A self-tracking study of international students in France: Exploring opportunities for language and cultural learning

ReCALL ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 276-292
Author(s):  
Nicolas Guichon

AbstractThis exploratory study focuses on international students’ usage of digital tools in order to understand what role such tools play in the transition to their new academic environments and what learning opportunities they provide. Not only do digital tools accompany international students’ social, cultural, and linguistic transitions as they move to France to further their language competence, but their usage also reveals part of the social and semiotic adjustments they have to make in the process. Sixteen international students who volunteered for the study were given a smartphone application with which they could track learning opportunities by taking pictures and writing textual commentaries. The data, collected over a period of five weeks, thus include the resulting entries these participants shared in their mobile multimodal diaries with the researchers, as well as an end-of-project debriefing that was conducted to shed further light on the international students’ digital habits and their attitudes towards self-tracking. This study indicates that digital tools can play an important and pervasive role in facilitating international students’ linguistic development and their dealings with everyday life abroad. It also confirms that self-tracking apps can be instrumental in enhancing students’ awareness of learning opportunities outside the classroom.

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 50-58
Author(s):  
Christopher Bond ◽  
Marc Ting-Chun Hsu

This study reviews and evaluates international students’ perceptions of UK banks. The specific research objectives were to identify international students’ expectations and perceptions of service quality from UK banks and to assess the quality GAP or dissonance between these. A total of 297 international students studying in the UK responded to the survey. Data gathered was analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS 16). The study reveals that the main areas of service quality with which international students are generally satisfied relates to tangibles such as physical layout and appearance. The key areas of dissatisfaction that the study identified were with factors related to reliability and empathy. This appears to be the first study in the UK banking sector that has focused on service quality with respect to international students. 


1998 ◽  
Vol 79 (2) ◽  
pp. 188-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen French Gilson ◽  
John C. Bricout ◽  
Frank R. Baskind

Social work literature, research, and practice on disabilities has lagged behind other topical areas dealing with oppressed groups. The social work literature remains “expert focused” and generally fragmented into discussions of specific disabilities or subpopulations. A viable general model that deals with the personal experience of disability is not available. This exploratory study presents a social work literature search and analysis as well as interviews with six individuals with disabilities about their experiences with social workers. Individuals with disabilities assert that they were treated as though they had categorically fewer aspirations, abilities, and perhaps even fundamental rights than did nondisabled people. This study provides a base for follow-up research on models of consumer-focused social work practice in the area of disability.


2021 ◽  
pp. 106648072110098
Author(s):  
Carla Sílvia Fernandes ◽  
Bruno Magalhães ◽  
Sílvia Silva ◽  
Beatriz Edra

The COVID-19 pandemic represents a global threat and crisis situation, and its wide-reaching impact has also affected marital satisfaction. Dysfunction of the marital system puts the survival of the family unit at risk. This research aimed to determine the level of marital satisfaction of Portuguese families during the social lockdown and the association between the variables under study. A descriptive, exploratory study was conducted. During the social lockdown, 276 people of Portuguese nationality and residing in Portugal were recruited using nonprobabilistic convenience sampling. Marital satisfaction in the pandemic phase showed low values that may be associated with the social, economic, and political context experienced by the pandemic situation. Future research must be carried out in order to identify, prevent, and intervene in situations of violence. In addition, future research should explore not only marital satisfaction during the current pandemic but a more systemic assessment of marital relations during crises, expanding the impact of marital satisfaction in family functioning.


