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Open Access
Article
Publication date: 1 June 2016

Abbas Zare-ee, Zuraidah Mohd Don and Iman Tohidian

University students' ratings of teaching and teachers' performance are used in many parts of the world for the evaluation of faculty members at colleges and universities. Even…

Abstract

University students' ratings of teaching and teachers' performance are used in many parts of the world for the evaluation of faculty members at colleges and universities. Even though these ratings receive mixed reviews, there is little conclusive evidence on the role of the intervening variable of teacher and student gender in these ratings. Possible influences resulting from gender-related differences in different socio-cultural contexts, especially where gender combination in student and faculty population is not proportionate, have not been adequately investigated in previous research. This study aimed to examine Iranian university students' ratings of the professional performance of male and female university teachers and to explore the differences in male and female university students' evaluation of teachers of the same or opposite gender. The study was a questionnaire-based cross-sectional survey with a total of 800 randomly selected students in their different years of undergraduate study (307 male and 493 female students, reflecting the proportion of male and female students in the university) from different faculties at the University of Kashan, Iran. The participants rated male and female teachers’ performance in observing university regulations, relationship with colleagues, and relationships with students. The researchers used descriptive statistics, means comparison inferential statistics and focus-group interview data to analyze and compare the students’ ratings. The results of one-sample t-test, independent samples t-test, and Chi-square analyses showed that a) overall, male university teachers received significantly higher overall ratings in all areas than female teachers; b) male students rated male teachers significantly higher than female students did; and c) female students assigned a higher overall mean rating to male teachers than to female teachers but this mean difference was not significant. These results are studied in relation to the findings in the related literature and indicate that gender can be an important intervening variable in university students' evaluation of faculty members.

Details

Learning and Teaching in Higher Education: Gulf Perspectives, vol. 13 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2077-5504

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 17 July 2018

Saowanee Thongnopakun, Tepanata Pumpaibool and Ratana Somrongthong

University students who have low knowledge, attitudes and intentions regarding the prevention of unintended pregnancies may experience higher rates of unintended pregnancies. An…

2395

Abstract

Purpose

University students who have low knowledge, attitudes and intentions regarding the prevention of unintended pregnancies may experience higher rates of unintended pregnancies. An educational program was developed based on the self-efficacy theory and peer-led education to improve unintended pregnancy problems among university students. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of an educational program on knowledge, attitudes and intentions regarding the use of condoms and emergency contraceptive pills among Thai university students.

Design/methodology/approach

The effectiveness of the educational program was tested by a quasi-experimental study with a pre- and post-test design. The study was conducted between September and October 2017. Multistage sampling was used to recruit 73 Thai female university students, including 36 students in the intervention group and 37 students in the comparison group. The intervention group received an eight-week educational program, while the comparison group did not. A self-administered questionnaire was used to assess the improvement of knowledge, attitudes and intention regarding condom and emergency contraceptive pill use. Descriptive statistics, paired samples t-test, Wilcoxon test and Mann–Whitney tests were used for data analysis.

Findings

Most participants in both groups had sexual intercourse. After the end of the program, the before-after mean score of the intervention group’s knowledge (8.0, 11.0), attitudes (29.4, 32.4) and intention (17.4, 20.4) were significantly increased (p-value<0.001). Post-intervention, there were statistically significant differences in knowledge scores (p-value<0.001) and intention scores (p-value=0.04) between the intervention group and the comparison group.

Originality/value

This educational program increases knowledge and intention but does not influence attitudes toward using condoms and emergency contraceptive pills.

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 19 July 2022

Shreyesh Doppalapudi, Tingyan Wang and Robin Qiu

Clinical notes typically contain medical jargons and specialized words and phrases that are complicated and technical to most people, which is one of the most challenging…

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Abstract

Purpose

Clinical notes typically contain medical jargons and specialized words and phrases that are complicated and technical to most people, which is one of the most challenging obstacles in health information dissemination to consumers by healthcare providers. The authors aim to investigate how to leverage machine learning techniques to transform clinical notes of interest into understandable expressions.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors propose a natural language processing pipeline that is capable of extracting relevant information from long unstructured clinical notes and simplifying lexicons by replacing medical jargons and technical terms. Particularly, the authors develop an unsupervised keywords matching method to extract relevant information from clinical notes. To automatically evaluate completeness of the extracted information, the authors perform a multi-label classification task on the relevant texts. To simplify lexicons in the relevant text, the authors identify complex words using a sequence labeler and leverage transformer models to generate candidate words for substitution. The authors validate the proposed pipeline using 58,167 discharge summaries from critical care services.

