy were the strategies, especially the pricing strategies of NASDAQ and virtual firms. The critique of Michael Porter regarding the non-strategic price cutting common to those firms is reviewed. Traditional models by Sweezy and Baumol, which focus on pricing in imperfectly competitive industries, are applied to provide a cogent theory as to why those firms made mistakes that were once viewed as common for neophyte industries.

Theories Of Presidential Decision Making: Wilson, Roosevelt, And The Soviet Union, Jeremy Lloyd

Sigma: Journal of Political and International Studies

No abstract provided.

The State Of The Art In Language Assessment: Notes For The Third Millennium, Bernard Spolsky

Russian Language Journal

In the 2000 years during which human abilities have been assessed formally, tests and examinations have grown more powerful. A century ago, critics launched a strong attack on examinations, citing their “inevitable uncertainty,” but a growing testing industry and governmental cries for “accountability” have managed a stubborn defense. More recently, appreciation of the complexity of notions such as “language proficiency” and acceptance of the resulting impossibility of finding a single measure of those notions have led testing experts to a realization that assessing language knowledge is multipart and intricate—and more likely to be served by profiles than by simple scores.

Fathers' Religious And Family Involvement At Home; And Work And Family Outcomes, Roxane O. Whyte

Theses and Dissertations

This study proposes and confirms two new predictors of work and family outcomes, thus far unexplored in existing work-family literature: fathers' religious involvement at home and fathers' family involvement at home. It is the first study to date to document that these produce a crossover effect to positively influence work-related outcomes including work-family conflict, work-family fit and job satisfaction.
Data come from employed married fathers and their spouses participating in the 2001 BYU Marriott School of Management Alumni Work and Family Survey (n = 210), all members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). Findings are that …

Change Agents And Change Agencies In Language Education: Implications For Langnet, Richard D. Brecht

Russian Language Journal

Educational innovation is a richly satisfying enterprise, particularly in an age of rising demands and expanding technology. But unless the innovators have an explicit strategic plan and a dedicated system for diffusing their work, innovation is destined to have little or no impact on the teachers and learners for whom it is intended. That truth lies at the heart of the literature on the diffusion of innovation.

Perspectives On Curriculum Construction At The Postsecondary Level: Contexts, Approaches, Principles, Heidi Byrnes

Russian Language Journal

A curriculum is an attempt, wrote Stenhouse three decades ago (1975, 4), to communicate the essential principles and features of an educational proposal in such a form that it is open to critical scrutiny and capable of effective translation into practice.

If one applies that notion of curriculum to the foreign language field in general, and to second- or foreign-language learning in U.S. colleges and universities in particular, one is immediately confronted with a dilemma: how can we speak of a foreign-language curriculum at the college level when a principled approach that is open to scrutiny and that builds on …

Full Issue

Russian Language Journal

No abstract provided.

From The Farm To The Faculty: The Educational Odyssey Of Paulus Falck, Johan Windmuller

The Bridge

During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, thousands of immigrants from Denmark settled in the American Midwest. Some of them brought with them educational concepts and religious convictions they hoped to pass on to future generations; to do so they created a variety of educational and religious institutions scattered across several Midwestern states. What follows is a study of Paulus Falck, who passed through several of these institutions.

Maternal Education And Child Nutritional Status In Bolivia: Finding The Links, Michelle Bellessa Frost, Renata Forste, David W. Haas

Faculty Publications

This study models various pathways linking maternal education and child nutritional status in Bolivia, using a national sample of children. Pathways examined include socioeconomic status, health knowledge, modern attitudes towards health care, female autonomy, and reproductive behavior. The data come from the 1998 Bolivia Demographic and Health Survey. Logistic regression results suggest that socioeconomic factors are the most important pathways linking maternal education and child nutritional status, and that modern attitudes about health care also explain the impact of education. Health care knowledge accounts for less of the effect of maternal education on child nutritional status, with autonomy being the …

Theorizing About Marriage, Jason S. Carroll, Stan J. Knapp, Thomas B. Holman

Faculty Publications

Since its inception in the 1920s, research on marriage relationships has attracted widespread attention within a variety of disciplines and has held a central position in the scientific study of families. However, despite marriage scholarship's long tradition and broad interdisciplinary base, a number of scholars believe that this area of research has reached a crossroads at the beginning of the 21st century. This pivotal moment is seen as largely the result of a lack of explicit theory development in the marriage field. In fact, during the past decade several leading marriage scholars have called for the development of broad integrative …

Attitudes Toward Abortion Among Religious Traditions In The United States: Change Or Continuity?, John P. Hoffmann, Sherrie Mills Johnson

