Search results

Virtual reality (VR) has been explored as a training and testing environment in a range of work contexts, and increasingly so in transport. There is, however, a lack of research exploring the role of VR in the training of tram drivers, and in providing an environment in which advances in tram technology can be tested safely. This study aimed to test a novel haptic tram master controller within a tram-based Virtual environment (VE).

The master controller is the primary mechanism for operating a tram, and its effective manipulation can significantly influence the comfort and well-being of passengers, as well as the overall safety of the tram system. Here, the authors tested a haptically enhanced master controller that provides additional sensory information with 16 tram drivers. The feasibility and user acceptance of the novel technology were determined through surveys.

The results indicate that the haptic master controller is seen as beneficial to the drivers suggesting that it could enhance their driving and demonstrate good acceptance. The VE has provided a potential training environment that was accepted by the drivers and did not cause adverse effects (e.g. sickness).

Although this study involved actual tram drivers from a local tram company, the authors acknowledge that the sample size was small, and additional research is needed to broaden perspectives and gather more user feedback. Furthermore, while this study focused on subjective feedback to gauge user acceptance of the new haptic technology, the authors agree that future evaluations should incorporate additional objective measures.

The insights gained from this VE-based research can contribute to future training scenarios and inform the development of technology used in real-world tram operations.

Through this investigation, the authors showed the broader possibilities of haptics in enhancing the functionality and user experience of various technological devices, while also contributing to the advancement of tram systems for safer and more efficient urban mobility.

The ageing and disabled population is fast growing, which emphasises the need to effectively modify current homes and environments to support healthy ageing and increasingly diverse health needs. This paper aims to bring together findings and analyses from three adaptations-focussed projects, drawing on perspectives from key stakeholders alongside the lived experiences of service users acquiring adaptations.

Following an Adaptations Framework developed from interviews and focus groups with older people and key stakeholders, the paper discusses barriers experienced by older people and front-line workers in receiving and delivering adaptations through all stages of the process.

This paper reveals how experiences around adaptations might diverge with unseen, hidden investment and need amongst individuals, and how conceptual and cost-focussed evidence gaps impact wider understandings of adaptations delivery. In so doing, this paper highlights how the adaptations process is perceived as a “fight” that does not work smoothly for either those delivering or receiving adaptations services.

The paper suggests a systematic failure such that the adaptations process needs to be rehauled, reset and prioritised within social and public policy if the housing, health and social care sectors are to support healthy ageing and prepare for the future ageing population.

The paper brings together insights from key stakeholders alongside service users' experiences of adaptations to highlight key policy drivers and barriers to accessing and delivering adaptations.

This paper aims to explore the core elements and essential characteristics of entrepreneurship pedagogy in American higher education institutions, outlining a model from multiple participants’ perspectives and offering a blueprint for teaching entrepreneurship in higher education settings.

Structured interviews were conducted with 26 participants involved in entrepreneurship education in American higher education institutions, including teaching managers, teachers and students. The interview data were transformed into documentary materials and analyzed through grounded theory.

The characteristics of the core elements of entrepreneurship education pedagogy in American higher education institutions include unified and distinctive teaching content, diverse and practical teaching methods, disciplinary and interdisciplinary curriculum system, professional and inclusive teaching team, procedural and systematic teaching evaluation. More profoundly, entrepreneurship pedagogy in American universities can be conceptualized as a flywheel model, propelled by the significant autonomy of teachers. Teacher autonomy empowers dynamic interactions among teaching content, teaching method, curriculum development and teaching evaluation, facilitating ongoing innovation in American entrepreneurship pedagogy like a rapidly forward-rolling wheel.

This study contributes to a better understanding of the pedagogy of American entrepreneurship education as a mature discipline, which may assist educators in teaching entrepreneurship at the college level. Moreover, a flywheel model of entrepreneurship pedagogy is offered, emphasizing teacher autonomy as a vital but often overlooked role in the development of entrepreneurship education.

A new Chatbot system is implemented to provide both voice-based and textual-based communication to address student queries without any delay. Initially, the input texts are gathered from the chat and then the gathered text is fed to pre-processing techniques like tokenization, stemming of words and removal of stop words. Then, the pre-processed data are given to the Natural Learning Process (NLP) for extracting the features, where the XLnet and Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) are utilized to extract the features. From these extracted features, the target-based fused feature pools are obtained. Then, the intent detection is carried out to extract the answers related to the user queries via Enhanced 1D-Convolutional Neural Networks with Long Short Term Memory (E1DCNN-LSTM) where the parameters are optimized using Position Averaging of Binary Emperor Penguin Optimizer with Colony Predation Algorithm (PA-BEPOCPA). Finally, the answers are extracted based on the intent of a particular student’s teaching materials like video, image or text. The implementation results are analyzed through different recently developed Chatbot detection models to validate the effectiveness of the newly developed model.

