Communication Practices of Professional Service Providers: Predicting Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty     

Wendy S. Zabava Ford 《Journal of Applied Communication Research》2003,31(3):189-211

This study examined customers' perceptions of personalized service communication performance in relation to their expectations as predictors of their satisfaction and loyalty intentions in four professional service contexts. Survey data were obtained from 253 customers regarding their expectations and experiences with physicians, dentists, auto mechanics, or hairdressers. Multisample covariance structure analysis procedures were performed to assess the level of support for alternative theoretical models across all four professional contexts. Results provided support for one model, specifying that customers' perceptions of communication performance accounted for significant variation in customer satisfaction, which, in turn, predicted customers' loyal behavioral intentions. Customers' expectations did not play an influential role in predicting customer satisfaction and loyalty, as proposed in an alternative model  相似文献   

Coming of Age? Overview of Career Guidance Policy and Practice in Australia     

Wendy?PattonEmail author 《International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance》2005,5(2):217-227

In recent years significant international focus has highlighted the critical importance of managing life, learning and work in a constantly changing labour market. This changing world and the corresponding need for individuals to engage in repeated decision-making about learning and work has raised the importance of and necessity for the provision of career development services across the lifespan. This challenge is being addressed by many countries across the globe. Within this context, this paper discusses the initiatives enhancing the status of career service provision in Australia.  相似文献   

A longitudinal evaluative study of student difficulties with engineering graphics   总被引：1，自引：1，他引：0  

Charles Potter  Errol Van Der Merwe  Wendy Kaufman  Julie Delacour 《European Journal of Engineering Education》2006,31(2):201-214

We have previously reported in this journal that spatial ability influences academic performance in engineering. We have also reported that spatial ability is trainable, and can be increased through instruction focused on using perception and mental imagery in three-dimensional representation. In this article, we present the results of a longitudinal evaluative study of student difficulties with engineering graphics at our university, involving research over a 24-year period. Prior to our intervention, the first-year engineering graphics course at our university had a failure rate of 36% for all engineering students, and failure rates of 80% for African students studying at our university. In terms of outcomes, our study indicates that changed teaching practices have been associated with increased pass rates, which currently average 88% for all students. There is clear evidence that African students no longer experience major difficulties in passing the course. This can be attributed both to changes in teaching methodology, as well as broader contextual changes occurring in South Africa over the period reviewed.

Despite evidence of increased pass rates, our data suggest that there is a continuing relationship between three-dimensional spatial perception and academic performance in engineering graphics, as well as with aggregated first-year engineering marks. For this reason, many students still require academic support. There is also evidence that female students experience difficulties with engineering graphics due to lack of previous technical experience, and use a variety of strategies to overcome their study problems. The most effective appear to be use of peers and friends, and in particular students who had previously taken the course, as mediators of the course content and materials. Those female students who have not taken technical drawing at school level, and female students who do not network with other engineering students, are those at greatest disadvantage.  相似文献   

Informed choice and deaf children: underpinning concepts and enduring challenges   总被引：3，自引：0，他引：3  

Young A  Carr G  Hunt R  McCracken W  Skipp A  Tattersall H 《Journal of deaf studies and deaf education》2006,11(3):322-336

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Planning changes to health library services on the basis of impact assessment     

Urquhart C  Thomas R  Ovens J  Lucking W  Villa J 《Health information and libraries journal》2010,27(4):277-285

Background: Various methods of impact assessment for health library services exist, including a toolkit developed for the UK. The Knowledge, Resource and Information service (KRIS) for health promotion, health service commissioning and public health (Bristol area, UK) commissioned an independent team at Aberystwyth University to provide an impact assessment and evaluation of their services and to provide evidence for future planning. Objective: The review aimed to provide an action plan for KRIS through assessing the impact of the current service, extent of satisfaction with existing services and views on desirable improvements. Methods: Existing impact toolkit guidance was used, with an adapted impact questionnaire, which was distributed by the KRIS staff to 244 users (response rate 62.3%) in early 2009. The independent team analysed the questionnaire data and presented the findings. Results: Users valued the service (93% considered that relevant information was obtained). The most frequent impacts on work were advice to patients, clients or carers, and advice to colleagues. Literature searching and current awareness services saved staff time. Many users were seeking health promotion materials. Conclusion: The adapted questionnaire worked well in demonstrating the service impacts achieved by KRIS, as well as indicating desirable improvements in service delivery.  相似文献   

International Librarianship: Cooperation and Collaboration: Edited by Frances Laverne Carroll and John Frederick Harvey. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2001. 384 pp. $65.00 (hardcover). ISBN 0-8108-3921-0.     

Wendy Simmons 《Library & information science research》2002,24(4):403

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How leaders can lead: A report on a research project involving an intensive ten‐day leadership program mounted by the University of Melbourne in 1992 and 1993     

Wendy Cahill 《Tertiary Education and Management》2013,19(1):28-30

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Collaborative feedback and reflection for professional growth: preparing first-year pre-service teachers for participation in the community of practice     

Graham R. Daniel  Greg Auhl  Wendy Hastings 《Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education》2013,41(2):159-172

Teaching has been described as an emerging community of practice. Within such professional communities, the processes of reflection and collaborative dialogue, or critical transformative dialogue, are central to the maintenance and improvement of professional practice for individuals, and the field. This paper reports on the challenges experienced by a group of first-year pre-service teachers engaging in a process of reflection and critique with peers, as they participated in a program focused on the development of core practices of teaching. These pre-service teachers' responses indicated their growing understanding of the importance of engaging in ongoing critical dialogue, as part of the “unnatural” aspects of teaching. The paper concludes with a reflection on the value of feedback from the earliest stages of professional learning.  相似文献   

Analysing the professional development of teaching and learning from a political ethics of care perspective     

Vivienne Grace Bozalek  Wendy McMillan  Delia E. Marshall  Melvyn November  Andre Daniels  Toni Sylvester 《Teaching in Higher Education》2013,18(5):447-458

This paper uses Tronto's political ethics of care as a normative framework to evaluate a model of teaching and learning professional development. This framework identifies five integrated moral elements of care – attentiveness, responsibility, competence, responsiveness and trust. This paper explicates on each of these elements to evaluate the piloting and implementation of a teaching and learning professional development model at a South African higher education institution. The political ethics of care was found to be a useful normative framework for a group of higher educators to reflect on the process of engaging in teaching and learning professional development in that it revealed the importance of differential power relations, the importance of working collaboratively and being attentive to the needs of both caregivers and care receivers.  相似文献   

EDITORIAL     

Cherene M. Ockerby  Wendy M. Cross  Brian C. Jolly 《Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning》2013,21(4):369-370

Novice nurses encounter numerous factors that impact on their learning in the complex healthcare workplace. Registered nurses often work one‐on‐one with novices as preceptors to facilitate the development of novices’ clinical skills and socialisation into the profession. This paper explores the concept of preceptorship from novice nurses’ and preceptors’ perspective, drawing upon data from a project between a large healthcare organisation and a university in Melbourne, Australia. The study, framed in ethnomethodology, included fieldwork observation, interviews and student surveys; this paper focuses on data collected over a series of individual interviews with nursing students (n = 28) and preceptors (n = 25). Thematic analysis yielded six key themes: workplace socialisation, empathy, individuality, willingness to engage, changing support and a realisation [by novices about the preceptor role]. Findings highlight the complexity of workplace learning that is influenced by the idiosyncrasies of the individuals involved and the social milieu in which the learning takes place.  相似文献