Range Of Organizational Levels Research Articles

Towards an effective change framework for scholarly teaching in higher education professional degrees

ABSTRACT Sustained innovation in teaching and learning is needed to achieve high-quality outcomes in student learning. However, despite extensive research in teaching and learning practice, challenges are faced to translate teaching research into scholarly practice, especially in professional degrees. This article develops and proposes a new conceptual framework for sustainable change in teaching and learning in higher education professional disciplines. This is designed to assist change managers to identify achievable goals and develop the most effective strategies, to deliver the greatest benefits to student learning. The new model activates collaboration between change managers and stakeholders at all stages of the change process, systematic consideration of interrelated variables across a range of organisational levels, selection of more effective change strategies and regular reviews of progress so strategies can be adapted in response to context changes. A key component of the framework is collaboration which enables contextualisation of change to the professional disciplines. Its nested structure also provides an implementation framework. Such a framework provides a useful contribution as it assists change managers in adapting teaching and learning to the changing future needs of universities, staff, students, graduates, and the professions.

Bringing templates to life: overcoming obstacles to the organizational implementation of Agile methods

Agile software development methods have become accepted as a template for organizations to create new products. Though generally viewed as an aid to productivity, there are a number of barriers to experiencing their full benefit. One such barrier pertains to the implementation of agile methods across the range of organizational levels from the use of tools to culture, norms, and policies creating the context within which projects are performed. This essay examines in detail the experiences of one expert at integrating agile technique, approach, and philosophy into the broader organizational setting. Numerous particular lessons and prescriptions result from this discussion. Turning around the grounded theory approach where numerous individuals are interrogated mildly in regard to a particular phenomenon, the discussion surfaced in this paper results from repeated interviews with one domain expert. Lessons and comments are organized into four sections: individual team member, organization, transitioning, and tools and techniques.

Reducing the Pain of Getting your Backlog Published

Discussions about the need to document and describe collections at a gross level have been in progress for at least two decades. The original form was the 2008 Natural Collection Description (NCD), which was never ratified. Although a number of implementations were set up using it, it was by and large, acknowledged to be cumbersome and out-of-date even at inception. Over the past three years there has been a concerted effort by the Collection Description Standard (CD) Interest Group to rationalise and create a practical and usable formulation. This presentation describes its use to document the real collections of the Field Museum. We attempted to model a set of Collections Description records by using a range of organizational levels within the Field Museum Collections, beginning at the institution-level by referencing the "Field Museum of Natural History" Global Registry of Scientific Collections (GrSciColl) record, and including its departments (e.g., "Zoology Collections"), collections (e.g., "Invertebrates Collection"), and more specific accessions (e.g., "Philip Carpenter Collection"). We then added our modeled records to a CD Wikibase site developed by Maarten Trekels to see how the CD standard could work in that system. No underlying structure was in place in Wikibase, and this allowed us to compare interpretations. It became clear very soon into the process that it was imperative to understand and clearly map out the connections between records at the different levels before attempting data entry. It was not a fun surprise as an afterthought and so systems built to implement this standard will need clear guidance on preparatory steps for data validation. In some cases, data fit easily into the CD fields as defined, but others were more complex to think about and manipulate. Further issues included fields duplicated unnecessarily between dimensions, and some fields missing entirely. It was also difficult to compare and match newly defined terms for describing the standard (e.g., Dimension and Class) with terms defined by Wikibase (e.g., Item and property). Some aspects of the standard were confusing especially where museum concept and research needs were less than obviously aligned. Ultimately we need something useful for researchers and understandable by Collection staff. Overall, documentation beyond plain field definitions needs to be included with the release of the standard. It should contain, but not be limited to, required core fields, fields needed to create hierarchical relationships, definitions of the difference between hierarchical and lateral relationships and resource roles associated with dimensions. Examples are also needed regarding how to plan and structure CD records that represent a complex collection. We foresee a need for extensive documentation to spare users difficulty and ultimately make the standard more usable.

How to improve regional and local planning by applying a gender-sensitive analysis: examples from Sweden

ABSTRACTHow to improve regional and local planning by applying a gender-sensitive analysis: examples from Sweden. Regional Studies. Regional development projects normally have gender-equality objectives, as these are recognized as one of the cornerstones of regional development. The success of gender-equality objectives is often analyzed by counting the number of men and women taking part in the projects. However, the extent to which this will enhance regional development is unclear and regional agents at a range of organizational levels express uncertainty about the most effective objectives and implementation measures. This paper proposes a way to assess the gender situation at the local level and, thus, to help enhance gender equality.

Genomic applications to various biological questions.

New biotechnologies have revolutionized the collection of various genome-wide (i.e., omics) data across a range of organizational levels in a variety of species. By integrating these data with particular biological phenomena and processes, many questions of fundamental importance to agriculture, biology and biomedicine can be addressed. In this issue, a group of scientists provide creative applications of genomic approaches to solving several practical issues related to heat shock resistance, salt resistance, response to anticancer interventions, population genetic diversity and genome-wide association studies. Chen et al. identified genes from the leaf transcriptome whose expression is related to response to heat shock stress in Populus euphratica. Li et al. compared genomic differences in total levels of gene expression between two varieties of Salix in response to salt stress, with the findings that can facilitate the precise selection of salt-resistant genotypes. Wang et al. used a powerful statistical model, called skellam, to study the genomic mechanisms that guide breast cancer cell lines to resist or sensitize to an anticancer drug. Zeng et al. developed a set of SSR markers to study the genetic diversity of outcrossing populations for Carya cathayensis, a hickory woody plant species naturally distributed in the southeastern China, and transferred these marker systems to other species in the same genus. Fu et al. proposed a graphical approach to correcting for multiplicity effect in genome-wide association studies. The collection of articles published in this thematic issue present the uses of genomic approaches to tackle several biological issues. It is believed that genomic data through their integration, analysis and modeling will play a more and more important role in addressing the complexity of biological questions and elucidating the mechanisms of interactions between genes and phenotypic variation. In particular, current genomic approaches have provided a desirable opportunity to pursue an in-depth study of those underrepresented species, such as forest trees, highlighting their intrinsic importance to human beings.

