Unshackling the Mind, Body, and Spirit: Reflections on Liberation and Creative Exchange between San Quentin and Auckland Prisons

This article explores a creative project entitled Performing Liberation which sought to empower communities with direct experience of incarceration to create and share creative work as part of transnational dialogue. One of the aims of the project was to facilitate creative dialogue and exchange between two incarcerated communities: prisoners at Auckland Prison and prisoners at San Quentin Prison in San Francisco. Written using autoethnographic methods, this co-authored article explores our recollections of key moments in a creative workshop at Auckland Prison in an attempt to explain its impact on stimulating the creativity of the participants. We begin by describing the context of incarceration in the US and New Zealand and suggest that these seemingly divergent locations are connected by mass incarceration. We also provide an overview of the creative contexts at San Quentin and Auckland Prison on which the Performing Liberation project developed. After describing key moments in the workshop, the article interrogates the creative space that it produced in relation to the notion of liberation, as a useful concept to interrogate various forms of oppression, and as a practice that is concerned with unshackling the body, mind, and spirit.

Acquisition versus greenfield in Colombia: Reviewing the effect of cultural distance and vicarious experience

The relation between the cultural distance and the firm’s entry modes to foreign countries has received considerable research attention, and studies have shown the role of experience in this relation. However, previous research has only studied direct experience and neglected the study of vicarious experience. Using a sample of 355 foreign companies that entered Colombia (2007–2017), this research reviews the effect of cultural distance on entry mode choice (e.g., Acquisition vs. Greenfield) and examines the moderating role of vicarious experience in this relationship. The study concludes that the cultural distance positively affects the entry probability by acquisition, and the vicarious experience negatively affects this relationship in four cultural dimensions. If firms have vicarious experience, the effect of cultural distance on the acquisition probability is less and positively influences the entry probability by Greenfield when the cultural distance is in power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism, and long-term orientation. Nevertheless, vicarious experience has the opposite effect when considering the masculinity dimension. Consequently, we highlight the importance of considering vicarious experience as a different variable of direct experience and the individual effects of cultural distance dimensions for cross-cultural studies in management.

Customer Satisfaction with Branch Office Services in Higashihiroshima, Hiroshima Prefecture

This study empirically investigates the major factors that determine customer satisfaction in local government offices in Japan by using three categories of questions. They referred to customer satisfaction studies worldwide, especially to the expectancy disconfirmation model, the SERVQUAL model, and subsequent methods that emphasize customer’s direct experience. The on-site surveys were conducted at the Kurose branch office in Higashihiroshima City. A total of 240 responses were obtained over six weekdays. The regression analysis showed that staff responses and explanations were the most influential, followed by aspects related to the physical office and service delivery quality (adjusted R2 value of .51).

Pemberdayaan komunitas peduli lingkungan melalui PKM Kubermas tahap 1 di Universitas Khairun

Kubermas (Community Work Lecture) is one of the intracurricular programs organized by Khairn University. The form of activity is in the form of service activities to implement the Tri Dharma of Higher Education. In phase 1, the main program of this Kubermas PKM activity is community empowerment to carry out the conservation of spices and herbs in home gardens. The activity location is on Campus 1 of FKIP, Akehuda sub-district, North Ternate city, and RT 14, Kayu Merah sub-district, South Ternate city. The objectives of the Kubermas PKM are 1) to form a community of people who have the sensitivity to plant and care for and utilize herbs and spices in the yard of the house as a conservation effort; 2) provide direct experience to students participating in Kubermas in community empowerment programs at Kubermas locations. The method of service is community participation and training. The results of this community service are public knowledge about the conservation of home garden spices and herbs and knowledge of the use of home garden spices and herbs in the manufacture of Hand Sanitizermade from herbs and Rorano during the pandemic. Students have direct experience of community assistance methods and the use of home gardens.

