Research Roundup: August 2023

Keeping Students Engaged With Social Media

Each semester, faculty face the same challenge as they develop their syllabi: How can they ensure that students connect what they learn in class to real-world contexts? There is one continuously updated source of real-world information that is readily accessible to every classroom: social media.

The Olayan School of Business at the American University of Beirut recently tested three tools to discover if it could make it easier for faculty and students to integrate and access social media in useful ways, as part of their formal courses. The three tools, designed to be compatible with internet browsers and learning management systems (LMS), include the following:

A social bookmarker that students use to identify relevant online materials as they find them. The bookmarker extracts the title and description of the data associated with the item; students then type in concepts the item covers.

A social-LMS explorer that enables students to explore social media content within an LMS in ways that link content sharing similar concepts. Because the tool allows material to be associated with multiple concepts, it enables any items that cross disciplines to appear to students across different courses. This tool also allows students “to comment on these materials using their social media accounts from within the tool.”

A social bookmarks aggregator that students can use to track and view recently bookmarked materials.

Fouad Zablith, associate professor of business information and decision systems, authored a paper that describes the resulting pedagogical framework and explores its impact on student learning. The tools listed above enable the school to track the use and output of this framework through its course entities creator, Zablith explains. The entire process, he adds, turns so-called “walled-garden” classrooms, each operating in isolation, into “flexible knowledge structures of linked entities.”

The school piloted this framework with a sample of 180 undergraduates in an information systems course. These students used the tools to connect 133 items they found on social media to 230 different concepts. Using the course entities creator, faculty then tracked the transdisciplinary links between that social media content and the school’s formal courses.

In the end, 94 percent of students favorably rated the ability to comment on the material, while 78 percent favorably rated the ability to explore the content within the LMS. However, only 37 percent reported favorable experiences with the social bookmarking aggregator page—those who did, however, appreciated the way it “centralized the communication around the shared material.”

The school hopes that, in the future, more faculty will use this approach to provoke ongoing interactive, interdisciplinary discussions on current, relevant topics. The framework, Zablith writes, supports faculty by “enabling students to perceive relations between ideas, concepts, and fields, and building connections between real-world knowledge sources and formal classroom knowledge.”

The Importance of Organizational Fortitude

What is organizational fortitude? According to an international group of researchers, it’s a term that encompasses several attributes that companies will need if they are to weather the increasing number of crises that lie ahead.

The co-authors explore the idea of organizational fortitude in a paper published by the Journal of Management. They include Celina Smith, associate professor entrepreneurship at emlyon business school in France; Emanuela Rondi, assistant professor at Università degli Studi di Bergamo in Italy; Alfredo de Massis, professor of entrepreneurship and family business at IMD in Switzerland and Lancaster University in the U.K.; and Mattias Nordqvist, professor of business administration and entrepreneurship at Stockholm School of Economics and Jönköping University in Sweden.

Companies that build the three aspects of organizational fortitude into their operations and practices are the ones that will thrive, not simply survive, when struck by multiple external shocks.

The group has based its findings on a study of a long-established family business in the United Kingdom that has experienced four major crises in a short period of time. These included a factory fire, a factory flood, forced relocation, and the global pandemic. In their study, the researchers identified three attributes the company needed to overcome these adverse events and thrive afterward:

Resoluteness propensity: A common motivation, determination, and desire among stakeholders to take all the steps they can—even risky ones—to ensure the firm survives.

Resource reserves: The availability of sufficient money, materials, knowledge, and connections to help a firm weather and bounce back from multiple shocks.

Shared values: The commitment of everyone within the organization to the same ideas and principles, wihch allows them to come to a consensus about the best next steps.

Given potential threats from climate change, political and social unrest, and even future pandemics, companies can expect to face an increased number of external shocks over their lifespans—many simultaneously, Smith says. Companies that build these three aspects of organizational fortitude into their operations and practices are the ones that will thrive, not simply survive.

“It is vitally important that companies actively build resilience into their business models,” says Smith, “to ensure that not only do they overcome these shocks, but they are more prepared in the future to deal with them.”

A Call to Reform a ‘Broken’ Publishing System

Three European scholars have published a paper in the journal Environmental Innovation and Societal Transition in which they describe academic publishing as “broken.” They urge academic institutions, journals, and scholars to contribute their expertise more effectively in ways that improve industry, the environment, and society.

The co-authors calling for change include Thomas Bauwens of Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University in the Netherlands, Denise Reike of the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development at Utrecht University and ETH Zürich in Switzerland, and Martín Calisto-Friant of the Copernicus Institute and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

Bauwens, Reike, and Calisto-Friant attribute flaws in the publishing system, such as issues of plagiarism and the pressure for academics to publish only positive results, to an overarching problem: the marketization of academia. In other words, the co-authors argue, scholarly output is being treated as a commodity “traded in the academic marketplace” for profit and gain. Such gains can come in the form of high journal subscription prices and article processing fees for publishers and in the form of tenure, pay raises, and royalties for scholars.

