Este artículo expone el resultado de la puesta en práctica de una metodología docente novedosa a través de la que se busca superar las dificultades que el proceso de enseñanza/aprendizaje encuentra en las asignaturas jurídicas que forman parte de los grados universitarios no jurídicos. Comienza destacando el papel que tienen las tecnologías de la información y la comunicación en dicho proceso y, significativamente, el campus virtual. Seguidamente, desgrana cada uno de los elementos de la metodología docente aplicaba, entre (...) los que encuentra la gamificación. Concluye con la determinación de las consecuencias de la experiencia desarrollada. (shrink)

Last Saturday I made my first journey into virtual reality . I walked with giant strides around a city called Seattle. I leaped the Columbia Center, the tallest building in the city, with a single bound. I dove beneath the surface of Puget Sound and watched a pod of whales heading north toward Canada. I hovered above the Space Needle, then dropped inside to enjoy its panoramic view and to examine its structural details. I raced a Washington State ferry (...) across the Sound from Seattle to Bremerton. I caught up with it just as it approached the Bremerton dock and was able to watch the docking operation from a perch on the roof of the bridge. Then I flew back across the Sound and peered down into the Kingdome, looking in vain for a winning team. Finally, I pointed my magic glove across the Sound to the Olympic Peninsula, flew there, and examined a group of towering snow-capped peaks from all angles. I did all of this without leaving a small building on the campus of the University of Washington. (shrink)

En el ámbito de la educación superior virtual de la Universidade de Vigo (UVigo, España) existe un servicio de videoconferencia masiva, integrado en el Campus Remoto, que puede emplearse para la docencia virtual; y, opcionalmente, también para la grabación automática de dichas clases en vídeos. La aparición de nuevas tecnologías como la del ultrafalso y la traducción cara a cara permitirán, además de la traducción/doblaje del audio en dicha videoclases, la manipulación de la imagen para que no (...) se note el cambio de idioma al hablar; de manera que la sincronización de labios se realice también de manera automatizada. (shrink)

Italy is one of the advanced industrial democracies with the smallest number of women elected to public office. Current literature has focused on several structural, institutional and cultural factors to explain such a gender gap in political participation and representation. However, one of the most basic forms of political participation, political discussion, has not received a thorough investigation. This article analyses gender differences in the attitudes and the habits of talking about politics with relatives, friends and social acquaintances during the (...) Italian 2006 electoral campaign. The main argument is that the analysis of political discussion may shed new light on how Italian women approach politics and help explain their reluctance to be involved in political activities in terms of elected office and party membership. (shrink)

This book continues the editors' work of highlighting and re-evaluating the contributions of the most important political scientists who have gone before.

This book fills an important gap in the growing reflective literature on the political science discipline: it consists of a series of 'objective' profiles of the 'Masters of Political Science', written by political scientists who have read and studied their work and who are therefore in a position to evaluate the nature of their contributions.

O acesso ao conhecimento, nomeadamente, através da educação e da formação, como agente de inclusão social e digital está na lista de prioridades de diversos organismos internacionais e a preocupação com grupos minoritários, como a população prisional é uma realidade incontornável. A este respeito a literatura também tem sido clara na demonstração de como a educação é fundamental para responder às necessidades daqueles que se encontram no limiar da exclusão social, em risco e vulnerabilidade. Este será um caminho para aumentar (...) a justiça social e reduzir a discriminação através da frequência de cursos de educação e formação. Neste texto procura-se fazer uma breve revisitação histórica da atividade educativa nos presídios em Portugal, com especial destaque para a recente iniciativa desenvolvida pela Universidade Aberta portuguesa, em parceria com a Direção Geral de Reinserção e Serviços Prisionais, relacionada com a criação do Campus Virtual Educonline@pris que se assume como uma academia de formação e educação digital. Pedagogicamente assente no modelo desta instituição apresenta-se, ainda, o desenho de um programa de formação que irá ser desenvolvido num presídio português de jovens adultos reclusos na área das competências e cidadania digital. (shrink)

Antimicrobial resistance is one of the greatest public health crises of our time. The natural biological process that causes microbes to become resistant to antimicrobial drugs presents a complex social challenge requiring more effective and sustainable management of the global antimicrobial commons—the common pool of effective antimicrobials. This special issue of Health Care Analysis explores the potential of two legal approaches—one long-term and one short-term—for managing the antimicrobial commons. The first article explores the lessons for antimicrobial resistance that can be (...) learned from recent climate change agreements, and the second article explores how existing international laws can be adapted to better support global action in the short-term. (shrink)

