Search Results (1,694)

This research is situated within the Irish tertiary educational space between Higher Education and Further Education and Training. This research is set in the Literacy Development Centre (LDC), South-East Technological University (SETU), the Higher Education organisation, and the Longford Westmeath Education Training Board (LWETB), the Further Education organisation. This study builds on the research conducted by the authors and focuses on the continued provision of a 120 ECTS NFQ Level 6 qualification, the Higher Certificate in Literacy Development and the importance of Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) in this educational progression. This article explores the impact of RPL as a means of educational access for adult learners. Two focus groups captured the differing accounts of experience, specifically the programme management team from both the higher and further education perspectives and the graduate perspective. The results demonstrated the individualised nature of RPL. While the onus was on each graduate to provide evidence of prior learning, the graduates expressed an experience of a ‘seamless’ RPL process while, conversely, the organisational team recalled experiencing a substantial, emotionally taxing workload. The data additionally demonstrates that the success of the project resulted from relationships and a culture of collaboration. Full article

Background/Objectives: Telerehabilitation is increasingly used globally to deliver physiotherapy services remotely, yet its adoption in Jordan remains limited. This quantitative cross-sectional study aimed to explore the awareness, perceptions, and willingness of Jordanian physiotherapists regarding telerehabilitation, and to identify barriers and facilitators to its adoption. Methods: An online self-administered questionnaire was completed by a convenience sample of 200 physiotherapists (111 males, 89 females; age range 23–62 years). Descriptive statistics and chi-square tests were used for analysis. Results: Results revealed that 116 participants (58.0% of the total sample) were aware of telerehabilitation. Among those aware, 79 (68.1%) had used it, with online video (27.0% of total sample; 46.6% of users) being the most common modality. A significant association was found between higher education level (Master’s/Ph.D.) and greater awareness (p < 0.001). Key barriers included lack of reimbursement (33.0% of total sample; 56.9% of aware respondents), technical difficulties (47.0%), infrastructure issues (39.0%), and lack of training (34.0%). Among aware participants who responded to attitude items, the majority agreed that telerehabilitation enhances patient access (85/116, 73.3% of aware respondents) and is a valuable addition to practice (102/116, 87.9% of aware respondents), while 43.0% of the total sample (86/200) believed it can never fully replace in-person consultation. Conclusions: Awareness of telerehabilitation among Jordanian physiotherapists is moderate, and actual clinical use remains low. Higher education level was significantly associated with greater awareness, highlighting a key demographic correlate. However, significant educational, financial, and infrastructural barriers hinder the transition from awareness to adoption. Policy reforms and structured training programs are urgently needed to support the integration of telerehabilitation into routine physiotherapy practice in Jordan. Full article

This single-institution case study examined faculty acceptance and instructional use of social media at the United Arab Emirates University (UAEU), with emphasis on individual-level demographic associations and faculty perceptions of technology-enhanced learning. A cross-sectional survey of 246 faculty members was analyzed using descriptive statistics and contingency-table methods. Female faculty reported higher instructional use than male faculty (88.0% vs. 75.3%; χ²(1, N = 246) = 5.07, p = 0.024; Φ = 0.144; OR = 2.41, 95% CI [1.16, 5.00]), indicating a small association. For age, the omnibus 5 × 2 chi-square test was not statistically significant (χ²(4, N = 246) = 8.17, p = 0.085), although an ordered trend test suggested increasing non-use with age (z = 2.34, p = 0.019); descriptively, this pattern was driven mainly by the 61–70 group rather than a steady increase across all age categories. Academic rank differed overall (χ²(3, N = 246) = 8.70, p = 0.034), but the pattern was non-monotonic, and the prespecified junior-versus-senior comparison was not significant (χ²(1, N = 246) = 2.00, p = 0.157). Faculty reported benefits related to communication, collaboration, audiovisual learning, mobile access, and academic networking, alongside concerns about distraction and reduced interpersonal interaction. Because the study was conducted at one university with a 26.25% response rate, the findings are context-specific and should not be generalized to all UAE or Gulf higher-education institutions. Full article

