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The purpose of this paper is to examine student, program and institutional support characteristics that relate to cohort intent to persist among Professional Golfers’ Association Golf Management University Program (PGA-GMUP) undergraduate students from 12 universities.

A survey instrument was created and disseminated to the targeted population. Multiple regressions were used to analyze the 473 responses of students’ intention to persist across the three independent variables (student, program and institutional support).

The research findings suggest higher levels of college GPA, career goals specific to the student’s desire to become a PGA professional, higher levels of faculty engagement, higher levels of satisfaction with major, being a leader in the student association and involvement in the student association are related to students’ intent to persist. Conversely, the results suggest career goals focused on being happy instead of graduation or working as a PGA professional and finding it difficult to make friends are associated with lower levels of intention to persist, while parental expectations of advanced degrees negatively affected students’ intent to persist. Additionally, passing a player ability test did not have bearing on intention to persist.

Results from this analysis offer insight into which persistence factors lead to students’ matriculation, with the ultimate goal of program completion. Identifying persistence factors may help PGA-GMUPs and other hospitality programs recruit students that are more likely to persist in the program, develop program characteristics that optimize cohort matriculation, and utilize university or institutional support services characteristics that may ensure program completion.

Given declining tuition funds and government grants, Kenyan universities need to develop strategies, including increased research grants and collaborations, to diversify their income sources. Well-managed doctoral students can boost a university’s teaching and research outputs. However, numbers of students enrolled in doctoral programmes at Kenyan universities are low, and graduation rates and time-to-graduate statistics are disturbing. Research undertaken elsewhere underline the important role played by supervisors and peers in facilitating students’ sense of belonging and their success. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the influence of supervisory and peer support on PhD students’ sense of belonging and their success at Kenyan universities.

In this cross-sectional study, data were gathered through an online questionnaire from 614 students admitted to doctoral programmes at Kenyan universities between 2010 and 2018. We used multi-item scales to collect data on PhD students’ self-efficacy, supervisory and peer support and a sense of belonging.

Structural equation modelling results revealed that PhD students’ modes of study and self-efficacy were significantly associated with the quality of supervision, peer support and a sense of belonging. However, only age, a sense of belonging and the quality of supervision were directly linked to their success.

This study contributes to the literature on doctoral-level education, responding to the need for research on the influence of relationships with supervisors and peers on PhD students’ sense of belonging and their success, especially in developing countries.

The purpose of this paper is to facilitate the spread of accessible e-books, especially ones of STEM much more in developing countries, an efficient/systematic scheme to localize tools for producing/reading them should be established. Furthermore, even in many advanced countries, Print-disabled people still do not have a good tool to write a content including technical notations such as mathematical formulas in their own local language. This work is aimed at giving a practical solution for those problems.

Here, multilingual support in a tool to produce accessible STEM contents and its new localization scheme are discussed.

It is shown that the accessible STEM-document editor can be customized easily for print-disabled people so that they can read and author a material including complicated technical notations in their own local language. The localization for Vietnamese and other various languages actually has been worked on.

The Vietnamese version was completed, and some prototype versions for the other languages were also given. It is expected that the software can contribute to improve STEM accessibility much more in many countries.

The aim of the paper is to analyze how actors in foodservice companies organize for inbound open innovation (OI).

This paper conducted a case analysis of a large and successful foodservice company operating in the Dutch market. Furthermore, drawing on 18 interviews and archive data, we identified the main organizational practices involved in the implementation of inbound innovation activities and the ways they are embraced are defined.

The results provide a holistic view of the main organizational practices a foodservice company implemented at different organizational levels, to exploit external knowledge coming from third parties and to promote the sharing and recombination of knowledge resources within the organization. The identified organizational practices reveal the main interaction patterns between relevant internal actors and other external parties in the company network, as well as between actors on different hierarchical organizational levels which allows processing relevant innovation information and make relevant decisions about it.

Implications are provided in terms of both theory and practice. This paper helps foodservice companies to create an internal organizational environment that supports the exploitation of customer knowledge.

There are few studies on how companies organize themselves for OI in general, and especially in the foodservice sector.

