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Although Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) has long focused on incorporating writing and related literacy activities into STEM education, the extent to which these pedagogies are widely used in STEM teaching remains unclear, as does their impact on student course performance, especially for underrepresented and marginalized student groups. Using a sample of 18 STEM courses at a private liberal arts university, this study uses unique empirical methods to reconsider, for STEM disciplines, Russell's (1990) claim that WAC has failed to make a "permanent impact" on higher education by a) using photography to document classroom activities in real time and b) using machine learning to categorize these images to determine which learning activities are used in STEM instruction and in what proportions. We find that (a) lecture continues to dominate in STEM education and that (b) some active learning pedagogies (discussion and group work) have ambivalent relationships to course performance (which differ according to student subgroups defined by gender, race, national origin, and other factors) while WAC pedagogies like reading and writing, although rare, are associated with improved student course performance. In light of these findings, we suggest implications for STEM pedagogy, best practices, and future research to prioritize equitably designed pedagogy in STEM.

Vaccination is the primary strategy to prevent COVID-19 illness and hospitalization. However, supplies are scarce and due to the regional mutations of the virus, new vaccines or booster shots will need to be administered potentially regularly. Hence, the prediction of the rate of growth of COVID-19 cases is paramount to ensuring the ample supply of vaccines as well as for local, state, and federal government measures to ensure the availability of hospital beds, supplies, and staff. eVision is an epidemic forecaster aimed at combining Machine Learning (ML) - in the form of a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) Recursive Neural Network (RNN) - and search engine statistics, in order to make accurate predictions about the weekly number of cases for highly communicable diseases. By providing eVision with the relative popularity of carefully selected keywords searched via Google along with the number of positive cases reported from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and/or the World Health Organization (WHO) the model can make highly accurate predictions about the trend of the outbreak by learning the relationship between the two trends. Thus, in order to predict the trend of the outbreak in a specific region, eVision is provided with a weekly count of the number of COVID-19 cases in a region along with statistics surrounding common symptom search phrases such as “loss of smell” and “loss of taste” that have been searched on Google in that region since the start of the pandemic. eVision has, for instance, been able to achieve an accuracy of %89 for predicting the trend of the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States

Purpose: This paper aims to analyze the ethical responses of the fashion industry to the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic when the entire world was shocked by the rapid spread of the virus. The authors describe lessons from emergency ethics of care in the fashion industry during the initial months of COVID-19, which can assist fashion managers in improving ethical decisions in future operations. Design/methodology/approach: Rapid qualitative research methods were employed by conducting real-time, in-depth interviews with key informants from multinational fashion companies operating in Spain, a severely affected region. A content analysis of news articles published during the first months of 2020 was conducted. Findings: Five critical disruptions in the fashion industry were identified: (1) changes in public needs, (2) transportation and distribution backlogs, (3) defective and counterfeit supplies, (4) stakeholder relationships at stake and (5) managers' coping challenges. Additionally, five business survival responses with a strong ethics of care component were identified, implemented by some fashion companies to mitigate the damage: (1) adapting production for public well-being, (2) enhancing the flexibility of logistic networks, (3) emphasizing quality and innovation, (4) reinventing stakeholder collaborations and (5) practicing responsible leadership. Originality/value: Despite the well-documented controversies surrounding unethical practices within the fashion industry, even during COVID-19, our findings inform managers of the potential and capability of fashion companies to operate more responsibly. The lessons learned can guide fashion companies' operations in a post-pandemic society. Furthermore, they can address other grand challenges, such as natural disasters, geopolitical conflicts and climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify what Colombians perceive as effective and least effective/ineffective managerial behavior. Design/methodology/approach: This study was conducted following a qualitative methodology based on the philosophical assumptions of pragmatism and the "pragmatic approach" (Morgan, 2007). The critical incident technique was used to generate data from a purposive sample of 27 managers and non-managerial employees located in Medellin and Bogota, Colombia. Findings: The results of this study suggest that effective managers in Colombia are those who are supportive, caring, considerate, participative, understanding, communicative and flexible, and are also good problem solvers. Research limitations/implications: This study focused on the perceptions of Colombian managers and non-managerial employees only. Therefore, the description of effective and least effective/ineffective managers in Colombia could be highly value-laden from the national cultural perspective. Hence, it is recommended that further research should be carried out to explore the perceptions of international managers who have frequently interacted or worked with Colombian managers. Originality/value: The results of this study have practical implications for Colombian managers and international managers who manage the Colombian workforce. For Colombian managers, this study provides insight into what is considered effective or least effective/ineffective managerial and leadership behavior. The findings provide useful information on foreign multinational corporations (MNCs) that have operations in Colombia. MNCs can use the results of this study to create effective management development models for their expatriates in Colombia.

The increasing importance of global virtual teams in business is reflected in the classroom by the increased adoption of activities that facilitate real-time cross-cultural interaction. This article documents the experience of students from two Colombian universities who participated in a collaborative international project using virtual teams as part of the international business (IB) curriculum. The data reveals that in spite of challenges associated with time zone differences, technology limitations, and trust issues, the vast majority of students perceived that the use of virtual teams as a teaching tool facilitates cultural understanding and IB-relevant learning. The findings of this research suggest that online experiential exercises can be an effective approach in teaching and in the development of virtual collaboration skills.