Variability in movement dynamics of topminnow (Fundulus notatusandF. olivaceus) populations

Abstract – Movement and dispersal patterns are key biological processes across a range of organisational levels. TheFundulus notatusspecies complex includes several species with similar ecological niches that exhibit broadly overlapping ranges. We conducted a mark–recapture study on two of the most widely distributed members of this species complex to improve our understanding of their movement and habitat use. A population ofF. notatuswas studied between June and August of 2008 and 2009 in Cahokia Creek, a small tributary of the Mississippi River in Illinois, along with a parallel study ofFundulus olivaceusbetween May and July of 2009 in Big Creek, a tributary of the Pascagoula River in Mississippi. Fish were recaptured approximately weekly, and habitat variables were measured. Estimated daily movement rates varied significantly both between locations and between years.Fundulus olivaceusin Big Creek moved <1 m per day, whileF. notatusin Cahokia Creek in 2009 moved nearly 23 m per day. The distribution of movements was strongly leptokurtic in all three data sets. Differences in movement rates were attributed to significant differences in population size and habitat characteristics. Our data did not support the hypothesis that populations consist of distinct mobile and resident components. Instead, individual fish went through periods of little or no movement followed by extensive movement (consistent with the home range shift model of fish movement). We discuss the implications these results have for contact zone dynamics between these two species.

Alan Griffin, Children's Services Manager at the Chilston Service at Barnardos in Tunbridge Wells

Numerous contributors to the BJLPS have commented about the importance of a conceptualisation of leadership at a range of organisational levels. For our interview in this issue Graham Towl was in conversation with Alan Griffin, Children's Services Manager at the Chilston Service at Barnardos in Tunbridge Wells. The Chilston project enjoys a national reputation as a centre for good practice in working with some challenging and vulnerable children. The high‐quality resources of the project are drawn upon from throughout the South East (and sometimes beyond). Such effective local leadership is probably one of the more demanding but hidden roles in public services.Alan Griffin has a background working in both the health sector and Social Services. Working for Barnardos has been his first job in the third sector. He is a qualified social worker and therapist.

Cattle, crops and clearing: Regional drivers of landscape change in the Brigalow Belt, Queensland, Australia, 1840–2004

Landscape change occurs through the interaction of a multitude of natural and human driving forces at a range of organisational levels, with humans playing an increasingly dominant role in many regions of the world. Building on the current knowledge of the underlying drivers of landscape change, a conceptual framework of regional landscape change was developed which integrated population, economic and cultural values, policy and science/technology. Using the Southern Brigalow Belt biogeographic region of Queensland as a case study, the role of natural and human drivers in landscape change was investigated in four phases of settlement since 1840. The Brigalow Belt has experienced comparable rates of vegetation clearance over the past 50 years to areas of tropical deforestation. Economic factors were important during all phases of development, but the five regional drivers often acted in synergy. Environmental constraints played a significant role in slowing rates of change. Temporal trends of deforestation followed a sigmoidal curve, with initial slow change accelerating though the middle phases then slowing in recent times. Future landscape management needs to take account of the influence of all the components of the conceptual framework, at a range of organisational levels, if more ecologically sustainable outcomes are to be achieved.

HIERARCHICAL ANALYSIS OF FOREST BIRD SPECIES–ENVIRONMENT RELATIONSHIPS IN THE OREGON COAST RANGE

Species in biological communities respond to environmental variation simultaneously across a range of organizational levels. Accordingly, it is important to quantify the effects of environmental factors at multiple levels on species distribution and abundance. Hierarchical methods that explicitly separate the independent and confounded influences of environmental variation across several levels of organization are powerful tools for this task. Our study used a hierarchical approach to partition explained variance in an Oregon Coast Range bird community among plot‐, patch‐, and landscape‐level factors. We used a series of partial canonical ordinations to decompose species–environment relationships across these levels of organization to test four hypotheses about the importance of environmental control over community structure. We found that plot‐level factors were better predictors of community structure than patch‐ or landscape‐level factors. In addition, although landscape‐level variables contributed substantial independent explanatory power, there was little evidence that patch‐level environmental variability provided additional explanation of community structure beyond that provided by plot‐ and landscape‐level factors. At higher levels of the hierarchical analysis, we found that, among plot‐level factors, vegetation cover type was as powerful a predictor of community structure as detailed floristics, and more powerful than vegetation structure. At the landscape level, we found that landscape composition and configuration both provided substantial independent explanatory power, with landscape composition being the better overall predictor. Our results have a number of implications for sampling, analysis, and conservation. For example, misleading results could be obtained by studies conducted at a single organizational level. Also, the high degree of confounding among several levels of our analysis suggests that there is a lack of independence between the influences of environmental structure at different organizational levels. Due to this confounding, our results suggest that patch‐based studies of forest–bird ecological relationships in the Oregon Coast Range may be equivocal. In addition, the power of mapped cover class as a plot‐level predictor variable suggests that coarse‐filter, multiscale approaches utilizing remote sensing and GIS may be nearly as effective at predicting local patterns as expensive field surveys of habitat conditions at the plot level, and more effective at predicting patterns continuously across large regions.