The purpose of this papers is to provide an overview of how students and teachers in Taiwan conceptualize learning, especially in technology-enhanced learning environments. Their conceptions of learning reveal the extent to which the prevalence of technological use in education has facilitated students to cultivate a more advanced conception of learning and develop a deeper learning approach.

It reviews a total of nine relevant case studies, covering the contexts of conventional schools (from elementary schools to college, and cram schools) as well as technology-enhanced environments (internet-assisted learning and mobile learning); and participants from Grade 2 students to adult learners as well as teachers. Their conceptions of learning and preferred learning approaches are summarized.

Results of the studies show the Taiwanese students’ and teachers’ conceptions of learning in general and of technology-enhanced learning in particular. The students tended to be passive learners to receive instructions and considered examinations as a short-term goal for their study, with surface learning approaches commonly adopted. Despite technology may help to promote their cultivation of a more sophisticated conception of learning, many of them still opted for rote memorization and practice as the major ways to study. The potentials of technology in enhancing learning thus have not been fully realized.

The results shed light on an Asian-specific educational culture which is exam oriented. They reveal the challenges regarding the use of technology in education, which hinder the promotion of students’ advanced conceptions of learning. They also highlight the directions of future work to create a more accessible and gratifying technology-enhanced environment.

In this paper a systematic and well-defined student participation assessment scheme for college courses is proposed. The scheme supports the involvement of students in a variety of areas of participation within and outside the classroom with the aim of improving their learning. The scheme addresses mostly the challenges related to the practicality of the structure and design of the assessment. It also addresses the subjectivity of grading student participations. Areas of participation are widened to allow the faculty more accurate information about the conduct of each individual student towards more objective assessment. In addition, it provides the faculty with the flexibility to select areas that best fit the learning outcomes, nature of the course, availability of time and resources, and class atmosphere. The proposed scheme is initiated and developed using feedback from the teaching staff of Nizwa College of Technology, (NCT) through a survey and open discussion. The results indicate that over two thirds of the surveyed staff show agreement with the concept of assessing participation and find the scheme design clear and systematic, while 82% of them perceive the scheme as effective in improving the motivation and learning of students.

The ever-changing educational landscape, exacerbated by recent events surrounding COVID, political and cultural unrest, necessitates educators who are antifragile, able to withstand pressures and thrive amidst uncertainty. To this end, the pilot study reported here aims to examine mathematics educators’ initial reflections on what it means to be a risk-taker in the classroom, what prevents them from engaging in instructional risks and what would support their instructional risk-taking.

The pilot study utilized interviews with participants, including four pre-service teachers who were enrolled at the university and seven in-service teachers who were employed on active PDS campuses within the school district.

Preliminary findings suggest teacher beliefs concerning risk-taking, the barriers to engaging in such behaviors and the support needed to be able to take instructional risks. Results highlight the role of school–university partnerships in cultivating a culture of risk-taking through active collaboration and dialogue.

These findings have important implications for universities and PDS partners engaged in preparing teachers for an educational field that is unpredictable and continually changing. Additional research should be completed in varying PDS settings.

Findings highlight the role of school–university partnerships in cultivating a culture of risk-taking through active collaboration and dialogue.

Educators are currently faced with an unprecedented instructional landscape. Antifragile, risk-taking teachers are needed who are adaptable and innovative, thus better equipped to enter the challenging and uncertain realities of education.

The study explored the impact of the King and Queen of Mathematics Initiative (KQMI) in promoting students’ interest in learning mathematics and improving their achievement. The specific objectives of the study focused on the impact of the initiative in promoting interest in mathematics, assessing the contribution of the initiative to students’ achievements and investigating challenges encountered by the initiative.

The study used a case study design with a mixed-method approach. One ward secondary school was involved. The sample size was N = 79, where 77 were grade three students in a science class and two teachers. Data collection involved documentary review, observation and interviews. Data analysis employed both content analysis and a dependent t-test to determine the effect size of the initiative.

