Factors Impacting the Usage Intention of Learning Management System in Higher Education

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to examine the factors impacting the usage intention of the Learning Management System (LMS) in higher education of Sichuan, China. Research design, data and methodology: Sample data was collected from target population by using quantitative method and questionnaire as a tool. Before distributing the questionnaire, Item-Objective Congruence (IOC) and pilot test of Cronbach's Alpha were adopted to test the content validity and reliability. Data was analyzed by utilizing Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to validate model’s goodness of fit and confirm the causal relationship among variables for hypothesis testing. Results: The study has found that the research conceptual model was able to predict and explain the behavioral intention (BI) to use LMS in higher educations. Perceived Usefulness (PU) and Attitude Towards use (ATU) are two key predictors and antecedents of BI to use LMS. Conclusions: Eight hypotheses proposed were proven to fulfill research objectives. This study suggested that developers of LMS course and management of higher education institutions should focus on improving the quality factors of LMS for students to perceive the system as useful, and would further formulate favorable attitude and behavioral intention toward using LMS

Influencing Factors of Fine Arts Student Satisfaction of Educational Internship in Sichuan, China

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to exploring the influencing factors of student satisfaction, including student expectation, service quality, supervisor support, task clarity and perceived value among the group of fine arts students in Sichuan province, China who had attended educational internship. Research design, data and methodology: This study adopted quantitative research method. The researchers firstly obtained data by distributing online questionnaires to the target students. Secondly, Item Objective Congruence (IOC) and pilot test were carried out. Afterwards, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation model (SEM) were used to analyze the data and to test the significant relationships among variables. Results: Service quality had a significant impact on student satisfaction. Furthermore, supervisor support, task clarity and perceived value significantly impacted student satisfaction on educational internship. Nevertheless, there was no causal relationship between student expectation and student satisfaction. Conclusions: For colleges and internship organizers, it was recommended to improve the service quality and the standard of internship programs. For students majoring in fine arts who participate in educational internship, they should realize the importance of internship program and actively communicate with the supervisor to get the valued feedback for the best in internship experience

Proyecto para la transformación de la tienda “Víveres mi Verito” en supermercado en la ciudad del Tena, provincia de Napo

La presente investigación tiene como objetivo, proponer un proyecto de factibilidad que permita la transformación de la tienda de abarrotes “Víveres mi Verito” en un supermercado en la ciudad del Tena, provincia de Napo con el fin de generar nuevas fuentes de empleo. Mediante un estudio de mercado, para lo cual se aplicó encuestas a la población de la ciudad del Tena, se pudo determinar la demanda, oferta y nivel de aceptación del proyecto, también se realizó una entrevista al propietario para obtener información acerca de la situación de la tienda que permitió identificar los problemas y las necesidades de la misma. Se llevó a cabo el estudio técnico, legal, administrativo y económico-financiero para determinar la inversión, financiamiento, estado de resultados y flujo de caja, mismos que permitieron la aplicación de los indicadores financieros obteniendo como resultado una tasa de descuento de 11,59%, un Valor Actual Neto (VAN) positivos $8.820,41, un Tasa Interna de Retorno (TIR) de 23$ 1.08, un Periodo de Recuperación de la Inversión (PRI) de 2 años 10 meses y 25 días y el Punto de Equilibrio del proyecto es de $459.943,90. Se concluye, que el proyecto es viable y que ayudará a mejorar la situación económica del inversionista y además generará dos nuevas fuentes de empleo. Los resultados arrojados fueron favorecedores, por lo que se recomienda ejecutar el proyecto.The following investigation's objective was to propose a feasibility project that allows the transformation of the grocery store "Víveres mi Verito" into a supermarket in the Tena city, Napo province, in order to generate new sources of employment. Through a market study, for which surveys were applied to the population of the Tena city, it was possible to determine the demand, supply and level of acceptance of the project, also an interview was conducted with the owner to obtain information about the situation of the store that allowed to identify the problems and needs of the same. The technical, legal, administrative and economic-financial study was carried out to determine the investment, financing, income statement and cash flow, which allowed the application of the financial indicators obtained as a result of a discount rate of 11, 59$ 8.820.41, an Internal Rate of Return (TIR) of 23%, a Benefit Cost (B / C) ratio of $1.08, an Investment Recovery Period (PRI) 2 years 10 months and 25 days and the project's Balance Point is$ 459.943.90. It is concluded that the project is viable and that it will help improve the economic situation of the investor and also generate two new sources of employment. The results were favorable, so it is recommended to execute the project

Determinants of Behavioral Intention to Use Hybrid Education Among Painting Students in Public Universities in Chengdu, China

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examining determinants of behavioral intention to use hybrid education among undergraduate students, majoring in painting at three public universities in Chengdu, China. Key variables are perceived ease of use (PEOU), perceived usefulness (PU), perceived satisfaction (PS), social influence (SI), performance expectancy (PE), facilitating conditions (FC), and behavioral intention (BI). Research design, data, and methods: The researchers used quantitative method by distributing questionnaire to 500 participants via offline and online channels. The sampling techniques involve judgmental, quota and convenience samplings. The content validity was approved by three experts, applying Item Objective Congruence (IOC) Index. All constructs were reserved by Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient values by pilot testing of 30 participants. Afterwards, Confirmatory Factor analysis (CFA) and Structural Equation Model (SEM) were executed in the data analysis, including goodness-of-fit, validities, and reliabilities. Results: All latent variables had a significant influence on behavioral intention. In addition, perceived ease of use had the strongest significant influence on perceived usefulness. Conclusion: Future researchers are recommended to extend the research model in considering to more variables in technology adoption theories in different region. Universities could improve hybrid education system to uplift students' engagement and learning performance

