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AbstractBackgroundThe COVID‐19 pandemic has resulted in pronounced changes for college students, including shifts in living situations and engagement in virtual environments. Although college drinking decreased at the onset of the pandemic, a nuanced understanding of pandemic‐related changes in drinking contexts and the risks conferred by each context on alcohol use and related consequences have yet to be assessed.MethodsSecondary data analyses were conducted on screening data from a large parent clinical trial assessing a college student drinking intervention (N = 1669). Participants across six cohorts (from Spring 2020 to Summer 2021) reported on the frequency of drinking in each context (i.e., outside the home, home alone, home with others in‐person, and home with others virtually), typical amount of drinking, and seven alcohol‐related consequence subscales.ResultsDescriptive statistics and negative binomial regressions indicated that the proportion and frequency of drinking at home virtually with others decreased, while drinking outside the home increased from Spring 2020 to Summer 2021. Limited differences were observed in the proportion or frequency of individuals drinking at home alone or at home with others in‐person. Negative binomial and logistic regressions indicated that the frequency of drinking outside the home was most consistently associated with more alcohol‐related consequences (i.e., six of the seven subscales). However, drinking at home was not without risks; drinking home alone was associated with abuse/dependence, personal, social, hangover, and social media consequences; drinking home with others virtually was associated with abuse/dependence and social consequences; drinking home with others in‐person was associated with drunk texting/dialing.ConclusionThe proportion and frequency of drinking in certain contexts changed during the COVID‐19 pandemic, although drinking outside the home represented the highest risk drinking context across the pandemic. Future prevention and intervention efforts may benefit from considering approaches specific to different drinking contexts.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a buzzing technology nowadays. It is believed to have the potential for revolutionizing today’s world. Several projects and publications addressed the use of IoT in various applications such as smart cities, smart homes, wearables, smart grids, connected vehicles, and health care. However, few works addressed the potential of using IoT in educational institutions. The technological revolution along with several changes through the past era, including the COVID-19 global pandemic, have made it indispensable to employ innovative learning methods, also, the students will be looking forward to existing in the environment of a smart campus. This study presents a framework to elucidate how IoT can be used to bring a smart and innovative university campus to life in order to improve the efficiency of delivering the daily educational activities. In the context of sustainable development, the social and environmental interactions should be considered to provide a sustainable campus. Also, challenges are investigated and research opportunities are highlighted. This framework can be put in practice in guiding universities to adopt novel visions to improve the performance of their educational activities and student life experience by properly adopting and deploying IoT technologies. These concepts are elaborated based on the case of the innovative campus of the Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology, which is located in New Borg Elarab, Alexandria, Egypt.

<b><i>Introduction:</i></b> We examined a range of alcohol use indicators among Norwegian adolescents before and during the early COVID-19 pandemic. <b><i>Methods:</i></b> We examined two cohorts of Norwegian 16-year-olds from the nationwide MyLife study who entered high school in fall 2020 (i.e., COVID-19 pandemic cohort; <i>n</i> = 915) and fall 2019/18 (i.e., prepandemic cohort; <i>n</i> = 1,621). Through e-surveys, adolescents reported their past year drinking frequencies and quantities (generating the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test-Concise; AUDIT-C scores) and completed Social Facilitation (SF) and Tension Reduction (TR) subscales of the Alcohol Outcome Expectancies Scale. Cohort differences across these outcomes were examined with linear and modified Poisson regression models. <b><i>Results:</i></b> There were no cohort differences in the proportion of adolescents who reported drinking in the past year or in drinking/binge drinking frequencies. However, alcohol quantities consumed on a typical drinking day were 1/3 of a drink greater in the COVID-19 cohort than in the prepandemic cohort; aIRR (95% CI) = 1.13 (1.02–1.25). These consumption differences compounded into significantly greater AUDIT-C scores (aIRR [95% CI] = 1.16 [1.02–1.32]) and positive AUDIT-C screens (31.2% vs. 26.4%; aRR [95% CI] = 1.21 [1.07–1.36]) in the COVID-19 cohort. In terms of alcohol-related expectancies, there were no SF differences, but the COVID-19 cohort reported significantly greater TR expectancies; <i>b</i> (95% CI) = 0.11 (0.02–0.20). <b><i>Conclusion:</i></b> Despite the 2020 lockdown, Norwegian adolescents who started high school during the first pandemic year did not differ from their prepandemic peers in terms of how many of them drank, how often they drank, or in prosocial expectations they had of alcohol use. However, they consumed greater alcohol quantities per drinking day, had greater AUDIT-C scores, and reported greater tension reduction expectations of alcohol use. These results underscore the value of examining adolescents’ alcohol-related behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic above and beyond the basic drinking prevalence and frequencies.

