As part of my PhD research, I investigate the factors of student success and the influence of the use of social media by first year students in higher education. For this I use the insights provided by the highly influential and leading integration theory of Tinto and diminished the amount of variables by only using the best predictive ones. Hereby, avoiding the capitalization of chance and establishing a more easy to use model for teachers and management. Furthermore, I enriched the model with the use of social media, in particular Facebook, to better suit students’ contemporary society in the developed world. Principal component analysis on Facebook usage provided different integration/engagement components, which I coined peer-engagement and knowledge engagement. Both consisted of various purposes of Facebook use (information, education, social and leisure) and the use of different pages amongst students. To uncover if these latent variables play a significant role in student success or if Facebook is a multi-distracting platform, two models were compared using structural equation modeling with SPSS AMOS; one with and one without the peer-, and knowledge engagement variables. The fit of both models are compared using the normed fit index (NFI), the comparative fit index (CFI), the Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) and the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA). In addition, the direct influence and indirect influence of all variables are compared to provide a better insight into what kind of influence social media can have upon student success.
This article examines two areas of tension within environmental ethics literature and relates them to the case study of the animal representation in the Dutch media. On the one hand, there is a tension between those who propagate clear division between anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric views; on the other hand, there is a tension between the land ethics perspective and animal right proponents. This article examines the media representation of animals using content analysis, and links the findings back to the areas of tension within environmental ethics. The main findings indicate that the division between anthropocentric and ecocentric perspectives is still relevant for evaluating the human-animal relations, while the convergence of the land ethics and animal rights perspectives can be helpful in explaining why this division is relevant. This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in "Environmental Processes".The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40710-014-0025-7 https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
MULTIFILE
This longitudinal, quantitative study contributes to the debate on technology-based professional development by examining the extent to which a learning (LinkedIn) intervention in a university setting affects an individual’s social media use for professional development, and the extent to which this relates to self-reported employability. In addition, we investigated how this relationship is moderated by an individual’s motivation to communicate through social media (LinkedIn). Based on social capital theory and the conservation of resources theory, we developed a set of hypotheses that were tested based on longitudinal data collected from university employees (N = 101) in middle- and high-level jobs. First, in line with our expectations, social media use for professional development was significantly higher after the learning intervention than before. Second, partially in line with our expectations, social media use for professional development was positively related with the employability dimension anticipation and optimization. Third, contrary to our expectations, motivation to communicate through social media (LinkedIn) did not have a moderating role in this relationship. We concluded that the learning intervention has the potential to foster social media use for professional development, and in turn, can contribute to individuals’ human capital in terms of their employability. Hence, the intervention that forms the core of this empirical research can be a sustainable and promising human resource management (HRM) practice that fits the human capital agenda.