Remote Context Research Articles

Who’s at the table: an exploration of community-based food security initiatives and structures in a north-central Canadian context

Abstract This article examines food security initiatives and actors specific to a rural, remote and northern Canadian community, a context found throughout the world. Using a ‘snowball technique’ to identify experts and practitioners in local food security, we employed qualitative engagement methods to map initiatives, actors and gaps in regional food security. We identified concerns around the ability of the region to be food secure; we also found a lack of cross-sector communication and planning, challenges with a small group of committed actors facing isolation and burnout and a need to more broadly engage the community and political entities with limited awareness of rural and remote cultures and concerns. Facilitating better collaborations across multiple food security-related activities while honouring current and supporting current initiatives could enable those who know their communities, to address food insecurity collectively and collaboratively in a rural, remote and northern context.

The salience of remote leadership: implications for follower self-control and work-life balance

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to examine whether remote work moderates the mediated relationship between leadership behavior (transformational leadership and leader incivility), followers' self-control, and work-life balance.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conducted a three-wave, time lagged study of 338 followers. Drawing on social information processing theory, a moderated mediation model was proposed: it was hypothesized that remote work strengthens the relationship between leadership behavior (transformational leadership and leader incivility), follower self-control, and subsequent work-life balance (moderated mediation). The theoretical model was tested using OLS regression in SPSS.FindingsThe results show that working remotely strengthens the mediated relationships between leadership behavior, self-control, and work-life balance.Practical implicationsOrganizations need to consider the interaction between remote work and leadership. Leader behaviors have a stronger relationship with follower self-control and work-life balance when the frequency of remote work is higher, so it is important to increase transformational leadership and reduce leader incivility in remote contexts. Leadership training programs and respectful workplace initiatives should be considered.Originality/valueThis study demonstrates the importance of leader behaviors for followers' self-control and work-life balance in relation to remote work. This study is the first to examine the boundary condition of remote work in relation to leadership behavior, follower self-control, and work-life balance.

Emergency remote teaching: EFL instructors’ satisfaction with teaching online

The purpose of this study was to investigate English language instructors’ satisfaction with teaching online in an emergency remote teaching context. A mixed-method approach was used for data collection in which both quantitative and qualitative methods were used. While the quantitative data of this study were collected through the Online Faculty Satisfaction Survey (OFSS) with the participation of 205 instructors, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 16 instructors to collect qualitative data. The quantitative data were analysed through descriptive statistics. The qualitative data from semi-structured interviews were analysed through content analysis. The findings indicated that the instructors were not satisfied with teaching online. Although the convenience and flexibility of online education created a sense of satisfaction among the instructors, students’ low levels of motivation, participation and attendance in online classes, the lack of face-to-face contact and interaction with the students, and students’ lack of technological equipment and internet connection problems were the most significant causes of the instructors' dissatisfaction with online teaching.

Remote learning and mental health during the societal lockdown: a study of primary school students and parents in times of COVID-19

BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic has brought challenges to families around the world. The prolonged school closures in Hong Kong have forced young students to stay at home and adapt to remote learning for over a year, putting their mental health conditions at risk. Focusing on primary school students and their parents, the main objective of our research is to investigate the socioemotional factors and their associations with mental health conditions.MethodsA total of 700 Hong Kong primary schoolers (mean age = 8.2) reported their emotional experiences, loneliness, and academic self-concept via a user-friendly online survey; 537 parents reported depression and anxiety, perceived child depression and anxiety, and social support. Responses from students and parents were paired to account for the family context. Structural Equation Modeling was used for correlations and regressions.ResultsThe results of students’ responses showed that positive emotional experiences were negatively associated with loneliness and positively related to academic self-concept among students. Furthermore, the paired sample results showed that, during the one-year societal lockdown and remote learning period, the socioemotional factors were associated with mental health conditions among primary school students and their parents. Among our family sample in Hong Kong, evidence supports the unique negative association between students-reported positive emotional experiences and parents-reported child depression and anxiety, as well as between social support and parents’ depression and anxiety.ConclusionsThese findings highlighted the associations between socioemotional factors and mental health among young primary schoolers during the societal lockdown. We thus call for more attention to the societal lockdown and remote learning context, especially since the social distancing practice could be “the new normal” for our society to handle the future pandemic crisis.