Higher education institutions operate complex digital environments that combine administrative services, research infrastructures, learning platforms, identity systems, and heterogeneous departmental IT. In the European Union, the NIS2 Directive increases the need for structured cybersecurity governance, while ISO/IEC 27001:2022 provides a mature information security management system standard that can support implementation. This paper proposes a design science artefact for aligning NIS2 obligations with ISO/IEC 27001:2022 clauses and Annex A controls in the context of higher education institutions. The framework organizes cybersecurity governance, asset and service scoping, risk management, incident handling, business continuity, supplier and cloud dependencies, access control, awareness, monitoring, and continual improvement into a staged maturity model. The artefact is instantiated for a Romanian public university context and assessed through internal traceability analysis, including mappings between NIS2 Articles 20, 21, and 23, Romanian NIS2 transposition requirements, and ISO/IEC 27001:2022 control areas. The institutional illustration identifies candidate assessment domains and evidence requirements but does not assign maturity levels because the internal records required by the scoring protocol were unavailable; it therefore does not constitute an audit, verified institutional measurement, or empirical validation. The contribution is therefore a structured and reusable compliance design artefact, together with a transparent mapping method that can support future expert validation, institutional pilots, and audit-oriented refinement. Full article

Purpose: This study investigates the structural pathways driving the startup potential of Generation Z students in Romania’s post-transition economy. It examines the sequential relationship between Entrepreneurial Mindset (EM), Entrepreneurial Intentions (EIs), and Entrepreneurial Behavior (EB), focusing on the mediating role of intentions in bridging the gap between cognition and action. Design/methodology/approach: Using a quantitative explanatory design, data were collected through a two-stage hybrid framework from a sample of 215 Romanian business students associated with the Hackathon Innovation Labs (HILs), selected via a non-probability purposive sampling method. Hypotheses were tested using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) with maximum likelihood estimation, supported by Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) to ensure statistical rigor. Findings: Results confirm that EM is a robust predictor of EI, which significantly drives EB, explaining 45.2% of its variance. The findings highlight that intentions fully mediate the relationship, suggesting that a growth-oriented mindset turns into firm intentions to overcome institutional and cultural barriers. Originality: This research applies a rigorous SEM framework to a cohort of digital natives in an underrepresented Eastern European emerging market. It integrates mindset as a foundational cognitive precursor and provides empirical evidence of the sequential path to entrepreneurial behavior. Research limitations/implications: The study is limited by its sample size and geographic focus on Romanian business students. Future longitudinal research should explore external contingency factors, such as access to capital and ecosystem support, to validate model generalizability. Practical and social implications: Higher education should shift toward experiential programs like HILs, embedding credit-bearing hackathons and micro-credentials to foster an entrepreneurial mindset. Socially, sustaining this momentum with structured mentorship bridges the intention–action gap, transforming Gen Z’s digital potential into tangible economic value for the post-transition ecosystem. Full article

Objective: To describe the clinical and sociodemographic profile of patients treated in a public assisted reproduction unit and to analyze the association between these characteristics and the type of assisted reproductive technique used. Materials and Methods: A retrospective, observational, descriptive-analytical study was conducted including patients who initiated or underwent assisted reproductive techniques at a tertiary public hospital in Andalusia between January and June 2025. Sociodemographic and clinical variables were collected from electronic medical records and analyzed using bivariate and multivariate models. The main outcome was the type of assisted reproductive technique used. Results: A total of 222 patients were included. The mean age was 34.70 years (SD 3.99), and most were employed, nonsmokers, and of normal weight. Heterosexual couples were the most frequent family model, although single mothers by choice and female couples also represented a substantial proportion of the cohort. In the adjusted multivariable model, older maternal age (aOR = 1.19, p = 0.004), male factor infertility (aOR = 5.07, p = 0.026), and mixed factor infertility (aOR = 5.43, p = 0.017) were significantly associated with higher odds of undergoing high-complexity techniques. Conversely, urban residence (aOR = 0.24, p = 0.003) and single motherhood by choice (aOR = 0.12, p = 0.010) were significantly associated with lower odds of high-complexity techniques (and higher reliance on low-complexity procedures). Educational level, BMI, smoking status, and structural uterine pathology showed no independent association with technique complexity. Structural uterine pathology was among the most frequent gynecological findings, but no independent association with high-complexity techniques was demonstrated in the adjusted analysis. New family models accounted for 23.6% of the cohort, including 16.67% single mothers by choice and 6.94% female couples. Conclusions: In this cohort, the type of assisted reproductive technique used was mainly associated with clinical factors and family model rather than with the sociodemographic variables analyzed. These findings describe patterns of technique selection in a public assisted reproduction unit, but do not directly assess access to care. Full article

