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1 – 10 of 14Naif Alghamdi, Alexandra den Heijer and Hans de Jonge
The purpose of this paper is to analyse 12 assessment tools of sustainability in universities and develop the structure and the contents of these tools to be more intelligible…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyse 12 assessment tools of sustainability in universities and develop the structure and the contents of these tools to be more intelligible. The configuration of the tools reviewed highlight indicators that clearly communicate only the essential information. This paper explores how the theoretical concept of a sustainable university is translated into more measurable variables to support practitioners and academics in assessing sustainability in universities.
Design/methodology/approach
The main method for this paper was a desk study approach, which incorporated reviewing research papers, graduate theses, academic books, network platforms and websites.
Findings
The tools reviewed share similar traits in terms of criteria, sub-criteria and indicators. Five benchmarks are essential for a holistic framework: management; academia; environment; engagement and innovation.
Practical implications
This research can not only be used to improve existing assessment tools but also as a means to develop new tools tailored for universities that face a variety of challenges and lack the ability to measure their sustainability policies.
Social implications
Making higher education more sustainable through all the criteria mentioned influences students, as well as staff, to maintain a culture of sustainability.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the literature by simplifying and detailing the structure and contents of the tools in a way which indicators are shown, giving a full picture of these tools to enable universities to be more aware of the sustainability issues that affect them.
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Abstract
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This study investigated the effect of cooperative learning on the performance of female college students enrolled in “writing and research” courses at Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd…
Abstract
This study investigated the effect of cooperative learning on the performance of female college students enrolled in “writing and research” courses at Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd University (Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia). Cooperative learning (CL) activities were employed in place of traditional lectures and group activities. Two populations were compared, one with the CL methodology and one with traditional methodology. The results were assessed by final exam scores, final course grades, the number of students passing, pre and post-tests and a self-report survey. We found that this sample of Arab college students performed at a higher level in the CL classes than in the traditional classes. Findings suggest that CL is an effective method for teaching Arab college students.
Stephen T. Homer and Kuan Siew Khor
This paper aims to highlight a multidimensional model of sustainability practices that are considered meaningful and practical for implementation by higher education institutions…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to highlight a multidimensional model of sustainability practices that are considered meaningful and practical for implementation by higher education institutions (HEIs).
Design/methodology/approach
The Concept System® Global MAX© software facilitated the bottom-up approach of this study, where 32 staff and students of a private HEI were prompted with the question, “What design features or facilities should the university building have for you to consider the building sustainable?” Their opinions were collected as statements via online brainstorming and the process was followed through with the sorting and rating of reduced statements. The software was also used to perform multi-dimensional scaling and cluster analysis to generate the findings of this study.
Findings
An eight-cluster solution was proposed based on the themes within respective clusters. Respondents rated the importance of sustainability resource usage and sustainability and technology highly. Whilst sustainable campus facilities appeal to students, education for sustainable development were more important to staff.
Originality/value
The community-based participatory research recommends activities that enhance the adoption of sustainable development in making universities a “living lab” for sustainability.
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Muhammad Zahid, Haseeb Ur Rahman, Wajahat Ali, Muhammad Nauman Habib and Fazaila Shad
The integration of sustainability is more matured in the corporate sector. However, the topic received less attention in higher education institutions (HEIs). Therefore, this…
Abstract
Purpose
The integration of sustainability is more matured in the corporate sector. However, the topic received less attention in higher education institutions (HEIs). Therefore, this study aims to conceptualize an integration framework and proposes sustainability integration and implementation index in the HEIs.
Design/methodology/approach
The index was developed from previous literature. For the implementation of the index, three universities were selected. The required data collected from websites, internal documents and interviews with the high officials of these universities.
Findings
Sample universities have somehow inclination toward the broad agenda of sustainable development, but still, they lack integration, implementation and reporting of their sustainable practices. Moreover, the departments have positive and practical intent toward sustainability especially regarding the environment, designing curriculum, teaching, research activities and volunteerism. However, in assessment, the social and economic contributions of these universities revealed to be somewhat mild. The findings also evidenced heterogeneity among the sample institutions to follow the said agenda which reflects a lack of awareness and policy or a centralized or regulatory push from the top.
