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Course evaluations are formative and are used to evaluate learnings of the students for a course. Anomalies in the evaluation process can lead to a faulty educational outcome. Learning analytics and educational data mining provide a set of techniques that can be conveniently applied to extensive data collected as part of the evaluation process to ensure remedial actions. This study aims to conduct an experimental research to detect anomalies in the evaluation methods.

Experimental research is conducted with scientific approach and design. The researchers categorized anomaly into three categories, namely, an anomaly in criteria assessment, subject anomaly and anomaly in subject marks allocation. The different anomaly detection algorithms are used to educate data through the software R, and the results are summarized in the tables.

The data points occurring in all algorithms are finally detected as an anomaly. The anomaly identifies the data points that deviate from the data set’s normal behavior. The subject which is consistently identified as anomalous by the different techniques is marked as an anomaly in evaluation. After identification, one can drill down to more details into the title of anomalies in the evaluation criteria.

This paper proposes an analytical model for the course evaluation process and demonstrates the use of actionable analytics to detect anomalies in the evaluation process.

This chapter delves into the biopsychosocial reasons behind offending behaviour. It provides an overview of key theories from the biological, psychological and social perspectives in psychology and criminology. The discussion includes different viewpoints on why people offend, focusing on Compassion-Focused Therapy and positive psychology. It explores how these approaches contribute to our understanding of offending behaviour.

This study aimed to investigate whether information from reliable news sources such as medical experts and government officials, along with governmental and individual risk responses, influences consumers’ perceptions of news and intention to seek more information. Additionally, it aimed to explore the relationships between these perceptions and consumers’ intentions to seek information in a food safety risk event.

A survey design methodology was employed. A quasi-experimental approach divided 470 Taiwanese participants into three groups, each exposed to varying online news content about food safety news, designed according to the Internalization-Distribution-Explanation-Action (IDEA) model. This involved different combinations of reliable sources and risk response advice to examine the impact on news comprehension and behaviour intentions.

The results indicated that consumers perceived the news as highly credible when they read it with reliable news sources or risk response advice. Governmental and individual risk response advice significantly impacted consumers’ understanding of news. In addition, perceptions of news credibility and understanding of news can increase individuals’ information-seeking intentions to protect themselves from food safety risks.

This study introduced novel insights into the application of the source credibility theory (SCT) model within Taiwanese food safety incidents, identifying key factors that motivate consumer information-seeking behaviour. It marks an initial attempt to incorporate the IDEA model-based risk communication content into research design, aligning with existing literature while highlighting the critical role of reliable sources in enhancing news credibility and consumer response.

This study aims to identify the irritating aspects in the mall environment that impact shoppers with disability and explore the opportunities to design inclusive mall environments.

A mixed-methods design was used in which data collected using a survey (n = 1,434 shoppers with and without disability) were analyzed by structural equation modeling (SEM) and repeated-measures two-way ANOVA. In addition, qualitative data were obtained from critical incident technique (CIT) stories (n = 521) from shoppers with and without disability.

Mall environmental irritants evoke feelings of irritation that mediate the impacts of “inconvenient ambient conditions,” “the annoying socialscape” and “overwhelming design and atmospherics” on decreased mall-visit frequency. Compared with shoppers without disability, shoppers with disability suffer more from these irritating aspects of the mall environment, as evidenced by significantly greater high-activation unpleasant emotions. The “poor access and accessibility” category of irritants mainly affects the mall experiences of shoppers with disability.

Based on the findings, this study offers spatial-, temporal-, social-, material- and virtual-oriented recommendations for the design of inclusive retail spaces. The authors suggest that people with disability have a unique “lived experience” perspective on retail environments and that solutions should be co-created based on ongoing consultations with shoppers and employees with disability.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study offers the first systematic, comprehensive comparison of the impact of environmental irritants on shoppers with and without disability and extends the literature on irritating aspects of retail environments from individual stores to malls.

As the today's world is leading toward the digital dependency and after the world pandemic of COVID-19, the dependency of students and the university is completely through a digital medium, in context with that the higher education according to the demand of the generation is leading towards digital transformation. The digital transformation in the sector of education is the road map for the sustainable management and development of education. The digital transformation is the new pillar of education in which the students are mostly reliable. The digitalization in the field of education will lead to simple and clarified as well as multiple way for acquiring the knowledge. As the integration of the new model of education system is applied and implemented throughout the globe, the digital medium plays a significant role for the smooth and the systemic development of the model. In this chapter, the pathway for the development of the well-stable and well-developed strategies is considered in which the integration of the essential requirements, proper guidance, and advantages of the model is dependent for the transformation to digital medium of the higher education that will be leading to the development of the management and the education system. The foundation of that transformation model is detailed in the paper for the digitalization of higher education.