Digital transformation in higher education requires integrated designs connecting strategy, governance, infrastructure, interoperability, applications, cybersecurity, accessibility, analytics, and continuous improvement. This study analyzes the Integrated University Digital Transformation Model implemented at Universidad Técnica de Machala, Ecuador, between 2023 and April 2026. A qualitative embedded case study with a design-science orientation examined institutional documents, technical records, governance evidence, cloud migration reports, interoperability mechanisms, system descriptions, analytics outputs, and cloud security assessment records through thematic analysis, process tracing, and artifact evaluation. Findings showed alignment between the Strategic Information Technology Plan and institutional planning; formal IT governance and information security structures; an API- and microservices-based architecture; a staged migration of 52 institutional servers in four operational lots, with documented post-migration monitoring indicating 99.85% average server uptime and no critical incidents attributable to the migration during the monitored period; an automated and traceable admission allocation process within a broader portfolio of integrated academic–administrative systems; and dashboards supporting evidence-informed decisions. MMGSI-Cloud complemented the architecture by assessing governance capabilities, identifying improvement priorities, and linking findings to an institutional roadmap. The case indicates that university digital transformation is strengthened when technological implementation is integrated with formal governance, systematic assessment, evidence-based planning, and institutional accountability. Full article

As educators are increasingly expected to integrate technology into meaningful learning experiences, higher education institutions face growing demands to prepare digitally competent STEM teachers. This study examines an interdisciplinary IoT-enhanced project-based training involving pre-service teachers from the Computer Education and Instructional Technology (CEIT) and Science Education programmes, focusing on pre–post changes in computational thinking, collaborative processes, project development experiences, and participants’ perceptions of how the training contributed to their professional development. The study involved 36 pre-service teachers from CEIT and Science Education programmes and employed an embedded mixed-methods design combining computational thinking assessments with qualitative analyses of project and collaboration processes. Results showed statistically significant pre–post increases in decomposition in both groups and in algorithmic thinking among Science Education pre-service teachers. The overall Computational Thinking Skills Test (CTS Test) score did not change significantly in the CEIT group, whereas the corresponding change in the Science Education group was interpreted cautiously because it was at the conventional significance threshold. No statistically significant changes were found in pattern recognition or abstraction in either group, and the subdimension findings were treated as exploratory given the small sample and the absence of correction for multiple testing. Furthermore, active participation in collaborative meetings was associated with stronger teamwork practices, while limited engagement was associated with reported implementation challenges. Because attendance was self-selected, these associations cannot be interpreted causally. Participants perceived their IoT learning experience as making a positive contribution to their professional development and future teaching practice. Taken together, the findings suggest that interdisciplinary IoT-supported project-based learning (PBL) may provide a promising framework for supporting selected dimensions of computational thinking and collaboration in pre-service teacher education, while also offering an accessible instructional model that supports participation among learners with different levels of prior technical expertise. Full article

Background: Mental health issues among university students are a growing global concern, including in Malaysia. This exploratory study aims to examine mental health support systems in Malaysian universities using a dyadic perspective, capturing both students’ and counsellors’ experiences. This addresses a key gap in the literature, which has largely relied on single-perspective accounts. Methods: A qualitative exploratory design was employed using purposive sampling. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 students receiving mental health support and 10 university counsellors. The data were analysed using hybrid deductive–inductive thematic analysis. Results: Three themes emerged from the findings. The first theme showed that students sought support once distress affected their daily functioning, valuing trust, safety, and emotional guidance, while counsellors described a parallel process of assessing student needs and facilitating longer term recovery. The second theme identified barriers shared by both groups, namely limited awareness of services and stigma, alongside additional constraints reported only by counsellors, including staffing shortages, unclear referral pathways, and limited institutional support. The third theme centred on strategies for improvement, including early assessment, awareness campaigns, digital accessibility, resilience building, and stronger collaboration among students, counsellors, and university stakeholders. Conclusions: This study contributes to the literature by integrating three complementary theoretical perspectives to explain university students’ mental health support experiences, support networks, and help-seeking behaviour. The findings also provide practical guidance for university administrators, counsellors, and policymakers seeking to develop more accessible, proactive, and student-centred mental health support systems. As the study is based on qualitative, cross-sectional data, the findings should be interpreted as indicative rather than causal. Nonetheless, they suggest that strengthening such initiatives may contribute to more supportive and responsive mental health provision within higher education institutions. Full article

