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Recent studies on search-as-learning (SAL) have recognized the significance of identifying users' learning needs as they evolve for acquiring knowledge during the search process. In this study, the authors clarify the extent to which search behaviors reflect the learning outcome and foster the users' knowledge of Chinese art.

The authors conducted an exploratory-sequential mixed-methods approach using simulated work task situations to collect empirical data. The authors used two types of simulated learning tasks for topics related to painting and antique knowledge. A lot of 25 users participated in this evaluation of digital archives (DAs) at the National Palace Museum (NPM) in Taiwan. For each set of topics, a close-ended task related to lower-level learning goals and an open-ended task related to higher-level learning goals.

The learning criteria reflect changes in the users' knowledge structure, revealing the SAL process. Furthermore, users achieved better task performance on the higher-level creative-learning task, which suggests that they met more learning criteria, exhibited a greater variety of search patterns when exploring the topics via interaction with various sources. Finally, there is a close relationship between creative-learning tasks, prior knowledge, keyword search actions and learning outcomes.

The authors discuss implications with respect to the design of DAs in practice and contributions to the body of SAL knowledge in DAs of online museums. For future reference, the authors provide implications for the development of learning measures from the perspective of user search behavior with associated learning outcomes in the context of DAs.

The authors introduce two semantics-based navigation applications that facilitate information-seeking activities in internal link-based web sites in Wikipedia. These applications aim to help users find concepts within a topic and related articles on a given topic quickly and then gain topical knowledge from internal link-based encyclopedia web sites. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The WNavi s application consists of three information visualization (IV) tools which are a topic network, a hierarchy topic tree and summaries for topics. The WikiMap application consists of a topic network. The goal of the topic network and topic tree tools is to help users to find the major concepts of a topic and identify relationships between these major concepts easily. In addition, in order to locate specific information and enable users to explore and read topic-related articles quickly, the topic tree and summaries for topics tools support users to gain topical knowledge quickly. The authors then apply the k-clique of cohesive indicator to analyze the sub topics of the seed query and find out the best clustering results via the cosine measure. The authors utilize four metrics, which are correctness, time cost, usage behaviors, and satisfaction, to evaluate the three interfaces. These metrics measure both the outputs and outcomes of applications. As a baseline system for evaluation the authors used a traditional Wikipedia interface. For the evaluation, the authors used an experimental user study with 30 participants.

The results indicate that both WikiMap and WNavi s supported users to identify concepts and their relations better compared to the baseline. In topical tasks WNavi s over performed both WikiMap and the baseline system. Although there were no time differences in finding concepts or answering topical questions, the test systems provided users with a greater gain per time unit. The users of WNavi s leaned on the hierarchy tree instead of other tools, whereas WikiMap users used the topic map.

The findings have implications for the design of IR support tools in knowledge-intensive web sites that help users to explore topics and concepts.

The authors explored to what extent the use of each IV support tool contributed to successful exploration of topics in search tasks. The authors propose extended task-based evaluation measures to understand how each application provides useful context for users to accomplish the tasks and attain the search goals. That is, the authors not only evaluate the output of the search results, e.g. the number of relevant items retrieved, but also the outcome provided by the system for assisting users to attain the search goal.

Seeking and retrieving information is an essential aspect of knowledge workers' activities during problem‐solving and decision‐making tasks. In recent years, user‐oriented Information Seeking (IS) research methods rooted in the social sciences have been integrated with Information Retrieval (IR) research approaches based on computer science to capitalize on the strengths of each field. Given this background, the objective is to develop a topic‐needs variation determination technique based on the observations of IS&R theories.

In this study, implicit and explicit methods for identifying users' evolving topic‐needs are proposed. Knowledge‐intensive tasks performed by academic researchers are used to evaluate the efficacy of the proposed methods. The paper conducted two sets of experiments to demonstrate and verify the importance of determining changes in topic‐needs during the IS&R process.

The results in terms of precision and discounted cumulated gain (DCG) values show that the proposed Stage‐Topic_W (G,S) and Stage‐Topic‐Interaction methods can retrieve relevant document sets for users engaged in long‐term tasks more efficiently and effectively than traditional methods.

The improved precision of the proposed methods means that they can retrieve more relevant documents for the searcher. Accordingly, the results of this research have implications for enhancing the search function in enterprise content management (ECM) applications to support the execution of projects/tasks by professionals and facilitate effective ECM.

The model observes a user's search behavior pattern to determine the personal factors (e.g. changes in the user's cognitive status), and content factors (e.g. changes in topic‐needs) simultaneously. The objective is to capture changes in the user's information needs precisely so that evolving information needs can be satisfied in a timely manner.

This research attempts to reveal ways of addressing challenges in open universities related to empowering lifelong learning; establishing policies and strategies in dropouts, student portfolio and support services for students with special needs; and implementing online instructional design and strategies. Two institutions were investigated, namely National Open University (NOU) Taiwan and Universitas Terbuka (UT) Indonesia, both founded in the 1980s to serve lifelong learners with diverse backgrounds and needs. This study was aimed at understanding good practices and challenges for improvement for the two open universities in those areas being investigated.

This research was qualitative using document analysis along with focus group discussions and interviews with administrators, academic staff, students and alumni to collect data for analysis.