Faculty Publications

Abortion continues to be a highly contentious issue in the United States, with few signs of abatement. The goal of this paper is to specify how variable positions about abortion across religious traditions have led to differential shifts in attitudes among their members. Based on culturally relevant events, position papers, and other religious media, the guiding hypotheses propose that Evangelicals have become increasingly opposed to abortion for elective reasons; yet changes in attitudes regarding abortion for traumatic reasons are due primarily to cohort shifts. Data from the cumulative General Social Surveys (1972–2002) are used to test the hypotheses. The first …

Shared Experience Building Around The Family Crucible Of Cancer, W. David Robinson, Jason S. Carroll, Wendy L. Watson

Faculty Publications

This study was designed to gain a greater understanding of the effects cancer has on families while simultaneously developing family therapy interventions that are helpful for families experiencing the crucible of cancer. On the basis of an action research paradigm, the authors designed an intensive case-analysis protocol involving reflective interviewing to learn about the personal perspectives of family members who participate in therapeutic treatment for cancer. An integration of reflective insight by the families, their therapist, and the research team ultimately revealed that cancer families face an ongoing struggle (a) between feelings of isolation and connectedness, (b) to make meaning …

A Unified Design Framework For Learning Objects And Educational Discourse, David Wiley, Sandie Waters

Faculty Publications

Instructional design is largely a matter of scope and sequence, and designing instruction with learning objections is no exception. Traditionally, learning objects are considered atomic units of educational content, and designing instruction with learning objects means scoping instructional messages and determining sequences for delivering the messages. We argue that instructional methods that rely heavily on social interaction can be implemented with learning objects when these are understood to be reusable scaffolds for scoping and sequencing what learners say to each other during instructional interactions.

Five Powerful Practices For Using Technology To Enhance Teaching And Learning In Higher Education, Charles R. Graham, Richard E. West

Faculty Publications

This presentation reports the findings from our investigation of the professors designated as the most innovative users of technology at our university. After seeking nominations from department heads, we selected thirty-five of the most successful and innovative professors as case studies. After interviewing these cases, and in some instances observing their classes, we identified five major patterns that represented the positive impacts technology was having on their instruction. These patterns were evident in several cases across many different disciplines, indicating they might be generalizable to many different situations and contexts. In our interviews, we identified what technologies these professors were …

Speech Interactions With Linguistic, Cognitive, And Visuomotor Tasks, Christopher Dromey, Emily Bates

Faculty Publications

Lip movements were examined across several repetitive speaking conditions (speech alone and speaking concurrently with a linguistic, cognitive, or visuomotor challenge task) in 20 young adults. Performance in these nonspeech activities was also compared between isolated tasks and concurrent speech conditions. Linguistic challenges resulted in increased spatiotemporal variability of lip displacement across repetitions. Motor challenges led to more rapid speech with smaller lip displacement. These qualitatively different changes suggest that different aspects of attention are required for linguistic versus manual visuomotor activity. Vocal intensity increased for all concurrent task conditions compared with speech alone, suggesting increased effort compared to the …

Sex-Related Acoustic Changes In Voiceless English Fricatives, Shawn L. Nissen, Robert Allen Fox

Faculty Publications

This investigation is a comprehensive acoustic study of 4 voiceless fricatives (/f q s Ý/)in English produced by adults and pre- and postpubescent children aged 6–14 years. Vowel duration, amplitude, and several different spectral measures (including spectral tilt and spectral moments) were examined. Of specific interest was the pattern of normal development of the acoustic properties of fricatives and the nature of sex-specific patterns of fricative articulation in prepubescent children. Little evidence of amplitude or duration differences was found between speakers that was related to sex of the speaker. However, significant sex-specific differences in fricative articulation were found in all …

Life On A Tricycle A Case Study Of Language Impairment From 4 To 19, Lee Robinson, Bonnie Brinton, Martin Fujiki

Faculty Publications

This article presents a longitudinal case study of a child named Cody identified with specific language impairment. Cody was followed from 4 to 19 years of age, at which time he compared his social skills with those of peers: “It’s like they’re driving sports car and I’m on a tricycle.” His initial long- and short-term intervention goals are presented, along with the treatment methods employed and the resulting outcomes. Although long-term goals remained consistent, as the nature of Cody’s academic, social, and emotional challenges shifted, it was necessary to gear treatment to address his changing needs. Cody’s case illustrates the …

Strategic Writing: Moving Beyond The Classroom Assignment, Deborah Dean

Faculty Publications

By focusing on specific strategies that they could apply to different stages of the writing process, Deborah Dean helped students acquire control over their writing in varying contexts.

