Heidegger, Quality, Excellence: The Currency of Teaching

The marginalization of business writing as a discipline has been traced to a lack of research and to the that many in the field teach in business departments that do not value the work of scholars in English studies. One way out of this position may be an act of disciplinary border crossing—aligning the field of business writing with progressive voices in business and management. This article describes a framework structured around key theoretical concepts from Senge’s The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (1995). Senge’s text is surprisingly rhetorical, and I examine the associated framework in terms of its potential for invigorating both teaching and research in business writing, thereby building ethos for the profession.

ABSTRACT: Cork, the Republic of Ireland’s second most populous city, is one of 12 UNESCO Learning Cities globally. Becoming a learning city requires a sophisticated audit of education, learning and other socio-economic indicators. It also demands that cities become proactively engaged in delivering to the objectives set by the Beijing Declaration on Building Learning Cities which was adopted at the first UNESCO International Conference on Learning Cities in Beijing (2013) and the Mexico City Statement on Sustainable Learning Cities from the second conference in Mexico City (2015). The UNESCO learning city approach lays heavy emphasis on lifelong learning and social inclusion. In addressing these two concerns Cork city is piloting the development of two Learning Neighborhoods. The pilots are a collaboration between the City Council, University College Cork and Cork Education and Training Board who will work with the learning and education organizations and residents in each area to promote, acknowledge and show case active local lifelong learning. This paper looks at the context and design of these Learning Neighborhoods.

When email meets organizational memories: addressing threats to communication in a learning organization

Focused on transforming the laboratory at Children's Medical Center Dallas into a learning organization, the lab's leaders looked beyond benchmarking to develop a customized approach—measured against their own ideal state—to achieve operational excellence. By applying lean principles, systems thinking, and family system theory; improving the facility's physical layout; and, most important, redefining the role between supervisors and staff workers, the lab has cut its turnaround times, improved service to patients and physicians, and evolved into a work environment that fosters personal and professional development. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The development of the 21st century demands changes in resources of human of “broad insight, critical thinking, and literacy” to deal with the development of 21st century education. Conditions in the field found that STEM, data literacy and technology had not been implemented, and the average score of students in physics learning had not been implemented. One solution that can be conducted is to develop ICT materials of teaching on work and energy based on STEM Education. This study aims to determine the validity of ICT-based business and energy teaching materials to integrate STEM Education to improve data and technology literacy of high school students.The research conducted includes development research using the development model of Plomp. The development model of Plomp is carried out until the design and prototype stages, namely determining the validity of the product carried out by experts on the product being developed. The results of the study obtained that the assessment of teaching materials was valid on five components based on data analysis using Aiken, V obtained the results for material substance with a value of 0.77, visual communication display with a value of 0.78, learning design with a value of 0.78, software usage with a value of 0.63 and STEM assessment with a value of 0.74. Based on this validity assessment, it can be concluded that ICT-based business and energy teaching materials integrate STEM Education to improve data literacy and valid high school students' technology so that they can be applied to students in learning

Objective: The objective of this research was to model the reduction of barriers to the establishment of learning organizations at Al-Qadisiyah and Kufa Universities in Iraq. Methodology: The current study is an applied research and utilizes a mixed-methods (qualitative-quantitative) approach. The research population consists of 12 experts whose opinions were used to identify the effects in the qualitative part, and the population for modeling included a group of faculty members from Al-Qadisiyah and Kufa Universities. The precise sample size of 91 individuals was obtained using Cochran's formula. The sampling method employed in this research was simple random sampling. The modeling of the effects of reducing barriers to creating learning organizations was initially identified using the Delphi technique, and then modeled and ranked using structural equation modeling and confirmatory factor analysis. Findings: The research results demonstrated that the model of the effects of reducing barriers to creating learning organizations is underpinned by 10 causal conditions, 5 contextual conditions, 4 intervening factors, and 6 strategies, resulting in 6 major outcomes for the universities of Al-Qadisiyah and Kufa, Iraq, which include: development of organizational learning in universities, organizational outcomes, collective experiential learning, social learning, knowledge enhancement, and organizational entrepreneurship. Conclusion: As the results indicate, communications play a crucial role in reducing barriers, being one of the most important causal conditions in this area. As it is evident, communication refers to all the means of connection among employees within Al-Qadisiyah and Kufa universities. Having internal communications will ensure that the cycle of knowledge and learning flows within the organization in an orderly manner. Possessing a wide array of communication tools such as telephones, email, the internet, and clear verbal communications between employees and various organizational departments is a pathway to reducing learning barriers.

