Sustainable Education Using New Communication Technology: Assessment with Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP)
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This is an interesting paper on the 5G network and sustainability. I'm not sure how well the title goes with the paper. There are some grammatical mistakes throughout, some, but not all are listed below as examples.
The introduction for this paper is clear, however it does need to be placed better within the literature by having a clear literature review section added. This will strengthen the paper. A clear Discussion section, using the literature that is in the lit review as a starting point to base the paper would be beneficial. I suggest this is added (along with the lit review section).
In the abstract (line 2-3) it says the paper is about 'teaching strategies of teachers for students' learning..." This could be re-written using the term pedagogically based strategies - as this might strengthen and clarify the paper (I realise pedagogy is not a word used in every language).
Mistakes in paper to be corrected:
- Line 34 delete 'the' before the word 'industry'
- Line 40 Reference needed after 'data'.
- Lines 67-69 sentence does or may do that - needs to be written in a clearer way. Also, needs a reference.
- Line 81 should be 'teachers' " with the apostrophe after the s.
- Line 88 should it be Questionnaires and Interviews - were interviews conducted?
- Line 112 should be 'has their own'
- Line 117 no 'the' before 5G
- Lines 119-120 Sentence needs rewriting to make sense.
- Line 129 - heading has an extra space
- Line 130 first word typo??? should be 'Schools' I think.
- Lines 143-45 awkward sentence - needs fixing.
- Line 157 should be 'can' instead of 'need to'
- Line 168 the reference number is incorrect for some reason. Should be 6.
- Line 171 should be 'decisions' with an s.
- Line 268 has an extra space
Author Response
Dear Prof.,
We appreciate the reviewers’ valuable comments. Hereby, we reply to the questions and comments as follows. We hope the replies satisfies for the publication of this paper in the journal.
Thank you so much.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The study aimed to survey teachers and students' learning experiences about 5G network. The biggest problem in the study is the questionnaire design. The survey construct did not base on strong theoretical foundation. Also, the instrument did not go through a validity construction process.
Author Response
We appreciate the reviewers’ valuable comments. Hereby, we reply to the questions and comments as follows. We hope the replies satisfies for the publication of this paper in the journal.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
- Introduction – quote: ‘The future of education seems largely dependent on the 47 maturity and practicality of technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality 48 (VR), and big data owing to the advantages of 5G technology’ (Lines 47-49) – why such an assumption? Is it a research hypothesis or does it come from the literature review? It is advisable to provide supporting research results.
- Why should teachers and students use virtual, remote, and/or multimedia teaching modes more often? The pandemic made it clear that restricting teaching to remote contact has numerous poor consequences despite the latest technologies and the best bandwidths. What is the advantage of remote/virtual teaching over the classic approach of face-to-face contact? What are the downsides of teaching using new technologies?
- Line 72: ‘solves many problems of traditional learning or teaching’ – what problems does the 5G technology solve in teaching? Please specify them and prove that 5G resolves the issues. Provide literature examples.
- The authors seem to believe we live in the 5G era. But do we? In many countries, access to 5G is poor. The time of 5G is a thing of a (distant) future. Can 5G be taken for granted? Provide evidence. Please provide 5G deployment statistics for various countries worldwide.
- The literature review is hardly sufficient. The authors failed to demonstrate a research gap. What is the goal of the manuscript? What are the results of similar research to date? What has been investigated so far? Have the authors proposed a research hypothesis? A research question?
5G is a relatively new topic and controversial at that (for example, the influence of 5G on living organisms), and yet, the literature in the manuscript seems to be limited and relatively outdated. Thus, merely a few publications were used, and recent findings were disregarded.
- The 5G network was not described; neither were its advantages and disadvantages. What are the deployment conditions in various countries in the world? What is the deployment progress? etc.
- What do the authors think about the widespread academic dispute concerning the correctness and usability of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Many researchers believe that AHP has a flawed score aggregation procedure and is insufficiently confirmed statistically (see Steiguer, J.E., Duberstein, J. Lopes, V. The Analytic Hierarchy Process as a Means for Integrated Watershed Management). I do not believe the method to be the best choice in this case. Change my mind.
- The authors touched upon the growth of the 6G network but did not present the deployment of the 5G network. Are there problems with 5G deployment worldwide? Is 5G generally approved in all countries around the world?
- The results seem too obvious: ‘The 183 survey results showed that 78% of teachers and 85% of students were satisfied with using 184 the 5G technology for teaching and learning.’ (Lines 183-184).