Research limitations/implications
The study is limited to three universities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Hence, in the future, the framework and index may be tested in other universities of the country or region. Nevertheless, the study carries theoretical significance in the literature of sustainability.
Practical implications
The study has practical implications for academia, regulatory bodies and universities to integrate, implement and report sustainability in HEIs.
Originality/value
The study proposes and validates the sustainability integration and implementation index in HEIs. The index is unique and has originality or value particularly for HEIs of the developing countries.
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Hanan Alghamdi and Ali Selamat
With the proliferation of terrorist/extremist websites on the World Wide Web, it has become progressively more crucial to detect and analyze the content on these websites…
Abstract
Purpose
With the proliferation of terrorist/extremist websites on the World Wide Web, it has become progressively more crucial to detect and analyze the content on these websites. Accordingly, the volume of previous research focused on identifying the techniques and activities of terrorist/extremist groups, as revealed by their sites on the so-called dark web, has also grown.
Design/methodology/approach
This study presents a review of the techniques used to detect and process the content of terrorist/extremist sites on the dark web. Forty of the most relevant data sources were examined, and various techniques were identified among them.
Findings
Based on this review, it was found that methods of feature selection and feature extraction can be used as topic modeling with content analysis and text clustering.
Originality/value
At the end of the review, present the current state-of-the- art and certain open issues associated with Arabic dark Web content analysis.
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Heng-Yang Lu, Yi Zhang and Yuntao Du
Topic model has been widely applied to discover important information from a vast amount of unstructured data. Traditional long-text topic models such as Latent Dirichlet…
Abstract
Purpose
Topic model has been widely applied to discover important information from a vast amount of unstructured data. Traditional long-text topic models such as Latent Dirichlet Allocation may suffer from the sparsity problem when dealing with short texts, which mostly come from the Web. These models also exist the readability problem when displaying the discovered topics. The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel model called the Sense Unit based Phrase Topic Model (SenU-PTM) for both the sparsity and readability problems.
Design/methodology/approach
SenU-PTM is a novel phrase-based short-text topic model under a two-phase framework. The first phase introduces a phrase-generation algorithm by exploiting word embeddings, which aims to generate phrases with the original corpus. The second phase introduces a new concept of sense unit, which consists of a set of semantically similar tokens for modeling topics with token vectors generated in the first phase. Finally, SenU-PTM infers topics based on the above two phases.
Findings
Experimental results on two real-world and publicly available datasets show the effectiveness of SenU-PTM from the perspectives of topical quality and document characterization. It reveals that modeling topics on sense units can solve the sparsity of short texts and improve the readability of topics at the same time.
Originality/value
The originality of SenU-PTM lies in the new procedure of modeling topics on the proposed sense units with word embeddings for short-text topic discovery.
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This paper aims to develop a simple model for estimating sustainable development goals index using the capabilities of artificial neural networks.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to develop a simple model for estimating sustainable development goals index using the capabilities of artificial neural networks.
Design/methodology/approach
Sustainable development has three pillars, including social, economic and environmental pillars. Three clusters corresponding to the three pillars were created by extracting sub-indices of three 2018 global reports and performing cluster analysis on the correlation matrix of sub-indices. By setting the sustainable development goals index as the target variable and selecting one indicator from each cluster as input variables, 20 artificial neural networks were run 30 times.
Findings
Artificial neural networks with seven nodes in one hidden layer can estimate sustainable development goals index by using just three inputs, including ecosystem vitality, human capital and gross national income per capita. There is an excellent similarity (>95%) between the results of the artificial neural network and the sustainable development goals index.
Practical implications
Instead of calculating 232 indicators for determining the value of sustainable development goals index, it is possible to use only three sub-indices, but missing 5% of precision, by using the proposed artificial neural network model.
Originality/value
The study provides additional information on the estimating of sustainable development and proposes a new simple method for estimating the sustainable development goals index. It just uses three sub-indices, which can be retrieved from three global reports.
