ABSTRACT
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the international shipping market has been highly volatile, posing a serious threat to the survival and development of many maritime start-ups. With the development of the digital economy, digital transformation is affecting the evolution and upgrading of many traditional enterprises, including maritime enterprises. In the post-COVID-19 era, start-up small and medium-sized enterprises will need to consider the importance of enterprise risk management to achieve transformation and upgrading. The purpose of this study is to provide guidance for the establishment and upgrading of risk management systems for start-ups based on the identification of risk management strategies of maritime enterprises and the evaluation of their performance. The fuzzy analytic hierarchy process and importance-performance analysis methods were used to rank the operational risk, financial risk, market risk, innovation risk, and disaster risk according to sub-items and screen out the risk management schemes for priority improvements. Through empirical research, it was found that the financial risk and market risk response schemes have the lowest performance and need to be prioritised for improvement. This study argues that start-ups can appropriately challenge their risk management strategies to meet potential risk management needs based on their own circumstances.
ABSTRACT
[...]after many such changes, relearning and reentering information into new profiles and management systems lost its luster. While believe that lecture course content can be delivered effectively online, there is an undeniable need for extensive hands-on laboratory experimentation in a physical science curriculum. [...]it provides more opportunities to reiterate key points to the students.
ABSTRACT
Princeton University, including the various language programs it offers, has intentionally resisted distance learning for decades, primarily out of a desire to concentrate on the residential undergraduate educational experience. In New Jersey, USA, state-level restrictions and institutional decisions resulted in the closure of campus instructional spaces from the halfway point of the 2020 spring semester through the end of the 2020-2021 academic year, with further precautions, mitigations, and flexible responses throughout the following academic year, including but not limited to frequent reversion to remote instruction during periods of high incidence, interior masking requirements, and social distancing when possible in classroom spaces. For the past six years, I have also redesigned, expanded, and aligned our second-year German program with the first year, which is based on a high-frequency core vocabulary and the development of contextual reading strategies, among other approaches (for a detailed description of approach, form, and function, see Oberlin, in press). Of the many tools and approaches considered during this frantic and bewildering week, one stands out: the application of outside-of-class student-to-student communication via Zoom or other video-conferencing technologies with written follow-up to fulfill a number of desiderata: (1) that students speak more in an alternate assignment format given the realities of affective and technological hurdles while using video conferencing software;(2) that they are provided with an unsupervised opportunity to speak in an effort to reduce anxiety;(3) that self-scheduled partner work might offer flexibility necessary during home-based study and the various complications and distractions that entails, particularly during a period of ongoing disruptions;and (4) that a written response to this oral communication would generate classroom discussion, deepen engagement with materials, and present instructors with another avenue for teacher-student feedback and the assessment of sentence- or paragraph-level writing.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic that began in March 2020 gave rise to a number of challenges for first-year experience activities at universities globally. One of the key challenges was the process of onboarding first-year students through an orientation programme that could not take place face-to-face as per the norm. In 2021, the first-year orientation at a large South African university in this study moved to an online platform, becoming a week-long programme conducted on Microsoft Teams and comprising a variety of live and pre-recorded videos. The programme included seven core learning sessions designed to introduce the students to key services available at the university and to lay the foundation for student success. Using data from the university's 2021 Orientation Week (O-Week) Survey, this paper seeks to explore - from the perspective of the students - the core challenges associated with an online orientation during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study employs descriptive statistics to decipher the profile of the survey respondents as well as participants' experience of various learning sessions. A thematic approach was used to analyse the open-ended questions to provide the contextual perspectives on the challenges that students experienced with online orientation. The study identified five categories of challenges, which had a negative impact on their process of transitioning into the university environment. The study's findings will help universities to understand the drawbacks of online orientation as well as provide empirical guidance for them as to how they could leverage online orientation for student success in shaping the remote, blended, and hybrid learning discourse. The particular university under discussion subsequently used these findings as guidelines to conceptualise a new three-week blended orientation programme, Gateway to Success, which was introduced at the beginning of 2022.