Findings

The results show that the proposed pipeline can identify relevant information with high completeness and simplify complex expressions in clinical notes so that the converted notes have a high level of readability but a low degree of meaning change.

Social implications

The proposed pipeline can help healthcare consumers well understand their medical information and therefore strengthen communications between healthcare providers and consumers for better care.

Originality/value

An innovative pipeline approach is developed to address the health literacy problem confronted by healthcare providers and consumers in the ongoing digital transformation process in the healthcare industry.

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 29 June 2022

Ibtissam Touahri

This paper purposed a multi-facet sentiment analysis system.

Abstract

Purpose

This paper purposed a multi-facet sentiment analysis system.

Design/methodology/approach

Hence, This paper uses multidomain resources to build a sentiment analysis system. The manual lexicon based features that are extracted from the resources are fed into a machine learning classifier to compare their performance afterward. The manual lexicon is replaced with a custom BOW to deal with its time consuming construction. To help the system run faster and make the model interpretable, this will be performed by employing different existing and custom approaches such as term occurrence, information gain, principal component analysis, semantic clustering, and POS tagging filters.

Findings

The proposed system featured by lexicon extraction automation and characteristics size optimization proved its efficiency when applied to multidomain and benchmark datasets by reaching 93.59% accuracy which makes it competitive to the state-of-the-art systems.

Originality/value

The construction of a custom BOW. Optimizing features based on existing and custom feature selection and clustering approaches.

Details

Applied Computing and Informatics, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2634-1964

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 19 January 2024

Fredrik Hillberg Jarl

The purpose of this study is to review literature on the relationship between leadership and workplace learning, to critically analyze and discuss findings and to suggest future…

1042

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to review literature on the relationship between leadership and workplace learning, to critically analyze and discuss findings and to suggest future research paths based on the synthesis.

Design/methodology/approach

This study applied a refined literature review process leading to a selection of 40 articles, which originated from 14 internationally acclaimed journals.

Findings

When explaining leadership influence regarding individual and team learning, the concepts of role modeling behavior, relational support and negotiation of meaning is significant. If leaders provide support, show exemplary behavior and negotiate individual arrangements with employees, workplace learning development is positively affected.

Research limitations/implications

Future studies should focus on empirical cases further illustrating how the leader–employee relationship is formed in practice, to further understand differences in leadership influence on employee workplace learning.

Practical implications

The gathered knowledge implicates that carefully designed leadership training programs and personalized work arrangements between leader and employees are beneficial for leader’s ability to influence employee workplace learning.

Originality/value

The reviewed studies were solely published in top management journals, which resulted in an original literature selection. This study also discusses implicit or articulated assumptions about the view of learning in the selected studies, offering additional understanding about the underlying learning views in leadership–workplace learning research.

Details

The Learning Organization, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0969-6474

Keywords

Content available
Book part
Publication date: 7 May 2019

Abstract

Details

Politics and Technology in the Post-Truth Era
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78756-984-3

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 25 April 2022

Brigitte de Graaff and Bert Steens

The purpose of this paper is to explore the perceived benefits of integrated reporting (IR) and factors influencing the motives that supervisory board members (SBMs) have for…

1392

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the perceived benefits of integrated reporting (IR) and factors influencing the motives that supervisory board members (SBMs) have for advocating a change towards IR implementation.

Design/methodology/approach

An exploratory survey study was conducted to investigate the influence of external market conditions, internal organizational conditions and observed benefits on the motivation to advocate IR adoption in companies that have not yet implemented IR. A unique set of survey data from 62 SBMs of Dutch companies was used for analysing the propositions derived from IR literature and based on institutional theory, legitimacy theory and diffusion of innovation theory.

Findings

The respondents indicated to be supportive of IR adoption. SBMs who had experienced the implementation of IR observed that IR offers benefits. Their motives for advocating a change towards IR in companies that had not implemented IR were influenced most by the observed benefits in IR companies. SBMs only involved in companies that had not adopted IR are motivated to support IR adoption to a similar extent. These findings suggest that directly observed benefits by SBMs need to exceed a considerable minimum level before these SBMs are more motived to advocate IR than their peers who have not witnessed the implementation of IR and that experiences are shared across companies. The motivation of both groups is influenced by external market conditions but not by internal organizational conditions.

