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In recent years, the public sector has faced the challenge of digitalisation. This has significantly impacted the relationships between citizens and public organisations and, thus, it widely affects participatory processes, such as participatory budgeting (PB); in fact, digital tools (DTs) have emerged as a solution, increasing citizen engagement whilst improving efficiency, reducing costs and saving time. This contribution analyses PB in Rome, which is also implemented with DTs, seeking to understand how DTs impact citizens’ role in creating public value.

The study is based on a qualitative approach, precisely by analysing a descriptive and exploratory single case study of PB’s first adoption in Rome in 2019. The information is obtained from multiple sources and examined through document analysis.

In the Roman context, DTs in PB primarily facilitated cost-effective information sharing, offering citizens basic participation. Unfortunately, the potential for more interactive DTs was overlooked, failing to enhance citizen engagement in critical phases like deliberation, evaluation or monitoring. Therefore, the tools did not fully support citizens becoming co-creators of public value instead of just users in governance.

The novelty of this study lies in exploring the difference between the use of DTs that assist citizens/users in improving service quality and those that support citizens in creating a public and shared value. It ventures further to assess various tiers of participation, meditating on the digital elements that stimulate active engagement and value creation instead of simply expanding the participant pool or process efficiency.

This paper aims to identify and evaluate resolutions to key learning and teaching challenges in very large courses that involve practical mathematics, such as foundational finance.

A design-based research approach is used across three semesters to iteratively identify practical problems within the course and then develop and evaluate resolutions to these problems. Data are collected from both students and teachers and analysed using a mixed-method approach.

The results indicate that key learning and teaching challenges in large foundational finance courses can be mitigated through appropriate consistency of learning materials; check-your-understanding interactive online content targeting foundational concepts in the early weeks; connection points between students and the coordinator to increase teacher presence; a sustained focus on supporting student achievement within assessments; and signposting relevance of content for the broader program and professional settings. Multiple design iterations using a co-design approach were beneficial to incrementally improve the course and consider multiple perspectives within the design process.

This paper develops a set of design principles to provide guidance to other practitioners who seek to improve their own courses.

The use of design-based research and mixed-method approaches that consider both student and teacher perspectives to examine the design of very large, foundational finance courses is novel.

Educational design patterns offer practical strategies that can be shared and adapted to address problems in teaching and learning. This article explores how educational design patterns for connected learning at scale at an Australian university may be adapted to a Vietnamese higher education context.

12 educational design patterns that address the challenges of active learning and large teaching team management are discussed. The authors then critically reflect on their cross-cultural adaptation for the higher education context, from an Australian to a Vietnamese university.

Transitioning from passive to active learning strategies and effectively leading large teaching teams present similar challenges across our contexts. Educational design patterns, when dynamically adapted, may assist educators to teach skills that are critical for work and the future. Higher education institutions globally could enhance their practices by incorporating international best practice approaches to educational design.

The Connected Learning at Scale (CLaS) educational design patterns explored in this article offer solution-oriented strategies that promote a more active learning experience. This paper identifies adaptations for educators, especially those in Vietnamese higher education that respect traditional structures, cultural nuances and resource limitations in implementation.

Whilst educational design patterns are well-researched in the Western contexts, few studies analyse design patterns in an Asian, and in particular the Vietnamese context. More research is needed in the cross-cultural adaptation of educational design patterns that joins practice and theory.

This study aims to explore how sustainable business models (SBM) can be developed within agri-innovation systems (AIS) and emphasize an integration of the two with a systemic understanding for reducing food loss and value loss in postharvest agri-food supply chain.

This study conducted longitudinal qualitative research in a developing country with food loss challenges in the postharvest supply chain. This study collected data through multiple rounds of fieldwork, interviews and focus groups over four years. Thematic analysis and “sensemaking” were used for inductive data analysis to generate rich contextual knowledge by drawing upon the lived realities of the agri-food supply chain actors.