La Colección Campus Virtual es el resultado de una iniciativa dirigida a laformación a distancia y la promoción y difusión de los programas y proyectosacadémicos regionales e internacionales que CLACSO impulsa a través de su plataforma virtual. Este libro presenta una versión reformulada de las clases y una selección de los trabajos finales del curso de formación a distancia La revolución contemporánea delsaber y la complejidad social: hacia unas ciencias sociales de nuevo tipo, que se desarrolló en (...) el marco del concurso de la Cátedra Florestan Fernandes de CLACSO, gracias al patrocinio de la Agencia Sueca de Desarrollo Internacional, Asdi. (shrink)

Le campus virtuel de la filière TIC de Limoges propose depuis 1998, via Internet, des formations diplômantes pour les TIC et par les TIC. Les 600 étudiants sont organisés en communautés virtuelles d'apprentissage. Les communautés virtuelles sont une forme de socialisation propre à Internet. Le travail de groupe évite le sentiment d'isolement et facilite les apprentissages. Les étudiants et les enseignants échangent et partagent au niveau de la communauté globale, au niveau des communautés de promotion et d'unité d'enseignement qui (...) sont des communautés de pratique. Ils pratiquent le travail collaboratif au niveau des communautés de travail, c'est-à-dire qu'ils mutualisent leurs compétences et coordonnent leurs actions pour mener à bien les apprentissages. Pour réussir ce travail collaboratif il ya des règles et une « nétiquette » à respecter. L'intelligence collective naît du travail en commun des étudiants en réseau.The virtual campus of the ICT sector offers Limoges since 1998, via the Internet, diploma courses for ICT and ICT. 600 students are organized in virtual learning communities. Virtual communities are a form of socialization own Internet. Group work prevents isolation and facilitates learning. Students and teachers exchange and share in the global community, community-level promotion and teaching unit which are communities of practice. They practice in collaborative working communities, that is to say, they pool their expertise and coordinate their actions to carry out learning. To achieve this collaboration there are rules and "netiquette" to follow. Collective intelligence born of students working together in a network. (shrink)

Interest in teaching business ethics classes on college campuses has increased dramatically during the past decade. In the United States, virtually all graduate and undergraduate business programs teach business ethics in some form. While current pedagogy relies primarily on factual recounting of actual workplace incidents and actual and hypothetical case studies, calls for multidisciplinary approaches to teaching business ethics have not yet produced significant pedagogical change. We propose the use of fiction (novels, dramas, and short stories) to enrich current teaching (...) materials. This paper illustrates the tremendous power of stories which deal with ethical dilemmas in business to illuminate moral issues in ways that lead to a clearer understanding of ethical theory. The fiction cited in this paper is all drawn from American literature. It seems likely that similar sources could be found in the literature of other countries. (shrink)