The marketization of research deters scholars from producing more innovative high-risk/high-gain intellectual output.

This system threatens the objectivity of scholarship, which is “often instrumentalized to legitimize specific interests, particularly when scientific projects or programs are funded by commercial companies.” The fact that many university-based research centers are managed as private businesses only exacerbates the problem by emphasizing metrics such as articles published and citations received, rather than impact achieved.

A consequence of this flawed system is that scholarship that addresses issues of urgent importance, such as climate change and the biodiversity crisis, is not sufficiently incentivized or rewarded.

“Sustainability researchers must typically approach such ‘wicked problems’ through long-term, inter-, or transdisciplinary research, which sits at odds with the metrics and fast-based approach to research,” says Bauwens. The marketization of research deters scholars from producing more innovative high-risk/high-gain intellectual output.

The co-authors urge institutions to reward academics for pursuing new areas of research such as sustainability, as well as to incentivize interdisciplinary, problem-focused research. They also call for the creation of more nonprofit open-access journals and an increase in public funding that gives academics greater flexibility and independence in the scholarship they choose to pursue

Ironically, once their article was accepted, the co-authors discovered that the publisher would not allow it to be open access due to the publisher’s policies for the journal in question. The co-authors had chosen Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions because it is read by a large portion of their intended audience—researchers working on societal impact issues. Although the original intention had been to publish the article as open access, Bauwens explains, the co-authors had no choice but to publish it under a subscription model.

However, the article is available via a temporary share link, and a pre-print version is accessible in open repositories. Soon it will appear on the Social Science Research Network.

The co-authors’ own publishing experience illustrates well “the potential conflicts between professional constraints and opportunities and ethical considerations on journal platforms,” says Bauwens. “Our objective was precisely to stimulate more discussions within the scientific community about the structural constraints faced by researchers, and to explore potential ways of altering these constraints in the future.”

RESEARCH NEWS

■ Encouraging climate-smart agricultural practices. The Maastricht School of Management (MSM) in the Netherlands is leading an Eramus+ project that will create Centers of Vocational Excellence in Climate Smart Agriculture in South Africa. MSM will work in close collaboration with its South African local partner Stellenbosch University and European partner Mendelu University in the Czech Republic. The three-year project will support innovative curriculum development at colleges that provide technical vocational education and training, known as TVET, in South Africa, with a focus on promoting educational programs in climate-smart technology that supports food security and sustainable agricultural practices.

■ OpenStax enables equity-focused research. OpenStax, an educational initiative based at Rice University in Houston, has launched a new platform designed to facilitate research projects that focus on equity in education, while also protecting sensitive learner data. OpenStax Kinetic will enable researchers to conduct equity research involving learners who are using educational content in real-world online learning environments.

The portal uses a data enclave model, which has been used in fields such as healthcare, that allows researchers to receive results without viewing or exporting individual student data. This makes it possible “to investigate how learning technologies work for students from different backgrounds” while protecting student privacy, explains Debshila Basu Mallick, OpenStax’s director of research.

“To support success for all students equitably, we need to continuously measure how our tools work to support all learners, especially those from underrepresented and marginalized groups.”

The hope is that researchers will use the portal to provide insights into how to overcome inequities in education, notes Kathi Fletcher, OpenStax’s director of fairness, accountability, transparency and ethics. “If we want to support success for all students equitably,” she says, “we need to understand, design for, and continuously measure how our tools work to support all learners, especially those from underrepresented and marginalized groups.”

■ NASA awards funding to minority-serving institutions (MSIs). The National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the United States has announced the names of institutions receiving awards as part of its annual Minority University Research and Education Project (MUREP). Fifteen MSIs will receive a portion of 900,000 USD to fund STEM-focused research that will help each MSI prepare to qualify for NASA’s larger funding programs, such as the Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Technology Transfer (SBIR/STTR). The MUREP award recipients are invited to meet with NASA researchers throughout this year to receive training in how to pursue and attain future NASA funding opportunities. All 15 awardees and their projects are listed on NASA’s website.

■ Recruiters cite communication, data analysis among sought-after skills. The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) has released its latest survey of corporate recruiters, conducted in partnership with the European Foundation for Management Development and the MBA Career Services and Employer Alliance. The 1,028 respondents, who include recruiters and hiring managers, ranked communication, data analysis, and strategy as the skills their companies most look for in new hires. In addition, employers noted that they still value graduates with in-person degrees more highly than those with online degrees or microcredentials alone.

In the United States, respondents noted that employers also value technological and intercultural aptitude but think that business schools could do more to help graduates develop skills in these areas. However, among those surveyed, 82 percent remained confident in the preparation students receive via graduate management education.

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