Disciplinary Differences in the Uptake of a Learning Management System: A Case of a South African Historically Disadvantaged Institution

The provision of a Learning Management System (LMS) for use in distributed, blended or open distance e-learning as a management tool has become a basic standard requirement in higher learning institutions globally. Many students and lecturers use an LMS in support of innovative and engaged teaching and learning, both inside and outside the classroom—whether blended or open leaning. However, many academics choose not to make use of the institutional LMS. This is the specific issue that this study addresses, with a particular focus on the role played by disciplinary differences in the uptake of an LMS. The research question guiding the study is thus: To what extent do disciplinary differences affect the uptake of an LMS? The research study drew on Legitimation Code Theory, a sociological theory that explains the knowledge principles underpinning practices, in this case, the practice of the uptake (or non-uptake) of an institutional LMS. The study made use of quantitative data collection and data analysis methods, drawing on the institutional LMS activity data. The study found that there was a significant relationship between the disciplines and LMS uptake. However, the study also found a number of unexpected exceptions, where the nature of the discipline did not seem to impact uptake or non-uptake. The contribution that the study makes is to show the significant role that the academics’ home discipline plays in LMS uptake.

A Few Comments on Disciplinary Differences in Academic Publishing

The review explores essential reading for students and teachers - Disciplinary persuasion in changing times by Ken Hyland and Feng Jiang. This book provides a comprehensive review of the main diciplinary practices in academic discourse and shows how academic discourse has changed over the past 50 years.

An Investigation of the Influence of Disciplinary Distance in Interdisciplinary Education Through Faculty’s Experience

Interdisciplinary initiatives have been encouraged in higher education curricula, especially in mechanical engineering as a result of the industry’s calls for talent with multidisciplinary competencies to solve complex real-world problems. However, disciplinary distance, due to disciplinary differences, poses great challenges in interdisciplinary teaching and learning. How can interdisciplinary faculty members collaborate effectively in teaching? How can students with different backgrounds learn significant knowledge? Collaboration for interdisciplinary education across disciplines is challenging, as co-teachers are usually affiliated with different departments or even schools, and they tend to speak different disciplinary languages and value different disciplinary cultures. Similarly, students in engineering design teams come from different backgrounds. Consistent with Klein’s concepts of Wide Interdisciplinarity and Narrow Interdisciplinarity, we propose the concept of disciplinary distance to present the research findings of disciplinary differences and their implications on interdisciplinary teaching and learning. This paper presents a qualitative analysis of disciplinary distance, as manifested in interdisciplinary education from faculty members’ perspectives. From 13 semi-structured interviews, we find that disciplinary distance plays a vital role in interdisciplinary teaching and learning. It influences teamwork — both in co-teacher teams and student teams. Interdisciplinary course content and interdisciplinary co-teacher teams can also create a wide disciplinary distance that serves as a barrier for interdisciplinary learning. We further find that interdisciplinary collaboration may help to mediate the negative impact of disciplinary distance.

Why Build a Robot With Artificial Consciousness? How to Begin? A Cross-Disciplinary Dialogue on the Design and Implementation of a Synthetic Model of Consciousness

Creativity is intrinsic to Humanities and STEM disciplines. In the activities of artists and engineers, for example, an attempt is made to bring something new into the world through counterfactual thinking. However, creativity in these disciplines is distinguished by differences in motivations and constraints. For example, engineers typically direct their creativity toward building solutions to practical problems, whereas the outcomes of artistic creativity, which are largely useless to practical purposes, aspire to enrich the world aesthetically and conceptually. In this essay, an artist (DHS) and a roboticist (GS) engage in a cross-disciplinary conceptual analysis of the creative problem of artificial consciousness in a robot, expressing the counterfactual thinking necessitated by the problem, as well as disciplinary differences in motivations, constraints, and applications. We especially deal with the question of why one would build an artificial consciousness and we consider how an illusionist theory of consciousness alters prominent ethical debates on synthetic consciousness. We discuss theories of consciousness and their applicability to synthetic consciousness. We discuss practical approaches to implementing artificial consciousness in a robot and conclude by considering the role of creativity in the project of developing an artificial consciousness.

Japanese doctoral students’ stress: Main findings from a national survey in 2017

This study is mainly concerned with an analysis of what stress Japanese doctoral students face and how universities they belong to could provide better support for them, and help them to overcome their stress. The study employs the data from a national survey of doctoral students at Japanese research universities in 2017. In addition to a general description of their overall stress, four variables of gender, discipline, age and sector of universities are used to explore their perceptions of stress. The study argues that a vast majority of Japanese doctoral students suffered from stress in various aspects. Although some findings based on the case study of Japan are not consistent with previous research such as gender differences in stress, some match with existing research in terms of disciplinary differences and age differences in stress.