ABSTRACT
The adoption of smart digital technologies in the education system has grown exponentially over the years, creating new possibilities to improve teaching and enhance learning. Against this backdrop, the 'brick-and-mortar' education approach survives on life support, with digital technologies promoting ubiquitous teaching and learning. Through complexity theory, this study uses an iterative review research approach comprising of nine steps to frame the study of smart digital education. The complexity theory lens provides an appropriate framework to reason about the complexities that surface due to interactions of the elements of smart digital technologies in the education system. The complementary strength of the adopted methodological approach led to multiple discourses on technology-enabled and technology-enhanced learning environments. In particular, four broad themes emerged, which demonstrated the prevalence of various technologies and how they interact as a means of making sense of the emerging digitally-enabled education environment. Through these themes, this paper highlights digitalisation affordances (which include multimodality, a/synchronicity, and new forms of engagement), discusses the key challenges and complexities of digitally enabled education, and advances the discourse on how digitalisation can support and promote inclusivity amidst historic challenges. Finally, it discusses how the advancement of technologies provides a new paradigm of learning, revolutionises knowledge construction, and extends and enriches the 'brick-and-mortar' learning environment to enhance the educational experience. As a future research agenda, this paper recommends comprehensive end-to-end programmes and innovative ways to conceptualise and execute digitally-enabled education that provides equity-oriented opportunities for cognitive development.
ABSTRACT
Freight train system is under constant pressure to optimize operational efficiency, a factor that has led the sector to spearhead many new technologies. To address this, the optimal guaranteed cost intermittent cruise control of freight train system with time-varying uncertain parameters is investigated. In particular, the guaranteed cost intermittent control approach is proposed, which can achieve both advantages of guaranteed cost control and intermittent control methods. In addition, the acceptable conditions for the guaranteed cost control laws are weakened to insure that the proposed strategy is suitable for the application in freight train systems. Moreover, to promote the optimal control design in the freight train system, the proposed optimal guaranteed cost intermittent control for the nonlinear system subjected to norm bounded parametric uncertainties is addressed. The results of numerical experiments are presented to ascertain the effectiveness of the proposed freight train control methodology and to compare it to prior methods.
ABSTRACT
The life cycle models are critical in the assessment of the performance of a product from the design phase to its end of life (EoL). With the quest for manufacturing sustainability with respect to energy, process, material, and environment friendliness as well as the clamour for circular economy which emphasizes zero tolerance for waste, there is a need for a critical review of the life cycle of machine tool employed for machining operations and product development. The objective of this study is to evaluate the efficient way of managing the machine tools throughout its lifecycle. Several studies have been conducted in analysing the life cycle of the machine tools and different strategies were employed for its design, manufacture, use, maintenance and recovery at the end of life. The common approach to ensure environmental sustainability was established when comparing the literature studied. From the articles reviewed 60% applied life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology to reduce energy consumption and enhance environmental sustainability, while 40% employed other assessment tools. In this study an integrated life cycle and cyber physical machine tool model is proposed.