Despite pervasive sexual violence against women, especially the extensive problem of rape on college campuses, there is virtually no Catholic response. This paper seeks to fill this lacunae by examining campus rape culture as an instance of social sin. Within this sinful social reality, rape is not deviant, but is the extreme manifestation of gender norms and expectations that construct femininity as sexual availability and masculinity as sexual aggression and dominance. Participation in the sin of rape culture may range (...) from actions of student and administrative bystanders to the everyday and mundane way that individuals live their gendered and sexual selves. In response, I offer three theological resources for moving toward transformation of rape culture into one that fosters the full human flourishing of all: interruption, conscience, and solidarity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 34.3 (2001) 260-274 [Access article in PDF] Second Thoughts on the Critiques of Big Rhetoric Edward Schiappa This note is divided into three parts. First, I explore some answers to the question "How did Rhetoric get so Big?" Second, I review some of the more important criticisms of a "globalized" or "universalized" view of rhetorical studies. Finally, I contend that the critiques of Big Rhetoric do (...) not withstand scrutiny and ought to be dismissed for insufficient evidence. While there certainly are important issues for scholars of rhetorical studies to consider about how to enhance the quality and importance of our work, such issues should not include the concern that rhetoric has grown too "big."By "Big Rhetoric" I refer only to the theoretical position that everything, or virtually everything, can be described as "rhetorical." I refer to the growth of rhetorical scholarship in communication studies and other disciplines as the "popularization" of rhetorical studies. 1 Theories associated with Big Rhetoric are credited with popularizing or at least rationalizing what Herbert W. Simons (1990) calls the "rhetorical turn" in a variety of disciplines. Within the journals and conventions of members of the National Communication Association (NCA), popularization is often characterized by studies of the form "the rhetoric of X," where X could literally be anything. Outside of the NCA-defined parameters of communication studies, popularization is evidenced by the apparently ever-increasing ranks of scholars who use "rhetoric" as a relevant and important term of art within their scholarship. By either measure, it can be argued fairly convincingly that "rhetoric" has become a widely used construct in scholarship. What I wish to engage is the disputed desirability of broad definitions and the related popularization of rhetoric. [End Page 260] 1. Whence big rhetoric? There are a number of narratives on the rise of Big Rhetoric already in print in communication studies (Simons 1990; Gaonkar 1990), rhetoric and composition (Berlin 1987; Young and Goggin 1993), and interdisciplinary publications (Roberts and Good 1993; Mailloux 2000; Nelson, Megill, and McCloskey 1987). Many accounts identify the 1960s as a turning point. For better or for worse, there was a confluence of changing rhetorical practices, expanding rhetorical theories, and opportunities for rhetorical criticism. The cultural clashes of the 1960s were felt perhaps most acutely on college campuses. The sufficiency of deliberative argument and public address can be said to have been called into question, whether one was an antiwar activist who hated LBJ's war in Vietnam or a pro-establishment stalwart trying to make sense of the rhetoric of protest and demonstration. Years later, scholars would characterize war itself as rhetorical. What counted as rhetorical practice was up for grabs.At about the same time, our understanding of rhetorical theory was being expanded. Here we can identify two main strands of thought. For ease of reference I will call one the symbolic interactionist rationale and the other the epistemological rationale. The symbolic interactionist rationale can be boiled down to a syllogism: All persuasive actions are rhetorical. All symbol/language-use is persuasive. Therefore: All symbol/language-use is rhetorical. Perhaps the two most significant pronouncements of this approach--for my generation of rhetoric scholars, at any rate--are by Richard Weaver and Kenneth Burke. Weaver claims that "language is sermonic" in the sense that whenever we offer a description or label a phenomenon, we are "preaching" a particular way of making sense of it (1970, 201-25). Burke, of course, has two famous (or infamous) statements in Rhetoric of Motives: first, that rhetoric is "the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols" (1950, 43); and second, that "something of the rhetorical motive comes to lurk in every 'meaning,' however purely 'scientific' its pretensions. Wherever there is persuasion, there is rhetoric. And wherever there is 'meaning,' there is 'persuasion'" (1950, 172). Obviously, such pronouncements serve as encouragement to [End Page 261] those who would define rhetoric broadly, and arguably fueled the popularization of rhetorical studies within the ranks of NCA.The epistemological rationale is fueled... (shrink)

The article reviews the peculiarities of distance learning platforms usage in law enforcement educational institutions during the Covid-19 pandemic. Distance learning at U.S. Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, which is based on the Online Campus have been substantiated. Particular attention is paid to topical issues of training on such online training mod-ules of the Campus: crime scene, driving training, drugs, firearms, health, interviews, investigation, law, topography, maritime training, personal security, technical means, terrorism, stopping vehicles, etc. There are also (...) programs to study the courses "Small Arms" and "Use of Force" in the online training modules of the Campus. The specifics of professional training of border guards in Asian countries have been revealed: the use of platforms of law enforcement agencies; focus of training on the devel-opment of basic competencies and the ability to solve problem situations; the opportunity to take online courses for all categories of staff at a con-venient time; creation of a three-level round-the-clock system of functioning of training of specialists. Peculiarities of professional training of border guards of European countries have been outlined considering the usage of both the platforms of institutions and joint platforms of international organizations, namely: web platform Virtual Aula of Agency FRONTEX; CEPOL DL web platform; European Coast Guard Training platforms; ILIAS EU Mission EUBAM; Connect & Learn UNHCR; UNODC and others. Special attention is paid to the capabilities of the Virtual Aula web platform for training teachers, instructors, external experts, etc. Web platform Virtual Aula of Agency FRONTEX presents up-to-date information on educational programs conducted in Europe. Characteristics of distance learning platforms usage in higher law enforcement educational institutions in Ukraine have been presented. Distance learning course of the English language for border guards have been developed and implemented. Considerable attention is also paid to the disclosure of online assessment of knowledge: the test of self-control on the topics, modules, and procedure of final assessment. (shrink)