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Amir Masoud Rahmani, Ali Ehsani, Mokhtar Mohammadi, Adil Hussein Mohammed, Sarkhel H. Taher Karim and Mehdi Hosseinzadeh
The concept of e-learning is essential in employee education since it provides different ways to develop employees' knowledge, skills and attitudes using modern technologies…
Abstract
Purpose
The concept of e-learning is essential in employee education since it provides different ways to develop employees' knowledge, skills and attitudes using modern technologies. E-learning has been overgrowing in employee education because learning can be held anytime and anywhere. In order to succeed in implementing e-learning and benefiting from its capacities, and avoiding potential threats in the country, it is necessary to address the factors affecting its success. This paper aims to test the role of internet of Things (IoT)-based systems, cloud-based services, virtual classes, evaluation tools, attitude, content management and creativity on the success of employees' e-learning programs based on a framework.
Design/methodology/approach
E-learning systems receive ever-increasing attention in academia, business and public administration. With the development of e-learning, employee education has also benefited from its capacities in various fields. To succeed in implementing e-learning and benefiting from its capacities, and avoiding potential threats in the country, it is necessary to address its success. The proposing of Information and Communications Technology (ICT)-based technologies such as the IoT, cloud, etc., in e-learning, can help transform education. Therefore, this paper aims to test the role of IoT-based systems, cloud-based services, virtual classes, evaluation tools, attitude, content management and creativity on the success of employees' e-learning programs based on a framework. The research model and the data collected from the questionnaires have been analyzed via Smart PLS 3.2. This study has utilized the SEM to evaluate the causal model's reliability and validity based on measurement. According to the literature in this study, a framework has been proposed that examines the impact of IoT-based systems, cloud-based services, virtual classes, evaluation tools, attitude, content management and creativity on employees' learning programs' success.
Findings
The results have shown that IoT-based systems, cloud-based services, virtual classes and evaluation tools are four significant factors affecting attitude, content management and creativity. The results have also shown that attitude, content management and creativity are three significant factors affecting employees' learning programs' success. The factors above are considered critical in explaining the success of employees' e-learning programs, but, as far as we know, there has been no study in which all these factors were demonstrated together.
Practical implications
From a practical viewpoint, the statistical outcomes support the important role of the following factors: IoT-based systems, cloud-based services, virtual classes, evaluation tools, attitude, content management and creativity. Henceforth, aspects relating to these factors got the attention of any organization to develop e-learning processes.
Originality/value
This research will contribute to the literature related to employees' e-learning programs' success by integrating all the mentioned variables. As far as we know, it is the first study to test these variables in Iran.
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Magdalena Maria Popowska and Monika Sady
This study aims to identify a sustainable university’s key features. It is an essential step in tracing the topics discussed in the context of a sustainable university and their…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to identify a sustainable university’s key features. It is an essential step in tracing the topics discussed in the context of a sustainable university and their evolution in the scientific discourse.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper relies on a systematic literature review (SLR) conducted using two scholarly databases: Emerald and Scopus. The timeframe selected by the authors for reviewing the available sources spans from 2001 to 2021.
Findings
The analysis distinguished seven sustainable university categories, each revealing critical features of sustainable higher education. Each of these categories represents an intriguing area for in-depth analysis. The SLR reveals gaps requiring further scientific exploration.
Research limitations/implications
The performed literature review was determined by the choice of entries (keywords) to identify the scientific papers in the selected databases. Moreover, as the authors aimed to focus on peer-reviewed sources, this SLR did not include books and doctoral dissertations dealing with the studied issues.
Practical implications
The results of the analysis can be used practically by both researchers and practitioners in the field of sustainable development (SD). Identified scientific gaps become a potential research field, and practitioners interested in the transition toward SD may contribute by accompanying universities in this journey. Collaboration and networking with business stakeholders are critical vectors for spreading the idea of SD.
Social implications
Society’s growing concern for climate change requires accurate and specific actions from institutions. As entities educating future generations, universities have a unique role in transforming toward SD. The findings allow us to get acquainted with the existing main activities undertaken by higher education institutions in this field and understand the importance of this topic for researchers.
Originality/value
SLR is a cornerstone of research synthesis and helps integrate scientific evidence from qualitative and quantitative published studies. Conducted research presents knowledge about university sustainability and can help scientists find research gaps.
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