Identifying and assessing the global causality among energy poverty, educational development, and public health from a novel perspective of natural resource policy optimization

With the gradual depletion of natural resources and the rapid development of renewable energy, reducing energy poverty will inevitably have a crucial impact on public health and educational development. However, the long-term cointegration link and the two-way causality among them at the global level, especially in developing countries, remain a black box, which was the initial incentive for this study. Based on annual panel data from 50 developing countries between 2000 and 2017, this study initially adopted second-generation unit root and cointegration tests to eliminate pseudo-regression. It then utilized impulse response function and Granger causality test to clearly demonstrate causality and its direction. In emerging economies and nations with high energy poverty rates, public health is positively influenced by educational development. In contrast, in non-emerging economies and countries with lower energy poverty rates, public health is negatively influenced by educational development. Thus, it is important to optimise natural resource policies to suit the local conditions. In summary, our empirical findings have implications for decreasing energy poverty, promoting educational development, and improving public health in developing countries;and for their natural resource policy formulation, especially in the post COVID-19 pandemic era.

Covid-19 and education in Africa: challenges, possibilities, and opportunities

With comprehensive examples from researchers across East Africa, West Africa, and Southern Africa, the book examines how primary, secondary, and tertiary education was affected by the pandemic and how its effects are shaping the future of education in Africa. This book addresses diverse issues relating to COVID-19 and education, including the gendered-, classed-, and disability-related effects of the pandemic;African educators' and students' experiences with different remote learning technologies;and the outcomes of government interventions in education, such as prolonged school closures. The chapters and case studies highlighted in the volume represent the voices of African educators, students, and parents as they share their experiences of the pandemic and their perspectives on how learning should be optimised to better manage future disruptions to education. This book is the first of its kind to comprehensively examine the effects of COVID-19 on education in Africa, and will be essential reading for researchers, academics, and scholars of African education, international and comparative education, and education policy

Best Practices for Training in Sustainable Greenhouse Horticulture

Consumer demands and current legislation require intensive greenhouse horticulture to be sustainable. This poses the challenge of how to teach the concept of sustainable horticulture to all professionals involved in farming. The province of Almeria, in the south-east of Spain, is one of the major horticulture greenhouse areas in Europe, and an expert panel of relevant stakeholders was invited to look into the best pedagogical practices and methods to transfer technology and knowledge, with the goal of improving the sustainability of greenhouse horticulture. A combination of an online questionnaire, a Delphi method, and desk research was, therefore, used as the strategy to collect the data and implement the research design during 2021. On-farm/business demonstrations, virtual education, and classroom education were common pedagogical methods used. On-farm/business demonstrations, participatory education, and co-learning were identified as the best pedagogical methods to use in sustainable agriculture/horticulture training. The expert panel also concluded that participatory education and co-learning should be further explored whereas virtual and classroom education should play a less dominant role in the training activities. This knowledge can help training organizations and designers to avoid common mistakes, tailor their training activities, and be mindful of common barriers and (mis)conceptions. © 2023 by the authors.

Online Learning Experiences of Graduate Students in Türkiye: Could This Be the Footsteps of a Reform?

With the recent COVID-19 pandemic, the way of teaching has rapidly turned into online learning environments. This situation has brought along various difficulties in the implementation of online teaching. From this point of view, this research focuses on the experiences of graduate students in the online teaching process and the multifaceted effects of this process on them. The research is a case study examining the opinions of 16 graduate students from various state and foundation universities in Türkiye. The maximum diversity sampling method, one of the purposeful sampling methods, was taken as a criterion in the determination of the participants. The data of the study were obtained with a semi-structured interview form developed by the researchers. Thematic analysis technique was used in the analysis of the obtained data. Research results show that online education facilitates access to education, develops students' self-discipline and awareness of taking responsibility;however, it has disadvantages in terms of social and psychological aspects. In addition, it has been concluded that online teaching is not yet ready to be considered as a stand-alone teaching delivery model, and it is more appropriate to use it as an alternative model to traditional face-to-face education. It is thought that the results obtained within the scope of the research will contribute to the improvement and development of online learning experiences of graduate students, as well as being a guide to higher education stakeholders and policymakers. [This study was presented as an oral presentation at "The 15th International Congress On Educational Administration" held in Gaziantep between 5-6 November 2021.]

Resilient sustainable investment in digital education technology: A stakeholder-centric decision support model under uncertainty

Investment in education technology (EdTech) is a complex decision problem for universities during the post-Covid era. With the objective to assess the quality and adoptability of education supply chain, a novel analytical evaluation model approach is proposed, based on quality function deployment and combinative distance-based assessment. To deal with uncertainty in the evaluation process, fuzzy theory is integrated into the model. To establish the house of quality matrix, technology-based stakeholders' requirements were identified and classified in four dimensions: economic and financial, technology adoption, sustainability, competencies. Moreover, nine supplier criteria were assumed. Based on expert evaluations, the results suggest that financial credit and supplier collaboration are the most prominent attributes to evaluate suppliers, while environmental commitment is sorted as the least important criterion. The results reveal that the three dominant suppliers, which provide the best response to the identified criteria, are providers of cloud service technology. © 2022