Practical implications

The findings have implications for potential IR adopters and institutions promoting the further diffusion of IR as they emphasize the need for tangible benefits of IR and confirm that sharing good practices and benefits of IR can provide a catalyst for IR adoption. The findings contribute to the understanding of the motivation of SBMs as an important organizational condition for implementing IR as this study provides insights in the factors that drive this motivation of key actors influencing the decision to implement IR. Furthermore, the finding that these factors predominantly comprise tangible results and external market conditions is relevant from an organizational change perspective.

Social implications

Understanding the mechanisms of IR-adoption decisions provides a relevant basis for deploying programmes promoting IR as a general reporting standard. This could provide society and a broad range of stakeholders with access to information incorporated in integrated reports. It could ultimately have a major impact on society by improving decision-making and increasing the long-term sustainability of organizations and their relations with stakeholders.

Originality/value

This study provides preliminary empirical evidence concerning the perspectives of SBMs on their motives for advocating IR, based on a unique sample from a country that has been involved with IR from its start.

Details

Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change, vol. 19 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1832-5912

Keywords

Content available
Article
Publication date: 1 June 2015

Maria Indrawan-Santiago, Matthias Steinbauer and Gabriele Anderst-Kotsis

158

Abstract

Details

International Journal of Pervasive Computing and Communications, vol. 11 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1742-7371

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 27 August 2019

Martha de Jesús Beltrán Hernández de Galindo, Luis M. Romero-Rodriguez and Maria Soledad Ramirez Montoya

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have been gaining popularity as non-formal lifelong learning educational platforms. However, they have been criticized for their low completion…

1604

Abstract

Purpose

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have been gaining popularity as non-formal lifelong learning educational platforms. However, they have been criticized for their low completion rate and low ability for networking. The purpose of this paper is to analyze how incorporating entrepreneurial competencies in MOOCs develops attributes of educational innovation and collaborative projects.

Design/methodology/approach

The research followed a three-stage process: in first stage, a comprehensive literature review was conducted to identify dimensions of entrepreneurial skills and attributes of educational innovation in MOOCs. In the second stage, a quantitative study was carried out, based on the analysis of pre- and post-test surveys taken by a sample of 6,517 participants. In the last stage, the interaction analysis model/computer-mediated communication analysis model was applied through qualitative analysis, using the MAXQDA tool to identify if entrepreneurship opportunities were generated in the interactions within the discussion forums of the MOOCs.

Findings

The results show that the analyzed MOOCs have an overall completion rate of 12.55 per cent, above the average of the rates found in the literature review. However, only 14.29 per cent of the participants expressed at least one opportunity to generate ventures related to the topics of energy in the discussion forums.

Practical implications

This research could help instructional designers and universities to consider the inclusion of entrepreneurship issues in the design of MOOCs’ content and to encourage more activities that promote networking among participants, to identify business potential from the educational materials.

Originality/value

This research is one of the very few studies on entrepreneurship competencies in MOOCs to understand how the inclusion of issues related to entrepreneurship in MOOCs can generate a positive impact on participants.

Details

Journal of Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economies, vol. 11 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2053-4604

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 12 October 2021

Lin Zhang

Expanding the research on traditional history of economic ideology into the research on the history of economics composed of three elements – history of ideology, history of…

Abstract

Purpose

Expanding the research on traditional history of economic ideology into the research on the history of economics composed of three elements – history of ideology, history of policies and events – is a new idea for researching the history of socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics. The start of the history of socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics is consistent with that of the Sinicization of Marxist political economy and can be dated from at least 1917.

Design/methodology/approach

The key point of the research on the history of ideologies of the socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics is to treat the relationship between theory and people properly, i.e. we should not neglect the effect brought out by the economists on theory construction while we attach importance to the theoretical contribution of the leaders and leading group of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

Findings

For the research on the history of economic policies of socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics, on the one hand, we should clarify the relationship among ideologies, strategies and policies; on the other hand, we should not evade the summarization of lessons from history.

Originality/value

Besides presenting the development route of socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics under competition, the research on the events in the history of socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics should also help develop the socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics.

Details

China Political Economy, vol. 4 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2516-1652

Keywords

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