Background/Objectives: Rosacea is a chronic inflammatory skin disease that requires long-term management and continuous patient education regarding triggers, skincare practices, and treatment adherence. In recent years, patients have increasingly turned to online platforms and artificial intelligence (AI)-based chatbots for health-related information. Although ChatGPT has been evaluated in the context of rosacea, evidence regarding the performance of other AI chatbots remains limited. This study aimed to evaluate the accuracy, reliability, quality, readability, and diagnostic relevance of AI-generated responses to common rosacea-related patient questions and to assess their potential role as sources of health-related information. Methods: Between 21 December 2025 and 22 February 2026, rosacea-related questions were collected from the publicly accessible Quora platform using a systematic screening process. Twenty clinically relevant and representative questions covering diagnosis, triggers, treatment options, skincare practices, and disease manifestations were selected. Each question was independently submitted to three AI chatbots (Claude Sonnet 4.5, ChatGPT-5.2, and DeepSeek-V3.2). Responses were evaluated by domain experts using the modified DISCERN (mDISCERN) for reliability, the Global Quality Scale (GQS) for overall quality, the Flesch Reading Ease Score (FRES) for readability, and a 5-point Likert scale for accuracy. Reference hallucinations were assessed through manual verification of cited sources. Statistical comparisons were performed using the Friedman test with Bonferroni-adjusted post hoc analyses, and effect sizes were calculated using Kendall’s coefficient of concordance (Kendall’s W). Results: Significant differences were observed among the AI chatbots across all evaluation domains (p < 0.05), with moderate to large effect sizes (Kendall’s W = 0.272–0.683). ChatGPT-5.2 and DeepSeek-V3.2 demonstrated significantly higher reliability and accuracy scores than Claude Sonnet 4.5. DeepSeek-V3.2 achieved the highest overall quality scores, whereas ChatGPT-5.2 produced the most readable responses. Reference analysis revealed variable hallucination rates among the evaluated models. Conclusions: Generative AI chatbots demonstrate considerable potential as sources of health-related information for rosacea-related queries. However, variability in performance and reference hallucination rates highlights the need for careful validation before their widespread use as complementary sources of patient health information. Full article

University canteens occupy a structurally significant position within European higher education, functioning simultaneously as food security infrastructures, socioeconomic equalizers, and community-building spaces. Yet, access to these services remains deeply uneven, shaped by financial constraints, logistical barriers, and a frequently underexplored cultural and symbolic dimension that precedes and overrides direct experiential evaluation. Drawing on 56 semi-structured qualitative interviews conducted with university students in Milan between April and May 2025, this paper investigates how students organize and experience their midday lunch break and what motivates them to access or exclude themselves from the university canteen service. The findings reveal that the student sample departs substantially from the dominant framing in the contemporary literature of the canteen as an existential food-security resource, instead deploying a range of domestic and commercial food tactics that bypass institutional catering entirely. More significantly, the data demonstrates that canteen avoidance is driven less by objective assessments of food quality or pricing than by a stratification of memories in which childhood memories of institutional dining spaces trigger pre-emptive rejection of the university facility before any direct engagement takes place. Against this backdrop, peer socialization emerges as a particularly salient counterforce for overriding both affective aversion and economic and logistical inconvenience, symbolically transforming the canteen from a regimented site of institutional constraint into a shared territory of collective belonging. Taken together, these findings suggest that improving canteen access requires intervention not only at the level of food quality and pricing, but at the level of spatial culture, service typology, and the culinary imagery that students carry with them to campus. Full article

Geospatial heterogeneity plays a critical role in shaping housing tenure among China’s floating population. Using three binary indicators—homeownership, social housing, and informal housing—this study measures migrants’ housing affordability, access to public housing resources, and residential stability. Based on nationally representative data from the 2017 China Migrants Dynamic Survey (CMDS), we examine how geospatial characteristics influence migrants’ housing tenure. The results show that both origin and destination characteristics significantly affect housing outcomes. Migrants moving to higher-tier cities are more likely to obtain social housing because these cities provide better public services and greater opportunities to accumulate human and social capital. However, high housing prices in megacities substantially reduce the likelihood of homeownership. A clear birthplace effect is also observed: migrants originating from eastern China and megacities have significantly higher probabilities of obtaining both social and owner-occupied housing, reflecting the advantages associated with more developed places of origin. In addition, marital status, duration of migration, educational attainment, and hukou status consistently influence housing tenure. These findings highlight the importance of geospatial heterogeneity in explaining housing differentiation among China’s floating population and provide evidence for improving housing policies during rapid urbanization. Geospatial factors shape both the housing choices and associated stratification patterns of China’s internal migrants, thereby exerting a discernible influence on the national trajectory toward sustainable development. Accordingly, policymakers must prioritize the pursuit of balanced regional development—with particular emphasis on aligning regional economic performance, infrastructure provision, public service accessibility, and the spatial distribution of population. Such measures would help attenuate the impact of geospatial disparities on migrant housing differentiation and, in turn, advance the country’s broader agenda for sustainable development. Full article