Automated Bridge Crack Detection Based on Improving Encoder–Decoder Network and Strip Pooling

The detection of bridge cracks is an important task in bridge maintenance. It can also reflect the health of the bridge. However, cracks are usually in the form of strips, which are different from the concrete surface. Most crack detection algorithms cannot adapt to this situation well. In this paper, the original image of bridge cracks is collected and the data set is obtained through image processing. A bridge crack detection method based on improving encoder-decoder and mixed pooling module is proposed in this article. The basic features of the crack images are extracted by an encoder with dilated convolution. In this way, the resolution of the feature image can be guaranteed, and large receptive field can be obtained. Then the feature picture through the mix pooling module, which helps to capture remote context information and establish a remote dependency. Finally, the decoder restores the picture to its original size and integrates the original features. In the comparison experiment with the same experimental conditions, we compared with the classic image segmentation methods such as PSPNet, U-Net, FCN, and DeepLabv3+. The results show that our method achieves 98.3%, 97.3%, 97.6%, and 84.5% in precision, recall, F1-score, and MIoU. The results show that our method does have certain advantages in the field of crack detection and segmentation.

Sociolinguistic prompts in the 21st century: Uniting past approaches and current directions

AbstractAs technology (particularly smartphone and computer technology) has advanced, sociolinguistic methodology has likewise adapted to include remote data collection. Remote methods range from approximating the traditional sociolinguistic interview via synchronous video conferencing to developing new methods for asynchronous self‐recording (Boyd et al., 2015; Leeman et al., 2020). In this paper, we take a close look at the question prompts sent to participants in an asynchronous, remote self‐recording project (“MI Diaries”). We discuss how some of the techniques initially developed for obtaining a range of styles in a traditional in‐person sociolinguistic interview can be fruitfully adapted to a remote context. Of this range of styles, we give particular focus to Narratives of Personal Experience (Labov & Waletzky, 1967), and provide an analysis of how the theme, style, and development of prompts can encourage narratives from participants. We end with a short discussion of prompts that have successfully elicited other speech styles, and prompts that are especially fruitful with child participants.

Understanding Chinese students’ online learning experiences with emergency remote teaching: a case study

ABSTRACT Despite the growing body of research on college students’ online learning experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, little is known about how individual students perceive and experience emergency remote teaching in China. To fill this gap, this study seeks to explore college students’ perceptions of emergency remote teaching as well as the factors deemed favourable and unfavourable to online learning. This study, adopting a photo elicitation method, investigated four college students’ online learning experiences in an emergency remote instruction context. Our study revealed that students went through three stages of online learning and their perceptions of emergency remote teaching changed from one stage to another. Additionally, student-content interaction, strong teacher support and a high-level of digital inclusion were three factors that facilitated effective online learning, whereas lack of interaction with teachers and peers and dormitory confinement were two factors perceived as hindrance. The study explored possible explanations of the findings and made pedagogical recommendations to foster online learning success. The study bears significance for teachers and administrators practicing technology-supported teaching activities amid and beyond the pandemic.

Nurse leaders’ experiences of remote leadership in health care

PurposeThis study aimed to describe nurse leaders’ experiences of remote leadership in health care sector.Design/methodology/approachSemistructured interviews were conducted among nurse leaders (N = 12) between January and March 2022. All of the interviewees had experiences of remote leadership and worked as immediate – (n = 5) or middle-level (n = 7) leaders in health care organizations across four provinces in Finland. The collected data were analyzed by inductive content analysis.FindingsThe leaders had experienced a rapid transition to remote leadership and highlighted the need for guidelines and joint discussions with different stakeholders. The interviewees felt that working life has changed in the last two years and that remote leadership will now be a key part of leadership in health care. The leaders’ experiences highlighted how important trust is in remote leadership. Furthermore, the interviewees pointed out a need for face-to-face contact and described other good practices for remote leadership. Overseeing work-related well-being was also stressed as important in the remote context; however, the interviewees expressed a need for instructions and tools concerning the management of employee well-being. The sudden change to remote leadership was not only described as interesting but also challenging, which has affected the leaders’ work-related well-being. Support – both from the organization and other employees – was found to be crucial to health care leaders’ work-related well-being.Originality/valueThe current study complements the little-researched topic of remote leadership in the health care sector. The results provide insights that can be used to develop remote leadership and/or guide future research.