It is rather to be expected that faster connection gives greater satisfaction. The statement has features of a cliché. Is it a worthy object of investigation?
- Why are results merged with the discussion?
- I am under the impression that the manuscript presents an unquestioning, hardly objective approach to the 5G technology. Its advantages and flaws were not discussed. The results seem straightforward, just as the summary, which can be condensed into a single sentence: 5G is necessary and indispensable because it is fast.
- What is the manuscript's contribution to state of the art?
Primary conclusion: the manuscript confirms pre-existing believes, and it seems to present/confirm the obvious: users are happier when they can use a faster Internet connection.
Author Response
We appreciate the reviewers’ valuable comments. Hereby, we reply to the questions and comments as follows. We hope the replies satisfies for the publication of this paper in the journal.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors already provided solutions to the problems reviewers addressed in the previous review process.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
We appreciate the reviewers’ valuable comments.
Thank you so much for spending time with us.
Reviewer 3 Report
1. I am not satisfied with the changes made to the manuscript. Moreover, the authors did not provide sufficient arguments for my comments.
2. Quote: Though digital learning policies spread widely in the EU, the USA, Singapore, China, and South Korea, there are rare research papers on the issue. This is explained in the abstract (line 55-62).
The above argument does not convince me.
3. 5G technology is just a tool. Technology can solve some problems, overcome selected barriers and limitations, but at the same time it creates new problems, but the authors did not discuss this. There is no discussion of the results. There is no presentation of advantages and disadvantages - this should be discussed. The reader should know the pros and cons.
4. The authors did not convince me of the growing popularity and universal use of 5G technology in the world.
5. There is no discussion of the results in the article. I recommend creating a separate chapter - Discussion of the results.
6. Is such a statement even legitimate, quotation: "We found that 5G will provide incredible benefits for students and teachers, in ways that we cannot even predict" (???).
7. In my opinion, the article is not very objective. Am I right?
8. Please correct the mistake in the numbering of the headings.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
We appreciate the reviewers’ valuable comments.
We would like to reply as follows to the reviewers’ comments (the attached file).
First of all, we would like to mention that the logic and conclusion of this paper have been changed according to reviewer 3’s argument and recommendation. We agree that 5G technology needs to be regarded as a tool and is not accepted widely for education. We focused on our data again and concluded that the result presented that the traditional method still is preferred as 5G technology has disadvantages as the reviewer pointed out. Therefore, we structured the paper again to present what is required to implement new technology into education, especially teaching. Then, problems pointed out by the reviewer have been corrected by the new arrangement. We hope the new arrangement convinces the reviewer to satisfy the journal’s standard.
Thank you so much.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 3
Reviewer 3 Report
In the revised version of the article [Was: 5G network for sustainable m-Learning (mobile learning): analytics and hierarchy; Now is: Sustainable Education Using New Communication Technology: Assessment with Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP)], the authors better described the barriers to the implementation of new technologies in teaching.
This article places more emphasis on users research (student and teacher). In my opinion, the logic and conclusion of the article have been changed in favor of the article.
However, I have some comments: The authors wrote: “The results show that teachers and students prefer the traditional teaching methods to the new technology with a high weight of the factor of 'Maintaining the traditional teaching tools' in the solution layer. The weights of the criteria layer show that the possibility of implementing new technology into education with appropriate support. Teachers seem to hesitate to use the technology by considering their effort and spending time and resources for preparing adequate materials and resources." – these are the authors' conclusions.
But, what results have researchers from other academic centers obtained? Have these conclusions been confirmed in other studies?
This is still missing in the article – there is no research review on the topic - "possibilities and barriers to the implementation and use of new technologies in education at different levels". The literature review is simply weak (it is poor in content, does not present a problem, there is no background). The last chapter should be entitled – Conclusions. Adding a "suggestion" there is, in my opinion, unnecessary.
Author Response
Title: Sustainable mobile learning (m-Learning) Using 5G network: Effectiveness Assessment with Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP)
Authors: Xin-Yu Wang, Guang Li, Jih-Fu Tu, Nguyen Thi To Khuyen, and Chun-Yen Chang
We appreciate the reviewers’ valuable comments. We would like to reply as follows to reviewer 3 s’ comments. First of all, we would like to thank you for your encouragement on our new research title. Also, we matched some related literature on our research, especially for our results. We hope our minor revision could convince you to satisfy the journal’s standard. Thank you so much.