Utilization of Multimedia in Student News Video Projects on Praktik Jurnalistik Media Televisi Course

This article aims to explain the use of multimedia in the form of the kinemaster application in the learning process of making news videos in the Praktik Jurnalistik Media Televisi course. The method used is a descriptive method with a qualitative approach. Data were collected from field findings, participant data, and researcher reflections. Sources of data obtained from direct experience, the results of interviews, observations, and documentation from lecturers who are in charge of the Praktik Jurnalistik Media Televisi course at the Indonesian Language and Literature Education Study Program, STKIP PGRI Sumatera Barat. Based on the findings, the kinemaster application helps students in producing news videos. After the data, news scripts, and voices that have been recorded are complete, they take advantage of this application to combine video, sound and images. This application provides a fairly complete video editing feature and can directly edit it on the spot without having to move to another application. Thus, the use of learning resources in the form of multimedia applications in the Praktik Jurnalistik Media Televisi will increase the effectiveness of learning, so that learning becomes more meaningful for students to get direct experience in the use of technology.

Peningkatan Kemampuan Siswa Menggambar Ekspresif Melalui Pendekatan Direct Experience Berbantuan Media Komputer

Pembelajaran berbantuan media komputer di era teknologi digital mendukung upaya percepatan untuk meningkatkan keterampilan proses menggambar ekspresif melalui bantuan media komputer. Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui dan mendeskripsikan pembelajaran menggambar siswa. Responden terdiri dari 21 siswa SON Pejaten Timur 22 Jakarta Selatan pada mata pelajaran SBDP menggambar ekspresif dengan media komputer. Jenis penelitian yang dilakukan adalah Penelitian Tindakan Kelas (PTK) yang terdiri dari dua siklus, siklus I dilaksanakan pada tanggal 3 Oktober 2019, dan siklus II pada tanggal10 Oktober 2019 menggunakan model Kemmis dan McTaggart yang terdiri dari empat komponen, yaitu: perencanaan, tindakan, pengamatan, dan refleksi. Teknik pengumpulan data dilakukan dengan observasi dan praktek langsung secara individual. Penelitian tindakan kelas ini menggunakan teori pendekatan kualitatif dan kuantitatif. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa pada siklus I nilai terendah adalah 34, sedangkan nilai tertinggi adalah 74. Jumlah siswa yang telah mencapai nilai KKM dan dikategorikan tuntas adalah sebanyak 14 orang dari 21 siswa atau 66,67%. Pada siklus II, nilai siswa terendah 64, sedangkan nilai tertinggi adalah 74. Jumlah siswa yang telah mencapai nilai KKM dan dikategorikan tuntas adalah 85,71%, dan menjelaskan bahwa penggunaan pendekatan pengalaman langsung berbantuan komputer dapat meningkatkan keterampilan siswa dalam pembelajaran menggambar ekspresif.

The Experience of Depression Relapse among Adult Thai Patients with Depressive Disorder: A Qualitative Study

Background: Depressive disorder is a disease with widespread incidence and has shown an annual increase, while depression relapse is also rising continually due to multiple causes. In Thailand, although many studies have been conducted to prevent depression incidence and relapse, there is little known about the meaning of depression relapse in adult Thai patients. An exploration of the direct experiences of adult Thai patients seems a suitable way to gather data for a care system development. Objectives: The objective of this study is to describe the perceptions of adult Thai patients concerning their experience of depression relapse and its management among adult patients with depressive disorder in the Thai context. Methods: This research is a qualitative study using the directed content analysis approach. In-depth interviews with 20 adult Thai patients with depressive disorders that had direct experience with depression relapse were the data collection method used in this study. The interviews allowed the participants to talk about their experiences with depression relapse and how to manage depressive symptoms; the interviews lasted approximately 60 minutes. Results: Two themes emerged from the study. First, the experience of depression relapse is the feeling of something pulling away from happiness. Second, managing depression relapse. Conclusion: Depression relapse among adult Thai patients with depressive disorder is an experience causing patients to feel that they are losing their happiness again. Care and management of depression relapse by each patient differ, despite being in the same social contexts. Therefore, depression relapse risk assessment is important in the care of each patient in order to design more effective care.

