Search Results (93)

Enhancing innovation capability can effectively promote the development of traditional industries. Based on Lewin’s behavioral model theory, this study investigated the relationship between industrial support policies and innovation behavior within traditional industries. Utilizing survey data collected from 152 traditional industrial enterprises in 2024 and employing structural equation modeling, the main findings are as follows: Industrial support policies can effectively alleviate the “innovation inertia” of traditional industries, with all policies being significant at the 1% confidence level. Among them, policies related to industry–university–research cooperation platforms have the most significant impact, with a standardized coefficient of 0.941, followed by fiscal and taxation policies (standardized coefficient: 0.846) and financial policies (standardized coefficient: 0.729). Innovation motivation acts as a mediating mechanism between industrial policies and innovation behavior. Industrial support policies accelerate the conversion of reserve-oriented patent portfolios into practical applications, helping to break through patent barriers and effectively alleviate innovation inertia. Consequently, the government should prioritize improving public services, and policy formulation needs to be oriented towards enhancing innovation efficiency. While ensuring industrial security, it is advisable to moderately increase competition to guide traditional industry market players towards thriving in competitive environments. Full article

The UI GreenMetric World University Ranking has become a widely adopted instrument for benchmarking institutional sustainability performance; nevertheless, empirically grounded evidence from universities in diverse regional contexts remains scarce. This study undertakes a rigorous appraisal of the extent to which Mahasarakham University (MSU) has institutionalized the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) within its pedagogical offerings, research portfolio, community outreach, and governance arrangements during the 2021–2024 strategic cycle. Employing a mixed-methods design and guided by the 2024 UI GreenMetric Education and Research indicators, this investigation analyzed institutional datasets pertaining to curriculum provision, ring-fenced research funding, 574 peer-reviewed sustainability publications, student-led community initiatives, and supporting governance mechanisms; the analysis was interpreted through a Plan–Do–Check–Act management lens. The number of sustainability-oriented academic programs expanded from 49 to 58. Student participation in community service activities strongly recovered following the COVID-19 pandemic, and MSU’s GreenMetric score increased from 7575 to 8475, thereby elevating the institution to the 100th position globally. These gains were facilitated by strategic SDG-aligned investment, cross-sector collaboration, and the consolidation of international partnerships anchored in Thailand’s Isaan region. The MSU case provides a transferable model for universities—particularly those operating in resource-constrained contexts—endeavoring to align institutional development with the SDGs and internationally recognized quality benchmarks. The findings substantiate the capacity of transformative education and applied research to engender enduring societal and environmental benefits. Full article

This study investigates how traditional costing methods hinder the development of modular product architectures. A structured literature review identifies the gap between Management Accounting (MA) and Innovation and Operations Management (IOM), revealing that current costing approaches often fail to provide an accurate cost assessment of the impact of modularity effects across the product life cycle. A hypothesis is proposed, suggesting that defining cost allocation by levels of abstraction—product, subsystem, and component—can address the challenges in current methods. The analysis found that modularity effects are predominantly assessed at the product level in four out of five life-cycle phases, despite product costs being incurred at lower levels, leading to inaccuracies in cost allocation. This study concludes that current costing practices do not offer a sufficient level of detail for informed design decisions based on cost when it comes to developing modular product architectures and proposes the development of more refined cost models. It offers a new perspective on how to assess product variety and its related effects in a product portfolio. This lays the foundation for future research combining the fields of MA and IOM. This paper highlights the absence of a universal method to assess the total life-cycle cost of product portfolios and outlines directions for future work, including the development and testing of refined allocation models through industry case studies. Full article

Transformative digitally integrated pedagogy can enrich learning experiences, diversify the curriculum and broaden access to industry-relevant advanced clinical education for remote learners in medical education. Clinical skills are characterised as the portfolio of practical and interpersonal skills required by practicing clinicians. The purpose of this project was to design a new wholly online post-professional university subject for clinicians in different healthcare disciplines to advance these skills, which would traditionally be taught and assessed in-person. Our methodology included critically reviewing existing evidence of relevant medical skills which need to be included in the curriculum and approaches to their assessment. We designed a subject which dovetailed learning experiences with continuing clinical practice, and developed a new framework for remote video assessment of practical skills. Our pedagogical approaches included a backwards design coupled with a Four-Component Instructional Design Model (4C-ID) approach, which increased access and contextualised learning opportunities for diverse and practicing clinicians. Our narrative synthesis critically shares our experience and insights of embracing digital-technology opportunities while problem-solving to move past barriers. Our impact evaluation and experiential insights offer a platform to reimagine emerging possibilities for future digitally integrated education in medical education and other clinical-skills professions. Full article