In 1991, organizational learning and use of IS technologies ranked fifth in a list of 20 critical IS management issues in the U.S.A. Globally, this issue ranked first in 1989 in Hong Kong, fifth in Singapore in 1987, and sixth in India during 1988. Knowledge of and skills in the use of office automation software like word processing, spreadsheet, and database represent the basic computer literacy requirements for the end users. Both academic institutions and corporations have been investing a significant amount of time and dollars to provide the necessary education in the use of this software. Research that can systematically and scientifically determine cost effective approaches to impart this software education has the potential of a phenomenal payoff. This paper(a) Delineates four approaches – traditional, asynchronous, delayed, and synchronous – to impart computer software education in a group setting,(b) Articulates and develops instruments to measure three relatively distinct areas of computer software knowledge and skills – memory recall, critical thinking, and computing literacy,(c) describes the research methodology developed to collect data, and(d) Analyzes data to compare and contrast the effectiveness of the asynchronous and synchronous modes for spreadsheet software (excel) education.The findings are:(a) Both asynchronous and synchronous approaches individually contribute to improving memory recall, critical thinking, and computing literacy;(b) there is no evidence to suggest that either mode is superior in contributing to this improvement, and(c) the end-users find synchronous mode and asynchronous mode as equally satisfying for learning spreadsheet software.

The question is, "What can vision do?" (Fritz, 1989) rather than "What is vision?" Keter's Chairman, Mr. Sami Sagol's vision is to establish an internship program that will strengthen the competitive edge of the Israeli industry, within the international arena. The program will set new standards of excellence for product development, engineering, technology and design. Mr. Sagol's vision of excellence, in the internship program, has commenced in a process of changing Keter from a conservative industry to a learning organization, which promotes innovation, excellence, and knowledge. His vision has changed Keter.

It has become almost cliche for those addressing modern business to invoke Drucker’s (1969) declaration of the ‘knowledge economy.’ Work’s fluid nature, the global economy’s hypercompetitiveness and the demand for innovation are clarion calls for learning in organizations. Over the past 20 years, recognition of ‘knowledge workers’ has sparked the burgeoning discourse in organizational learning and knowledge management (OL/KM) centering on how learning happens within (and by) organizations, and how knowledge is created, stored, transferred and retrieved. As with any new area of inquiry, OL/KM struggles to mature and gain identity. Some theorists have focused on technology, others on social considerations, others on how individuals learn and still others on how organizations themselves learn. Diversity has led to debate, particularly dissentious debate, over terms, concepts, processes and purposes (Easterby-Smith and Lyles, 2011). Learning and knowledge have always been thorny terms which elude clear definition (Sarason, 2004). Philosophical ambiguity has fueled multiple trajectories of discourse.

As usability knowledge and techniques continues to grow, there is an increasing need to provide tools that disseminate the accumulated wisdom of the field. Usability guidelines are one technique that is used to convey usability knowledge. Another is the emerging discipline of usability patterns. This paper presents an approach that combines these techniques in a case-based architecture and utilizes a process to help an organization capture, adapt, and refine usability resources from project experiences. The approach utilizes a rule-based tool to represent the circumstances under which a given usability resource is applicable. Characteristics of the application under development are captured and used to match usability resources to the project where they can be used to drive the design process. Design reviews are used to capture feedback and ensure that the repository remains a vital knowledge source for producing useful and usable software systems.