First, this study finds that the value losses are varied in the supply chain, encompassing production value, intrinsic value, extrinsic value, market value, institutional value and future food value. This happens through two cumulative effects including multiplier losses, where losses in one model cascade into others, amplifying their impact and stacking losses, where the absence of data stacks or infrastructure pools hampers the realisation of food value. Thereafter, this study proposes four strategies for moving from the loss-incurring current business model to a networked SBM for mitigating losses. This emphasises the need to redefine ownership as stewardship, enable formal and informal beneficiary identification, strengthen value addition and build capacities for empowering communities to benefit from networked SBM with AIS initiatives. Finally, this study puts forth ten propositions for future research in aligning AIS with networked SBM.

This study contributes to understanding the interplay between AIS and SBM; emphasising the integration of the two to effectively address food loss challenges in the early stages of agri-food supply chains. The identified strategies and research propositions provide implications for researchers and practitioners seeking to accelerate sustainable practices for reducing food loss and waste in agri-food supply chains.

Professional development (PD) is an essential component of continuing learning for in-service teachers. This paper discusses a school-based example of using the best practice of coaching in early childhood education supported by a professional development school partnership. We explain how a teacher identified need led to a collaborative, multistep approach to meeting that need in connection to State mandates.

In this research, we used a case study methodological approach with a team of preschool teachers at one school. The model combines use of PD sessions, classroom coaching, classroom observation and reflection.

Teachers’ feedback indicates that using the strategy positively impacted most of the participants’ ability to support communication, community-building and inclusive practices in their classrooms. The data that emerged in the following year evidenced increased use of visual supports in classrooms, use in connection with literacy goals and interest in creating new uses in the school.

This article contributes an action-oriented school-based example of bridging research to practice to support teachers’ needs through PD and coaching in a PDS. The design and practical implications may interest preschool educators, instructional coaches, administrators, professional development schools and others involved with monitoring teacher development initiatives.

Just transition is a fundamental concept for supply chain management but neither discipline pays attention to the other and little is known about how supply chains can be orchestrated as socioecological systems to manage these transitions. Building from a wide range of just transition examples, this paper explores just transition to understand how to move beyond instrumental supply chain practices to supply chains functioning in harmony with the planet and its people.

Building from a systematic review of 72 papers, the paper identifies just transition examples while interpreting them through the theoretical lens of supply chain management, providing valuable insights to help research and practice understand how to achieve low-carbon economies through supply chain management in environmentally and socially just ways.

The paper defines, elaborates, and extends the just transition construct by developing a transition taxonomy with two key dimensions. The purpose dimension (profit or shared outcomes) and the governance dimension (government-/industry-led versus civil society-involved), generating four transition archetypes. Most transitions projects are framed around the Euro- and US-centric, capitalist standards of development, leading to coloniality as well as economic and cultural depletion of communities. Framing just transition in accordance with context-specific plural values, the paper provides an alternative perspective to the extractive transition concept. This can guide supply chain management to decarbonise economies and societies by considering the rights of nature, communities and individuals.

Introducing just transition into the supply chain management domain, this paper unifies the various conceptualisations of just transition into a holistic understanding, providing a new foundation for supply chain management research.

This study aims to explore aesthetic atmospheres and their affordances in urban squares to advance knowledge on the research and design of attractive living environments.

Descriptions of pleasant and unpleasant experiences of urban squares were collected using qualitative questionnaires with open-ended questions. The theoretical framework and the lens of aesthetic affordances were applied to pinpoint and understand the connections between the place attributes and experiences.

This study found four distinct aesthetic atmospheres formed by perceived synergies of both the material and immaterial aspects of the environment. It was also found that the atmospheres may shift. A model that shows the aesthetic atmospheres and their potential affordances as layered and emerging is presented.

Everyday aesthetics considered as affordances open new research perspectives for the understanding of what generates attractive living environments – or not.

Aesthetics affordances may provide the design professionals and alike means on how to design places that engender specific aesthetic atmosphere.

Gathering and discussing commonplace aesthetic experiences in everyday life may enhance democratic participation in place development among people with different levels of design expertise.