Considerations on assistance and rescue at sea in the light of the increasing autonomy in shipping

The global search and rescue (SAR) system heavily relies on merchant cargo vessels for operations of assistance and rescue at sea. Conventionally, vessels proceeding to such operations have been ships with master and crew on board, at least to some extent capable of embarking and accommodating those rescued as well as providing humanitarian assistance thereto. With the introduction of ships capable of being remotely operated with no crew on board, the potential role of these vessels in the SAR system will have to be carefully appraised. In this regard, policymakers must observe that safety of life at sea is not compromised to the advantage of commercial benefits sought from the adoption of these vessels and ensure that the contribution of these vessels to SAR is maximised. This may require, in the remote operation context, a re-evaluation of the duty to assist and proceed to the rescue incumbent on conventional ships’ masters, both in terms of its scope and of those who may be charged with it. This paper points out that those operating unmanned vessels remotely may be obliged to discharge the duty, however the technical limitations of these vessels as well as the absence of humanitarian assistance on board due to unmanned operation would substantially delimit its scope. Therefore, the design and facilities of these ships must be carefully thought out to widen the scope of the duty and accordingly to maximise the contribution of these ships to the safety of life at sea.

Improving employee outcomes in the remote working context: a time‐lagged study on digital‐oriented training, work‐to‐family conflict and empowering leadership

Drawing on social exchange theory, this study develops a research framework that highlights the moderating role of empowering leadership and the link between digital‐oriented training programs and employee outcomes in the context of remote work. We conducted a study utilizing the time‐lagged research design. Data were collected from 259 supervisor–employee dyads working in companies located in different regions in Vietnam. The results demonstrate that a training program for digital skills enhances employees' perceived organizational support, which, in turn, reduces work‐to‐family conflict. By exploring the moderating role of empowering leadership, this study supports the moderation and moderated mediation models. Particularly, both direct and indirect influences are stronger when empowering leadership is high, and weaker if empowering leadership is low. Additionally, we highlight the impact of easing work‐to‐family conflicts on employee job satisfaction and performance in a new context: remote working. Finally, we discuss managerial and theoretical contributions and limitations.

The construction of the primary health care organizational model index to fight COVID-19: scope, limits and perspectives in the Brazilian remote rural context

The construction of the primary health care organizational model index to fight COVID-19: scope, limits and perspectives in the Brazilian remote rural context

A Systematic Review of eHealth Interventions Among Adolescents of Low Socioeconomic and Geographically Remote Backgrounds in Preventing Poor Diet, Alcohol Use, Tobacco Smoking and Vaping

AbstractDisadvantaged adolescents such as those of low socioeconomic and geographically remote backgrounds experience disproportionate chronic disease burden and tend to engage in greater risk behaviors including poor diet, alcohol use, tobacco smoking, and vaping. The social, structural, and economical barriers to health that uniquely affect adolescents of low socioeconomic and geographically remote backgrounds, such as stigma, access to and affordability of services, may partially explain their disadvantage in attaining health equity. Universal eHealth interventions can provide effective prevention, however, it is unclear whether they benefit disadvantaged adolescents, including those from low socioeconomic and geographically remote contexts. This study systematically reviewed the effectiveness of eHealth interventions targeting disadvantaged adolescents in preventing poor diet, alcohol use, tobacco smoking and vaping. Of 3278 identified records, 15 publications assessing 14 interventions were included, comprising 7170 youth (aged 9–18 years, 50.1% female, 56% low-mid SES, 33% remote). Nine interventions targeted poor diet, three targeted alcohol, one targeted tobacco, and one targeted alcohol and tobacco. No interventions targeted vaping. eHealth interventions significantly increased fruit and vegetable intake and percentage energy of nutrient-rich food, decreased sugar-sweetened beverage consumption, total energy intake, nutrient-poor food percentage energy consumption, and were associated with reduced binge drinking at 1-month follow-up among intervention completers. The findings of this study highlight that eHealth interventions can be effective in targeting poor diet and alcohol use among disadvantaged adolescents. However, due to the limited number of studies meeting inclusion criteria for this study, it is critical future research focus on developing and evaluating effective eHealth interventions targeting disadvantaged adolescents.

