Online Workplace Research Articles

Online Workplace Training in Libraries

This study was designed to explore and describe the relationships between preference for online training and traditional face-to-face training. Included were variables of race, gender, age, education, experience of library employees, training providers, training locations, and institutional professional development policies, etc. in the library context. The author used a bivariate test, KruskalWallis test and Mann-Whitney U test to examine the relationship between preference for online training and related variables.

Identifying Effective Pedagogical Approaches for Online Workplace Training: A case study of the South African wood products manufacturing sector

This study investigated appropriate pedagogical techniques for workplace e-learning programs in the South African wood products (furniture) manufacturing sector. The study found that learners responded favourably to constructivist teaching approaches, such as asynchronous discussions, open-ended task-based activities, and assignments incorporating authentic, real-world examples. Learners viewed constructivist activities to be more useful than quizzes and traditional essay-based assignments, as they allowed new concepts to be learned in context and were perceived to promote deeper understanding of the subject matter. Nevertheless, they valued the inclusion of a blend of pedagogical approaches in the course design, as this enabled them to approach and analyze new concepts in an assortment of ways. Learners placed importance on regular interaction with other learners and course instructors, and were strongly in favour of including face-to-face components in Web-based courses.

(152) The Effect of Live Plants and Window Viewson Employee Job Satisfaction

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of the presence of live interior plants or window views of exterior green spaces on employee job satisfaction. A survey was administered through an online database. The survey included questions regarding physical work environment, the presence or absence of live interior plants, windows, exterior green spaces, environmental preferences, job satisfaction, and demographical information. About 600 office workers from Texas and the Midwest responded to the on-line workplace environment survey. Data were analyzed to compare levels of job satisfaction of employees that worked in office spaces that included live interior plants or window views of exterior green spaces and employees that worked in office environments without live plants or window views. Demographic information collected allowed controlling for salary, occupational level, educational level, age group, gender, and ethnicity. This research data can be particularly useful in urban planning, commercial property design and to encourage the incorporation of plants and green spaces in interior and exterior development projects.

Making contact in international virtual offices: An application of symbolic interactionism to online workplace discourse

The online work environment brings with it factors that can create problems in crosscultural interactions. Technical communicators, therefore, need to understand how cultural communication expectations can affect discourse in IVOs. This article overviews one area-contact-in which cultural differences could cause online communication problems. The article also uses the theory of symbolic interactionism to examine these problems and to posit strategies for avoiding them.

Pedagogy, architecture, and the virtual classroom

Teaching through the Web requires instructors to reconsider their previous assumptions about the nature of teaching, lecture, testing, and student/teacher interaction. Teaching technical writing online, however, raises additional issues. How can a technical writing instructor create an online workplace in which professional‐level collaboration can occur, while also allowing for purely academic instruction and discussion of theoretical issues? This article will address these issues in relation to the author's design and development of his Digital Rhetorics and the Modern Dialectic, specifically, how instructors must assume different roles as designers and then as teachers of online courses; how useful dialectical exchange on the Web that mimics (and sometimes surpasses) face‐to‐face, in‐classroom discussion can be created; and how technical writing instructors can foster productive online collaboration. This article will be a mixture of theory and practice—leaning a little more toward the practice, making it of immediate use to someone who has just been asked to teach a class online for the first time and is seeking help.