Search Results (1,478)

Background/Objectives: Dental Practice-Based Research Networks (DPBRNs) bridge the gap between academic research and private dental practice, addressing questions relevant to everyday medical care. Despite their growing scientific output, little research has explored the experiences of practitioners engaged in these networks. Our study therefore aims to investigate these practitioners’ perspectives in order to identify strategies for improving investigator recruitment, training and data quality in future DPBRN studies. Methods: The qualitative methodology was chosen, and our study adhered to the Standards for Reporting Qualitative Research (SRQR) guidelines. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with dentists who had participated in a DPBRNs study and transcribed before being thematically analysed using Braun and Clarke’s framework. MaxQDA 2022 software was used to facilitate coding of the verbatim quotes. Results: Three major themes emerged: (1) obstacles to participation, including time constraints, difficulties in patient recruitment, and a perceived disconnect between academia and private practice; (2) facilitators of engagement, such as strong leadership, logistical support, and a collaborative research environment; and (3) personal benefits, such as skill development, breaking professional routines, and counteracting stereotypes about private practitioners’ involvement in research. Conclusions: The findings align with existing literature on medical Practice-Based Research Networks (PBRNs), highlighting logistical and motivational barriers while also emphasizing the importance of social and professional benefits. Notably, although financial compensation or credits for continuing professional development are frequently cited as motivators for research participation, these were not significant concerns for our participants. This study sheds light on the experiences of health practitioners in PBRNs, offering recommendations to overcome challenges through strategies such as accessible training, practical incentives and collaboration opportunities. Full article

This mixed-methods study explores the views and experiences of 55 English-language teacher candidates in Chile who designed gamified project-based lessons aimed at fostering inclusive learning and social justice in culturally diverse classrooms. Data were collected through lesson plans, semi-structured interviews, and a Likert-scale survey, and were analysed using inductive content analysis and descriptive statistics. The findings reveal that participants valued gamification for enhancing student engagement, collaboration, and critical thinking, and they perceived gains in their ability to integrate social justice themes into language teaching. However, discrepancies emerged when participants had to plan lessons that had a social justice orientation because they perceived they did not have enough competence to approach equity-oriented themes. This study adopts a justice lens that foregrounds power, agency, and digital equity in teacher candidates’ lesson-planning skills to examine how they can redistribute voice, recognise situated knowledges, and expand their capacity to act within and against structural constraints. The study underscores the need for teacher education programmes to move beyond technical and motivational uses of gamification and digital tools. From their lesson plans, teacher candidates were not simply adopting digital tools at a technical level but seem to be designing an integrated pedagogical ecosystem that aligned gamification and project-based learning. However, it is inconclusive whether they are able to design gamified PBL environments that do not reproduce existing social and educational inequalities and ensure that access and participation are carefully scaffolded. Full article

International students at English-medium universities in Australia whose first language is not English often struggle with language learning due to challenges sustaining motivation and managing anxiety, while simultaneously needing to strengthen their English skills to succeed academically and fully engage in university life. Although serious games are increasingly used in second-language education, many are not explicitly grounded in established pedagogical strategy frameworks, and grammar-focused serious board games remain underrepresented. In response, this study designed a strategy-embedded serious board game (The Pyramid of Time) that integrates Oxford’s indirect Language Learning Strategies to support grammar-focused practice. Following a Design Thinking process informed by desk-based evidence and refined through two rounds of playtesting, the final prototype was evaluated in a single-session, between-subjects quasi-experiment with 64 international L2 English students studying in Australian English-medium universities, comparing a collaborative board-game condition with an individual textbook self-study condition. Outcomes were assessed using pre- and post-measures of grammar test performance, language learning motivation, and grammar-learning anxiety. The strategy-embedded, collaborative game-based condition showed larger short-term gains in grammar test performance and more favourable changes in motivation and anxiety than the individual textbook self-study condition. An exploratory bootstrapped mediation analysis was consistent with an indirect pattern in which anxiety reduction related to grammar gains primarily via increased motivation, although evidence was modest. Findings provide initial support for theory-informed, strategy-embedded game-based instruction as a promising approach for grammar-focused practice that also improves learners’ short-term motivational and affective experiences. These results should be interpreted in light of differences in instructional format, collaborative structure, and time-on-task across conditions. Full article