Lifelong learning is the necessity of individual in societies for continuing professional development through enabling access to quality university education. Open universities have been tasked to cater for lifelong learners using non-traditional approaches, new technology and adapting to online learning and teaching in digital age. This research was exploratory, and the findings were expected to improve understanding of lifelong learning in open universities, particularly in NOU and UT.

Findings of this research are relevant to open universities to enhance its missions and define its possible new roles to serve lifelong learners.

This research reveals the roles of open universities in lifelong learning and enhances understanding of open universities that have a wide range of responsibilities in offering programs and courses to accommodate lifelong learners.

The objective of this study is to investigate how country risk, different political actions from the government and bureaucratic behavior influence the activities in industry supply chains (SCs) in emerging markets. The main objective of this study is to investigate the influence of these external stakeholders’ elements to the demand-side and supply-side drivers and barriers for improving competitiveness of Ready-Made Garment (RMG) industry in the way of analyzing supply chain. Considering the phenomenon of recent change in the RMG business environment and the competitiveness issues this study uses the principles of stakeholder and resource dependence theory and aims to find out some factors which influence to make an efficient supply chain for improving competitiveness. The RMG industry of Bangladesh is the case application of this study. Following a positivist paradigm, this study adopts a two phase sequential mixed-method research design consisting of qualitative and quantitative approaches. A tentative research model is developed first based on extensive literature review. Qualitative field study is then carried out to fine tune the initial research model. Findings from the qualitative method are also used to develop measures and instruments for the next phase of quantitative method. A survey is carried out with sample of top and middle level executives of different garment companies of Dhaka city in Bangladesh and the collected quantitative data are analyzed by partial least square-based structural equation modeling. The findings support eight hypotheses. From the analysis the external stakeholders’ elements like bureaucratic behavior and country risk have significant influence to the barriers. From the internal stakeholders’ point of view the manufacturers’ and buyers’ drivers have significant influence on the competitiveness. Therefore, stakeholders need to take proper action to reduce the barriers and increase the drivers, as the drivers have positive influence to improve competitiveness.

This study has both theoretical and practical contributions. This study represents an important contribution to the theory by integrating two theoretical perceptions to identify factors of the RMG industry’s SC that affect the competitiveness of the RMG industry. This research study contributes to the understanding of both external and internal stakeholders of national and international perspectives in the RMG (textile and clothing) business. It combines the insights of stakeholder and resource dependence theories along with the concept of the SC in improving effectiveness. In a practical sense, this study certainly contributes to the Bangladeshi RMG industry. In accordance with the desire of the RMG manufacturers, the research has shown that some influential constructs of the RMG industry’s SC affect the competitiveness of the RMG industry. The outcome of the study is useful for various stakeholders of the Bangladeshi RMG industry sector ranging from the government to various private organizations. The applications of this study are extendable through further adaptation in other industries and various geographic contexts.

Implementing food safety measures (FSMs) have become a prerequisite for food firms looking to export internationally. Many exporters find it difficult to comply with multiple regulations, and their consignments are often rejected at borders due to food safety concerns. Hence, harmonization in food safety standards is arguably the most contentious topic regarding the export market since it affects international trade. Accordingly, the paper uses the case of Indian seafood exporters to identify key FSMs, investigate stringency associated with them and rank international markets based on degree of stringency for selected FSMs.

First, the authors identify the key FSMs by using the Delphi method. Then, the authors apply the Fuzzy analytical hierarchical process (FAHP) method to calculate weights of the FSMs as criteria. Lastly, the authors apply the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) approach to rank markets. To compute fuzzy TOPSIS, weights are derived from fuzzy AHP.

This study’s findings suggest that product and process standards, traceability requirements and tolerance limits for residues are the most stringent FSMs, among others. Besides, the overall ranking of markets reveal that the European Union (EU), the USA and Japan ranked lowest and perceived to have the most stringent food safety requirements.

The paper offers guidance to firms and policymakers to manage their efforts and resources during food safety implementation by focussing on critical FSMs. Researchers will get insights about FSMs for further empirical investigation. To the authors’ knowledge, no study examined the stringency associated with various FSMs in the seafood industry.

This study investigates a novel educational strategy in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) teaching that integrates the engineering design process (EDP) as a framework. The strategy aims to help teachers explain STEM concepts in a simplified way. We employed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) methodology to enable a systematic review that evaluated the effectiveness of this approach in improving both teaching and learning in STEM subjects.

In order to fulfill the objectives of the review, key data were extracted from each of the 400 articles that were reviewed from three databases: Scopus, ProQuest Central and EBSCO. Two types of analysis were conducted, namely descriptive analysis and literature classification.

This systematic review analyzed 44 articles on the EDP, focusing on 18 detailed studies mainly from ProQuest, SCOPUS and EBSCO. It revealed a limited focus on gender’s impact on EDP and a trend toward interdisciplinary use and integrated research approaches. The study underscores the need for further exploration of demographic influences and preparation programs in EDP across various disciplines, aiming to inform future research and educational policies.

The study’s value lies in its comprehensive assessment of engineering design (ED) research over the past decade, serving as a key reference point. It highlights progress in the field, consolidates findings and provides insights into the field’s evolution, guiding future research directions in ED.