One of the premises of vocational education (VET) is a practically-based curriculum approach that aims to teach students contemporary work practices so that they are better prepared to enter the workforce. It stands to reason that if students need to be educated about contemporary work processes, then the teacher also needs to have an understanding of such processes for teaching and learning practice. Teacher currency, therefore, becomes an issue of high importance, particularly as economic and social globalisation contribute to the continuing transformation of workplaces. One way to achieve such currency may be through voluntary teacher industry placements, where the teacher is seconded to industry for a period of time. Based on data gathered through semi-structured interviews, the paper discusses the experiences of VET business teachers in Australia who have undertaken an industry placement and considers issues such as: negotiating self through changing work, the work of identity formation, and organisational learning. The paper concludes that changing teaching and learning practises post an industry placement problem and are difficult to achieve due to various environmental factors including organisational barriers and regulatory constraints.

Moral Perception and Particularity

Barrett, D. J. (2006). Strong communication skills a must for today’s leaders. Handbook of Business Strategy, 7, 385-390. Campbell, C. P. (1998). Rhetorical ethos: A bridge between high-context and low-context cultures? In S. Niemeier, C. P. Campbell, & R. Dirven (Eds.), The cultural context in business communication (pp. 31-47). Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Kankaanranta, A. (2000). What makes the reader tick? Business professionals’ reactions to firstyear business students’ writing. In M. Charles & H. Kangasharju (Eds.), New orientations and developments: Business communication research and teaching working papers (pp. 153179). Helsinki, Finland: Helsinki School of Economics and Business Administration. Kankaanranta, A. (2005). “Hej Seppo, could you pls comment on this!”—Internal email communication in lingua franca English in a multinational company. Retrieved October 2, 2006, from http://ebooks.jyu.fi/solki/9513923207.pdf Lesznyak, A. (2002). From chaos to the smallest common denominator: Topic management in English lingua franca communication. In K. Knapp & C. Meierkord (Eds.), Lingua franca communication (pp. 163-194). Frankfurt, Germany: Peter Lang. Louhiala-Salminen, L. (2002). The fly’s perspective: Discourse in the daily routine of a business manager. English for Specific Purposes, 21, 211-231. Munter, M. (2006). Guide to managerial communication: Effective business writing and speaking. Upper Saddle River NJ: Prentice Hall. Rogers, P. S., & Rymer, J. (20001). Analytical tools to facilitate transitions into new writing contexts: A communicative perspective. Journal of Business Communication, 28, 112-152.

This paper describes the characteristics of a system designed to promote one sort of organizational learning (Senge, 1990), in particular, to enhance the organization-wide learning of application software (note 1). The system presented here will (1) capture evolving expertise from a community of practice (Lave & Wenger 1991), (2) support less-skilled members of the community in acquiring that expertise, and (3) serve as an organizational memory for the expertise it captures. One version of the system has been partially implemented for a software engineering environment (Linton, 1990).In many workplaces … mastery is in short supply and what is required is a kind of collaborative bootstrapping of expertise. (Eales & Welch, 1995, p. 100)The main goal of the design is to continuously improve the performance of application users by providing individualized coaching based on the automated comparison of user logs to expert models. The system discussed here would be suitable for situations in which the following assumptions are true:(1) People who hold similar jobs and perform similar tasks have similar software usage patterns, e.g., managers use spreadsheet financial functions when preparing budgets, researchers use multiple views of the text when preparing journal articles, and salespeople use standard request forms when making travel arrangements.(2) Some people systematically make better use of their applications than others.(3) Everyone benefits when employees become optimal users of their application software (note 2).The fundamental requirement of the envisioned system is the capability to log the software usage patterns of a large number of individuals. Networked PC computing has recently made this logging requirement practical.