Exploring stakeholder attitudes towards AI in clinical practice

ObjectivesDifferent stakeholders may hold varying attitudes towards artificial intelligence (AI) applications in healthcare, which may constrain their acceptance if AI developers fail to take them into account. We set out to ascertain evidence of the attitudes of clinicians, consumers, managers, researchers, regulators and industry towards AI applications in healthcare.MethodsWe undertook an exploratory analysis of articles whose titles or abstracts contained the terms ‘artificial intelligence’ or ‘AI’ and ‘medical’ or ‘healthcare’ and ‘attitudes’, ‘perceptions’, ‘opinions’, ‘views’, ‘expectations’. Using a snowballing strategy, we searched PubMed and Google Scholar for articles published 1 January 2010 through 31 May 2021. We selected articles relating to non-robotic clinician-facing AI applications used to support healthcare-related tasks or decision-making.ResultsAcross 27 studies, attitudes towards AI applications in healthcare, in general, were positive, more so for those with direct experience of AI, but provided certain safeguards were met. AI applications which automated data interpretation and synthesis were regarded more favourably by clinicians and consumers than those that directly influenced clinical decisions or potentially impacted clinician–patient relationships. Privacy breaches and personal liability for AI-related error worried clinicians, while loss of clinician oversight and inability to fully share in decision-making worried consumers. Both clinicians and consumers wanted AI-generated advice to be trustworthy, while industry groups emphasised AI benefits and wanted more data, funding and regulatory certainty.DiscussionCertain expectations of AI applications were common to many stakeholder groups from which a set of dependencies can be defined.ConclusionStakeholders differ in some but not all of their attitudes towards AI. Those developing and implementing applications should consider policies and processes that bridge attitudinal disconnects between different stakeholders.

The limits of automatic sensorimotor processing during word processing: investigations with repeated linguistic experience, memory consolidation during sleep, and rich linguistic learning contexts

While a number of studies have repeatedly demonstrated an automatic activation of sensorimotor experience during language processing in the form of action-congruency effects, as predicted by theories of grounded cognition, more recent research has not found these effects for words that were just learned from linguistic input alone, without sensorimotor experience with their referents. In the present study, we investigate whether this absence of effects can be attributed to a lack of repeated experience and consolidation of the associations between words and sensorimotor experience in memory. To address these issues, we conducted four experiments in which (1 and 2) participants engaged in two separate learning phases in which they learned novel words from language alone, with an intervening period of memory-consolidating sleep, and (3 and 4) we employed familiar words whose referents speakers have no direct experience with (such as plankton). However, we again did not observe action-congruency effects in subsequent test phases in any of the experiments. This indicates that direct sensorimotor experience with word referents is a necessary requirement for automatic sensorimotor activation during word processing.

Factors Determining Customer Satisfaction with Counter Services of Local Government Offices: On-Site Survey Examining Service Quality at Higashihiroshima City Hall, Japan

This study empirically investigated the major factors determining customer satisfaction with counter services in local government offices in Japan, comparing them with the results of similar surveys conducted by the author in 2020. This study considers visitors’ direct experience of counter services through an on-site survey conducted at a municipal government building, referring to (1) customer satisfaction research in various countries, especially the expectancy disconfirmation model; (2) the SERVQUAL model; and (3) subsequent methods that emphasise the customer’s direct experience. SERVQUAL, as the name suggests, is a five-group scale for evaluating service quality with respect to customer satisfaction. However, in actual organizational settings, five groups of questions may be burdensome to respondents and may reduce the collection rate. The author’s research involves conducting on-site surveys on customer satisfaction or service quality of the local government office using an original three-group questionnaire scale and tailoring the question items to a scale for Japanese local administration settings. The surveys comprise three categories of questions, referring to (1) customer satisfaction research in various countries, especially the expectancy disconfirmation model; (2) the SERVQUAL model; and (3) subsequent methods that emphasise the customer’s direct experience. A total of 1,000 questionnaires were distributed over four weekdays at the City Hall. As of September 27, 2021, there were 537 respondents (response rate: 53.7%). The regression analysis indicated that the independent variables of group C (service delivery) were most influential, followed by those of groups B (human-related factors) and A (office hardware) (adjusted R2 value: .58). Service delivery, human factors, and hardware aspects are important, in that order, to ensure customer satisfaction with the City Hall’s counter services. This is consistent with the results of the author’s Internet survey of users of Osaka City Government’s ward offices. Focusing on the second principal component of the service delivery category (C), promptness and short waiting times do not necessarily affect customer satisfaction positively.