The findings revealed that KQMI had a significant impact on improving performance in mathematics among students (t (71) = −7.917, p < 0.05). The study also showed that male students improved their performance more than their counterparts throughout the KQMI. The mathematics teacher revealed that students still need assistance to solve mathematical questions with different techniques to develop the expected competencies.

The initiative was conducted only in one school, limiting the findings’ generalization. Also, the innovation faced different challenges, such as accessing adequate resources and students with little knowledge of mathematics, which the initiative aimed to address.

Pedagogical innovations enhance the promotion of students’ interest in learning mathematics and hence improve their performance. Also, through pedagogical innovations, teachers improve their teaching skills and practices from students’ feedback.

The KQMI is a new pedagogical innovation modified from the existing innovations such as game-based method, task design, mobile learning and mathematics island.

The purpose of this paper is to describe an online faculty development pilot course on how to engage students online. A framework was used, referred to as the Trifecta of Student Engagement, for the design of the course. The Trifecta of Student Engagement proposes that students, in order to be fully engaged in a course, need to be engaged with their course content, with their peers and with their instructor. The course has three units of content that each correspond to the Trifecta of Student Engagement. This course has gone through one pilot with faculty and has impacted students and faculty positively.

An online faculty development course was piloted with eight faculty members across a range of disciplines who participated in the program. After taking the course, they had to apply the Trifecta of Student Engagement framework to a course they taught and share what they did via written report, webinar, or web presentation. This study summarized the faculty participants’ written reports and presentations as well as provided a qualitative evaluation on the impact this course had on students and faculty.

After faculty applied the Trifecta of Student Engagement framework to courses taught, faculty saw an improvement in student engagement, satisfaction, learning and achievement. Three faculty surveyed students to determine their engagement and satisfaction and found students to respond positively to the use of tools and activities for student-to-content engagement, student-to-student engagement and student-to-instructor engagement. Two faculty examined student grades to determine if there were changes in student outcomes. One professor saw average grades increase by 11 percent. Another professor saw grades improve by 8 percent. She also found that student assessment of learning increased by 0.57. Both faculty attributed the improvement to the effectiveness of the teaching strategies employed.

This research is limited to the eight faculty who participated in the pilot. Some faculty used methods to attempt to measure the impacts of their teaching practices by surveying students and looking at student performance data. A second pilot is needed for additional faculty to take the course and apply the Trifecta of Engagement framework to generate more data for impact.

Institutions looking to create an online teaching professional development course for faculty can utilize the Trifecta of Student Engagement framework for their course design. Additionally, faculty can read about tools and strategies that they can immediately apply to create more student-to-content engagement, student-to-student engagement and student-to-instructor engagement.

Faculty can be more intentional in how they engage students in their online course experience.

This paper adds to the literature on faculty development regarding student-centered teaching practices. Other institutions looking to create a faculty development course or program that utilizes a student-centered framework may find aspects of this paper useful for their own online teaching professional development initiatives.

This study aims to validate the English version of a WHO-adapted questionnaire: Zika infection awareness/knowledge questionnaire using a unique dual-approach validation model.

A cross-sectional pilot study of 30 adult respondents in Malaysia completed the self-administered questionnaire on knowledge and perception to Zika infection. Construct validity was assessed by exploratory factor analysis (EFA) of SPSS and Rasch partial credit. Reliability is tested using pKR20 and Cronbach’s alpha.

Knowledge construct was unidimensional, good model fit, easy to endorse and well discriminative. Five-rating Likert scale for perception domain was appropriate. Knowledge domain should be separated into 6 level of difficulties. Perception domain should remain as one construct. Knowledge domain was highly reliability (pKR20 = 0.96), perception domain was fairly reliable (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.641). Respondent's ability to answer knowledge domain and perception domain were separated into 3 and 4 levels.

Small sample size may affect factor analysis.

The questionnaire has good psychometric properties to measure the knowledge and perception of Zika infection among Malaysian community.

The questionnaire helped to gauge knowledge and perception of the general community in Malaysia to aid preparation of health education tool for Zika infection.

This paper validated questionnaire with two biostatistical software programs in bidirectional approach – items difficulty and respondents' ability – is the first field test of WHO questionnaire among general population in Southeast Asia.