Background: Adolescent pregnancy is a public health problem in Latin America, with a higher prevalence in rural areas. This population faces barriers to accessing education and healthcare services, increasing the risk of maternal and neonatal complications. Methods: This study employed a cross-sectional analytical design and included 72 adolescents aged 12 to 17 years in Lonya Grande. The associations between structural and intermediate social determinants of health and the prevalence of adolescent pregnancy were assessed. Results: Among the structural determinants, extreme poverty (PR: 2.48; 95% CI: 1.23–5.03; p = 0.004), type of public health insurance (PR: 3.05; 95% CI: 1.21–7.72; p = 0.005), and parental educational level were associated with a higher prevalence of adolescent pregnancy. After adjustment, having public health insurance (aPR: 0.49; 95% CI: 0.36–0.66; p < 0.001) and having parents who had completed primary school (aPR: 1.67; 95% CI: 1.15–2.42; p = 0.01) were associated with a higher prevalence of adolescent pregnancy. Among the intermediate determinants, alcohol consumption (PR: 2.77; 95% CI: 1.85–4.16; p < 0.001), knowledge about contraceptives (PR: 0.21; 95% CI: 0.03–0.85; p = 0.04), and being 17 years old (PR: 4.44; 95% CI: 1.48–13.39; p = 0.01) were associated with adolescent pregnancy. In the adjusted model, adolescents aged 15 years (aPR: 3.15; 95% CI: 1.04–9.52; p = 0.04) maintained a higher prevalence compared with those aged 14 years. Conclusions: An association was found between structural and intermediate social determinants of health and adolescent pregnancy in rural settings. These findings suggest the need for additional studies to better understand interventions targeting these associated factors. Full article

This study analyzes educational migration patterns in small towns across Dambovita County, Romania, focusing on spatial accessibility and gender disparities. Officially designated as Rank III urban settlements under national legislation, these small towns face structural regional imbalances. The research is based on a comprehensive structured questionnaire administered to a target sample of 143 graduates from 15 high schools across the surveyed municipalities. Given that the data collection depended on institutional access granted by school administrations, a non-probability purposive sampling approach was employed. The survey incorporated open-ended and closed-ended items capturing students’ institutional choices, secondary education profiles, intentions to pursue matching higher education fields, and underlying motivations. Survey data were integrated with spatial analysis methods using QGIS 3.34 version isochrones modeling and the OpenRouteService (ORS) Matrix to evaluate travel times and distances to competing regional university centers. The results reveal gender-based patterns differences in student mobility: female high school students concentrate on a single metropolitan destination, whereas male high school students are more broadly distributed secondary vocational nodes. Ultimately, this research contributes to understanding how gender intersects with educational migration and highlights the influence of transport infrastructure and spatial friction in students’ decision-making processes. Full article

Background: This study aimed to identify the factors associated with self-reported visual difficulty and uptake of spectacle/contact lens correction among women of reproductive age in Malawi. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional secondary analysis of the 2024 Malawi Demographic and Health Survey data. Outcomes were self-reported visual difficulty and use of spectacles/contact lenses. Age, residence, region, education, and marital status were examined as associated variables. Categorical variables were summarized using frequencies and percentages. Chi-square tests, multinomial and binary logistic regression models were used to assess associations. Results: The analysis included 5634 women aged 15–49 years; 78.3% lived in rural areas, and 62.4% had primary education. Self-reported visual difficulty was significantly associated with region, age, residence, education, and marital status (all p ≤ 0.004). Reported use of spectacle/contact lenses was also associated with these factors. Increasing age was associated with higher odds of reporting “some difficulty” seeing (OR 1.07, 95% CI 1.06–1.09). Compared with women in the Southern region, those from the Northern (OR 2.1, 95% CI 1.5–2.9) and Central regions (OR 1.6, 95% CI 1.2–2.1) had higher odds of reporting visual difficulty, with stronger associations for “a lot of difficulty” in the Central region (OR 4.3, 95% CI 2.1–8.6). Urban residence was associated with higher odds whereas being married/living together, divorced/separated, or widowed was associated with lower odds. Conclusion: Self-reported visual difficulty and use of spectacles/contact lenses varied by demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. Targeted strategies to improve access to affordable eye care may reduce barriers to uptake of corrective services and reduce visual impairment among women in Malawi. Full article