Protocol paper: Needs analysis for the development of innovation competence in higher education remote learning environments

This work adheres to the recommendations for publication in three steps (Marin-Garcia, 2021). We propose a protocol to develop research the objective of which is to analyze the needs and challenges, as perceived by university lecturers, related to teaching, learning, or assessing competencies related to the innovative capacity of students in an array of digital remote teaching contexts. In this sense, we want to consider situations where teachers watch their students interact with each other. The interaction between students can occur face-to-face or remotely and, in the latter case, either synchronous or asynchronous. In addition, teacher observation can be done synchronously (face-to-face or remotely) or by watching a previously recorded video.

Presenteeism Is Reloaded and Ready for Further Research – A Commentary on Priebe, J. and Hägerbäumer, M. (2023)

Presenteeism Is Reloaded and Ready for Further Research – A Commentary on Priebe, J. and Hägerbäumer, M. (2023)

FSPN: End-to-end full-space pooling weakly supervised network for benthic habitat mapping using remote sensing images

Space remote sensing is powerful for conducting large-scale coral reefs benthic habitat mapping (CRBHM). However, it is difficult because of the large spectral differences in remote sensing images of benthic habitats due to the environment, observation time, atmospheric effects, and water column characteristics. While deep learning convolutional neural networks have shown significant advantages in remote sensing image segmentation, the lack of high-precision public datasets and proprietary networks has led to slow progress in deep learning for BHM. Considering that building a densely annotated coral reef BHM dataset would be expensive and difficult to guarantee accuracy, we introduce weakly supervised learning (WSL) to coral reef BHM for the first time. Subsequently, based on real coral reef benthic habitat survey data, a high-quality, sparsely annotated BHM remote sensing dataset (NJUReef) in the Spratly Islands was created. Moreover, an end-to-end full-space pooling network (FSPN) is proposed that uses shape-adaptive pooling layers to construct full-spatial pooling that can efficiently exploit sparse labels for remote context modeling. In addition, a dense label simulation loss (DLSLoss) is proposed and used to guide FSPN using soft relations between labeled and unlabeled pixels and soft pseudo-labels constructed based on low-level features. We performed extensive experiments on the NJUReef and an open-source dataset (BIRNM). Experimental results show that FSPN outperformed the state-of-the-art WSL model by 6.70 % mIoU. Even for the fully supervised BHM task, the average mIoU is 2.57 % higher than that of the mainstream network.

Adapting MAIN to eliciting stories from adults and in a remote context: What do we have to consider, and what do we know?

The present study suggests guidelines for the successful elicitation of adults’ narratives using an online remote design. In doing so, I have adapted the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS MAIN) to an adult population and specify possible applications in a remote context. Hereby, I elaborate on various features that impact the elicited data and the testing context. I also report results from a pilot study with 10 adults telling MAIN stories using three different testing methods (two moderated methods using PowerPoint or an external link and one unmoderated) to argue that different methods of remote narrative elicitation do not influence the macrostructure of the narratives. However, by extending the analysis to the context of the testing and including the experimenters’ and participants’ assessments of the testing situation, we can see differences that lead me to recommend the so-called Link method (a moderated remote testing method with a certain degree of autonomy) for remote testing with adults.