A smart model for the NLP is developed to help education-related institutions for an easy way of interaction between students and teachers with high prediction of accurate data for the given query. This research work aims to design a new educational Chatbot to assist the teaching-learning process with the NLP. The input data are gathered from the user through chats and given to the pre-processing stage, where tokenization, steaming of words and removal of stop words are used. The output data from the pre-processing stage is given to the feature extraction phase where XLnet and BERT are used. In this feature extraction, the optimal features are extracted using hybrid PA-BEPOCPA to maximize the correlation coefficient. The features from XLnet and features from BERT were given to target-based features fused pool to produce optimal features. Here, the best features are optimally selected using developed PA-BEPOCPA for maximizing the correlation among coefficients. The output of selected features is given to E1DCNN-LSTM for implementation of educational Chatbot with high accuracy and precision.

The investigation result shows that the implemented model achieves maximum accuracy of 57% more than Bidirectional long short-term memory (BiLSTM), 58% more than One Dimansional Convolutional Neural Network (1DCNN), 59% more than LSTM and 62% more than Ensemble for the given dataset.

The prediction accuracy was high in this proposed deep learning-based educational Chatbot system when compared with various baseline works.

Following the recent rise in generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools, fundamental questions about their wider impacts have started to reverberate around various disciplines. This study aims to track the unfolding landscape of general issues surrounding GenAI tools and to elucidate the specific opportunities and limitations of these tools as part of the technology-assisted enhancement of mechanical engineering education and professional practices.

As part of the investigation, the authors conduct and present a brief scientometric analysis of recently published studies to unravel the emerging trend on the subject matter. Furthermore, experimentation was done with selected GenAI tools (Bard, ChatGPT, DALL.E and 3DGPT) for mechanical engineering-related tasks.

The study identified several pedagogical and professional opportunities and guidelines for deploying GenAI tools in mechanical engineering. Besides, the study highlights some pitfalls of GenAI tools for analytical reasoning tasks (e.g., subtle errors in computation involving unit conversions) and sketching/image generation tasks (e.g., poor demonstration of symmetry).

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study presents the first thorough assessment of the potential of GenAI from the lens of the mechanical engineering field. Combining scientometric analysis, experimentation and pedagogical insights, the study provides a unique focus on the implications of GenAI tools for material selection/discovery in product design, manufacturing troubleshooting, technical documentation and product positioning, among others.

Even after establishing their business successfully, many business owners get demotivated, and it leads to unwillingness to grow. This study aims to propose a comprehensive model that represents interrelationships among various personal factors affecting “unwillingness to grow.”

The personal factors for unwillingness to grow were identified by extant literature, and expert interviews were conducted to establish the contextual relationships among these factors. The interrelationships among the filtered variables have been done using interpretive structural modeling (ISM) and MICMAC analysis was done to determine the importance of each factor in influencing “unwillingness to grow.”

In total, 30 personal attributes were identified from previous literature, out of which 15 were selected for the final study. The result identifies 7 variables having a strong impact on “unwillingness to grow.” These attributes are “absence of strong network,” “lack of vision,” “lack of proactiveness,” “reluctance to involve external consultants,” “absence of/small founding team,” “lack of ambition” and “improper attitude.”

The research attempts to create a bricolage of all the important personal factors affecting “unwillingness to grow.” Previous researches have used few attributes, but with the help of ISM, a graphical modeling technique, it became possible to draw interrelationship between 15 attributes. Further, with the help of MICMAC, the importance of each attribute was determined.

Using bibliometrics, this study aims to explore the intellectual structure of social segregation research, key contributors, thematic areas and hotspot topics.

A bibliometric analysis was performed for more than 15,000 research papers listed in one of the famous, rich and widely used scientific databases: Web of Science (WoS). This review approach was used to identify social research hotspots on segregation, intellectual structure, borders and development trends. VOSviewer and Gephi software were employed for mapping and analysis.

The study indicates a marked increase in segregation research, particularly from a spatial/urban perspective. The study reveals the interrelationship between segregation and many other social concepts, such as social equality, cohesion, integration and inclusion. In conclusion, addressing the ramifications resulting from the multiple forms of segregation will help in implementing social policies and evaluating their impact on achieving inclusive social development in general and the 2030 agenda of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in specific.

