FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO VIETNAMESE UNIVERSITY LECTURERS' BURNOUT IN ONLINE EMERGENCY CLASSROOMS AMIDST THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

This large-scale study aimed to investigate the impacts of underlying factors on lecturers' burnout in emergency online classrooms during the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. The study attracted the participation of 399 lecturers conducting online emergency classrooms from 30 universities and colleges across Vietnam. Data analyses with EFA, CFA, and SEM indicated that such factors as support resources, anxiety towards emergency online teaching and Coronavirus, lecturer's technological and pedagogical content, and knowledge significantly impacted their burnout levels. In contrast, no significant difference in burnout states was found between lecturers with different demographic features, genders, and residences. The results from this study also suggested critical pedagogical implications for higher education leaders and administrators to prepare emergency online classes for sustained education in times of crisis. © 2023,Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education. All Rights Reserved.

Teachers' Scaffolding Strategies in Internet-based ELT Classes

Social distancing due to COVID-19 has necessitated the immediate implementation of Internet-based English language teaching (ELT) in developing countries. This abrupt transition from face-to-face to online learning and teaching environment has brought up many concerns, particularly about maintaining ELT education in crises, one of which is how teachers scaffold students in Internet-based classrooms. Although there is an extensive body of research devoted to scaffolding students' learning in face-to-face ELT classes, effective teachers' scaffolding strategies in online classes are still worth receiving further scholarly attention. Therefore, this article reviews contemporary research on scaffolding strategies for teachers to apply in their Internet-based ELT classes. After discussing the inherent difference between scaffolding and support, and the relationship of scaffolding, support, and linguistic competence, the author synthesizes and systemizes scaffolding functions, intentions, and strategies applicable to the Internet-based English class. The author also suggests practical recommendations that teachers can utilize to scaffold students in differential teaching and learning contexts on the Internet. Finally, this article addresses some common challenges and suggests solutions for teachers to conduct scaffolding strategies effectively in Internet-based ELT classrooms. © 2022 Editorial Board TESL - EJ. All rights reserved.

A novel design of a smart interactive guiding robot for busy airports

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a massive impact on the global aviation industry. As a result, the airline industry has been forced to embrace new technologies and procedures in order to provide a more secure and bio-safe travel. Currently, the role of smart technology in airport systems has expanded significantly as a result of the contemporary Industry 4.0 context. The article presents a novel construction of an intelligent mobile robot system to guide passengers to take the plane at the departure terminals at busy airports. The robot provides instructions to the customer through the interaction between the robot and the customer utilizing voice communications. The usage of the Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API combined with technical machine learning to analyze and understand the customer's requirements are deployed. In addition, we use a face detection technique based on Multi-task Cascaded Convolutional Networks (MTCNN) to predict the distance between the robot and passengers to perform the function. The robot can guide passengers to desired areas in the terminal. The results and evaluation of the implementation process are also mentioned in the article and show promise.

Factors Contributing to English as a Foreign Language Learners’ Academic Burnout: An Investigation Through the Lens of Cultural Historical Activity Theory

During the shift from face-to-face to online emergency classes due to the COVID-19 pandemic, learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) were under constant pressure to familiarize themselves with the once-in-many-generations learning context. Based on the cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), this qualitative study investigated factors contributing to EFL learners’ academic burnout at Open University, Vietnam. The interviewees were seven students, two teachers, and two administrators recruited using a theoretical-based sampling technique. The data consisted of iterative rounds of interviews which lasted approximately 60 min each until the data saturation point was reached. The content analysis revealed six factors that impacted EFL learners’ physical and psychological exhaustion, including prolonged online learning time, privacy concerns and cyber-bullying, teachers’ role, institution’s role, and support community outside the classroom. Also, teachers’ insufficient preparation for online teaching and students’ academic misconduct during exams were factors that created EFL learners’ academic cynicism. Finally, participation in social networking sites’ extracurricular activities, participation checking, and cheating in exams affected the last dimension of academic burnout, the sense of academic achievement. Based on this study, the authority, administrators, and teachers can take a more proactive role in supporting students in curbing their academic burnout during this unprecedented pandemic. The authors also hope that this study can lay the foundation for further humanistic research into the EFL learner’s psychological world in online classes, particularly when each student’s social and cultural background is considered. Copyright © 2022 Bui, Bui and Nguyen.

DASH Live Video Streaming Control Using Actor-Critic Reinforcement Learning Method

With the COVID19 pandemic, video streaming traffic is increasing rapidly. Especially, the live streaming traffic accounts for large amount due to the fact that many events have been switched to the online forms. Therefore, the demand to ensure a high-quality streaming experience is increasing urgently. Since the network condition is expected to fluctuate dynamically, the video streaming needs to be controlled adaptively according to the network condition to provide high quality of experience (QoE) for users. In this paper, a method was proposed to control the live video streaming using the actor-critic reinforcement learning (RL) technique. In this method, the historical video streaming logs such as throughput, buffer size, rebuffering time, latency are taken consideration as the states of RL, then the model is established to map the states to an action such as bitrate decision. In this study, the live streaming simulation is utilized to evaluate the method since the model needs training and the simulation can generate data much faster than real experiment. Experiments were conducted to evaluate the proposed method. Results demonstrate that the total QoE in Bus and Car scenarios show the best performance. The QoE of Tram case shows the lowest due to the low bandwidth. © 2022, ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering.

Limit-to-arbitrage factors and ivol returns puzzle: Empirical evidence from taiwan before and during COVID-19

This paper examines the impacts of limit-to-arbitrage factors on the returns of the idiosyncratic volatility (IVOL) puzzle in Taiwan before and during the Covid-19 pandemic. Although various studies explore the relationship between stock returns and IVOL, the empirical findings are mixed. We are motivated by unique market microstructures in Taiwan, such as individual investors' aggressive trading volume and low transaction costs in Taiwan, discouraging arbitrary trading activities. Our empirical results indicate a negative relationship between IVOL and stock returns by using data from the Taiwan stock market. However, the IVOL anomaly does not exist during the Covid-19 pandemic, even in the small stocks sample. Besides, our findings suggest that four proxies of limits-to-arbitrage, such as reversal, transaction costs, turnover and Amihud's Illiquidity, have statistically significant impacts on the return of IVOL anomaly in Taiwan except for the pandemic period. Finally, our finding suggests that the stock turnover is the only limit-to-arbitrage factor that helps investors earn arbitrary profits during the COVID-19 period. © 2021 World Scientific Publishing Company.