“My name is Matshepo … Mother of Hope”: Examining Hope amid the First-Year Experience

Student affairs practitioners have essential roles to play in assisting students in concretising a sense of hope. However, more research is needed to explore the role of hope amongst university students during the first-year experience. This article reports on a mixed methods study that explored hope in the context of the first-year experience. The quantitative phase of the study explored the relationships between hope, flourishing, psychological distress, and academic achievement amongst a sample of 296 first-year South African university students (mean age = 20.70, SD = 1.30, female = 63%).Statistical analyses revealed significant relationships between the constructs assessed. Students who reported high scores on hope also obtained higher academic marks compared to participants who reported lower scores on the same construct. The qualitative phase of the study explored differences inconceptions of hope between participants (N = 28, age-range 18‑22) who reported high versus low scores on a quantitative measure of hope. Two qualitative themes emerged, namely the trichotomy of hope, and hope-based generalised resistance resources. The findings indicate that students who present with high levels of hope may be more inclined to pursue academic goals and experience a sense of well‑being. Implications for student support are discussed, and the importance of promoting realistic hope amid the first-year experience is highlighted

Towards a Learning Mindset: First-Year University Students’ Qualitative Perspectives on Gratitude in the Context of Learning Effort

Signature strengths, such as gratitude, can assist students in navigating the demanding first-year experience. However, more research is needed to explore the role of gratitude in relation to cognitive benefits for students. This article reports on a constructivist grounded theory study that exploredSouth African students’ conceptions and enactments of gratitude with regard to their learning efforts.  Qualitative data were collected in individual open-ended interviews (n = 22, age-range = 18‑23) and analysed using three interdependent coding phases (initial coding, focused coding and theoretical coding). The resultant grounded theory was titled ‘Thanks: Gratitude and learning resilience amongstfirst-year university students’. The findings revealed that gratitude could take many forms and has a positive qualitative impact on students’ learning resilience, and that gratitude and learning resilience are emancipatory in nature. Limitations and areas for further research conclude the discussion

“My name is Matshepo … Mother of Hope”: Examining Hope amid the First-Year Experience

Student affairs practitioners have essential roles to play in assisting students in concretising a sense of hope. However, more research is needed to explore the role of hope amongst university students during the first-year experience. This article reports on a mixed methods study that explored hope in the context of the first-year experience. The quantitative phase of the study explored the relationships between hope, flourishing, psychological distress, and academic achievement amongst a sample of 296 first-year South African university students (mean age=20.70, SD=1.30, female=63%). Statistical analyses revealed significant relationships between the constructs assessed. Students who reported high scores on hope also obtained higher academic marks compared to participants whoreported lower scores on the same construct. The qualitative phase of the study explored differences in conceptions of hope between participants (N=28, age-range 18-22) who reported high versus low scores on a quantitative measure of hope. Two qualitative themes emerged, namely the trichotomy of hope, and hope-based generalised resistance resources. The findings indicate that students who present with high levels of hope may be more inclined to pursue academic goals and experience a sense of well-being. Implications for student support are discussed, and the importance of promoting realistic hope amid the first-year experience is highlighted. Keywords: first-year experience; hope; mixed methods; positive psychology; well-bein

Towards a Learning Mindset: First-Year University Students’ Qualitative Perspectives on Gratitude in the Context of Learning Effort

Signature strengths, such as gratitude, can assist students in navigating the demanding first-year experience. However, more research is needed to explore the role of gratitude in relation to cognitive benefits for students. This article reports on a constructivist grounded theory study that explored South African students’ conceptions and enactments of gratitude with regard to their learning efforts. Qualitative data were collected in individual open-ended interviews (n=22, age-range=18-23) and analysed using three interdependent coding phases (initial coding, focused coding and theoretical coding). The resultant grounded theory was titled ‘Thanks: Gratitude and learning resilience amongst first-year university students’. The findings revealed that gratitude could take many forms and has apositive qualitative impact on students’ learning resilience, and that gratitude and learning resilience are emancipatory in nature. Limitations and areas for further research conclude the discussion. Keywords: first-year experience; gratitude; positive psychology; resilience; well-bein

LLM-based Comment Summarization and Topic Matching for Videos

Large language models (LLMs) have shown substantial improvements on text summarization and classification benchmarks over prior techniques. LLMs can be used for topic detection for online video which can help improve video recommendations. This disclosure describes techniques to parse comments associated with a particular video in addition to video topic detection. The automated parsing enables acquisition of auxiliary information about the context in which the video is made available. The topics/keywords can be complementary to or can extend upon topics detected from the video and/or video metadata. A combination of the video topics and comment topics can be utilized for video recommendations and can identify potential audiences that may not otherwise be matched to a video

The Best that I Can Be: A Case for a Strengths-Based Approach during the First‑Year Experience

More South African research is needed that examines the application of positive psychology to assist students in navigating the stressful first‑year experience by identifying, developing and applying signature strengths. This article reports on a mixed methods study that investigated the efficacy of a strengths-based development programme presented to a sample of 55 first‑year university students (mean age = 19.77, SD = 1.50, female = 60%). Quantitative data were collected in a pre- and post-intervention manner using the Personal Growth Initiative Scale, the Subjective Happiness Scale, the Satisfaction with Life Scale and the Strengths Use and Deficit Improvement Questionnaire.  Qualitative data were collected in individual semi-structured interviews (n = 12, age range = 18‑22).  Significant changes between the pre- and post‑test scores emerged when comparing the quantitative data. The qualitative analysis pointed to aspects that participants regarded as beneficial to the efficacy of the strengths-based programme. Collectively, the data integration suggested that the intervention had a positive impact on participants’ sense of well‑being and contributed to enhancing the first‑year experience. Limitations and areas for further research conclude the discussion

Inoculation strategies for bounded degree graphs

We analyze a game-theoretic abstraction of epidemic containment played on an undirected graph $G$: each player is associated with a node in $G$ and can either acquire protection from a contagious process or risk infection. After decisions are made, an infection starts at a random node $v$ and propagates through all unprotected nodes reachable from $v$. It is known that the price of anarchy (PoA) in $n$-node graphs can be as large as $\Theta(n)$. Our main result is a tight bound of order $\sqrt{n\Delta}$ on the PoA, where $\Delta$ is the maximum degree of the graph. We also study additional factors that can reduce the PoA, such as higher thresholds for contagion and varying the costs of becoming infected vs. acquiring protection

Single Gate P-N Junctions in Graphene-Ferroelectric Devices

Graphene's linear dispersion relation and the attendant implications for bipolar electronics applications have motivated a range of experimental efforts aimed at producing p-n junctions in graphene. Here we report electrical transport measurements of graphene p-n junctions formed via simple modifications to a PbZr$_{0.2}$Ti$_{0.8}$O$_3$ substrate, combined with a self-assembled layer of ambient environmental dopants. We show that the substrate configuration controls the local doping region, and that the p-n junction behavior can be controlled with a single gate. Finally, we show that the ferroelectric substrate induces a hysteresis in the environmental doping which can be utilized to activate and deactivate the doping, yielding an `on-demand' p-n junction in graphene controlled by a single, universal backgate