This study remains limited to the precision and thoroughness of the bibliographic data gained from WoS.

This study is valuable for readers to gain rich insights into the state of research on social segregation. It also provides ideas for future research that prospective authors and interested research and academic institutions can investigate.

Internships are widely used as one of the best learning tools for professional practice. The purpose of this research paper is to comprehend to what extent the LIS interns become competent with practical tasks through this program, current facilities offered by the internship-offering institutions and their plan in this regard.

This study used a mixed-method approach. To examine LIS students’ practical experience, this study conducted a survey. Participants were 110 students having internship experience from the LIS bachelor’s degree offering universities of Bangladesh. For qualitative data, representatives of internship-offering institutions were interviewed.

Results indicate that there is a certain lack of coordination between theoretical knowledge with practical demonstrations. Some essential ICT-based tasks missed out from this program like library automation software (e.g. KOHA); online-based cataloging such as Machine Readable Cataloguing, Resource Description and Access; digital library software (Greenstone); Institutional Repository software (Dspace, EPrint, etc.); virtual library services; radio frequency identification, etc. which should be taken into consideration in internship modules. Including faculty members and practitioners is suggested for a model internship framework ensuring ever-advanced LIS education. There is no significant difference between interns’ gender with their satisfaction level.

The major limitation of this study is the absence of coverage of faculty perceptions regarding Internships. As in the higher education institution, the three stakeholder groups’ subsets, namely, faculty members, practitioners and students are parallelly important to take any initiative.

The input from interns will assist the industries in redesigning their modules in light of interns’ feedback to best prepare interns for the competitive job market.

Internship in LIS education is not a new research area; however, research attempts to show students’ experience along with organizations’ preparedness in offering internships is new in nature.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors influencing the development of social media marketing strategy in an international context. We specifically look at the potential drivers and barriers throughout the social media marketing strategy development process and how cultural differences shape social media marketing strategy decision-making among firms in international markets.

The study is conducted with an inductive research approach involving in-depth interviews with 32 firms from Finland, China and Brazil. Using inductive data analysis, we identify both internal and external factors that drive and hinder the development of firms’ social media marketing strategies. Moreover, we explore the essential elements in social media marketing strategy development based on the key practices observed among these firms, which enables us to conduct a comparative analysis of how cultural values influence the development of social media marketing strategies.

Our findings underscore the importance of both internal (i.e. resources and capabilities) and external (i.e. market-level and country-level) factors that influence the development of social media marketing strategy. Our analysis also unveiled four key practices throughout the social media marketing strategy development process: social selling, content marketing, risk management and relationship management. Additionally, we identified three distinct mindsets regarding firms’ social media selling objectives across companies in the three countries.

The comparative approach provides novel insight into firms' international social media marketing strategy. Our proposed conceptual model shows the development process of social media marketing strategy in the international context. The research propositions highlight the role of cultural values and open up new avenues for future research.

The study aims to embrace the lingering call for more empirical studies that can theorize the role of digital platforms in digital entrepreneurship. Hence, this study seeks to reveal the liminal space entrepreneurial experience of third-party application developers, by investigating how the platform boundary resources promote third-party entrepreneurial actions, as they transition through the disoriented, uncertain and ambiguous processes of digital entrepreneurship development.

To conduct this investigation, an expert interview qualitative method was used. This approach is a well-established technique in the field of social sciences, which allowed a detailed exploration of the theory of liminality. Liminality refers to the transitional phase that individuals or groups experience when moving from one social or cultural context to another. The expert interview method is appropriate for this study because it involves engaging with knowledgeable individuals who have extensive experience and expertise in the subject area being investigated. Through in-depth and unstructured interviews, the experts were able to provide valuable insights and perspectives about the phenomenon investigated.

The research findings demonstrate that digital platform boundary resources play a significant role in the behaviour of third-party developers’ who engage in the development of digital entrepreneurship in today’s market. The study highlights three ways that show how these resources (software development kit (SDK), API, integrated development environment (IDE), libraries, frameworks) enable third-party developers to create new applications that are used to pursue entrepreneurship in a digital platform, leading to increased user engagement and revenue generation.

The research addresses the critical roles of digital platform boundary resources in digital entrepreneurship development processes. Also, using liminality theory, the research explicated the core experiences of third-party developers as they navigated the challenges and ambiguities experienced in the pursuit of entrepreneurship. Thus, contributing to the existing body of knowledge in literature and practice.