ABSTRACT
An Applied Drama and Theatre pedagogy is rooted in principles of embodiment, participation and collaboration, praxis and immersion in social contexts. Over the past fourteen years, the Drama for Life department at the University of the Witwatersrand prioritised the implementation of an Applied Drama and Theatre teaching and learning practice that is premised on our bodies operating within social and cultural contexts. Furthermore, the experiential pedagogy is reliant on physical presence and human contact for the purposes of reflection, transformation and education. With the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, this complex pedagogy faced a threat. How can we migrate an Applied Drama and Theatre curriculum to online learning platforms? Can we fully honour its pedagogical objectives remotely? The study explored how Applied Drama and Theatre educators re-envisioned and implemented strategies to maintain the integrity of the embodied pedagogy as it moved online. These collective approaches transpired amidst a disruptive digital divide within a South African context, which impacted connectivity, access and the hopes of a synchronous learning experience. From 2020 to 2021, the ethnographic study tracked and observed Drama for Life and its Applied Drama and Theatre educators as they;1) responded to the pandemic and identified its threats to the pedagogy;2) through processes of experimentation, transitioned the curriculum to online learning platforms;and 3) reflected on their discoveries, challenges and interim solutions throughout the journey. The study found (based on literature and data) that the pandemic provided higher education institutions and practitioners with an opportunity for directed change. Central to the collective strategies remained student centredness and pedagogical alignment. Although certain aspects of the Applied Drama and Theatre pedagogy have undeniably been compromised online, the study demonstrated that with increased efforts to bridge the digital divide, the strategies can be navigated continually with a carefully negotiated balance.
ABSTRACT
As online learning becomes a recurrent component of higher education, there have been growing interests in the interaction between students and educational resources within digital environments so as to understand and facilitate students' initiative in managing those resources. The present study is an explorative inquiry into the relationships between students' self-reported preferences of study materials, their actual usage of those materials and their learning performances in online learning. It focuses on analysing the learning management system's log files, test results and students' responses to an evaluative survey of a bachelor business course at a large Belgian university, which was a blended course turned fully online due to the pandemic circumstance. The first research question concerns how preferences relate to the usage of materials. A cluster analysis was conducted to classify students based on their perceived interest and actual access to learning resources. The results show three clusters of students with different preferences and levels of usage towards the four types of study materials provided in the course. However, the majority showed strong favour for multimedia online learning, with Web lectures being prioritised both in perception and access behaviour, while discussion boards receive mixed opinions and the lowest actual participation. The second question follows these up by linking the preference-usage patterns with academic performances. A multivariate analysis of variance was conducted to compare the learning performances of students with different preference-usage patterns. The results show no significant differences, which means the students' preferences and/or usage of study materials has little to no impact on their learning performances in the online course.
ABSTRACT
The Blood Bank mobile application is an effort of easing the process of receiving and donating blood. This application helps the users to seamlessly donate and receive the required blood and also gives the availability of oxygen and ambulance in nearby hospitals. It gives the user information related to the availability of blood types in different hospitals and blood banks. Taking in mind the COVID-19 pandemic situation, in which the requirement for blood and oxygens were reached an unmanageable level. Blood and Oxygen is an essential part of the healthcare system. Day by day, the requirement for blood and oxygen is increasing, but still, there is unavailability and shortage. This project aims to give people a single platform to resolve these issues. © 2023 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
This research, which was performed in order to determine the relationship between some activities in the online learning environment and their academic achievements of Physical Education and Sports School students, was designed in a relational scanning model. The research was conducted on the data of 444 students who attended online classes at a physical education and sports school of a state university in the spring term of the 2020-2021 academic year. Data used in the research were collected through "Aid for Learning Management System (ALMS)" and "Student Information System (SIS)" of the relevant university. The duration of watching the courses live and from the archive, the number of downloading the course documents and the duration of watching the course videos uploaded were obtained within the scope of online learning activities via ALMS;and the academic achievement scores of the students for these courses were obtained via SIS. As a result of the research, a positive and significant relationship was found between course attendance, the duration of watching the archived and uploaded course videos, the number of downloading course documents and students' gender and their academic achievement scores while there was no significant relationship between students' grade level and academic achievement scores. According to the significant correlations, it was seen that the duration of live course attendance and watching from the archive significantly predicted the academic achievement scores of the students while the duration of watching the course videos, the number of downloading the course documents and gender did not significantly predict the academic achievement scores of the students.