This essay is an attempt to share the experience of staff developers in Philosophy for Children within the Pacific Northwest. I write as the Director of Philosophy for Children, Northwest, located on the campus of Western Oregon State College in Monmouth, Oregon, in which capacity I have been coordinating staff development in Philosophy for Children within the Pacific Northwest since 1981. Currently, both Liz Lyell of Seattle, Washington, and John Thomas of Portland, Oregon, work with me in staff development. (...) All three of us are employed virtually full-time in college teaching, severely limiting our possibilities for in-classroom staff development, though each of us has done a little of this above and beyond conducting intensive workshops conducted by a single staff developer. The remarks which follow primarily reflect my own experience, but they substantially reflect the experience of Liz and John as well. (shrink)

In the 1960s, there were efforts to move broadcast television in the direction of the experimental video art by altering television's conventional format. Fred Barzyk, in his role as a producer and director at WGBH-TV in Boston, was uniquely positioned to act as a link between television and experimental video artists who normally would not have had access to the technology available at a major broadcast facility. As the leading innovator in the beginnings of video art, the Korean American Nam (...) June Paik (1932-2006) deserves special mention. His work bridges the worlds of art, video technology, and television. The video works of Nan June Paik, Amy Greenfield, Peter Campus, Feng Meng Bo, Elizabeth Sussman and other video artists are considered in this essay as key contributors to the development of video art. The selection is based on my experience with the artists cited. Despite video art's growing popularity among contemporary artists in the 1970s and beyond, the museums were slow to acknowledge this development. One of the problems was deciding where, among the existing museum collections, to locate video art. In its 50 some years of history, video art has enjoyed a remarkable success in its artistic innovations while undergoing changes in formats virtually at the speed of rapid advances in electronic visual technology. Ironically, the legacy of creative television set in motion by Barzyk and his generation has been largely coopted by the television broadcasting industry, which mainly serves as a platform for mass media advertising. (shrink)

University research in the U.S.A. is based on a tight relationship between University and economic activity. In Europe and South America, although less commonly than in the U.S.A., there's already a large amount of experiences related to the creation of "on campus" or "spin off" companies based on the results and knowledge obtained from research in University departments and R&D centres financed with public funds. The virtual base of this results in communication technologies enables private use and the (...) appropriation of the benefits by their authors. European model, historically widely separated from private companies, has produced high quality basic research, but it has failed to obtain profit from technological development. Research funds happen to be basically public. Europe heads for economic, politic and military union. Common economic space and the growing up of the new markets, which we can foresee to be extended to other countries, will promote business opportunities and the relationship University-Industry. University institutions and faculties should think about their current ethic convictions to create a new Industry-University model in the context of a global economy. (shrink)

University research in the U.S.A. is based on a tight relationship between University and economic activity. In Europe and South America, although less commonly than in the U.S.A., there's already a large amount of experiences related to the creation of "on campus" or "spin off" companies based on the results and knowledge obtained from research in University departments and R&D centres financed with public funds. The virtual base of this results in communication technologies enables private use and the (...) appropriation of the benefits by their authors. European model, historically widely separated from private companies, has produced high quality basic research, but it has failed to obtain profit from technological development. Research funds happen to be basically public. Europe heads for economic, politic and military union. Common economic space and the growing up of the new markets, which we can foresee to be extended to other countries, will promote business opportunities and the relationship University-Industry. University institutions and faculties should think about their current ethic convictions to create a new Industry-University model in the context of a global economy. (shrink)

This essay revisits the scholarly production around three major pandemics in the region: (a) the Third Plague Pandemic; (b) HIV/AIDS in the 1980s; and (c) COVID-19. The essay aims to provide a comprehensive set of resources (both printed and digital) in four languages (Portuguese, Spanish, English, and French) to examine how scholars have approached these phenomena and how their scope and interpretations have changed over time. Historians of health paid particular attention to sociocultural aspects of the disease, which enabled them (...) to consider usually-neglected actors, such as patients of Indigenous and African descent with their own medical traditions. This added more complexity to our understanding of how these pandemics were fought and received. In addition, the essay suggests that COVID-19 prompted the emergence of historians of health as public scholars. They actively used social networks and other digital tools not only to communicate about the long history of diseases and pandemics in the region, but also to provide an authorized or informed perspective amid misinformation and fake news. In addition, the internet was crucial to the development of helpful databases and virtual conferences beyond academic campuses and paywalls. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic affects all population segments and is especially detrimental to university students because social interaction is critical for a rewarding campus life and valuable learning experiences. In particular, with the suspension of in-person activities and the adoption of virtual teaching modalities, university students face drastic changes in their physical activities, academic careers, and mental health. Our study applies a machine learning approach to explore the gender differences among U.S. university students in response to the global pandemic. (...) Leveraging a proprietary survey dataset collected from 322 U.S. university students, we employ association rule mining techniques to identify and compare psychological, cognitive, and behavioral patterns among male and female participants. To formulate our task under the conventional ARM framework, we model each unique question-answer pair of the survey questionnaire as a market basket item. Consequently, each participant's survey report is analogous to a customer's transaction on a collection of items. Our findings suggest that significant differences exist between the two gender groups in psychological distress and coping strategies. In addition, the two groups exhibit minor differences in cognitive patterns and consistent preventive behaviors. The identified gender differences could help professional institutions to facilitate customized advising or counseling for males and females in periods of unprecedented challenges. (shrink)