2014 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 83-97
Author(s):  
Arne Lindseth Bygdås

Purpose – The literature on knowledge transfer is dominated by a one-way transmission model logic where knowledge is captured and transferred from one source to another, assuming the source and receiver resemble each other and have some common knowledge. The social learning processes, what is learned and the phases and sequences of the developmental processes by which learning take place are more or less black boxed in the literature. This paper investigates the social dynamics of the formation and shaping of organizational practice from scratch in a greenfield organizational setting where no prior organizational practice exist. Design/methodology/approach – The paper builds on a case study approach applied in two greenfield organizational settings. A descriptive process model is developed to analyze the translocation and sociogenesis of organizational practices. Findings – A transfer-approach provides a too simplistic and narrow understanding of the process of “moving” organizational practices. Establishing an organizational practice can be described as a community of knowing “in the making” following various modes of cultural learning characterised by mutual adjustments, joint interactions, and alignment of shared understandings, and as such is more learned than transferred. Practical implications – The process model developed in the paper provides a platform for better understanding, planning and execution of intra-firm knowledge transfer and regeneration. Originality/value – The paper provides an in-depth empirical analysis of organizational practice generation from scratch emphasizing the social dynamics and co-construction of meaning when a collective capability is being acquired and built up.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (s1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamsin Blaxter ◽  
David Britain

Abstract In this article we assess the extent to which we can collect plausible data about regional dialect variation using crowdsourcing techniques – the BBC Future Survey – without explicitly gathering any user metadata, but relying instead on background information collected by Google Analytics. In order to do this, we compare this approach with another crowdsourced survey, operated from a smartphone application, which examines the same site – the British Isles – but which explicitly asks users to submit detailed social background information – the English Dialects App (EDA) (Leemann et al. 2018). The EDA has the disadvantage that there is a considerable user drop-off between completing the dialect survey and completing the social metadata questionnaire. The BBC Future Survey, however, only collects information on where users are physically located when they complete the survey – not where they are from or even where they live. Results show that the BBC Future Survey produces a plausible snapshot of regional dialect variability that can complement other more sophisticated (expensive, time-consuming) approaches to investigating language variation and change. We suggest the approach constitutes a digital-era rapid anonymous survey along the lines of Labov (1972), serving similar aims, with similar success, but on a much much larger scale.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
HyunJung Kim

UNSTRUCTURED South Korea COVID-19 pandemic responses, namely the 3T (testing, tracing, and treating) strategy, come to the fore as a new biosurveillance regime utilizing new IT and digital tools actively. The 3T biosurveillance system is a developed version of the traditional biosurveillance systems (indicator-based or event-based systems), which can provide epidemic intelligence capabilities for both ex ante prevention/preparedness or ex post response/recovery missions. Epidemiological investigation efforts exploiting the use of new digital and IT tools are the ground of the Korean 3T system practicing test, trace, and treatment mission, which can be referred to as ‘contact-based biosurveillance system.’ However, critics argue that the Korea’s 3T strategy may violate individuals’ privacy and human rights in addressing that the Korean biosurveillance system would strengthen the social surveillance and population control by the government as a “digital big brother” in the cyber age. However, closer scrutiny reveals that the Korea’s digital-based biosurveillance system for pandemic response has evolved since the experience of the 2015 Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) outbreak, by citizen’s requests and self-help behaviors


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sukma Dewi Hapsari

Abstract: Education is a process of activities carried out to live a good life and can also be said to be an activity of honing human resources (human resources) to gain expertise in the social field and the development of a good person to make a strong interpersonal relationship with the cultural environment of the surrounding community. . (Idris, 1987). On that basis, why education cannot be far from the culture or culture of a place it occupies, as the goal of education so far, namely, to hone taste, initiative and work. The achievement of these educational goals depends on how the culture is conveyed in the classroom, so this is where the role of multicultural education will become an intermediary for the development of human resources who have strong and good characters.This study aims to describe several things, namely as follows: (1) Culture-based learning, (2) Application of Cultural Learning to children in schools, and (3) Impact of implementing cultural curricula on children's characters. The approach in writing this paper uses literature analysis with literature reviews and data is collected through systematic search of scientific literature on journal articles and documents that discuss significantly and are related to the theme of this research. The data that I get will be processed or analyzed descriptively, interpretatively and comparatively.


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