COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE IN UNIVERSITY: A PRELIMINARY STUDY

There has been a lot written about the benefits of communities of practice (CoP) in university. The benefit of the communities of practice was described with respect to teachers’ qualification and teaching competencies influencing students implicitly as well as to areas related to the students themselves. Many studies prove the fact that the process of learning is of a social character (e.g. Lave, Wenger, 1991). That is why the communities of practice present suitable environment for collaborative learning which makes the process of generating, sharing and storing knowledge easier. The present paper defines on a theoretical level the concept of the communities of practice and moreover, provides a brief overview of the latest research in the communities of practice with regard to education. Another part of the article focuses on the pre-research of the communities of practice at Faculty of Economics and Management (FEM) Czech University of Life Sciences Prague (CULS). Although the authors conform with the opinion that the communities of practice are a natural feature and spontaneously develop wherever there is a need for sharing implicit or tacit knowledge, the pre-research focused on the verification of this premise in order to continue in the research of a quantitative character. The existence of the communities of practice was verified on the basis of fundamental characteristics following Wenger’s model. Other characteristics, considered significant in relation to the communities of practice by McDermott were also investigated. Based on a group interview the existence of the communities of practice of the students at FEM at CULS has been verified and a conceptual model was created. The determined work prerequisites will be investigated in another phase of the research

INNOVATION OF DOCTORAL STUDIES AT THE FEM CULS PRAGUE

Research results and university performance measures have been frequently discussed topic in the Czech higher education system. Performance can be improved by establishing innovations in education in many areas. At higher education sector the performance within research activities is of the same importance. Various authorities have been making an effort to establish a set of measures to assess research performance at institutional level. This paper focuses on the assessment of research activity within an institution – the Faculty of Economics and Management (FEM), Czech University of Life Sciences (CULS) Prague – with the use of Data Envelopment Analysis model (DEA). The measured units (DMUs) are 12 FEM departments. Based on the findings revealed by the DEA model application various measures adopted by the faculty in order to improve research and education performance are introduced. Following the widespread trend in many countries the focus of the effort is in training of university teachers and students. This aim is being partially accomplished by the Project Operational Program Prague – Adaptability (OPPA), which is focused on the innovation of the Ph.D. studies at the FEM. The main project aims are i) to improve students’ research experiences, ii) to provide appropriate conditions for Ph.D. students at the departments/faculty and iii) to launch tools for better communication among Ph.D. students and their supervisors

SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY OF HIGHER EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS – THE COMPARISON OF THE VIEW OF STUDENTS AND POTENTIAL STUDENTS

The paper discusses the concept of social responsibility of higher educational institutions (HEI). The concept of corporate social responsibility was initially created for the commercial sector. With changes occurring in the external environment, this concept is now also being introduced in other areas, e.g. in HEI. The paper describes the qualitative part of research on the application of the concept of social responsibility within public HEI in the Czech Republic. Through the method of focus groups the article chases up the knowledge and relationship to problems of social responsibility of universities between two important groups of interest - current and potential students – and students´ requirements on universities

Sustainability reports: Differences between developing and developed countries

Achieving sustainability is a major challenge faced by many societies. The increasing moral consciousness of stakeholders has put pressure on companies, forcing these companies to include long-term policies that reflect the regionally specific needs of stakeholders. Using a structural topic model, this study identified differences between developing and developed countries with respect to sustainability disclosures. Data were obtained from 2100 sustainability reports published in the United Nations Global Compact database for the year 2020. In global terms, these sustainability reports addressed three main topics: 1) human rights, 2) diversity, equity, and inclusion, and 3) sustainable production. Moreover, the sustainability reports from developing and developed countries incorporated different communication strategies. Based on the prevalence (rate of occurrence) of content, sustainability reports from developed countries predominantly communicated issues related to "sustainable production" and "supply chain emissions", whereas sustainability reports from developing countries more frequently communicated issues related to "education" and "human rights"

Cultured Meat on the Social Network Twitter: Clean, Future and Sustainable Meats

The rapid development of technologies for cultured meat production has led to new challenges for producers regarding appropriate communication with future customers in order to deliver products to a viable market. Communication analysis of social media enables the identification of the key characteristics of the monitored topic, as well as the main areas of communication by individual users based on active digital footprints. This study aimed to identify the key characteristics of cultured meat based on communication analysis of the social network Twitter. Communication analysis was performed based on 36,356 Tweets posted by 4128 individual users. This analysis identified the following main communicated characteristics: clean meat, future meat, and sustainable meat. Latent Dittrich allocation identified five communication topics: (1) clean and sustainable products, (2) comparisons with plant-based protein and the impact on agribusiness, (3) positive environmental aspects, (4) cultured meat as an alternative protein, and (5) the regulation of cultured meat

Food Bloggers on the Twitter Social Network: Yummy, Healthy, Homemade, and Vegan Food

Many people now consider social networking to be an indispensable tool. There are now over 4.6 billion social media users, who leave a digital footprint through their online interactions. These big data provide enormous research potential for identifying the social and cultural aspects of the monitored topic. Moreover, the use of social media platforms has been found to have an impact on eating habits. The analysis of these social networks is thus essential to understand the factors that influence eating habits. To this aim, we identified the main topics associated with food bloggers on Twitter using the Social Media Analysis based on the Hashtag Research Framework of 686,450 Tweets captured from 171,243 unique users from 1 January 2017 to 30 May 2022. Based on the analysis of communication on Twitter, the most communicated hashtags in the food blogger sphere were as follows: #yummy, #healthy, #homemade, and #vegan. From the point of view of communities, three major clusters were identified, including (1) healthy lifestyle, (2) home-made food, and (3) fast food, and two minor clusters were identified, namely, (4) breakfast and brunch and (5) food traveling

Healthy Food on Instagram Social Network: Vegan, Homemade and Clean Eating

Social media platforms have become part of many people’s lives. Users are spending more and more time on these platforms, creating an active and passive digital footprint through their interaction. This footprint has high research potential in many research areas because understanding people’s communication on social media is essential in understanding their values, attitudes, experiences and behaviors. Researchers found that the use of social networking sites impacts adolescents’ eating behavior. If we define adolescents as individuals between ages 10 and 24 (WHO’s definition), 76% of USA young people at age 18–⁠24 use Instagram, so the Instagram social network analysis is important for understanding young people’s expressions in the context of healthy food. This study aims to identify the main topic associated with healthy food on the Instagram social network via hashtag and community analysis based on 2,045,653 messages created by 427,936 individual users. The results show that users most associate Healthy food with healthy lifestyle, fitness, weight loss and diet. In terms of food, these are foods that are Vegan, Homemade, Clean and Plant-based. Given that young people change their behavior in relation to people’s behavior on social networks, it is possible to use this data to predict their future association with healthy food characteristics