I would never think of teaching a reading strategy that worked for only one text. And students do not consider predicting or summarizing to be strategies unique to a specific text, either. Why, then, do students so often look at writing strategies as practices useful for only one assignment? Why do they complete freewrites or webs after they have finished the paper? Or "mess up" a copy of a paper just to …

Leadership, Collective Personality, And Performance, David A. Hofmann, Lisa Jones Christensen

Faculty Publications

By viewing behavior regularities at the individual and collective level as functionally isomorphic, a referent-shift compositional model for the Big 5 personality dimensions is developed. On the basis of this compositional model, a common measure of Big 5 personality at the individual level is applied to the collective as a whole. Within this framework, it is also hypothesized that leadership (i.e., transformational, transactional, and passive) would predict collective personality and that collective personality would be significantly related to collective performance. The results supported these hypotheses using a sample of franchised units. On the basis of recent research at the individual …

Distance Learning And University Effectiveness: Changing Educational Paradigms For Online Learning, Scott L. Howell

Faculty Publications

Howell reviews Distance Learning and University Effectiveness: Changing Educational Paradigms for Online Learning by Caroline Howard, Karen D. Schenk, and Richard Discenza.

Technology: Taking The Distance Out Of Learning/New Directions For Teaching And Learning, 94, Nathan K. Lindsay, Scott L. Howell

Faculty Publications

Lindsay and Howell review Technology: Taking the Distance Out of Learning: New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 94 edited by Margit Misangyi Watts.

The Medieval Holocaust: The Approach Of The Plague And The Destruction Of Jews In Germany, 1348-1349, Albert Winkler

Faculty Publications

When the Black Death approached the German Empire in 1348, civic authorities in Germany tried to prevent the disease from striking their cities. No one knew what the Plague was, but there were unfounded rumors that the contagion was caused by Jews who were poisoning the water sources. Civic authorities soon tortured Jews for confessions, and the largest single persecution of Jews in Germany before the 1940s broke out. Jews were attacked in more than three hundred communities, their wealth was plundered, and many thousands were burned to death. The pogroms in Strasbourg and Basel are well-documented examples of what …

Passive Decisions And Potent Defaults, James J. Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian, Andrew Metrick

Faculty Publications

Default options have an enormous impact on household choices. Such effects have now been extensively documented in the literature on 401(k) plans (Madrian and Shea 2001; Choi et al. 2002b, 2004). Defaults have been shown to affect participation, savings rates, rollovers, and asset allocation. For example, Choi et al. (2004) study three firms that use automatic enrollment. When employees at these firms are automatically enrolled in their 401(k) plan, only a tiny fraction opt out, producing participation rates exceeding 85 percent regardless of tenure. But when employees at these firms were not automatically enrolled, participation rates were significantly lower, ranging …

Job Demands And Job Search Among High-Level Managers In The United States And Europe, John B. Bingham, Wendy R. Boswell, John W. Boudreau

Faculty Publications

High-level managers are often faced with challenging demands at work, and much of the managerial development literature has researched the responses to these challenges. The authors propose an extension to this research by investigating the influence of challenge-related and obstacle- related job demands on job search among a sample of U.S. managers and a sample of international managers. Specifically, the authors propose divergent relationships among job search and the type of job demands managers experience, and we also explore the mediating effect of job satisfaction. The authors’ study provides further insight into the complexities of managerial responsibilities and their behavioral …

Measuring Organizational Safety And Effectiveness At Nasa, Daniel S. Wong, Vinit M. Desai, Peter Madsen, Karlene H. Roberts, Anthony Ciavarelli

Faculty Publications

Many project managers may be fully aware of the safety risks within their organizations. What they may not know, however, is that many of these risks are caused by the underlying safety culture of the organization rather than human individual differences in the organization. This article argues that managers can mitigate safety risks by obtaining a better understanding of their organizations’ culture. The researchers created a management metric that enables engineering/project managers to identify positive and negative aspects of safety that are tied to their organizations’ cultures. The article presents a process that managers can use to increase safety and …

The Strength Of Multidimensional Item Response Theory In Exploring Construct Space That Is Multidimensional And Correlated, Steven Gerry Spencer

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation compares the parameter estimates obtained from two item response theory (IRT) models: the 1-PL IRT model and the MC1-PL IRT model. Several scenarios were explored in which both unidimensional and multidimensional item-level and personal-level data were used to generate the item responses. The Monte Carlo simulations mirrored the real-life application of the two correlated dimensions of Necessary Operations and Calculations in the basic mathematics domain. In all scenarios, the MC1-PL IRT model showed greater precision in the recovery of the true underlying item difficulty values and person theta values along each primary dimension as well as along a …