ABSTRACT
Internet of things is progressing very rapidly and involving multiple domains of everyday life including environment, governance, healthcare system, transportation system, energy management system, etc. smart city is a platform for collecting and storing the information that is accessed through various sensor-based IoT devices and make their information available in required and authorized domains. This interoperability can be achieved by semantic web technology. In this paper, I have reviewed multiple papers related to IoT in Smart Cities and presented a comparison among the semantic parameters. Moreover, I've presented my future domain of research which is about delivering the COVID-19 patients report to the concerned domains by the healthcare system domain. © 2023 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Since the Covid-19 outbreak in March 2020, e-learning has become a necessity. There may have been some uncertainty on how to perform e-learning properly because many educational institutions may not have expected the rapid change in learning style. This is especially true when it comes to offering an e-learning management system (LMS). This study aims to examine the affordances of higher education institutions in Indonesia in conducting the e-learning during the pandemic. To understand more about the adoption of e-learning in their individual institutions, we conducted an online survey towards 100 university lecturers from several cities. The results revealed that 79% of the participants used a specially built LMS in their universities, while the rest still used commercially built LMS like Moodle. Then, 82% of the participants prefer blended learning model which combined face-To-face and e-learning models, and 46% of them wanted to have a fifty-fifty division between face to face and e-learning. As for the challenges, no interaction with students was deemed as the most disturbing challenge for the lecturers. The results imply that e-learning will continue to be implemented in Indonesia, regardless of the condition of the pandemic. Thus, universities should provide an e-LMS that can cater all the e-learning needs, while lecturers should also equip themselves with pedagogical as well as technological skills to face the e-learning challenges. © 2023 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
The mental health discourse need not involve the creation or invention of a whole new experience or dogma. When workers feel respected, valued, cared for and viewed holistically, rather than as "cogs in a system," the natural outflow will be mental health- "state of someone functioning at a satisfactory level of cognitive, emotional and behavioral adjustment." (U.K. OSH adviser, personal communication, 2022) In a social context, the safety and health team may facilitate a psychosocial hazard identification and risk assessment process, but the follow-up actions are likely to relate to people management systems. [...]this responsibility could sit with line management, human resources or an organizational effectiveness group.
ABSTRACT
Environmental Management Systems (EMS) are currently the cornerstone of achieving sustainability globally. Nevertheless, the question is applicability of EMS in the medical sector. Hence, the review focused on applicability of EMS in medical waste management Zimbabwe. EMS involves overall processes that facilitate reduction of dire impacts of company's activities while increasing performance. EMS framework consists of environmental policy, planning, implementation, checking, review and improvement stages. To examine applicability of EMS in management of medical sector waste, published secondary sources with information related to the topic were utilised. Analysis of strengths and opportunities of EMS was used as a base to examine its applicability in medical waste management. Zimbabwean medical sector consist of hospitals and primary healthcare facilities. Medical waste includes pathological, pharmaceutical, cytotoxic, radioactive, chemical, sharp, infectious and general waste. However, twenty-first century witnessed expansion of medical institutions to accommodate COVID-19 patients, resulting in generation of construction and demotion waste. Medical institutions in Zimbabwe are accountable for solid waste management at generation source although municipalities are responsible for conveying solid waste to landfills. Solid waste from medical sector is disposed through traditional strategies namely landfilling, incineration, open pits and open burning, resulting in water, air, and soil contamination. However, EMS can reduce quantity of solid waste disposed through waste reuse, recycle and recovery. Moreover, achievement of integrated approach, effective legislation, policies and inclusive participation in medical waste management is adopted through use of EMS. Therefore, EMS were utilised to develop an integrated sustainable medical waste management model to achieve sustainability.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Medical Waste , Refuse Disposal , Waste Management , Humans , Solid Waste/analysis , Zimbabwe , Conservation of Natural Resources , Environmental Monitoring , Waste Management/methods , Waste Disposal Facilities , Medical Waste/analysis , Refuse Disposal/methodsABSTRACT
COVID-19 pandemics lead to further shortages of beds globally. Ningbo No.1 Hospital implemented an integrated digital management system to tackle inefficiency in the discharge process, however, this problem is not fully solved. To help the hospital fully address this problem, this article identifies the problems in the hospital's dataset and proposes a methodology for the machine learning model training in order to predict the patient's leaving time, which provides a space for the hospital to improve the discharge process when procedures simplify, integration and digitalization are done. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic had an impact on the educational system all over the world. As a result, the educational institutions have to solely rely on online method of delivering education in the form of e-lectures, e-presentations and webinars. Elearning has been defined as "an educational method that facilitates learning by the application of information technology and communication providing an opportunity for learners to have access to all the required education programmes."1 The term e-learning has been interchangeably used with the terms web-based learning, online learning or education, computer-assisted or -aided instruction, computer-based instruction, internet based learning, multimedia learning, technology-enhanced learning and virtual learning.2,3 All the institutions are striving to best deliver the content online to engage students effectively and to conduct timely assessments for them. It has led to accelerated development of online learning environment so that learning would not be hindered. Online Learning Management Systems (LMS) are web-based software for distributing, tracking, and managing courses over the Internet. These systems offer an effective solution to deliver the learning content effectively and establish a two-way communication between the faculty and students.