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At an academic digital library of a graduate business school in Berlin, Germany, the librarian reflects on the “new normal” following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, with its increased faculty and student engagement with digital resources and heightened awareness of and activity in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

This paper details the concepts and practices of an academic library that is a center for information resources and services, as well as a contact point for DEI advocacy and student conflict mediation. The librarian is the only information professional at the school, and this is a reflective essay written from her perspective.

This case study suggests that a librarian cross-trained as a conflict mediator or coach can offer both information literacy and support services to further the development of an inclusive campus environment. Educators in both roles build students’ competence and confidence, focus on their achievements and progress and contribute to their sense of belonging. Combining these activities in a central institution builds on the strengths of both disciplines and is consistent with inclusion as a core principle of librarianship.

The findings will be useful for librarians wishing to expand their existing mandate to provide inclusive information access and services to include DEI initiatives.

Theoretical models of attrition have failed to address the interwoven factors from the perspective of undergraduate students that influence their decision to drop out. The purpose of this paper is to unravel these complexities using a qualitative phenomenological approach to gain systematic descriptions of the experience of non-completion.

Tinto’s (2004) and Bean and Metzner’s (1985) models serve as the theoretical construct for the study’s design and analysis. In-depth interviews were conducted with 41 students who discontinued studies at universities in the United Arab Emirates, to understand the situations that led them to drop out of university and how they experienced this event in their lives.

Several issues were identified as contributing factors for dropping out that are consistent with those found in the international literature. Additional issues were more gender or culture specific and, to some extent, represented the differences that signal a social development that is in a transitional stage. The findings revealed that institutional factors, poor pre-college preparation, environmental factors (work-education conflict), early marriage responsibilities, well-paid job opportunities and financial concerns were most influential.

Despite the limitations of relying on a small sample to generalize findings, the rich detail of this inductive study has added to the understanding of the dropout phenomenon in a new context.

The paper recommends both remedial and early intervention strategies to be undertaken by the Ministry of Education and universities. Remedial strategies include re-examining the desired standard of English as a condition for admission and adjusting the grading system. Early intervention measures that accommodate the needs of at-risk students are also proposed. At local, regional and international levels, higher education should be freed from commodification and inflated fees.

The paper presents a significant departure from the largely North American and European literature on the university dropout, by offering a broader knowledge of this phenomenon in another regional and national context.

Research has shown that employee commitment is an important factor in performance. Research into student commitment in the university context is less common and only few studies explore the different components and foci of commitment. The purpose of this paper is to examine the meaning of students’ commitment in the university context.

Based on a survey of 530 students, the results confirmed that, similar to the work context, different components and foci of commitment exist.

Commitment to the university is primarily positively related to extra-role performance. Commitment to the study subject is positively related to both in-role and extra-role performance. Affective commitment to the university shows the strongest relationship with extra-role performance. However, there is a potential conflict between the two types of performance. The relationship between affective commitment to the university and extra-role performance decreases for students with a high intention to study efficiently as an indicator of in-role performance.

The paper concludes that universities should strive to improve their students’ commitment, especially affective commitment to encourage a balance of both in-role and extra-role performance.

This study looks into different foci and components of commitment and the potential for conflict for students between in-role and extra-role performance. The study has shown that commitment to the university and to the study subject likely enhances students’ in-role and extra-role performance; both of which are important to numerous stakeholders in the education context. As in other contexts, affective commitment has been shown to be the most powerful predictor of performance. This knowledge can help universities target their resources when trying to foster student commitment. However, because students might feel that extra-role performance is in conflict with in-role performance, universities might want to emphasize the benefits of both types of performance.

Argues that sexual harassment is no longer just a personal matter, as the increase in lawsuits against firms in the USA shows; employers have an obligation to provide a safe environment, or they will suffer the consequences, whether they are aware of the harassment or not. Recommends that employers should first gain a clear understanding of the definition of sexual harassment, of its forms and origins, of who is most commonly harassed and who the harassers are, before going on to why it occurs, and how to handle it. Further suggests that employers design a strong policy against sexual harassment, communicate it to all employees, and train employees – workers must realize that their own views and values are not those of their co‐workers and that they must respect one another.

This study aims to introduce a research framework that identifies the potential sources of design self-efficacy that emerge from the digital class by covering the teaching for professional competence model (TPCM) to enhance students’ design self-efficacy.

The multistage and purposive sampling technique is used, and the respondents considered are Malaysian university students. Further, the students who completed the survey included both local and international students so as to capture responses through primary data.

The findings of this research study reveal that design self-efficacy is determined not only by feedback and collaborative learning but also by perceived digital class experience.