Place mouse over image continent. 2.1 (2012): 36–39. From an ethical and political perspective, people and property can hardly be separated. Indeed, the modern political subject – that is, the individual, the person, the self, the autonomous actor, the rational self-interest maximizer, etc. – has taken shape in and through the elaboration, institutionalization, and enactment of that which rightfully belongs to it. This thread can be traced back perhaps most directly to Locke’s notion that the origin of the political state (...) occurs when people rise above the state of nature by ceding the power to prosecute offenses. The rule of law begins then with a defense of the right to property. People become subjects by adhering to the social contract, which they do by deferring the defense of their own property to the state. In this light, the response of the United States federal government to the financial crisis of 2008 appears to many as a breach of the social contract. The chant “banks got bailed out, we got sold out” states the claim plainly. Why exactly did some subjects (e.g., the banks) have their property defended by the state (i.e., through the variety of programs including TARP, the discount window at the US Federal Reserve, etc.), when other subjects (e.g., homeowners) found themselves without protection of their property rights, forced to default on mortgage debts and face dispossession? Even if the rhetoric about “too big to fail” can be believed, and the collapse of the financial system would lead to negative consequences for people who had little or no connection to the activities that brought it about, such consequences need not call into question the notion that everyone stands equally before the law. To occupy, then, appears as a form of civil disobedience, an intentional, retaliatory breach of the social contract by those who feel that they have lost the support of the state to which they ceded their power as sovereign agents. The visible and the invisible The violation of property rights of people who have recognition, protection and power under the law destabilizes their very status as citizens and tests the limit of democracy. Does the financial system force the dematerialized victimization of individuals? Do people become numbers, or worse still, percentages of unemployed, tranches of defaulted mortgages and foreclosures? Are they perhaps instead disenfranchised prospectively from the privileged position occupied by virtual entities and actors such as those involved in the derivatives markets, always already exiled back into the physical, visible realm? The line of conflict appears to be drawn between invisibility/absence/deferral and visibility/presence/realization. The demonstrators occupy an excess property of those subjects, namely, the banks and financial elite, who did receive recognition and protection under the law. By domesticating this excess property, rendering its invisibility visible within the political economy, the protesters raise a new form of threat to the hegemonic order. To occupy, then, involves a rejection of the order under which the “99%” have been subjected to erasure. The occupation seeks creatively to establish a new means of communication and law for its subjects. In the face of an existing power structure that is increasingly disenfranchising the majority of people while consolidating nodes of power and influence, the “occupation”, or the work of the Occupy movement, involves seizing a space that refuses the rules of the existing, allegedly corrupt sovereign state. This refusal of governance extends even to include a steadfast refusal to articulate a strategy, to formulate a list of demands, to converse with the sovereign power on the grounds of its own conventions, to put forth a leader, to resolve the ambiguity of the movement into a discreet identity, face, or voice. Do these tactics provide a resolution to the problem that was its genesis? Not in such a direct and easily resolved manner, but it remains difficult to imagine a direct and simple resolution to the problematic of the breach of the social contract. The ambiguity of the situation has generated significant interest within the broader populace, though many people sympathetic to the cause appear to be frustrated because the movement has not simply put forward a short list of concrete demands, or even a set of leaders and spokespeople, much less a resolution. And yet, this lack of coherence appears as a resolution of a problem generic to protest movements in the past, where individual leaders can be removed or discredited, and lists of demands can be co-opted by others holding more political power. Meanwhile, the ambiguity has compelled imitations on a global scale, with the Occupy Wall Street participants consciously taking actions that can be replicated by anyone anywhere without significant cost. These actions have taken place not in a peripheral location such as a parking lot in New Jersey, but instead close to the centers of power and governance, adjacent to Wall Street, close to the White House, on college campuses, etc. This spontaneous archipelago of protests becomes an irritant, a negation of the accepted order of protests, but when the protesters themselves move outside of their encampments, they are escorted by the police, constantly monitored and maintained so that a permanent state of paranoid persecution takes hold. To occupy, occupying, occupation – these actions involve a variable degree of danger – are you willing to step into a different space, where the rule of law is unclear and evolving? Are you presenting yourself as a representative of the majority, the 99%? Who has a sense of belonging to the 99%? This previously invisible population becomes a focal point of political power, garners increasing public support, infects the public dialogue. The government recognizes this population by forcing it from the occupied space, removing the element of possession of property. It is at this point of conflict, in the struggle to hold the physical property, where the greatest friction and violence occurs. Scaling the rule of law While occupied, the property calls for a redress of grievances, a restoration of the rule of law. The Occupy movement does not select and put forward individuals or leaders, it puts forward places – the occupied property represents the point of conflict, not the individual. And it is this very property that the government then tries to reclaim. The movement remains faceless, anonymous, uncounted, or rather counted only as a mass, the self-labeled mass of 99%. These spaces are like refugee camps or favelas, but constructed to unite the political life and private life of the protesters. This objective is presented as a tactical necessity, as all other means of protest and communication have failed, leaving only the option of seizing, holding, occupying a property. But to what end, exactly? Can anyone deliberately return to the prior social contract, embrace, affirm, and govern in strict accordance with the earlier relationship to property, following the logic of Locke’s arguments? In this respect, the contemporary crisis indicates a new, transitional phase in the way that property operates, or rather, in the balance between real and virtual value. The roots of the crisis lay in the massive overvaluation of property caused by lax lending practices, as more people were encouraged to borrow more money, which drove up the prices of property. At the same time, these individual properties, these mortgages for homes actual families lived in and worked to support, were bundled into securities that could be bought, sold, and speculated on. The reduction of a physical house or piece of real estate to an almost incalculably small element in an investment vehicle appears as a scaling of the hedge that radically diminishes the value of any individually owned property. Moreover, a number of recently-innovated financial products allow investors to hedge in new ways, to deliberately spread risk around a portfolio in hopes of bringing returns even when the individual mortgage defaults. At the level of the ‘free’ market, these virtual negative valuations are designed to balance the physical positive valuation, though many of the biggest lenders are now being investigated for controlling both sides of this valuation, the positive and the negative, to facilitate both the creation and failure of the investments and to profit from both. The ability to benefit from both the negative and positive value of an investment is a result of a technologically enabled capacity to operate within a complex field. These layered and scaled investment vehicles and the simultaneous negation of their value together represent a commingling of the virtual and physical existence that is both complex and multiple. The valuation of a virtual property has tremendous power to change the valuation of the physical - either injecting it with or depriving it of funds, pumping in or draining life and energy. This situation has roots of its own – the notion of property advanced e.g., throughout the enclosure movement in Britain was, from the outset, an imposition of virtuality (i.e., the concept of law, the institutions associated with ownership, etc.) on the physical reality of land. 1 The difference today is that technological trading platforms combined with innovations within the financial services industry have enabled the reduction of each individual property receiving or losing value in scale to an almost atomic level. In turn, the number of properties held simultaneously and valued as a massive, multiple wholes – i.e., the derivatives market in mortgage-backed securities – is a new phenomenon made possible through the application of similar technologies and institutional structures. And those actors who can trade in these layers of complexity can then profit from the new phase of disassociation of the virtual and the physical – unconcerned with and operating at such a virtual distance from the individual residing physically on a particular piece of real estate that they no longer feel the tug of the physical tying them back to the physical, operating literally as in a video game, in a virtually distanced world. What can or should be done about this situation? Answers lie outside the scope of this current essay, but merit consideration in the near future… NOTE 1) Hernando de Soto has emphasized this dimension by empirically demonstrating its non-existence in many countries in The Mystery of Capital. (shrink)

