Challenges and policies for promoting internationalization—The case of Iranian public universities

The global knowledge economy has turned higher education into a key player in societal development. Internationalization benefits higher education institutions in several aspects, such as improvement and visibility in international rankings, revenue generation via tuition fees and external funding, improvement of research and teaching quality, integration with academic communities and familiarization with scholarly attitudes. In this study, we provide insights into the challenges of internationalization faced by higher education institutions in Iran as a developing country. Several policies and practices have been adopted in Iran to improve internationalization efforts; however, these activities have had little impact on the quality of research and educational programs at Iran's universities. Understanding the challenges they face in a systematic way can help identify different factors and develop a set of suggestions to increase the quality and quantity of international cooperation. We formulate our suggestions based on the opportunities provided by the digitalization solutions in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and the increasing importance of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals in both global and national environments. We interviewed 15 faculty members in Iranian higher education institutions and 14 managers in charge of international affairs at universities in Iran. In addition, data extracted from three forums on Iranian higher education internationalization are analysed. Using a grounded theory approach, we group the challenges into macro-, institutional and individual levels and then suggest a number of practices and policies to increase the quantity and quality of internationalization efforts.     

Adopting evidence-based practice in clinical decision making: nurses' perceptions, knowledge, and barriers

Objective:

Evidence-based practice (EBP) provides nurses with a method to use critically appraised and scientifically proven evidence for delivering quality health care to a specific population. The objective of this study was to explore nurses'' awareness of, knowledge of, and attitude toward EBP and factors likely to encourage or create barriers to adoption. In addition, information sources used by nurses and their literature searching skills were also investigated.

Method:

A total of 2,100 copies of the questionnaire were distributed to registered nurses in 2 public hospitals in Singapore, and 1,486 completed forms were returned, resulting in a response rate of 70.8%.

Results:

More than 64% of the nurses expressed a positive attitude toward EBP. However, they pointed out that due to heavy workload, they cannot keep up to date with new evidence. Regarding self-efficacy of EBP-related abilities, the nurses perceived themselves to possess moderate levels of skills. The nurses also felt that EBP training, time availability, and mentoring by nurses with EBP experience would encourage them to implement EBP. The top three barriers to adopting EBP were lack of time, inability to understand statistical terms, and inadequate understanding of the jargon used in research articles. For literature searching, nurses were using basic search features and less than one-quarter of them were familiar with Boolean and proximity operators.

Conclusion:

Although nurses showed a positive attitude toward EBP, certain barriers were hindering their smooth adoption. It is, therefore, desirable that hospital management in Southeast Asia, particularly in Singapore, develop a comprehensive strategy for building EBP competencies through proper training. Moreover, hospital libraries should also play an active role in developing adequate information literacy skills among the nurses.

Highlights

• Nurses in Singapore, as in other countries, support the idea of evidence-based practice (EBP) but have limited skills in the area of literature searching and understanding evidence, which limits their use of evidence-based practice.
• Only a small number of nurses were able to pick an appropriate search strategy for a given topic, indicating a lack of basic literature searching skills.
• Sufficient literature searching knowledge is essential to retrieve current, relevant, and accurate evidence. However, a majority of nurses do not know how to properly use Boolean and proximity operators, indexing, truncation, or limits.

Implications

• Librarians need to be part of providing ongoing training for clinical nurses in searching the evidence, especially in hospitals promoting EBP or seeking Magnet status.
• Training is needed for clinical nurses to be able to achieve the use of EBP, and librarians can support this goal by teaching the search strategies portion of an EBP skills course.
• This study''s instrument could be used by librarians as a needs assessment tool to measure their own clinical nurses'' information literacy skills, if justification is needed locally.

     

Intellectual capital and organizational organic structure in knowledge society: How are these concepts related?

This paper seeks to investigate the relationship between organizational organic structure and intellectual capital improvement. Researches show that the organic structure and intellectual capital have a strong relationship but this relationship has not been examined systematically. This paper reviews the important theoretical work in both streams of research, highlighting the fundamental similarities and differences. Models of intellectual capital are compared, and the distinction between social, human and organizational capital is examined. The nature of organizational organic structure is presented. We examine the relationship between organic structure and intellectual capital improvement. Then the impact of organic structure on information management and information processing capability is examined.The results support the view that organic structure has a positive impact on intellectual capital. Therefore, the organic structure can improve intellectual capital in the organization.This study helps managers to design flexible and dynamic organizational structures to enhance the intellectual capital in the organization and increase the ability to compete.     

Causes and consequences of academics’ emotions in private higher education institutions: implications for policy and practice through the lens of affective events theory

Educational Research for Policy and Practice - This study aims at testing a few tenets of affective events theory (AET) from a predictive perspective in the context of Malaysian private higher...     

Monotonic triaxial experiments to evaluate steady-state and liquefaction susceptibility of Babolsar sand

In this study, drained and undrained triaxial tests under isotropic and anisotropic consolidations were conducted on reconstituted samples of Babolsar sand, which underlies a densely populated, seismic region of the southern coast of the Caspian Sea, Mazandaran, Iran. It was demonstrated that the sand experienced all possible states of liquefiable soil： flow failure, limited flow, and dilation. The steady-state and flow liquefaction lines of this sand were presented and compared with previously tested sands. It is shown that the initial stress anisotropy can affect the potential of volume change and pore pressure generation. The steady-state line （SSL）, however, remains identical for the isotropically and anisotropically consolidated specimens under drained and undrained conditions. The tests data were then analyzed in order to investigate the liquefaction susceptibility of this sand in terms of parameters such as the state parameter, relative state parameter index, and lateral earth pressure ratio at failure.     

Medical education and COVID-19 pandemic: a crisis management model towards an evolutionary pathway

Education and Information Technologies - The COVID-19 crisis has had a profound effect on higher education, especially medical education due to its sensitive nature, dealing with people’s...     

Effects of aerobic training on serum omentin-1 and cardiometabolic risk factors in overweight and obese men

Abstract

Omentin-1 is a newly discovered protein expressed and secreted from visceral adipose tissue that increases insulin sensitivity. We examined the effects of 12 weeks of aerobic training on serum omentin-1 concentrations together with cardiovascular risk factors in overweight and obese men. Eighteen overweight and obese participants (age 43.1 ± 4.7 years, BMI ≥25 kg · m^?2) were assigned to exercise training (n = 9) and control (n = 9) groups. A matched control group of normal weight participants (n = 8; age 42.2 ± 3.8 years, BMI <25 kg · m^?2) were also recruited for baseline comparison. The obese exercise group participated in 12 weeks of progressive aerobic training 5 days a week. Measures of serum omentin-1, insulin resistance, lipid profiles, blood pressure, and body composition were obtained before and after the 12 weeks. At baseline, normal weight participants had significantly higher serum omentin-1 concentrations than overweight and obese participants, and there were inverse correlations between omentin-1 and each of waist circumference, fasting glucose, insulin resistance, total cholesterol, triglyceride, and systolic blood pressure (P < 0.05). After the aerobic training, waist circumference, percent body fat, fasting glucose, insulin resistance, triglyceride, total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and systolic blood pressure were all significantly decreased (P < 0.05). In contrast, serum omentin-1 concentration was significantly increased after the aerobic programme (P < 0.05), and correlated with changes in insulin resistance (r = ?0.67, P = 0.04), glucose (r = ?0.65, P = 0.05), waist circumference (r = ?0.70, P = 0.03), and aerobic fitness r = ?0.68, P = 0.04). Aerobic training resulted in an improvement in cardiometabolic risk factors in obese participants, and this improvement was accompanied by increased omentin-1 concentrations.