The accelerated expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping economic systems, labour markets and democratic life, giving rise to hybrid human–AI societies. In this context, education becomes a strategic arena for enabling sustainable and socially just transitions within the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This article examines how digital competence can be reconceptualized to prepare future citizens and educators for these emerging societal configurations, with particular attention to the Ibero-American context. A conceptual framework is proposed that integrates algorithmic literacy, critical data awareness, AI ethics, human–AI collaboration skills, and civic and socio-emotional capacities as core dimensions of “next-decade” digital competence. Methodologically, the study combines three complementary approaches: (a) a structured review of interdisciplinary literature on AI, digital competence and sustainability; (b) an analysis of international and regional policy documents and competence frameworks relevant to Ibero-America; and (c) selected empirical insights drawn from the first author’s doctoral research on digital competence and AI use in teacher education. The findings reveal significant tensions between rapid AI adoption and persistent structural inequalities in the Global South, while identifying key leverage points for aligning teacher education, public policy and institutional strategies with the Sustainable Development Goals. The proposed framework aims to support policymakers, universities and international organizations in fostering inclusive and sustainable AI-driven social change while mitigating new forms of exclusion and dependency. Full article

This study intended to examine how human–AI collaboration-based identity threat appraisals in the form of the loss of autonomy and loss of skill trigger a professional identity that fosters cyberloafing. Based on social identity theory, this study applied a three-wave survey design with 507 employees. The proposed research model was tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) with SmartPLS 4, which enabled the assessment of both measurement and structural models. The perceived loss of skill and loss of autonomy are positively associated with professional identity threat, which mediates their relationships with cyberloafing. AI-inclusive identity weakens these associations for the loss of autonomy, suggesting that employees with strong AI-inclusive identity exhibit weaker professional identity threat. When integrating AI, organizations should mitigate appraisals of the loss of autonomy and loss of skill through participatory design, role redesign, and communication that emphasizes unique human contributions. Supporting healthy AI–human identity integration may reduce counterproductive behaviors such as cyberloafing. By positioning identity threat appraisals as human–AI collaboration-driven antecedents of professional identity threat and cyberloafing, this study extends social identity theory to human–AI contexts. It further demonstrates that over-identification with AI may heighten professional identity threats by diminishing the value of uniquely human contributions. Full article

The current educational transformation driven by the incorporation of digital technologies has required teachers to acquire new technical and pedagogical skills. The purpose of this study was to identify the level of pedagogical implementation of interactive whiteboards (IWBs), analyze the levels of technical competence in the use of IWBs, and identify the advantages, limitations, challenges, and perceived impact of IWBs in regular basic education, considering the differences between public and private institutions. The methodology adopted a descriptive-comparative approach, with the application of a structured questionnaire to teachers in public and private basic education institutions. The results showed the growing use of IWB as a teaching resource to facilitate learning, as well as a significant gap in the skills and frequency of use of IWBs between teachers in the public and private sectors. It was also found that IWBs foster greater student interaction, motivation, and participation, particularly when they are integrated into active and collaborative teaching strategies. However, limitations related to technological infrastructure, teacher training, and equipment maintenance were recognized. In conclusion, IWB integration is effective, but it requires equipment and ongoing training in digital and pedagogical skills. Full article

Achieving high-quality employment for retired athletes is essential for promoting the holistic development of athletes and accelerating the construction of a strong sports nation. From the perspective of capital collaboration, this study develops a comprehensive analysis framework by incorporating human capital, social capital, and psychological capital to systematically investigate the influencing factors and configuration pathways for high-quality employment of retired athletes. Utilizing Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA) and fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), this study discovers three main findings. First, no single condition variable independently constitutes the necessary condition for high-quality employment. Second, three configuration pathways for achieving high-quality employment are identified, including human capital–social capital synergy, human capital–psychological capital synergy, and human capital–social capital–psychological capital integration. Third, vocational skill, as a component of human capital, emerges as an important condition in configurations associated with high-quality employment. Based on the findings, this research recommends improving the athlete security policy system, promoting the accumulation of human capital, strengthening the development of psychological capital, constructing diverse social support networks, and optimizing the pathways for retired athletes to achieve high-quality employment. These aims will support retired athletes in navigating career transitions effectively while securing stable and high-quality employment. Full article

Cultivating new quality productive forces is pivotal for the high-quality development of China’s ethnic minority regions. This study investigates how digital finance, by leveraging its capacity to overcome geographical constraints, can drive this process. Utilizing panel data from 45 ethnic minority cities from 2013 to 2023, we employ two-way fixed-effects, spatial econometric, mediation, and moderation models to examine the impact and underlying mechanisms of digital finance. The findings indicate that digital finance significantly enhances new quality productive forces in border ethnic minority regions and generates positive spatial spillover effects on neighboring areas. This impact is mediated by two pathways: technological innovation and the green, low-carbon transformation. Conversely, digital divides related to access, usage, and skills exert a significant negative moderating effect on this positive impact. Furthermore, a regional heterogeneity analysis reveals that the driving effect of digital finance is more pronounced in the Northwest region compared to the Southwest. Accordingly, we propose targeted policy recommendations centered on optimizing adaptive digital infrastructure, strengthening digital literacy, promoting green finance, and establishing collaborative regional mechanisms. The objective is to amplify the positive impacts while mitigating the existing digital divides. Full article