La communication par ordinateur est de plus en plus utilisée comme soutien pour les cours universitaires conventionnels. Cet article offre un panorama d'une série d'études fines d'innovation à petite échelle dans diverses disciplines sur deux campus universitaires britanniques. La plupart impliquait des interactions textuelles asynchrones concernant tous les étudiants et tous les tuteurs d'un cours. Des observations, des questionnaires et des entretiens ont servi à établir des configurations de décollage et d'usage des nouveaux médias pour la discussion. Les résultats (...) sont discutés selon les cinq « règles de virtualité » .Computer-based communication is increasingly being used in support of conventional university courses. This paper offers an overview of a series of detailed studies of small scale innovations across a range of disciplines at two campus-based UK universities. Most involved asynchronous, text-based interactions involving all students on a given course and the tutor or tutors involved. Observations, questionnaires and interviews were used to establish patterns of uptake and use of the new discussion media. Findings are discussed in terms of five "rules of virtuality". (shrink)

The AAUP faculty union, established in 1973 on the University of Bridgeport campus, followed a policy of maximum militancy. Typically, this strategy was met by an ad hoc and often poorly informed administrative response, and ended in the bitter two-year faculty strike of 1990–1992. The absence of a coherent union relations strategy on the administration's part and a pattern of militant confrontation wherein the union almost always prevailed virtually guaranteed such an outcome.