Moreover, this study is limited in offering a theoretical framework using the TPCM; therefore, future studies may incorporate Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory and may also use the theory integration approach. Also, in terms of geographic coverage, the current work is limited to an area in Klang Valley. Future studies may be carried out in other parts or regions of the country. Future researchers may also focus on technological self-efficacy to capture the other related factors that may be related.

This study not only contributed to the theoretical extensions but also to practical implications, which would benefit the policymakers of higher education providers in Malaysia.

TPCM components, which are students’ personal characteristics, teaching practices and student’s perceptions of the classroom climate, are mapped into the digital class context as potential sources of design self-efficacy and collectively labelled as digital class experience. To the authors’ knowledge, the digital class environment variable is yet to be tested as a component of TPCM.

The objective of the study is to investigate the social alienation status of Swedish high school students with respect to gender and immigrant background.

The sample was randomly selected from high school students aged 15‐19, and 446 students participated in the study. The Jessor and Jessor general alienation questionnaire was used to explore feelings of social alienation. Sequential multiple regression analyses were performed to examine the relationships between alienation, age, sex, and immigrant background.

The results demonstrated a significant association between immigrant background and alienation. It was found that first‐generation immigrants felt more alienated than second‐generation immigrants and second‐generation immigrants felt more alienated than natives. Adolescents who were first‐generation immigrants had higher scores on the social isolation subscale than second generation immigrants and native Swedes. However, second generation immigrants had higher scores on the meaninglessness subscale than first‐generation immigrants and native Swedes. Age proved to have a significant quadratic component. The research found feeling of alienation significantly higher among youngest and oldest students but lower for those aged 17.

The study was limited by the number of participants with different cultural background in the immigrant samples. As such, it was unable to compare feeling of alienation between students with different cultural background.

As the authors could not identify any studies that specifically address feelings of social alienation among adolescents in Sweden, thus this study is believed to be the first one in this context.

The purpose of this paper is to assess quality of life in relation to wellbeing among Lebanese nursing home elderly residents. The study attempts to understand the impact of structures, processes and skills on elderly health status.

In this paper, 220 normally functioning elderly respondents from 33 nursing homes were studied. A quasi‐experimental approach measured psychological and health‐related factors using the Geriatric Depression Scale, Activity of Daily Living, EuroQol EQ‐5D and the Mini‐Nutritional Assessment (MNA) instruments.

A relatively high level of mild depression among elderly residents and a lack of mobility were found. Generally, normally functioning elderly residents were well nourished and had moderate daily activity levels.

The study is original in the sense that it assesses elderly residents' psychological and physical health status in relation to institutional structures, processes, and skills.

This study describes the evaluation of a first‐year experience course which emphasised the “appreciative advising” theoretical model – a strength‐based, relational approach to student development that aims to enhance students’ self‐efficacy and academic self‐perception. In order to measure the effectiveness of the course and its impact on student academic achievement, an outcome‐based evaluation was conducted. The evaluation focused on the impact of the course on students’ attitudes and perceptions towards their academic ability, their actual academic achievement and student retention. Using a number of comprehensive measures, including the tracking of academic outcomes, and assessment of students’ attitudes and behaviours, the evaluation evidenced the positive impact of the course.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse how using bibliometrics and information visualization can provide a “picture at glance” from which decision-makers can structure processes, thus organizing outputs/outcomes from inception.

This study carried out a bibliometric-oriented review on studies on higher education students' retention; 1,962 records were downloaded from Scopus and grouped into three five-year intervals: 2002–2006 (n = 236), 2007–2011 (n = 584) and 2012–2016 (n = 1,142). Centrality measures and text-mining techniques were used to analyse data.

Clusters of academic networks were identified by using co-citation analysis. Also, terms with high semantic value were ranked and grouped by using automatic term extraction and co-word analysis.

The bibliometric approach used in this study identifies clusters of authors specialized in student retention, as well as detects the primary terms within this research field.

This paper provides evidence that a bibliometric approach in conjunction with data visualization can be a valuable complement to in-depth literature reviews for the decision-making process.

Quebec was the first Canadian jurisdiction to legislate on pay equality. It did so through the adoption of the Charter of Rights and Freedom, in 1976, a passive legislation since it is based on complaints. It seems to be a matter of time before the Quebec Government passes a pro‐active legislation on pay equity and, in doing so, it will likely draw its inspiration from the Pay Equity Act (PEA) passed by the Ontario Government in 1987. One of PEAs important features is the emphasis on institutional structures and practices in determining the appropriate unit for the purpose of achieving pay equity. In practice, such units will often match up with the usual job families (e.g. clerical or office vs production jobs). However, the historical development of jobs families is intertwined with the evolution of occupational segregation between men and women in the labour markets.