Education to Prepare Health Professionals for Rural Practice

Rural and remote communities are challenged by an incongruous combination of poorer health and deficits of health workers. Health professionals working in rural and remote practice contexts are largely educated with standardised curriculum content designed for urban-dominant systems, even though non-urban populations account for approximately half of the global population. Education is one strategy considered pivotal to recruitment and retention of health care workers in rural areas, yet has received less research attention than strategies such as rural background, incentive schemes and clinical placements. Peer reviewed literature published in English between 2011-2021 were obtained, guided by PRISMA-P guidelines (Shamseer, 2015). The aim of this review was to examine how health professionals are currently being prepared for rural practice. Following key health database searches 189 relevant articles were retrieved, of which 26 articles met the inclusion criteria for final analysis. This review identified a heavy reliance upon standardised curricula delivered via clinical and interprofessional placements with little attention to specific rural curriculum content or pedagogic strategies tailored to rural and remote practice. Three themes were developed from the literature: Context (‘learning to think differently’, ‘relationships’, and ‘health leadership’), Curriculum and Pedagogy (‘rural clinical placements’ and ‘interprofessional education’). There is a paucity of educational design and evaluation research to assess the value of education strategies that prepare health professionals to work in rural places. Identifying key rural pedagogic strategies can support curriculum content, experiences and assessment that provide health professionals with the competence, confidence and skills to sustain careers in rural and remote practice.

Feet Washing (John 13:1-17) as a Paradigm for Christian Leadership in Nigeria

The washing of the feet is unique to the Gospel of John. In John 13:1-17, Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. Scholars have offered numerous interpretations of this pericope in their efforts to provide a better understanding of the pericope. However, putting together the grammatical, literary, philosophical, and theological analysis of some interpretations can be difficult because they do not fully capture the Johannine presentation of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet at the Last Supper. This piqued our interest, and we decided to contribute to the ongoing debate about whether Christians should wash their feet today. This article contends that the Johannine hupodeigma (see v. 15) implies more than an example for imitation, but rather a concrete and fundamental sign of Jesus’ perfect form of love by which Jesus victoriously conquers the world, completes the mission, and offers a part in his life for ‘his own’, thus challenging them to foster servant leadership. The Historical-Critical method is used in this article, with diachronic and synchronic approaches. It addresses literary issues in the text such as delimitation, textual analysis, and an examination of the text’s remote and immediate contexts. The importance of this work lies in the fact that it will add to the existing literature on John 13:1-17 and open up new avenues for future research on the subject.

Analysing preservice teachers' enactment of the UDL framework to support diverse students in a remote teaching context

Internationally, the investigation of inclusive education in foreign language teaching and foreign language teacher education is a relatively new phenomenon. Part of this imperative has been the pressing need to research how teachers perceive inclusion and learn to support a diverse range of students. Responding to this challenge, this paper reports on the results of a case study that investigated the perceptions and attitudes toward inclusion of a group of Chilean preservice teachers of English (n = 6) enacting the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in ELT. The study drew on qualitative data generate through interviews, focus group discussion and an artefact analysis, and was conducted within a remote teaching context due to COVID pandemic during 2020 and 2021. The outcomes suggested that preservice teachers conceptualised inclusion as ‘not-segregation’, expressing positive attitudes toward diversity and a commitment to principles of inclusion in their teaching. The enactment of UDL allowed participants to diversify the representation of contents and making language more comprehensible. However, participants also experienced frustration and anxiety as they felt their practices were sometimes ineffective. The findings also made visible the complex challenges and struggles preservice teachers confront as they attempt to teach inclusively, particularly in remote learning environments.

Is someone looking over my shoulder? An investigation into supervisor monitoring variability, Subordinates' daily felt trust, and well‐being

SummaryRemote working has become the new norm in organizations. However, little is known about how supervisors' monitoring affects their relationships with subordinates in remote work settings. Our research aims to enhance the understanding of the daily dynamics of monitoring and trust between supervisors and subordinates. Based on self‐determination theory, we propose a multilevel theoretical model predicting that supervisors' daily monitoring affects the extent to which subordinates feel trusted by their manager (“felt trust”) and their subsequent daily exhaustion and vigor. Further, we develop the novel concept of supervisor monitoring variability and test its role in these relationships. We conducted two experience sampling method (ESM) studies (N = 191, 1,417 data points for Study 1; N = 257, 2,244 data points for Study 2) in different hybrid work contexts. Multilevel analysis findings confirmed that daily monitoring was negatively associated with daily felt trust, which in turn had a negative impact on subordinates' daily well‐being in both contexts. Furthermore, we found that monitoring variability intensified the negative relationship between daily supervisor monitoring and subordinates' daily felt trust in the newly introduced remote working context, although not in a more stable context. We discuss the theoretical implications of our findings and derive a research agenda to study the daily dynamics of monitoring and its implications for organizations.