Outdoor ecological practice is essential for cultivating ecological literacy; however, there is currently a relative lack of comprehensive outdoor practical teaching case designs for class-based teaching. This study describes the design of an experimental teaching case for ecological education involving UAV-based field data collection. For the scheme, we selected the Xinhui Tangerine Peel Germplasm Resources Conservation Center in Jiangmen City, Guangdong Province as the study area, utilizing the DJI Phantom 4 RTK drone, which serves as the equipment for experimental teaching. The experiment is structured into three phases: indoor preparation, field execution, and data processing. Students from four groups collaboratively conducted aerial surveys across 24 partitioned plots, with flight altitudes stratified between groups to ensure safety and data integrity. (1) In the indoor preparation phase, appropriate single-flight operational units were defined. QGIS software (version 3.26.2) was employed for zonal mission planning, and suitable flight altitudes were estimated using contour data. (2) Field experiment phase. This involved conducting a comprehensive survey of the on-site environment, selecting suitable takeoff and landing points, dividing students into teams to carry out UAV-image-acquisition tasks, and assigning different altitudes for flight routes among the teams. (3) After the fieldwork, students processed imagery using Agisoft Metashape (version 2.0.1) to generate orthomosaics and digital surface models, and engaged in ecological interpretation of the results. The experimental design ensured orderly execution, complete data coverage, and active student participation. The results indicate the approach effectively enhanced students’ UAV operational skills, outdoor problem-solving abilities, and teamwork capabilities, while deepening their ecological understanding through real-world inquiry. This case provides a replicable model for integrating UAV technology into ecological education, contributing to the transformation of ecological awareness into actionable practice. Full article

Digital literacy is widely promoted as enabling later-life inclusion, but its potential to generate trust-related vulnerabilities remains insufficiently examined, particularly in rapidly ageing societies. Using nationally representative data from the 2022 China Family Panel Studies including 1583 adults aged 60 and above, this study examines whether digital literacy is associated with older adults’ trust in strangers, which is interpreted here as a form of trust vulnerability in low-verifiability interactions. In this study, trust vulnerability is operationalised through respondents’ self-reported trust in strangers, while digital literacy is operationalised through behavioural competences spanning information and data literacy, communication and collaboration, content creation, digital transactions, and problem-solving. OLS regression models with Huber–White robust standard errors are employed. The findings indicate that higher levels of digital literacy are positively associated with stronger trust in strangers, suggesting that competence may heighten older adults’ inclination to trust and increase exposure to digital risks. This association is driven primarily by functional competences, with mobile payment use and problem-solving skills showing the largest and most consistent associations. By contrast, subjective well-being and perceived platform security show no significant mediating roles. The study recommends integrating functional training, trust calibration and risk-recognition education, alongside interpretable and verifiable safeguards that make security more visible to older adults. Full article

Complex products and production processes are intertwined and demand expressive, lifecycle-wide digital representations. The Asset Administration Shell emerged as a standard for Digital Twins (DTs), structuring heterogeneous data across cloud-based Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) infrastructures. However, today’s deployments predominantly realize passive or reactive DTs, while intelligent behavior remains underexploited. This paper addresses this gap, proposing an end-to-end architecture operationalizing the DT Reference Model through the integration of machine-interpretable granulated industrial skills, which are semantically accumulated into a knowledge graph enabling discovery and reasoning, while a multi-agent system provides autonomous, utility-based negotiation via machine-to-machine interactions within a federated marketplace. The approach is applied in a real smart manufacturing demonstrator, combining order processes, production orchestration, and lifecycle documentation into a unified execution pipeline spanning IIoT-connected shopfloor assets and cloud-based services. Quantitative experiments evaluating negotiation latency, renegotiation robustness, and utility variation demonstrate stable, predictable behavior even under concurrent demand and failure scenarios. The architecture lays a foundation for interoperable, sovereign collaboration across value chains to realize shared production. The results underline the effectiveness of the tightly coupled enabler technologies realizing proactive, reconfigurable, and semantically enriched intelligent DTs. Full article

The agriculture sector plays a pivotal role in global economies, and optimizing its perishable food supply chain (PFSC) is vital to ensuring food security and transparency. The purpose of the study is to develop a blockchain-based smart contract to secure and provide transparency about perishable goods in the PFSC while delivering the goods between the stakeholders, such as farmers, mandis, and wholesalers. The study enhances collaboration between stakeholders by implementing smart contracts. The delivery status and the transactions have been safely recorded and verified by the stakeholder in the PFSC to ensure data integrity all the way through. The blockchain application has reduced fraud and streamlined the flow of goods and information. Moreover, this study emphasizes providing farmers with a straightforward route to the market to empower them. The benefits for the stakeholders are optimizing inventory control and developing appropriate decision-making skills. A three-echelon PFSC can become more resilient and is able to meet changing market demands by implementing blockchain-based smart contracts. Finally, the study employs blockchain technology to establish a decentralized and efficient PFSC, confirming a tamper-resistant system and enhancing stakeholder trust and collaboration. Full article

Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS) are progressing from proof-of-concept to engineering test and initial application phases due to advancements in intelligent sensing, automatic control, and communication technologies. However, numerous studies have shown that the improvement of automation level does not linearly reduce human factor risks. Instead, it exhibits more complex evolutionary characteristics at the medium automation level. In particular, MASS Level 2 (MASS L2) features a “system-dominated, human-supervised” operational mode, and its human factor risks have become one of the key factors restricting the safe operation, large-scale application and sustainable long-term deployment of autonomous ships. This study employs a systematic literature review to analyze 89 core articles (2020–2025) and summarizes the theoretical basis, risk characteristics, and evolutionary trends of human factor risk research in MASS L2. The review results indicate that the current research consensus has gradually shifted from the traditional “human error”-centered explanatory paradigm to a systematic understanding of “information mismatches, opacity, and coupling failures in the human-machine-shore collaborative system”. Typical human factor risks in MASS L2 are mainly manifested as the degradation of supervisory cognition and situation awareness, imbalance in trust in automation, vulnerability in mode switching and takeover, skill degradation, and structural risks in ship-shore collaboration. Based on these findings, this study constructs a classification system and a comprehensive analysis framework for human factor risks in MASS L2, reveals the interaction relationships and dynamic evolution mechanisms among different risk types from a system-level perspective, and further discusses the limitations of existing research in terms of methods, data, and engineering applicability. Finally, considering the development trends of autonomous ship technology, this study proposes future research directions in human factor theoretical modeling, dynamic risk assessment, system design, and operation management. This study aims to provide a systematic knowledge framework for human factor risk research in MASS L2 and offer references for the safety design, safety management, and development of higher-level automation of autonomous ships, while supporting the sustainable and safe advancement of the global intelligent shipping industry. Full article

Workspace digitalisation presents a transformative shift from traditional, physically bounded offices to virtual, technology-enabled environments. Digital technologies like cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things enable remote collaboration, data accessibility, and operational efficiency, thereby accelerating this transformation. Digital workspaces transcend geographical limitations, enabling a more flexible, inclusive, and adaptive work culture. They offer better work–life balance, with flexible options, reduced commuting time, and increased personal autonomy and control over commitments, compared to traditional workspaces. Despite these benefits, digitalisation creates cybersecurity, data privacy, and digital divide issues, where unequal access to digital tools and skills can exacerbate social and economic inequalities. The lack of physical interaction affects team cohesion and company culture. Hence, this paper explores these phenomena to uncover their implications and consider possible strategies to optimise workspace digitalisation, providing a comprehensive systematic review of extant literature within the study context, offering pragmatic insights and recommendations for workspaces. This study has found workspace digitalisation to be a complex, multifaceted phenomenon that provides flexibility, efficiency, and innovation, but also poses challenges that must be carefully managed. It postulates that as technology and work progress, a hybrid model that blends digital and traditional workspaces would be suited to each organisation’s needs and goals. Full article

The accelerated expansion of advanced technologies—particularly artificial intelligence, intelligent systems, and interactive digital environments—is influencing contemporary media ecosystems and contributing to changes in educational practices. This study provides a systematic and descriptive bibliometric mapping of recent scientific production on artificial intelligence in education, algorithmic ethics, and digital inequality. A total of 229 Scopus-indexed documents published between 2021 and 2026 were analyzed using Biblioshiny and VOSviewer to examine publication patterns, influential authors and sources, and the conceptual structure of the field. Results indicate a marked increase in research output since 2024, with an annual growth rate of 47.58%, an average of 8.68 citations per document, and an international co-authorship rate of 24.45%. These indicators reflect an expanding and increasingly collaborative research landscape, accompanied by a diversification of thematic priorities within the field. The analysis identifies five thematic clusters: (1) the technical foundations of AI and digital transformation; (2) intelligent and immersive learning environments; (3) personalized and adaptive learning systems; (4) AI literacy and pedagogical integration; and (5) ethical considerations, including algorithmic bias and educational robotics. The findings highlight the need for explicit justification of database selection, strengthened critical AI literacy, and context-sensitive strategies that address disparities in access, skills, and institutional capacity. Overall, this study offers a coherent overview of a research area that is currently expanding and undergoing conceptual reorganization, providing evidence-informed insights for future research, policy development, and the design of equitable AI-driven educational technologies. Full article