This study combines theories of place with a novel concept of aesthetic affordances to identify distinct aesthetic atmospheres. A holistic overview structure of how the various constituents of aesthetic atmospheres relate to each other provides new ways of studying and understanding urban aesthetic atmospheres.

This paper explores the potential that block teaching offers to enhance employability in the context of large-scale classes. It suggests that block teaching, with its condensed structure, necessitates curriculum innovation, fosters participatory learning and peer-to-peer networking, and has been shown to increase student focus and enhance engagement and attainment, especially amongst diverse learners. As these are the same challenges that large-scale teaching faces, it is proposed that intensive modes of delivery could be scaled up in a way that may help to mitigate such problems as cohorts in business schools continue to increase in size.

The paper is based on secondary research and provides an overview of literature that looks at block teaching, followed by that which explores the challenges of large-scale teaching contexts. It compares and contrasts the gaps in both to suggest a way that they could be combined.

The paper provides key insights into changes in the contemporary landscape of teaching within UK business schools, which have seen increasingly large cohorts and draws out the key strengths of intensive modes of delivery, which include helping students to time manage effectively, encouraging curriculum innovation and the creation of participatory learning opportunities as well as providing closer personal relationships between students and staff. Outlining some of the well-documented issues that can arise when teaching larger cohorts, the paper suggests that scaling up blocked delivery may offer a new way help to overcome them.

Because of the chosen research approach, the research results are subject to generalisation. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions in large-scale teaching scenarios.

This paper includes implications for the development of innovative modes of teaching in the context of large cohorts, an experience that is increasingly common amongst British business schools and beyond.

This paper brings together two bodies of literature for the first time – that of intensive modes of teaching and that focuses on large-scale teaching contexts – for the first time to show how the former may help to overcome some of the key issues arising in the latter.

This research aims to explore digital feedback needs/preferences in online education during lockdown and the implications for post-pandemic education.

An empirical study approach was used to explore feedback needs and experiences from educational institutions in the Netherlands and Germany (N = 247) using a survey method.

The results showed that instruments supporting features for effortless interactivity are among the highly preferred options for giving/receiving feedback in online/hybrid classrooms, which are in addition also opted for post-pandemic education. The analysis also showed that, when communicating feedback digitally, more inclusive formats are preferred, e.g. informing learners about how they perform compared to peers. The increased need for comparative performance-oriented feedback, however, may affect students' goal orientations. In general, the results of this study suggest that while interactivity features of online instruments are key to ensuring social presence when using digital forms of feedback, balancing online with offline approaches should be recommended.

This research contributes to the gap in the scientific literature on feedback digitalization. Most of the existing research are in the domain of automated feedback generated by various learning environments, while literature on digital feedback in online classrooms, e.g. empirical studies on preferences for typology, formats and communication channels for digital feedback, to the best of the authors’ knowledge is largely lacking. The findings and recommendations of this study extend their relevance to post-pandemic education for which hybrid classroom is opted among the highly preferred formats by survey respondents.

Collaborating with consumers during new product development can provide companies with significant benefits and competitive advantages. Although several studies have been conducted on the design of co-innovation platforms, there is still a need for a more comprehensive understanding of the co-innovation phenomenon. To address this gap, this research aims to identify the critical success factors of co-innovation platforms and provide an extensive analysis of the variables that determine their effectiveness.

This study presents a systematic literature review of co-innovation platforms based on an analysis of 89 articles published in 50 scholarly journals in the disciplines of information systems, marketing and business, covering the years from 2006 to 2022.

The review synthesizes the current state of scientific knowledge and groups prior studies thematically as critical success factors of co-innovation platforms. As a result, eight success factors have been identified in terms of quantity and quality of contributions. These factors include product involvement, perceived fairness, sense of community, interactive environment, employee involvement, participant diversity, assessment structure and task design.

The study consolidates existing research about the critical success of co-innovation platforms. It also provides a research framework that incorporates a diverse set of variables that can be used to assess co-innovation performance in future studies.