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted a major flaw in the current medical oxygen supply chain and inventory management system. This shortcoming caused the deaths of several patients which could have been avoided by accurate prediction of the oxygen demand and the distribution of oxygen cylinders. To avoid such calamities in the future, this paper proposes an Internet of Everything (IoE) based solution which forecasts the demand for oxygen with 80-85% accuracy. The predicted variable of expected patients enables the system to calculate the requirement of oxygen up to the next 30 days from the initiation of data collection. The system is scalable and if implemented on a city or district level, will help in the fair distribution of medical oxygen resources and will save human lives during extreme load on the supply chain. © 2023 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Surveillance camera has become an essential, ubiquitous technology in people's daily lives, whether applicable for home surveillance or extended to public workplace detection. The importance of the camera is irreplaceable in terms of the agent for an enclosed system to function correctly. The goal of ubiquitous computing is to keep different devices or technology communicating seamlessly, allowing them to expand to other areas instead of limiting it to one device. However, many research papers have been released on how the camera can aid in the current situation where COVID-19 is still raging worldwide, especially in crowded places. This paper aims to suggest a method by which surveillance cameras on the university campus can automatically detect student face mask status and notify them. Alongside that, this concept of applying a video management system within the university campus will assist in the automation of invigilating the student's daily mask status from the number of embedded surveillance cameras around the campus. © 2023 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, many companies have introduced working from home to avoid the risk of infection. In this study, we conducted questionnaire surveys and analysed the building energy management system (BEMS) in an office building where the number of employees working from home increased after the onset of the pandemic. The influence of working from home on the indoor environment satisfaction and the variability in energy consumption at home and office was determined. The indoor environment satisfaction was significantly higher when working from home than when working at the office. In 2020, the total energy consumption at home and office decreased by 30% in April and increased by 22% in August compared to the previous year. To work from home while saving energy regardless of the season, it is necessary to reduce office energy consumption by decreasing the number of workers present at the office. © 2022 17th International Conference on Indoor Air Quality and Climate, INDOOR AIR 2022. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
This paper presents a new method to quantify the potential user time savings if the urban bus is given preferential treatment, changing from mixed traffic to an exclusive bus lane, using a big data approach. The main advantage of the proposal is the use of the high amount of information that is automatically collected by sensors and management systems in many different situations with a high degree of spatial and temporal detail. These data allow ready adjustment of calculations to the specific reality measured in each case. In this way, we propose a novel methodology of general application to estimate the potential passenger savings instead of using simulation or analytical methods already present in the literature. For that purpose, in the first place, a travel time prediction model per vehicle trip has been developed. It has been calibrated and validated with a historical series of observations in real-world situations. This model is based on multiple linear regression. The estimated bus delay is obtained by comparing the estimated bus travel time with the bus travel time under free-flow conditions. Finally, estimated bus passenger time savings would be obtained if an exclusive bus lane had been implemented. An estimation of the passenger's route in each vehicle trip is considered to avoid average value simplifications in this calculation. A case study is conducted in A Coruña, Spain, to prove the methodology's applicability. The results showed that 18.7% of the analyzed bus trips underwent a delay exceeding 3 min in a 2,448 m long corridor, and more than 33,000 h per year could have been saved with an exclusive bus lane. Understanding the impact of different factors on transit and the benefits of a priority bus system on passengers can help city councils and transit agencies to know which investments to prioritize given their limited budget.
ABSTRACT
After more than two years of the beginning of Covid-19 crisis, this research work investigates the students' acceptance towards utilizing learning management systems (LMSs) as a useful supporting learning medium while most of higher education institutions over the world have adopted these systems to become an indispensable, promising teaching tool and considering the distance learning as compliance to the conditions of social isolation is case of any crisis. This article analyzes the most significant factors effecting the adoption and led to the acceptance of LMSs through the higher education across 423 undergraduate and postgraduate students from several universities in Jordan. By applying the structural equation modelling, the results reveal that all proposed determinants have an impact on the adoption of distance learning, with noted significant impact for social isolation. The infection anxiety and students' level have moderated these effects on the behavioral intentions and actual use of learning management systems and show significant impact on them.
ABSTRACT
This paper aims to establish if any of the following characteristics are associated with a difference in student performance during the COVID-19 pandemic: online lecture attendance, study time and performance;gender, class standing (freshman (1st year), sophomore (2nd year), junior (3rd year)and senior (4th year)) and having one's own room. A Learning Management System was used to measure students' study times and performance on the assessments. A survey instrument was used to obtain information about their gender, class standing, whether they had their own room and their perceptions of online education. The study found a positive correlation between study times and performance, except for test 1 and its study time, and a positive relationship between academic performance and having their own room. There was also a difference noted between class standing and performance, however, there was no difference based on gender in the performance of the students.