11,737 research outputs found

    A Comparative Study on Students’ Learning Expectations of Entrepreneurship Education in the UK and China

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    Entrepreneurship education has become a critical subject in academic research and educational policy design, occupying a central role in contemporary education globally. However, a review of the literature indicates that research on entrepreneurship education is still in a relatively early stage. Little is known about how entrepreneurship education learning is affected by the environmental context to date. Therefore, combining the institutional context and focusing on students’ learning expectations as a novel perspective, the main aim of the thesis is to address the knowledge gap by developing an original conceptual framework to advance understanding of the dynamic learning process of entrepreneurship education through the lens of self-determination theory, thereby providing a basis for advancing understanding of entrepreneurship education. The author adopted an epistemological positivism philosophy and a deductive approach. This study gathered 247 valid questionnaires from the UK (84) and China (163). It requested students to recall their learning expectations before attending their entrepreneurship courses and to assess their perceptions of learning outcomes after taking the entrepreneurship courses. It was found that entrepreneurship education policy is an antecedent that influences students' learning expectations, which is represented in the difference in student autonomy. British students in active learning under a voluntary education policy have higher autonomy than Chinese students in passive learning under a compulsory education policy, thus having higher learning expectations, leading to higher satisfaction. The positive relationship between autonomy and learning expectations is established, which adds a new dimension to self-determination theory. Furthermore, it is also revealed that the change in students’ entrepreneurial intentions before and after their entrepreneurship courses is explained by understanding the process of a business start-up (positive), hands-on business start-up opportunities (positive), students’ actual input (positive) and tutors’ academic qualification (negative). The thesis makes contributions to both theory and practice. The findings have far reaching implications for different parties, including policymakers, educators, practitioners and researchers. Understanding and shaping students' learning expectations is a critical first step in optimising entrepreneurship education teaching and learning. On the one hand, understanding students' learning expectations of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education can help the government with educational interventions and policy reform, as well as improving the quality and delivery of university-based entrepreneurship education. On the other hand, entrepreneurship education can assist students in establishing correct and realistic learning expectations and entrepreneurial conceptions, which will benefit their future entrepreneurial activities and/or employment. An important implication is that this study connects multiple stakeholders by bridging the national-level institutional context, organisational-level university entrepreneurship education, and individual level entrepreneurial learning to promote student autonomy based on an understanding of students' learning expectations. This can help develop graduates with their ability for autonomous learning and autonomous entrepreneurial behaviour. The results of this study help to remind students that it is them, the learners, their expectations and input that can make the difference between the success or failure of their study. This would not only apply to entrepreneurship education but also to other fields of study. One key message from this study is that education can be encouraged and supported but cannot be “forced”. Mandatory entrepreneurship education is not a quick fix for the lack of university students’ innovation and entrepreneurship. More resources must be invested in enhancing the enterprise culture, thus making entrepreneurship education desirable for students

    Performance and efficiency in Indian universities

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    While the evaluation of university efficiency has become commonplace in developed countries, exercises of this kind have rarely been conducted in the context of developing economies. We use frontier methods to analyse the determinants of costs in higher education institutions in India. Results obtained using the standard stochastic frontier model are compared with those from a latent class cost frontier model. Average incremental costs, returns to scale, and returns to scope are evaluated. Despite the relatively small size of average institution, we find that economies of scale are largely exhausted. The implications of various models for the evaluation of institution-level measures of efficiency are highlighted. The results differ in a number of respects from those obtained in more developed countries. Implications of the analysis for policy and practice are highlighted

    Economics is converging with sociology but not with psychology

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    The rise of behavioral economics since the 1980s led to richer mutual influence between economic and psychological theory and experimentation. However, as behavioral economics has become increasingly integrated into the main stream in economics, and as psychology has remained damagingly methodologically conservative, this convergence has recently gone into reverse. At the same time, growing appreciation among economists of the limitations of atomistic individualism, along with advantages in econometric modeling flexibility by comparison with psychometrics, is leading economists to become more pluralistic than psychologists about the ontology of behavioral causation and structures. This, combined with economists’ growing interest in network models, is drawing economists closer in theory and practice to sociologists who use quantitative or mixed methods

    Tracking and Nowcasting Directional Changes in the Forex Market

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    Price changes in financial markets are typically summarized as time series (TS). Directional Change (DC) is an alternative, data-driven way to sample data points. The main objective of this thesis is to find new ways to extract new, useful information from the market. This is broken down into three directions: (1) to summarize price changes with DC, one must first determine the threshold to be used. We ask: could a threshold be too big or too small? If so, how could we determine the range of usable thresholds? (2) Could DC indicators extract volatility information from the market that is not observable under TS? (3) In DC, the start of a new trend is only confirmed in hindsight – to be precise, at the DC Confirmation (DCC) point when the price has reversed by the threshold specified. Could we detect that a new trend has begun before the DCC point? This is known as a nowcasting problem. This thesis has made three contributions. Firstly, we have created a guideline to determine the range of useable thresholds under DC. This supports the research that follows. Secondly, we have demonstrated how DC indicators could complement TS in tracking the market for volatility information. Thirdly, we have introduced new DC indicators; by using these indicators, we have proposed an algorithm and demonstrated how it could help us nowcast whether a new trend has begun in DC

    Combinatorics and Stochasticity for Chemical Reaction Networks

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    Stochastic chemical reaction networks (SCRNs) are a mathematical model which serves as a first approximation to ensembles of interacting molecules. SCRNs approximate such mixtures as always being well-mixed and consisting of a finite number of molecules, and describe their probabilistic evolution according to the law of mass-action. In this thesis, we attempt to develop a mathematical formalism based on formal power series for defining and analyzing SCRNs that was inspired by two different questions. The first question relates to the equilibrium states of systems of polymerization. Formal power series methods in this case allow us to tame the combinatorial complexity of polymer configurations as well as the infinite state space of possible mixture states. Chapter 1 presents an application of these methods to a model of polymerizing scaffolds. The second question relates to the expressive power of SCRNs as generators of stochasticity. In Chapter 2, we show that SCRNs are universal approximators of discrete distributions, even when only allowing for systems with detailed-balance. We further show that SCRNs can exactly simulate Boltzmann machines. In Chapter 3, we develop a formalism for defining the semantics of SCRNs in terms of formal power series which grew as a result of work included in the previous chapters. We use that formulation to derive expressions for the dynamics and stationary states of SCRNs. Finally, we focus on systems that satisfy complex balance and conservation of mass and derive a general expressions for their factorial moments using generating function methods

    AIUCD 2022 - Proceedings

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    L’undicesima edizione del Convegno Nazionale dell’AIUCD-Associazione di Informatica Umanistica ha per titolo Culture digitali. Intersezioni: filosofia, arti, media. Nel titolo è presente, in maniera esplicita, la richiesta di una riflessione, metodologica e teorica, sull’interrelazione tra tecnologie digitali, scienze dell’informazione, discipline filosofiche, mondo delle arti e cultural studies
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