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This study aims to describe key elements that are critical to virtual qualitative research especially while working with practitioners as participants.

This paper takes a reflexive researcher approach using a case study to explore how researchers adopted a qualitative research approach using digital technology. We use five principles suggested by Boland et al. (2022) as a framework to consider and reflect on our experiences as researchers and those of our participants.

We highlight the gatekeeper’s support, trusted relationship with the organisations, interpersonal skills of interviewers, stringent measures of securing data and shared experiences of interviewee and interviewers helped complete virtual research. We recommend that four key factors such as digital competency, feasibility, flexibility and resilience should be considered while undertaking or commissioning virtual, qualitative research studies.

Social care practitioners and qualitative researchers increasingly negotiate with digital technologies to undertake their work. In this paper, we evidence how online qualitative approaches can be effective provided challenges are dealt with diligently in each stage of the research process.

Despite evidence showing the benefits of early diagnosis of breast cancer many Australian women delay seeking advice when they find a change in their breast. This paper describes the process evaluation of a national programme to encourage women to see their general practitioner within three months of finding a breast change. The programme used a partnership approach involving different sectors of the community to deliver an inexpensive national programme with sustainable community components. The programme included strategies to promote messages through the news media, television commercials, community meetings across Australia and general practitioner based strategies. This paper reports on a process evaluation of the implementation of the programme; outcome measures will be available at a later stage.

The purpose of this paper is to present a virtual library plan created by library directors of the 23 California State University (CSU) system campuses. The information literacy portion of the project offers a repository of high quality interactive digital learning objects (DLOs) in the MERLOT repository. Therefore, DLOs created locally at the Dr Martin Luther King, Jr Library at San José State University (SJSU) focus on topics that supplement the “core” DLO collection.

This case study presents planning assumptions for developing local content that complements a California State University (CSU) system collection of high quality interactive information literacy DLOs. The authors also offer suggestions from the professional literature that guide their application of such Web 2.0 tools as wikis, podcasts, and tagging to create supplemental learning modules for their local information literacy instruction program.

Web 2.0 Digital Learning Objects are essential components of an efficient academic information literacy program comprised of face‐to‐face and “on demand” virtual approaches. The California State University (CSU) system has identified a core set of DLOs, which are easily available in the MERLOT open access repository. Local development efforts, then, focus on the design and creation of DLOs of local significance.

Librarians at the Dr Martin Luther King, Jr Library in San José, California, USA, are developing local content for Web 2.0‐enabled information literacy instruction. These developments occur within the context of a 23 campus initiative, originating at the Chancellor's Office, which has identified high quality information literacy digital learning objects (DLOs). This core open access collection intends to fulfill academic libraries'core instructional needs and is freely available to any library through the open access MERLOT repository by any library

This paper recommends an approach for local production of virtual information literacy content which benefits from harvesting the “best of the best” currently available on the internet.

The purpose of this paper is to engage with a foundational gendered imaginary in Western medical and popular discourse regarding fetal sexual development. It is an imaginary that consists of dual narratives that bolster an oppositional complementary model of sex-gender. By these accounts male sexual development results from complex and multi-faceted processes generated by the Y chromosome while female sexual development is straightforward, articulated through a discourse of “default sex” (Jost, 1953). Such apparent truths fit seamlessly with the timeworn notion of maleness and masculinity as always already active, and femaleness and femininity always and inevitably passive. In other words, he does and she is.

Despite embryogenetic findings thoroughly debunking these ideas, contemporary medical and biological textbooks remain haunted by outdated androcentric models of sex development. This paper attends to biomedical and everyday understandings of sex and gender to demonstrate how fresh lines of inquiry produce conditions that enable new ways of understanding bodies and embodied experiences.

This paper demonstrates how new ways of thinking can lead to a new understanding with regards to sex, gender, bodies, and experiences.

This paper attends to biomedical and everyday understandings of sex and gender to demonstrate how fresh lines of inquiry produce conditions that enable new ways of understanding bodies and embodied experiences.