While the COVID-19 pandemic has had various impacts on economic and social development, it may have partially reduced human energy use, thereby helping achieve the goals of reducing carbon emissions and promoting carbon neutrality. During the pandemic, online education was widely used to replace traditional education all over the world. There is a lack of empirical studies on whether and to what extent the change of education model can reduce carbon emissions. Taking Chinese universities as cases, this study, concentrating on two main elements - transportation and electricity consumption - constructs a model and calculates the impact of online education on carbon emissions. The results show that online education can significantly reduce energy consumption and lower carbon emissions. In the field of higher education alone, the carbon emissions reduction caused by online education in half a year is equivalent to the total carbon emissions reduction of college students caused by online education during the half-year is equivalent to the total carbon emissions in 1.296 h in China, 2.688 h in the United States, 5.544 h in India, 12 h in Japan and 3.864 h in European countries of OECD. Therefore, this study suggests that the impact of online education on carbon emissions should be further studied, online education should be promoted through legislation and other systemic measures, and the goals of carbon emissions and carbon neutrality should be explored further within the field of education.

AbstractBlockchain is slowly but surely changing the world. Cryptocurrencies are having a profound effect on the economic landscape. With the advent of COVID‐19, the education sector, just like other sectors, need a complete reinvention or redesign to continue producing graduates that would be able to effectively contribute to an ever‐changing world. Very often, the administrative burden of managing the award of academic qualifications is ignored. With a globalised world and given the actual context of COVID‐19, education is no longer seen as being carried out within the four walls of the classroom. The future of University education lies within the ability to pool resources from different places and to encourage cross‐university collaboration. This can also be seen as the ability to assemble the different building blocks so that the learners are able to acquire the necessary skills and knowledge. This study focuses on the design and implementation of an examination, transcript and certificate system using blockchain. It is meant to provide a completely transparent and effective examination and awards system that can be used to replace the traditional one in place. What has also proposed in this study is a novel light blockchain system composed of a number of modules, which have been built from scratch. With its decentralised approach, the proposed system proved to be very much helpful. Other features, such as security, immutability, availability, and anonymity, of the system are also discussed and yielded highly encouraging results.

Learning outcomes Students should be able to use the case study in debate apply theories relating to the subjects specified. Case overview/synopsis The case is based on a fictitious South African company going through emergency response conditions analogous with what many businesses are encountering during the COVID crisis. The protagonist is struggling with structural challenges imposed on the business by unpredictable and uncontrollable external pressures and needs to make transformative decisions which might impact the culture, organisational design and digitisation of the business. Complexity academic level Post-graduate general management. Supplementary materials Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Subject code CSS: 7 Management Science.

The Covid-19 pandemic has forced a sudden change in many sectors worldwide including the education sector. The closure of schools, colleges, and universities has impacted all educational institutes on teaching transformation method from face-to-face classroom to online classroom abruptly. Getting in-depth insights from online EFL teachers is vital to understand and enables to resolve their difficulties and teaching limitations. The purposes of this study were to explore EFL teachers’ attitudes and opinions in a Thai university in Bangkok, Thailand towards their online teaching amid the Covid-19 pandemic and to examine their problems occurred while they were managing online teaching. The participants were 19 English lecturers at a Thai university consisting of 15 Thai and 4 foreigner lecturers. A researcher collected data through an online survey, focus-group discussions, and individual interviews with open-ended questions, and then used content analysis, a conventional approach to analyze the data. The findings revealed that all lecturers were willing to teach online, but they lacked the comprehensive training on online teaching techniques and some effective equipment to support online language teaching.