The Central Queensland Conservatorium of Music (CQCM) has maintained a partnership with Hamilton Island Enterprises (HIE) since 2002. As a part of this partnership, the Bachelor of Music (jazz & popular) students visit Hamilton Island (HI), an island resort located off the Australian east coast, four to six times annually to engage in 3 to 10…

This study explores how group processes, such as group cohesiveness and group norms, influence an individual EFL learner's motivation. The uniqueness of this research lies in shifting the focus from an analysis of the individual's experience being seen as apart from the group to considering the individual's experience in relation to the social…

The process of the formation and functioning of youth associations and organizations in today's Russia (whether on the basis of their formal registration or without it) can be looked at as a manifestation of personally and socially important active involvement. Participation in their activity is based on freedom of choice, value preferences, and…

This article describes a project that encourages the development of a critical-pedagogical perspective in an undergraduate small group communication class. The project provides a transition from ideology to practice by combining activities that have been connected to critical communication pedagogy--service learning and autoethnography. The…

Institutions of higher education in China and the United States are increasingly seeking international partners to deliver degree programs to the Chinese populace. This article illustrates how shared and divergent partner motivations and outcome expectations in a Chinese cross-border higher education program have created synergy and challenged the…

This article is based on ethnographic work with two "crews" of young graffiti artists in southern Mexico City. The crews share certain characteristics with gangs or urban tribes, but more with "communities of practice": they live in the "figured world" of graffiti, a community of practice at the local and global…

The authors explored the factors contributing to student learning in the context of business simulation. Our results suggest that social interaction and psychological safety had a positive impact on knowledge development in student groups, and that this synergistic knowledge development enabled students to form complex mental models. Implications…

Collaboration--working with like-minded others to achieve a common purpose--is an action-oriented strategy that can be considered as a way of reaching your goals. Because collaboration, as in dancing with an octopus, requires keeping track of many different points (or tentacles), planners who know when collaborations are more likely to work and…

This article highlights contrasts between the identity and values of sociology faculty members versus the identity and values of college administrators. Some of these contrasts include: questioning authority and speaking truth to power versus being in a position of authority and engaging in political compromise; taking a critical, reflective, and…

Most state professional associations promote and fund at some level, an advocacy program. These advocacy programs usually aim to support or plead for a program, policy, or proposal. They can range from simple communication to complex strategies, from daily interactions to annual productions, and from position papers to onsite, legislative visits.…

Peer and self-ratings have been strongly recommended as the means to adjust individual contributions to group work. To evaluate the quality of student ratings, previous research has primarily explored the validity of these ratings, as indicated by the degree of agreement between student and teacher ratings. This research describes a…

Little is known about the influence of language background in problem-based learning (PBL) tutorial groups on group processes and students' academic achievement. This study investigated the relationship between language background, secondary school score, tutorial group processes, and students' academic achievement in PBL. A validated tutorial…

For the state of Washington's one-hundredth birthday, in 1989, Native peoples there decided to revive a distinctive mode of transportation--long-distance journeys by canoe--along with an entire culture associated with it. Born as the "Paddle to Seattle," during the past two decades these canoe journeys have become a summertime staple for…

The aim of this article is to analyze how a facilitator of a conflict resolution course can encourage productive active participation and interaction between rival groups during the workshops and how does s/he cope with situations where the group does not cooperate. One successful approach is make some outlandish statements as a systematic and…

Background: Hospital adoption of health information technology (HIT) systems is promoted as essential to decreasing medical error and their associated 44,000 annual deaths and $17 billion in healthcare costs (Institute of Medicine, 2001; Kohn, Corrigan, & Donaldson, 1999). Leading national healthcare groups, such as the Institute of Medicine,…