Concetta A. DePaolo

Task and Relationship-Oriented Trust In Leaders

This study examines the relative influence of competence, consistency and motivational intention upon the defined task and relationship dimensions of trust in leaders. A sample of 345 part- and full-time employees provided survey responses regarding their perceptions of their direct supervisors. Results indicate that competence and consistency explain more variance in task than in relationship-oriented trust. Motivational intention explained more variance in relationship than in task-oriented trust. The results, practical implications, limitations and future research opportunities are discussed.

Service-Learning by Doing How a Student-run Consulting Company finds Relevance and Purpose in a Business Strategy Capstone Course

A challenge for undergraduate learning in strategy is that the students lack professional work experiences. Without a rich background of experience, many strategic management topics are difficult to grasp. Our solution has been to develop a strategic management capstone course that combines service-learning and problem-based learning. The experiential design puts students in charge of a consulting company serving struggling local nonprofits and small businesses. By consulting, students have access to strategic decision makers and learn to understand the missions of their organizations. Students acquire a sense of urgency to solve strategic problems and develop a commitment to improving their community. In this article, the authors describe their motivations for the course design and how service-learning enhances the design’s efficacy. In addition, the authors explain the use of a matrix structure for the student consulting company, how the company operates, and the strategic process consultation approach its consultants use. This study also describes the student leadership structure and just-in-time lecture technique that enables the instructor to provide on-demand instruction. The authors conclude by explaining the assessment system of quality checks, presentations, and reflection papers that allows instructors to maintain student learning in a very flexible and student-driven learning system.

A heuristic algorithm for a chance constrained stochastic program

A chance constrained stochastic program is considered that arises from an application to college enrollments and in which the objective function is the expectation of a linear function of the random variables. When these random variables are independent and normally distributed with mean and variance that are linear in the decision variables, the deterministic equivalent of the problem is a nonconvex nonlinear knapsack problem. The optimal solution to this problem is characterized and a greedy-type heuristic algorithm that exploits this structure is employed. Computational results show that the algorithm performs well, especially when the normal random variables are approximations of binomial random variables.

Understanding transactional distance in web-based learning environments: An empirical study

Transactional distance is an important pedagogical theory in distance education that calls for more empirical support. The purpose of this study was to verify the theory by operationalizing and examining the relationship of (1) dialogue, structure and learner autonomy to transactional distance, and (2) environmental factors and learner demographic factors to transactional distance in web-based distance courses. More than 200 online undergraduate and graduate students in a Midwest university in the USA were surveyed. The findings indicate that high levels of structure and dialogue are not necessarily incompatible while supporting the inverse relationship of structure, dialogue and learner autonomy to transactional distance. Environmental factors and learner characteristics impacting transactional distance are identified, and practical implications of the findings for online course design are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Measuring Transactional Distance in Web-Based Learning Environments: An Initial Instrument Development.

This study was an initial attempt to operationalise Moore’s transactional distance theory by developing and validating an instrument measuring the related constructs: dialogue, structure, learner autonomy and transactional distance. Data were collected from 227 online students and analysed through an exploratory factor analysis. Results suggest that the instrument, in general, shows promise as a valid and reliable measure of the constructs related to transactional distance theory. Potential refinement of the instrument and future research directions are included at the end of the article.

The STAT-ATTIC Website: Links to Statistics Applets for Introductory Courses

Statistics instructors are increasingly using stand-alone applets to illustrate statistics concepts to students. There are hundreds of applets available on the web, but locating a quality applet to serve a particular purpose can be time consuming. This paper presents the STAT-ATTIC (STATistics Applets for Teaching Topics in Introductory Courses) website, located at http://sapphire.indstate.edu/~stat-attic/index.php, as a tool for locating statistics applets for a particular pedagogical purpose. The site has links, with descriptions, to approximately 600 publicly available applets on topics commonly taught in introductory courses, including graphical displays, descriptive statistics, probability concepts, random variables, sampling, confidence intervals, hypothesis tests, regression, ANOVA and chi-square tests. Within each broad topic, applets are organized by intended purpose; for example, applets intended to illustrate properties or behavior are shown separately from those that calculate statistics or perform tests. Advantages of the database over other statistics resources are presented, along with the process that was used to identify and select applets for the site. Lastly, the structure and functionality of the database, including the ability to search and rate or comment on applets, are also discussed.

Instructional Uses of Web-Based Survey Software

Recent technological advances have led to changes in how instruction is delivered. Such technology can create opportunities to enhance instruction and make instructors more efficient in performing instructional tasks, especially if the technology is easy to use and requires no training. One such technology, web-based survey software, is extremely accessible for anyone with basic computer skills. Web-based survey software can be used for a variety of instructional purposes to streamline instructor tasks, as well as enhance instruction and communication with students. Following a brief overview of the technology, we discuss how Web Forms from nTreePoint can be used to conduct instructional surveys, collect course feedback, conduct peer evaluations of group work, collect completed assignments, schedule meeting times among multiple people, and aid in pedagogical research. We also discuss our experiences with these tasks within traditional on-campus courses and how they were enhanced or expedited by the use of web-based survey software. The Journal of Educators Online, Volume 3, Number 1, January 2006

Café Data 2.0: New Data From a New and Improved Café

ABSTRACT In this article, we revisit the café story first introduced in 2011. Recent data from this café run by business students at a Midwestern public university are explored and analyzed. The data were collected using a point-of-sale system over a 3-month period during the spring semester of 2015. These data can be used in introductory statistics courses to illustrate the use of time series and forecasting, applications of data mining and visualization, as well as sampling, confidence intervals, and inference using ANOVA and chi-square tests for independence. Since the data pertain to a student-run business, we believe that statistics students, especially those in business disciplines, will find the datas context to be relevant and interesting. In addition to the technical exercises, we provide background and context for several managerial issues that these data can be used to address, thus emphasizing the importance of data-driven decision making.