Aligned with the worldwide shift towards promotional and preventative health care, the South African government has introduced a re-engineered primary health care plan, facilitated through a National Health Insurance (NHI) platform. Community health workers (CHWs) are key role-players in most universal health care systems. This article shares insider perspectives from 31 CHWs in one of the South African NHI pilot districts. Based on their perspectives, the authors share recommendations to strengthen the NHI plan. Recommendations comprise of the inclusion of a dedicated CHW team leader and reporting nurse, ongoing CHW education and training with an accompanying portfolio of evidence, and awareness campaigns on the role of CHWs within the South African re-engineered primary health care plan and NHI platform. Full article

This paper introduces a two-phase decision support system based on information theory and financial practices to assist investors in solving cardinality-constrained portfolio optimization problems. Firstly, the approach employs a stock-picking procedure based on an interactive multi-criteria decision-making method (the so-called TODIM method). More precisely, the best-performing assets from the investable universe are identified using three financial criteria. The first criterion is based on mutual information, and it is employed to capture the microstructure of the stock market. The second one is the momentum, and the third is the upside-to-downside beta ratio. To calculate the preference weights used in the chosen multi-criteria decision-making procedure, two methods are compared, namely equal and entropy weighting. In the second stage, this work considers a portfolio optimization model where the objective function is a modified version of the Sharpe ratio, consistent with the choices of a rational agent even when faced with negative risk premiums. Additionally, the portfolio design incorporates a set of bound, budget, and cardinality constraints, together with a set of risk budgeting restrictions. To solve the resulting non-smooth programming problem with non-convex constraints, this paper proposes a variant of the distance-based parameter adaptation for success-history-based differential evolution with double crossover (DISH-XX) algorithm equipped with a hybrid constraint-handling approach. Numerical experiments on the US and European stock markets over the past ten years are conducted, and the results show that the flexibility of the proposed portfolio model allows the better control of losses, particularly during market downturns, thereby providing superior or at least comparable ex post performance with respect to several benchmark investment strategies. Full article

An education oriented towards learning must necessarily include assessment techniques and instruments that effectively achieve this goal. Currently, assessment has become a crucial element, leading to the promulgation of legal regulations to govern it. This study aimed to explore the perceptions of assessment in three Chilean universities among faculty members vs. practicum students from two cohorts of Chilean Initial Teacher Education in Physical Education (ITEPE) from two cohorts from subsequent moments, with a difference of four years. The study followed a quantitative, cross-sectional, and comparative approach and the sample consisted of a total of 458 participants, including 1st Group: n = 162 practicum students (S1) 2019–20 (M = 22.5, SD = 3.1) and 44 faculty members (FM1) from the same cohort (M = 42.3, SD = 11.2) vs. 197 practicum students (S2) 2023–24 (M = 23.6, SD = 2.2) and 55 faculty members (FM2) from this cohort (M = 40.4, SD = 10.4). Data were collected using the “Questionnaire for the Study of the Assessment System”. The results revealed significant differences between students and faculty regarding the perception of the use of assessment instruments in ITEPE. The 2023–24 cohort students perceived a greater presence of portfolios compared to their peers from four years ago, while faculty from the latest cohort indicated a perception of higher use of traditional exams. In conclusion, it can be observed that decision-making predominantly falls on the faculty, as evidenced by discrepancies regarding feedback and student participation in grade determination. This reinforces the idea that the process remains teacher-centered. Full article

Behavioral risk management is an increasingly important consideration in investment strategies, as research has shown that investor psychology can significantly impact portfolio performance. This study examines how psychological variables influence investing choices and the effects that these actions have on risk mitigation and overall investment performance. The primary respondents for this study were the employees of Takoradi Technical University. Partial Least Square Structural Modeling was adopted for the data processing, analysis, and testing of the study’s hypotheses. The study’s findings, which were based on a carefully chosen sample of 348 investors, showed that investigating behavioral risk management in investment strategies is an effective method for thoroughly comprehending and utilizing investors’ psychology to maximize risk management procedures and enhance investment results in dynamic financial markets. Seven hypotheses were deemed insignificant, and five were considered significant. This study is limited by its exclusive focus on only one technical university. This study augmented the growing corpus of research on risk management in investment strategies. Full article