Our aim in this study is to investigate the relative importance of the economic policy uncertainty and of the geopolitical risk on U.S. REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts) returns with a special focus on the different real estate sectors.

We use an augmented Fama-French (1993)’s asset pricing model, including economic policy uncertainty indices (EPU), introduced by Baker et al. (2016), and geopolitical risk indices (GPR) recently developed by Caldara and Iacoviello (2022), to price the potential risk factors for U.S. Nareit indices returns. To obtain robust economic results, we correct for the problems of errors-in-variables in linear asset pricing models; we advocate the use of higher moments estimators as instruments in a generalized method of moments (GMM) framework.

Our results report that economic policy uncertainty (EPU), and geopolitical risk (GPR) are priced for the different Nareit sectors for the last three decades. The GPR index stands as a relevant risk factor. The coefficient estimates are low compared to Fama-French risk factors. They are higher for Shopping Centers, Retail and Region Malls and lower for Health Care and Lodging/Resorts. EPU indices are also priced and less statistically significant. Health Care sector, followed by Shopping Centers and Retail are the most policy-sensitive sectors.

In their “2023–2024 Top Ten Issues Affecting Real Estate” “political unrest and global economic health” is ranked 1 issue by the Counselors of Real Estate. Our results report that economic policy uncertainty and geopolitical risk are priced for the different Nareit sectors. They suggest implications for investors, insurers, bankers, policymakers and other stakeholders. The geopolitical risk index (GPR) stands as a relevant and significant risk factor for REITs returns.

Based on parsimonious robust asset pricing models, the results shed a new light on the relative importance of geopolitical risk and economic policy uncertainty in the real estate sector, with a special focus on the different U.S. REITs sectors. They suggest possible implications for investors, insurers, bankers, policymakers and other stakeholders in a context marked by higher uncertainty shocks and geopolitical risks.

This chapter explores the problems of social exclusion and inclusion in the fields of arts and culture. After a theoretical elaboration of the key concepts, the chapter investigates interconnected topics of (1) social features of cultural and creative work with the focus on the importance of economic, social and cultural capital, (2) the difficulties of achieving social inclusivity in the cultural and creative sector, and (3) the possibility of fostering communication amongst disparate social groups. The concepts of exclusion and inclusion deal with the ability and opportunities citizens have to participate in economic, social, political and cultural activities. Even though policy documents highlight the agenda of social inclusion, participation and the importance of opening cultural programs to wider social circles of workers and audiences, inclusion is still difficult to achieve. Research has shown that, even though this line of work is marked by atypical forms of employment, burnout syndrome and exploitation, cultural workers are still motivated by the idea of working for the community and bringing positive social change. However, previous research has also shown that the wider community often does not recognise these endeavours. The aim of the chapter is to articulate potential elements of exclusivity of cultural and creative work. In doing so, the ambivalent identity configuration of cultural and creative workers that simultaneously occupy social positions of symbolic privilege and economic deprivation is taken into consideration as a potential bridge for fostering communication and solidarity amongst other marginalised and disparate social groups.

This study investigates how firm-specific exposure to COVID-19 influences capital structure choices, a topic of significant importance due to the pandemic’s unprecedented economic disruption. We leverage a novel text-based measure of firm-specific COVID exposure to explore these dynamics.

Our research adopts an innovative text-based approach to measure firm-specific COVID exposure, developed by prior studies, which analyzes earnings conference call transcripts using advanced machine learning algorithms. The analysis is based on a comprehensive sample of US firms spanning over 20 years. Various statistical techniques, including firm-fixed effects, propensity score matching, entropy balancing and instrumental-variable analysis, are employed to ensure robust results.

Our findings indicate that firms with higher COVID exposure significantly alter their leverage, favoring debt financing over equity financing. This effect is less pronounced in larger and more profitable firms as well as those more vulnerable to climate change risk. The unique impact of COVID on leverage is contrasted with other infectious diseases, which do not exhibit similar effects.

Our study’s originality lies in its application of a novel text-based metric, borrowed from existing research, to measure firm-specific COVID exposure, marking a significant advancement in the field. This method provides a timely and precise assessment of exposure, offering insights that traditional metrics cannot capture. It is the first study to document the significant role of COVID exposure in determining corporate leverage, enhancing the understanding of capital structure dynamics in the context of unprecedented global disruptions.