This article presents a typology of the medicated self, as developed through in-depth interviews with twenty-two social work students and practitioners. Utilizing an interactionist perspective, the experience of taking psychiatric medication is examined in both samples, using a comparative analysis. Emphasis is placed on the impact of taking psychiatric medication on the sense of self. The data suggest that the development of a medicated self is complex and varied, and includes a small number of those who feel that medication led to an improved self, and the majority who felt damaged by their experience with medication, and expressed varying degrees of ambivalence about its use. Despite this ambivalence, most of our respondents seemed to develop an altruistic, empathetic self geared toward helping others. This self emerged in spite of respondents saying that their self was damaged. Implications are presented, and conclusions and suggestions for further work on the impact of psychiatric medication use on the self are presented.

Strengthening the nation’s technological workforce, competing and expanding its relevance in the global economy, and maintaining personal as well as homeland security will be highly dependent on the quantity, quality, and diversity of the next generations of scientists, engineers, technologists, and mathematicians. Production of a diverse generation of human resources with relevant, competitive skills is critical. However, so too is the need to raise an enlightened citizenry with cross-cultural experience and cultural awareness competency, with a broad worldview and global perspectives. These requirements are critical to understanding the challenges and opportunities of scholarly activity in a pluralistic global environment and positioning ourselves to capitalize upon them. Scholars with cross-cultural experience and competency are empowered to adapt and work collaboratively, nationally and globally, with scholars of different races, geopolitical, socioeconomic, and cultural backgrounds. Development of effective strategies to transform science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) departments for inclusion and to broaden the participation in STEM across cultures, socioeconomic standing, race, and gender in higher education has been a dominant topic of pedagogical interest of national priority in the last several decades. However, success in these endeavors is achievable only through systemic change and a cultural shift to address the underlying root causes of socioeconomic disparity, gender, and racial disparities and a paucity of cultural awareness among all educational stakeholders. STEM departments can only be truly transformed for inclusion through the development of sensitive, creative, and student-engaging curricula and targeted recruitment and retention of underrepresented minorities in STEM. Formation of well-coordinated alliances spanning educational sectors, governmental and non-governmental organizations, and community engagement and outreach are also critical to promoting inclusive and broad participation in STEM education.

The first section of the chapter gives an introduction to various challenges, obstacles, and hindrances that prevent a successful transformation of K–12 science education as well as STEM departments in higher education for inclusion. The second section discusses historical perspectives of the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith (UAFS) – the institutional profile, missions, and visions of UAFS as a regional university. Policies and strategies for addressing the socioeconomic disparity, faculty gender, and racial disparities and cultural competency awareness at UAFS are also highlighted in this section. Other approaches including targeted efforts to recruit and retain underrepresented minority students, provision of financial assistance for students from low-income families, and a creative “Math-up” curriculum innovation to promote inclusive and broad participation in STEM at UAFS are highlighted in the latter section of the chapter. Formation of alliances between UAFS, local K–12 school districts, and governmental and non-governmental agencies to promote broad participation in STEM at UAFS are discussed. The last section of the chapter provides recommendations for adaptation and sustainability of strategies and efforts aimed at transforming national STEM departments for inclusion.

This article discusses the pay packages of executive officers at internetrelated business. Generally, the executives’ total compensation include salary, bonuses, commissions, stock options, and other financial compensation, such as forgiveness of loans, automobile expenses, etc. The 70 to 80 percent of the CEOs’ compensations are from gains of exercising stocks. In this tumbling market, shareholders are suffering the loss from the declining stock prices. However, many CEOs are still left with a mountain of wealth. Meanwhile, the board of directors also raises the stock options to retain their top talents even to those who are under‐performing. Besides CEOs’ compensations, we will also compare the CEO pay with non‐CEO pay packages. The CEOs compensations are still the highest. Furthermore, the average CEO made 42 times the average hourly worker’s pay in 1980, 85 times in 1990, and a staggering 531 times in 2000. Many shareholders are against these out of control pay packages. We conclude that it is time to review the process of determining the CEOs compensation, and that the significant presence of pay‐by‐performance should be taken into account in any examination of the practice and regulation of corporate governance.