This paper presents the development and analysis of a bridge bearing database consistent with the 2020 Italian Guidelines (LG2020), currently enforced by the Italian law for risk classification and management of existing bridges. The database was developed by putting together the contribution of 24 research teams from 18 Italian universities in the framework of a research project foreseen by the agreement between the High Council of Public Works (CSLP, part of the Italian Ministry of Transportation) and the research consortium ReLUIS (Network of Italian Earthquake and Structural Engineering University Laboratories). This research project aimed to apply LG2020 to a set of about 600 bridges distributed across the Italian country, in order to find possible issues and propose modifications and integrations. The database includes almost 12,000 bearing defect forms related to a portfolio of 255 existing bridges located across the entire country. This paper reports a preliminary analysis of the dataset to provide an overview of the bearings installed in a significant bridge portfolio, referring to major highways and state roads. After a brief state of the art about the main bearing types installed on the bridges, along with inspection procedures, the paper describes the database structure, showing preliminary analyses related to bearing types and defects. The results show the prevalence of elastomeric pads, representing more than 55% of the inspected bearings. The remaining bearings are pot, low-friction with steel–Teflon surfaces and older-type steel devices. Lastly, the study provides information about typical defects for each type of bearing, while also underscoring some issues related to the current version of the LG2020 bearing inspection form. Full article

The management of public institutions is focused not only on providing and improving public services but also on managing the physical infrastructure that these institutions use—buildings for provision of such services. The focus of this paper is on decision support to the management of individual buildings and the set of such buildings (portfolio) during the planning phase. More precisely, it is directed towards support towards both the decision-maker (DM) and decision-making process (DMP) when planning construction activities/projects such as maintenance, renovation, reconstruction, extension, construction, design/preparation of project-technical documentation, etc. The aforementioned DMP includes the processing of a large amount of diverse data (technical, economic, social, etc.) expressed differently—numerically or descriptively, as well as in different units of measurement, simultaneously taking into account the different wishes and attitudes of stakeholders (consequently meeting their often conflicting goals and criteria). The above indicates that it is a complex and ill-defined multi-criteria problem faced by the DM/planner. On top of that, and knowing that the DM usually does not have all the necessary knowledge and skills, this paper proposes how to overcome these issues by supporting the DM within the DMP during such a planning process. The proposed concept promotes an integral (considering relevant aspects of this management problem) and inclusive (taking into account the views of relevant stakeholders) approach to managing complex construction projects and their portfolios. It is methodologically based on the logic of decision support systems and multi-criteria analysis. The multi-criteria methods used include the Preference Ranking Organization METhod for Enrichment Evaluation (PROMETHEE) for the evaluation and comparison of alternatives in an integral manner, as well as the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) for determining the weights of criteria and achieving an inclusive and consistent approach to relevant stakeholders (based on the goal tree approach). The concept was tested on the planning of infrastructure management at a university in the Republic of Croatia, and it was proven to be useful because it provided the DM with a basis for decision making. The usefulness of the concept was confirmed by the concordance of the plan obtained using the concept and the activities/projects actually realized. Full article

The emergence of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) raises critical questions about learner autonomy and agency. This exploratory case study examines how four university-level German language learners with diverse backgrounds developed autonomy in their learning process through engagement with AI tools. The study was conducted in early 2023 when most learners were first discovering ChatGPT’s potential for language learning. Data were collected through reflective journals, digital portfolios, and interviews during a semester-long course that scaffolded self-directed learning with AI integration. The findings reveal emerging patterns of shared agency between learners and AI tools. Learners developed distinct strategies for AI integration based on their language learning backgrounds, with heritage speakers focusing on accuracy improvement while classroom learners emphasized communication practice. Cross-case analyses identified key dimensions of autonomy development: a critical evaluation of AI output, evolving learner–AI relationships, maintaining and developing a second language (L2) voice, and the strategic integration of AI tools while preserving learner agency. These patterns suggest that autonomy in AI-mediated environments manifests through learners’ capacity to engage productively with AI while maintaining critical awareness and personal agency in their learning process. Full article