Tutoring in (online) higher education: Experimental evidence

Demand for personalized online tutoring in higher education is growing but there is little research on its effectiveness. We conducted an RCT offering remote peer tutoring in micro- and macroeconomics at a German university teaching online due to the Covid-pandemic. Treated students met in small groups, in alternating weeks with and without a more senior student tutor. The treatment improved study behavior and increased contact to other students. Tutored students achieved around 30% more credits and a one grade level better GPA across treated subjects. Our findings suggest that the program reduced outcome inequality. We find no impacts on mental health. © 2022 Elsevier Ltd

A Redesigned Educational System for the COVID-19 Pandemic and Post Pandemic era

This research aims to develop a technology-driven educational application that will be a platform for providing interesting content to students. In light of the COVID-19 pan-demic, the objective of this redesign is to address the shortcomings of the current teaching strategy. In addition, survey and interview results supported the need for a revision of the current educational strategy. The proposed application employs Bloom's taxonomy quizzes to create a customized learning technique and structure content so that students can comprehend subjects more thoroughly. Visual Studio Code and the Ionic Framework were used for front-end development, while the Angular and PHP frameworks were utilized for the back-end. The program was reviewed using white box testing techniques and received positive feedback from users. In addition, it highlighted the possibility for sophisticated enhancements, such as the incorporation of learning styles, to improve the learning experiences of students. © 2022 IEEE.

How education and GDP drive the COVID-19 vaccination campaign.

BACKGROUND: Since vaccination is the decisive factor for controlling the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to understand the process of vaccination success which is not well understood on a global level. The study is the first to judge the now completed "first wave" of the vaccination efforts. The analysis is very relevant for the understanding why and where the vaccination process observed got stuck by the end of 2021. METHODS: Using data from 118 countries globally and weighted least squared and survival analysis, we identify a variety of factors playing crucial roles, including the availability of vaccines, pandemic pressures, economic strength measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP), educational development, and political regimes. RESULTS: Examining the speed of vaccinations across countries until the Fall of 2021 when the global process got stuck, we find that initially authoritarian countries are slow in the vaccination process, while education is most relevant for scaling up the campaign, and the economic strength of the economies drives them to higher vaccination rates. In comparison to North and Middle America, European and Asian countries vaccinated initially fast for 5% and 10% vaccination rate thresholds, but became rather slow reaching the 30% vaccination level and above. The findings are robust to various applied estimation methods and model specifications. CONCLUSIONS: Democratic countries are much faster than authoritarian countries in their vaccination campaigns when controlling for other factors. This finding suggests that the quality of government and the political environment play a key role in popular support for government policies and programs. However, despite the early success of their vaccination campaigns, the democratic country group has been confronted with strong concerns of vaccine reluctance among their vast populations, indicating the two most potent variables explaining the speed of the COVID-19 vaccination campaign are education and economic conditions.

"Designing into the Unknown": Harnessing the Promise of Flexible Course Design

With the return to on-campus learning in progress, recalling how higher education responded to the COVID-19 pandemic poses a challenge. Back in March 2020, many university leaders thought returning "to normal" (now a phrase almost as maligned as "unprecedented") was a matter of weeks--not months or years. The short-sighted certainty of the initial response as a brief pivot soon morphed into a mixture of horror and uncertainty about how to respond to the larger public health crisis and its consequences for higher education. Collaborating at scale with 200 colleagues and via an iterative learning community conversations, the authors confronted anxieties, frustrations, and new ways of seeing course design and inclusive teaching and learning. The authors shared what this immersive process brought forth at a January 2021 Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) panel entitled "Threshold Concepts in Online and Hybrid Course Design" in the form of three insights about flexible course design: community is co-created with, between, and centered on the whole student;effective assessment is an ongoing conversation;and good teaching requires continuous reflection and recalibration to authentically enact values. Following a brief description of the summer 2020 workshops, this article elaborates on these insights and considers their implications for teaching and educational development in a postpandemic future.

The Research Trend of Big Data in Education and the Impact of Teacher Psychology on Educational Development During COVID-19: A Systematic Review and Future Perspective.

The COVID-19 outbreak, along with post-pandemic impact has prompted Internet Plus education to re-examine numerous facets of technology-oriented academic research, particularly Educational Big Data (EBD). However, the unexpected transition from face-to-face offline education to online lessons has urged teachers to introduce educational technology into teaching practice, which has had an overwhelming impact on teachers' professional and personal lives. The aim of this present work is to fathom which research foci construct EBD in a comprehensive manner and how positive psychological indicators function in the technostress suffered by less agentic teachers. To this end, CiteSpace 5.7 and VOSviewer were applied to examine a longitudinal study of the literature from Web of Science Core Collection with the objective of uncovering the explicit patterns and knowledge structures in scientific network knowledge maps. Thousand seven hundred and eight articles concerned with educational data that met the criteria were extracted and analyzed. Research spanning 15 years was conducted to reveal that the knowledge base has accumulated dramatically after many governments' initiatives since 2012 with an accelerating annual growth and decreasing geographic imbalance. The review also identified some influential authors and journals whose effects will continue to have future implications. The authors identified several topical foci such as data mining, student performance, learning environment and psychology, learning analytics, and application. More specifically, the authors identified the scientific shift from data mining application to data privacy and educational psychology, from general scan to specific investigation. Among the conclusions, the results highlighted the important integration of educational psychology and technology during critical periods of educational development.