There is widespread consensus that present patterns of consumption could lead to the permanent impossibility of maintaining those patterns and, perhaps, the existence of the human race. While many patterns of consumption qualify as ‘sustainable’ there is one in particular that deserves greater attention: virtual consumption. We argue that virtual consumption — the experience of authentic consumptive experiences replicated by alternative means — has the potential to reduce the deleterious consequences of real consumption by redirecting some consumptive behavior (...) from shifting material states to shifting information states. (shrink)

This paper aims to show that Lessing develops in his aesthetics a pre-Kantian philosophy of consciousness. The concept of virtuality that the german writer puts forward in his essay Laocoon implies an interweaving of temporal dimensions similar to the threefold temporal synthesis described by Kant in the transcendental deduction of the Critique of Pure Reason. But whereas Kant thematizes an a priori of consciousness, Lessing is in search of an a priori of plastic art. It will be seen that perfect (...) sculpture presupposes the choice of that moment in time which can open the imagination to the past and the future in a way that enriches the present by transforming it into a "pregnant moment". The final aim of the article is to trace the genesis of the concept of simultaneity of temporal dimensions presupposed by the idea of the pregnant moment, and its implications for the idea of the temporality of consciousness. (shrink)

I argue that virtual reality is a sort of genuine reality. In particular, I argue for virtual digitalism, on which virtual objects are real digital objects, and against virtual fictionalism, on which virtual objects are fictional objects. I also argue that perception in virtual reality need not be illusory, and that life in virtual worlds can have roughly the same sort of value as life in non-virtual worlds.

ABSTRACT In this article, we discuss the potential of Virtual Reality (VR) technologies for the creation and adaptation of stories aimed at children and young adult, focusing on the specificities of their usage protocols. We begin by introducing narratives in VR and their connection to the field of children and young adult literature. Subsequently, 360º videos targeted at children and young people are presented, along with the reading and engagement protocols that arise from their peculiarities. Starting from the field (...) of Cinematic Virtual Reality (CVR), we discuss about the main challenges posed by this medium for the enjoyment of immersive works, based on the analysis of the work Invasion!, produced by the Baobab studio. Thus, we conclude that both the production and reception of narratives in Virtual Reality presuppose the management of the viewer’s vision and attentional focus, considering the reading protocols already learned and naturalized through other media. (shrink)

According to David Chalmers, the virtual entities found in Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) environments instantiate virtual properties of a specific kind. It has recently been objected that such a view (i) can’t extend to all types of properties; (ii) leads to a proliferation of property-types; (iii) implausibly ascribes massive errors to VR and AR users; and (iv) faces an analogue of Jackson’s “many-property problem”. My first objective here is to show that advocates of (...) class='Hi'>virtual properties can deal with each of these objections. The other goal of this paper is to examine the consequences of Chalmers’ theory in the particular case of AR. If we countenance virtual properties, AR highlights that non-virtual objects can possess both non-virtual and virtual properties. With AR, it also appears that a same non-virtual object can have different and even incompatible properties across augmented environments. Lastly, considering properties in light of AR highlights the risk of an “augmented solipsism”, and calls forth interesting questions about the persistence conditions of non-virtual objects in AR environments. (shrink)

A common remedial response to a culture of racism, sexism, homophobia and other forms of oppression on college campuses has been to institute mandatory implicit bias training for faculty, staff and students. A critical component of such training is the identification of unconscious prejudices in the minds of individuals that impact behavior. In this paper, I critically examine the rush to rely on implicit bias training as a panacea for institutional culture change. Implicit bias training and the notion of implicit (...) bias it is grounded in is examined and the advantages and limitations of this approach is elaborated. An exclusive focus on implicit bias, it is argued, can protect ignorance rather than correct it. Similar to implicit bias, microaggressions is a concept that has played a role in campus diversity interventions. An examination of microaggression education demonstrates how it corrects for some of the pitfalls of relying on the concept of implicit bias to improve campus climate. The ambiguity that is characteristic of microaggressions, however, hints at the need to explore the type of “unknowing” that both implicit bias education and microaggression education attempt to remedy. Building on the recent scholarship around the idea of epistemic injustice, crucial insights can be gleaned about the significance of shifting the focus from lack of knowledge to a willful resistance to know. In the final section, some implications for improving campus climate are drawn out. (shrink)

