Informatics for Digital Education

It is recognized that negative emotions such as anxiety, stress, and pressure have a negative impact on cognitive performance, the working memory capacity of the brain, and consequently on the academic attainment. Thus incorporating social-emotional learning (SEL) programs in the higher education is essential. The first step to implement these programs is to understand students’ social-emotional skills and evaluate the strengths to be endorsed and directed positively and the weaknesses and limitations to be improved and enhanced. To obtain this type of knowledge, Panorama’s SEL surveys are used to measure students’ social-emotional competencies for higher education students in UAE from both genders. The measured skills are social awareness, self-efficacy skills, growth mindset, grit, and self-management. The students’ self-assessments indicated that implementing SEL competencies within the higher education programs is a necessity in order to lead higher academic performance, long-life learning, and fruitful work accomplishments.

The current paper explores and investigates the best possible practices that can ensure and effective, comprehensive and successful inclusive learning and educational experience for students of determination within the higher education in the United Arab Emirates, focused in the Emirate of Dubai thru one university representing the higher education system. The inclusion of students of determination with specific learning disabilities chiefly with Dyslexia, Dysgraphia, and Dyscalculia in higher education stage is the focus of this study. A qualitative expressive case study method was adopted to represent the experience of students of determination, consequently the perspectives of Faculty Members, Deans, leaders in addition to, administrators of higher education institutes and parent is also investigated in alignment with the purpose of the study. This paper is a proposed insight of an array of possible assistive accommodations primarily consisting of differentiated curriculum implementation, its possibility, challenges, solutions, and perception by all key individuals represented in the participants’ samples of the study, to provide students of determination with Dyslexia, Dysgraphia, and Dyscalculia with the best learning and educational experience on academic, social, and personal directions.

Higher education is pivotal not only for economic progress and prosperity, but also for individual propensity to self-actualization. The normal route used in education is face-to-face learning, but some circumstances may force people to adapt to distance learning to achieve their goals. This study has sought to distinguish distance education from formal education, identify models applicable to distance education, ascertain the benefits of distance education, and identify suitable technology for distance education. A cross-sectional literature review was carried out using search engines such as Masader, Google Scholar, and ResearchGate. The literature revealed that distance education has been practiced for several decades and recent developments such as stiff competition, globalization, technology, and natural disasters have left institutions with no choice but to adopt distance education as part of its curriculum. Some of the models identified were individual correspondence, group correspondence, and parallel learning. The authors recommend that institutions embark on a needs-based assessment, to establish target markets and identify appropriate technologies suitable for their chosen distance education models.

The Industry 4.0 revolution encompassing technologies like Artificial intelligence (AI), Big data and the Internet of Things is integrating and influencing Education, Business, Health care, and other sectors. Big data benefits business by providing enhanced decision making, offering novel perceptions, and incorporating competent processing. Big data and Industry 4.0 are also used to enhance the learner’s involvement and experience and utilization of Tutor time. University leaders are keen in using technologies to check if students get detached and are at risk. Big data helps Universities to determine the institute’s retention, progress and completion aspects relating to students. This further assists in lowering attrition by the early discovery of at-risk learners and informing teachers and administrators. This paper attempts to provide an insight of the research and steps taken by various universities or education bodies towards pooling this varied data both structured and unstructured that is present in a massive amount and can be exploited for prediction related to student’s progress and status. The review paper explores Learning Analytics technology and classification methods: Decision Tree, Artificial Neural Networks, Naïve Bayes, Bayesian Network and Multi-Linear Regression and software like data analytics using WEKA tool, Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) analysis tool, Python among others for prediction.

Being an educator means upgrading the teaching styles to accommodate vast changing environments of teaching. This study reflects on the implementation of innovative pedagogical approaches, namely, context-based learning and incidental learning. The research was conducted on 125 higher education students who were undergoing a science course. Two major interventions were introduced, and variation in students’ performance was measured through the learning experience, survey, and students’ grades. The results of the study illustrated the value of incidental and context-based learning on the improvement of the student’s skills.

The purpose of this research is to examine student readiness, willingness and acceptance of online education on the basis on E-Learning Theoretical Framework and Online Readiness Assessment Measure. This paper draws on data collected from a total of 305 students using e-learning tools as part of an extensive stakeholder analysis project that studies Middle East higher education system readiness to accredit online education. Mixed-method research approach was employed to generate a comprehensive final study model on key findings framed under prospects and barriers, then offer a strategic plan for successful implementation of online education. As hypothesized, findings revealed that student readiness for online education is influenced by students’ self-competence, perceived usefulness, self-directed learning, motivation and financial status, that proved to be a significant determinant of willingness to enroll in online classes. The study showed adequate readiness and proficiency levels among learners and increased acceptance to implement online education, demonstrated in better academic performance, perceived usefulness and personal development. Barriers surfaced as doubts in self-regulatory skills among students, affected academic rigor, market acceptance and social influence. The study generated strategies to overcome impeding barriers based on developed model, practical contributions, contributions to knowledge and finally recommendations for future work.

Food is more than just a means of survival; it is also a form of communication. Social, economic, and political relations are defined and maintained through food. This paper looks at the impact of globalization and information technology on food systems, consumer behavior, dietary, and sports patterns and their effect on nutritional status and health. Food and sports policies have an essential role for preventing nutrition health-related problems. The purpose of this study is to qualitatively explore how combined policy actions work and how such policies can be designed to be more effective with substantial and sustained effect in different settings. This paper (1) provides an overview of healthy lifestyles and consumer behavior determinants, (2) discusses the powerful impact of marketing, mass and social media, and interactive communication on food consumption and health behaviors, and (3) offers an innovative logic model of smart food and sports policies for healthy lifestyles promotion in the digital age. Further, this study provides insights about effective food-policy actions that should be: (1) tailored to the preference, behavioral, socioeconomic, and demographic characteristics of the people they seek to support, (2) designed to work through the mechanisms through which they have greatest effect, and (3) implemented as part of a combination of complementary and mutually reinforcing actions. Mobilization and organization of key stakeholders support for bold executive actions is crucial. Smart food and sports policies should be comprehensive to create positive changes to information, social environments, and food systems that enable people to learn healthy behaviors.

Early exposure to violence is a phenomenon that increases every day and that contaminates the first layers of the personality’s constitution. The children subject to such behaviors, as victims or even as perpetrators, are exposed to many psychological risks that can disrupt their emotional and cognitive development. Various studies demonstrated that aggression is part of the daily life of pupils at school and that it’s impacting negatively their educational journey. Some of them are suffering from bullying, harassment, anxieties, phobias and even depression. If not diagnosed and treated, those problems may last until adulthood. In this study, three major spheres related to violence in the early stages are evaluated: perception of violence, reaction to aggression and protecting resources against brutality among children and teenagers at schools from different nationalities. To achieve our goal, a survey has been created in Arabic and English and has been distributed to students from two different schools in Dubai. The results of the study are confirming that a high number of students are witnessing and are expressing violent behaviors at schools. Most of them still have a lack of awareness about the mediation role of the counselor at school and are basing their reactions basically on the regression defense mechanism or are focusing on groups dynamic to serve as a protector from the outside environment.