This research investigates how university students define and perceive success, an area that is increasingly important to ensuring that a university’s brand remains aligned to the expectations of future students. Over the next decade, university students will comprise members of Generation Z (Gen Z), and by recognizing this group of students’ preferences and aspirations, universities can tailor their branding, educational portfolio, and overall campus experiences to ensure that together they resonate and satisfy evolving needs and demands. Using data based on a sample of Gen Z undergraduate students undertaking their degrees at three case study UK post-1992 universities, this research adopted an exploratory, interpretivist methodology. Data collected from semi-structured interviews were analyzed using recursive abstraction to identify underlying patterns and trends within the data. The research identified five key themes that Gen Z are using to define success, and these are the following: (1) being objective and task-driven; (2) embracing fluidity and subjectivity; (3) being ethically and morally responsible; (4) having resilience; and (5) accepting and learning from failure. Recommendations were made for actions that universities should start to take to enable them to work toward achieving this. Full article

Dental implant education is required to prepare students for independent general practice. This investigation aimed to assess students’ perceptions of their educational experience and training in a preclinical dental implant introduction course, using reflective logs anonymously extracted from course portfolios. Methods: This study employed qualitative research methodology to analyze second-year dental students’ reflections on their educational and development of psychomotor skills in a preclinical course focusing on dental implants at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. These reflections served as the primary data source for qualitative analysis. The analysis was facilitated using NVivo software version 12 plus, which assisted in data coding and the organization of these codes into meaningful units, patterns, and themes. Results: Four themes emerged, which interrelated to each other and to the research question. Students reported positive course outcomes in dental implant learning, improvements in applying theoretical implant knowledge while developing practical skills, digitally scanning implant cases for the final restoration, and enhancement of their insight in evidence-based restoratively driven implant planning. They generally found the hands-on experience to have improved their understanding of the dental implant as an option for restoration. Although there were challenges, students viewed these as learning opportunities. For us, as educators, it provided invaluable feedback to understand students’ perceptions of difficulties in knowledge acquisition and psychomotor skill development in placing and restoring dental implants. Conclusions: Within the limitation of this study, students expressed a positive perception of their learning experience in the introductory course on dental implants. Full article

To ensure a comfortable post-retirement life and the ability to cover living expenses, it is of utmost importance for individuals to have a clear understanding of how long their pre-retirement savings will last. In this research, we employ a ruin-theory approach to model the inflows and the outflows of retirees’ portfolios. We track all transactions within the portfolios of retired clients sourced by a registered investment provider to Canada’s Financial Wellness Lab at Western University. By utilizing an advanced ruin model, we calculate the mean and the median time it takes for savings to be exhausted, the probabilities of exhaustion of funds within the retirees’ expected remaining lifetime while accounting for the observed withdrawal rates, and the deficit at ruin if a retiree has used up all of their savings. We also account for gender as well as for the risk tolerance of retired clients using a K-Means clustering algorithm. This allows us to compare the financial outcomes for female and male retirees and to enhance some findings in the literature. In the final phase of our study, we compare the results obtained by our methodology to the 4% rule which is a widely used approach for post-retirement spending. Our results show that most retirees can withdraw safely more than they currently do (around 2.5%). A withdrawal rate of about 4.5% is proved to be safe, but it might not provide sufficient income for most retirees since it yields approximately CAD 20,000 per year for male retirees in the highest risk tolerance group who withdraw about 4.5% annually. Full article

The rise of digital technology and artificial intelligence has led to a significant change in the way financial services are delivered. One such development is the emergence of robo advising, which is an automated investment advisory service that utilizes algorithms to provide investment advice and portfolio management to investors. Robo advisors gather information about clients’ preferences, financial situations, and future goals through questionnaires. Subsequently, they recommend ETF-based portfolios tailored to match the investor’s risk profile. However, these questionnaires often appear vague, and robo advisors seldom disclose the methodologies employed for investor profiling or asset allocation. This study aims to contribute by introducing an investor profiling method relying solely on investors’ relative risk aversion (RRA), which, in addition, allows for the determination of optimal allocations. We also show that, for the period under analysis and using the same ETF universe, our RRA portfolios consistently outperform those recommended by the Riskalyze platform, which may suffer from ultraconservadorism in terms of the proposed volatility. Full article