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Moving away from the stories of financial disaster we encountered in Chapter 2, Chapter 3 examines what it means for fans when their club is suddenly awash with more financial muscle than some nation-states due to the generosity of a wealthy benefactor who is seemingly more interested in sporting glory than in financial gain. This chapter engages with the notion of the football club as a billionaire’s plaything. Roman Abramovich’s acquisition of Chelsea in 2003 saw the West London club embark on an eye-watering spending spree and a sustained period of on-field successes, one that was unknown in the club’s history to that point. As a result, we take Chelsea during the Abramovich era as a starting point for considering how this model of ownership affects the relationship between fans and the connection that they have with their club. The evident success that financial muscle can bring shows owners what a happy fanbase is capable of, what they are capable of doing, and what they are capable of ignoring. The success of the financially doped teams of the 2000s created a precedent for winning over a fanbase with a successful football club, but nevertheless sat awkwardly with the normative ideals of how a football club should exist in the world and relate to its supporters.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive overview of the key risks and challenges of Short-Term Study Abroad (STSA), so higher education practitioners and global mobility providers can design effective and safe STSA programmes. The Institute of International Education defines STSA as programmes of up to eight weeks in length, with this standard now widely accepted by both practitioners and scholars (Iskhakova and Bradly, 2022).

This study draws from a comprehensive review of STSA risks literature, cases of published “incidents”, “safety practices”, “risk lists” and examples by global mobility professionals. The paper also draws upon the extensive practical experiences that the authors have acquired through their management of risks while delivering numerous STSA international business programmes for undergraduate students across seven different global destinations (India, USA, UAE, Russia, Croatia, Slovenia and Vietnam).

Through the analysis, the authors identify 42 types of risks and challenges that may be encountered in the delivery of STSA programmes that we group into 12 categories.

The results serve as an effective guide for planning, designing and delivering effective and safe STSA programmes for global mobility practitioners worldwide. The authors also provide an agenda and specific directions for future research on the topic to global mobility scholars.

For those designing STSA programmes, an in-depth understanding of the nature and range of risks during study tours is needed, including how to ensure in-country experiences are safe for all participants while achieving the intended learning outcomes.

Design an innovative Flipped classroom’s Delivery through virtual laboratory.

The fundamental framework of the present investigation is a Participatory Action Research (PAR) design. By merging the impetus of “action.” with the inclusiveness of “participation,” PAR establishes a “network” for collaborative teaching or research. PAR is pertinent to our research because it facilitates the participation of infrastructures and individuals in formulating a critical community. This community encourages critical self-reflection, promotes accountability, redistributes authority, and cultivates confidence in research. PAR fosters constructive transformation in educational environments by utilizing participants' combined insights and experiences to establish a structure for substantive dialogue and proactive measures.

As virtual laboratories are becoming essential in 21st-century science education, we found groundbreaking evidence that can support our novel approach to enhance the quality and equity in education. Our results show that virtual labs engage scientific goals and practices, develop scientific literacy, foster scientific inquiry and problem-solving, and promote metacognition. The effects of the virtual laboratory can develop high self-efficacy and positive attitudes among students. It improves students' laboratory performance, which we noted from laboratory activities, simulations, and long exam results.

The study offers groundbreaking account to depict epistemic fluency aided by virtual laboratory.