Influencing Factors of Behavior Intention of Master of Arts Students Towards Online Education in Chengdu Public Universities, China

Purpose: This study aims to investigate influencing factors of behavioral intentions to use online education of Master of Arts students from three public universities in the Chengdu region of China. The conceptual model contains perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, social influence, effort expectancy, self-efficacy, perceived satisfaction, and behavioral intention. Research design, data and methodology: The researchers employed a quantitative approach of survey distribution to 501 participants. The sample techniques involve judgmental, quota and convenience sampling. The content validity method of Item Objective Congruence (IOC) Index was used, resulting all measuring items reserved by three experts. Pilot testing of 30 participants was approved under Cronbach’s Alpha reliability test. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Structural Equation Model (SEM) were performed for data analysis, including goodness of model fits, validity, and reliability testing. Results: Perceived ease of use had the strongest influence on perceived usefulness toward behavioral intention. Furthermore, perceived usefulness, social influence, self-efficacy, perceived satisfaction, except effort expectancy, significantly impacted behavioral intention. Conclusions: The findings lead to the recommendations that educational administrators at public universities to enhance the behavioral intention to use online education by providing well-design online learning system and promote various benefits of using

Analysis of Factors Affecting Art Major Students' Behavioral Intention of Online Education in Public Universities in Chengdu

Purpose: This research emphasizes factors affecting behavioral intentions of online education among art major undergraduate students from three universities in the Chengdu region of China. Perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, social influence, effort expectancy, self-efficacy, perceived satisfaction and behavioral intention were examined in the research framework. Research design, data and methodology: The researchers employed a quantitative study with 500 samples and administered the statistically survey distributing to undergraduates at three universities. The nonprobability sampling techniques were applied, including judgmental, quota and convenience samplings. Before the data collection, the Item Objective Congruence (IOC) Index is used for screening the items’ quality, and Cronbach’s alpha coefficient values were approved from the pilot testing of 50 participants. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Structural Equation Model (SEM) were utilized for the statistical analysis, which include validity and reliability test, and goodness of model fits. Results: Each latent variable had a significant impact on the related one, except perceived satisfaction and behavioral intention. Furthermore, perceived ease of use had the strongest impact on perceived usefulness. Conclusions: Education department administrators at public institutions are recommended to identify the primary contributors for the implementation of contemporary online learning in order to enhance student engagement and learning behavioral intention

Machine Translation for Accessible Multi-Language Text Analysis

English is the international standard of social research, but scholars are increasingly conscious of their responsibility to meet the need for scholarly insight into communication processes globally. This tension is as true in computational methods as any other area, with revolutionary advances in the tools for English language texts leaving most other languages far behind. In this paper, we aim to leverage those very advances to demonstrate that multi-language analysis is currently accessible to all computational scholars. We show that English-trained measures computed after translation to English have adequate-to-excellent accuracy compared to source-language measures computed on original texts. We show this for three major analytics -- sentiment analysis, topic analysis, and word embeddings -- over 16 languages, including Spanish, Chinese, Hindi, and Arabic. We validate this claim by comparing predictions on original language tweets and their backtranslations: double translations from their source language to English and back to the source language. Overall, our results suggest that Google Translate, a simple and widely accessible tool, is effective in preserving semantic content across languages and methods. Modern machine translation can thus help computational scholars make more inclusive and general claims about human communication.Comment: 5000 words, 6 figure

Let AI Entertain You: Increasing User Engagement with Generative AI and Rejection Sampling

While generative AI excels in content generation, it does not always increase user engagement. This can be attributed to two main factors. First, generative AI generates content without incorporating explicit or implicit feedback about user interactions. Even if the generated content seems to be more informative or well-written, it does not necessarily lead to an increase in user activities, such as clicks. Second, there is a concern with the quality of the content generative AI produces, which often lacks the distinctiveness and authenticity that human-created content possesses. These two factors can lead to content that fails to meet specific needs and preferences of users, ultimately reducing its potential to be engaging. This paper presents a generic framework of how to improve user engagement with generative AI by leveraging user feedback. Our solutions employ rejection sampling, a technique used in reinforcement learning, to boost engagement metrics. We leveraged the framework in the context of email notification subject lines generation for an online social network, and achieved significant engagement metric lift including +1% Session and +0.4% Weekly Active Users. We believe our work offers a universal framework that enhances user engagement with generative AI, particularly when standard generative AI reaches its limits in terms of enhancing content to be more captivating. To the best of our knowledge, this represents an early milestone in the industry's successful use of generative AI to enhance user engagement

Inhibition of epidermal growth factor receptor attenuates atherosclerosis via decreasing inflammation and oxidative stress

Atherosclerosis is a progressive disease leading to loss of vascular homeostasis and entails fibrosis, macrophage foam cell formation, and smooth muscle cell proliferation. Recent studies have reported that epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) is involved vascular pathophysiology and in the regulation of oxidative stress in macrophages. Although, oxidative stress and inflammation play a critical role in the development of atherosclerosis, the underlying mechanisms are complex and not completely understood. In the present study, we have elucidated the role of EGFR in high-fat diet-induced atherosclerosis in apolipoprotein E null mice. We show increased EGFR phosphorylation and activity in atherosclerotic lesion development. EGFR inhibition prevented oxidative stress, macrophage infiltration, induction of pro-inflammatory cytokines, and SMC proliferation within the lesions. We further show that EGFR is activated through toll-like receptor 4. Disruption of toll-like receptor 4 or the EGFR pathway led to reduced inflammatory activity and foam cell formation. These studies provide evidence that EGFR plays a key role on the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis, and suggests that EGFR may be a potential therapeutic target in the prevention of atherosclerosis development