The history of humankind is full of examples that indicate a constant desire to make human beings more moral. Nowadays, technological breakthroughs might have a significant impact on our moral character and abilities. This is the case of Virtual Reality (VR) technologies. The aim of this paper is to consider the ethical aspects of the use of VR in enhancing empathy. First, we will offer an introduction to VR, explaining its fundamental features, devices and concepts. Then, we will approach (...) the characterization of VR as an “empathy machine,” showing why this medium has aroused so much interest and why, nevertheless, we do not believe it is the ideal way to enhance empathy. As an alternative, we will consider fostering empathy-related abilities through virtual embodiment in avatars. In the conclusion, however, we will, we will examine some of the serious concerns related to the ethical relevance of empathy and will defend the philosophical case for a reason-guided empathy, also suggesting specific guidelines for possible future developments of empathy enhancement projects through VR embodied experiences. (shrink)

Is virtual reality the latest grand narrative that humanity has produced? This book attempts to disentangle the common characteristics of human reality and posthuman virtual reality by examining discourses on psychoanalysis, gene-technology, globalization, and contemporary art.

The study investigated the influence of campus environmental factors on job commitments. The research design was quantitative descriptive sample survey of ex-post facto type while the population includes both male and female senior non-teaching staff of Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ogun State. Multi-stage sampling technique was used in choosing 200 participants selected from nine faculties and one college. A structured and close-ended questionnaire titled ‘Campus Environmental Factors and Job Commitment Questionnaire’ with reliability co-efficient of 0.85 obtained through Cronbach alpha (...) methods was administered. 170 were retrieved from the 200 instruments administered. Data were analysed using frequency count, simple percentage, Pearson Correlation, and t test of significance. The study demonstrated a significant positive influence of campus environmental factors on job commitments of staff in the university. Useful recommendations were also raised. (shrink)

Drawing from a long history of feminist writing grounded in personal reflection and informal dialogue between feminist thinkers, Cobb and Godden-Rasul present an email-based conversation with Jess Lishak, the outgoing Women’s Officer at the University of Manchester Students’ Union. The conversation draws on Cobb and Godden-Rasul’s experience as feminist academics engaged in critical institutional practice through such initiatives as editing the Inherently Human blog, organising the Inspirational Women of Law exhibition, and participating in university working groups on campus-based harassment (...) and violence. In asking Lishak to reflect on her journey to feminism and her experiences of activism, the conversation ranges over such issues as personal influences and experiences, strategies for securing institutional support, encouraging student engagement with feminism, and campaigning tactics. The conversation developed out of a “Campus Feminisms” event in March 2016, which explored the rise of exciting new grassroots single-issue campaigns and political mobilisations by students in higher education, and was organised by Cobb and Godden-Rasul at Newcastle University, UK. Undergraduate and postgraduate students shared their personal struggles and achievements in bringing feminist ideas and campaigns to their university campuses. Lucy Morgan, the Gender Equality Officer at Newcastle University Students’ Union, offered inspiring reflections on her efforts to reinvigorate the ‘F’ word, in the face of simultaneous student apathy and backlash. Many of these campus-based mobilisations have demanded better institutional responses to sexual violence against women. At around the same time, Cobb was beginning a new role as the co-chair of the University of Manchester’s first Task & Finish Group on Sexual Violence and Harassment on Campus. This followed Universities UK’s decision to create a taskforce to consider options for improving institutional responses to student safety. In the process, Cobb crossed paths with Lishak, who had been appointed a member of the UUK Taskforce in light of her path-breaking students’ union work addressing violence against women. Since Lishak was an exemplar of this new feminist wave in higher education, one that was still inadequately understood by feminist academics despite often working side-by-side within the same institutions, the authors embarked on this conversation in order to better understand the relationship between academic and student feminist activism on campus. As Lishak makes clear in her own reflections, there is nothing inevitable about the synergies between these movements, but there is potentially a great deal that could be achieved through their closer engagement. (shrink)

In a recent study by Cai et al. about water shortages in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban areas, virtual water has become the central concept of the groundwater security strategy by suggesting increasing imports of water-intensive agricultural products instead of utilizing the depleted groundwater resources for production. However, despite reviewing the content, we could not see how the authors discussed the households’ economic and financial issues from both production and consumption perspectives.