• Energy Research
• 4. Education close
• CN close
• KR close

To meet the demand of talents in the rapid and sustainable development of the steel manufacturing industry and the needs of the local development of green and intelligent steel technology, this paper presented a reformed training program of intelligent manufacturing of universities for the steel industry. The training program explored the reform plan of talent training objectives, curriculum system, teaching mode, practical links, and operation mechanism of intelligent manufacturing engineering, and built a system with the goal of cultivating innovative ability covering green and intelligent concepts. A new mode of talent cultivation that covers the green and intelligent manufacturing concept and awareness, engineering knowledge, and innovation ability is built, to cultivate high-quality engineering talents who can adapt to the demand of green and intelligent development of steel and other industries. The innovative talent cultivation mode could reconstruct the steel intelligent manufacturing engineering education system and produce a demonstrative effect and good social benefits on the construction of intelligent manufacturing engineering specialty in the industry-featured colleges and universities.

With the deep integration of ICT into education and teaching, the effect of technology acceptance on students’ self-directed learning has been one of the key concerns in the education field. This study examines the relationship between technology acceptance and self-directed learning and the mediating role played by positive emotions and technological self-efficacy in a sample of 501 middle school students in eastern China. The results show that: (1) positive emotions mediate the relationship between technology acceptance and self-directed learning; (2) technological self-efficacy also mediates the relationship between technology acceptance and self-directed learning; (3) positive emotions and technological self-efficacy play a mediating role between technology acceptance and self-directed learning. The findings not only reveal the mediating role of positive emotions and technological self-efficacy between technology acceptance and self-directed learning but are also valuable for Chinese teachers to guide middle school students to engage in self-directed learning with the help of technology.

In learning based on socio-scientific issues, teachers primarily use role playing in situation learning to promote students’ knowledge and responsibility and to teach them how to reach a consensus in multirole scenarios. However, if participants only engage with the material from the perspective of having one role, they will ignore comprehensive information on said issue. Therefore, the roles students play during multirole situational learning lead to diversity biases in learning results. To help participants enhance their competencies related to issues and eliminate learning gaps, we developed an issue-based board game named Water Ark based on the following four design ideas: multirole simulation, reflective goal, systemic situation, and interactions of society. The results indicated that after playing the game, participants’ knowledge and responsibility regarding water resource adaptation improved significantly. Furthermore, the findings revealed that the gap between the learning outcomes of participants with different roles in the game was not statistically significant, except in terms of students’ personal willingness to act. Thus, these design ideas could improve the utility of board games for learning about socio-scientific issues with multirole scenarios.

Background: At present, family socioeconomic status is a significant contributor to the differences in university students’ learning motivation, but few studies have examined the effects on different types of motivation to learn conformity. Thus, the present study investigates the effects of family socioeconomic status on different types of learning conformity and the mediating role of self-efficacy. Methods: 339 Chinese university students were surveyed using the general self-efficacy scale, the learning conformity scale, and the family socioeconomic status questionnaire. We analyzed the effect of family socioeconomic status on learning conformity and the mediating role of general self-efficacy through common bias tests, correlation analysis, structural equation modeling, and tests of mediating effects. Results: (1) There are three types of learning conformity, as follows: learning abidance, learning obedience, and learning compliance. (2) The mediation model concluded that family socioeconomic status had a positive and significant effect on learning abidance and learning obedience, and general self-efficacy played a partially mediating role, with an adequate ratio of 59.7% and 26.26%, respectively; family socioeconomic status had a negative and significant effect on learning compliance, and general self-efficacy played a partially mediating role, with an adequate ratio of 52.02%. Conclusions: This study provides first-hand empirical data to support studies of learning motivation, learning conformity behavior, and self-efficacy among Chinese university students. It also provides a theoretical basis for subsequent research on family socioeconomic status and learning conformity.

As many universities in non-Anglophone countries have committed to internationalising their academic programmes, more content courses in Arts and Sciences are being taught in English. When content courses are taught in English in a country where English is not the first language, this is called English Medium Instruction (EMI). Using specific country cases, previous studies have confirmed that an EMI course can pose many challenges to the learning of course content by students. To date, there have been few attempts to examine these challenges through a large-scale qualitative prism, which would be useful for gaining new insights in order to inform policy as well as classroom interventions. In this systematic thematic synthesis we have aimed to identify the obstacles to implementing learner-centred pedagogy in EMI tertiary programmes, focusing on student perspectives. The Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) and Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Studies (COREQ) were used to appraise and synthesise 40 empirical articles. The articles included 1769 participants in 20 non-Anglophone countries and jurisdictions. The participants were both local and international non-native English-speaking students enrolled in EMI courses. The synthesis yielded 46 descriptive themes stratified into six analytical domains. The suggested domains are meta/linguistic, instructional, meta/cognitive, socio-cultural, affective, and institutional obstacles. They suggest that students in different regions faced quite similar challenges in their EMI courses. The challenges consist of inadequate use of English by students and lecturers, and a lack of student-centred pedagogy, particularly in teacher–student and student–student interactions. The findings of most learner-centred EMI studies revealed that the main challenges came from English comprehension (the first three suggested domains); fewer studies included factors related to the learning environment (the last three domains). This review can inform university administrators, teaching staff and researchers engaged in internationalising higher education and aid in designing appropriate EMI programmes that offer better learner-centred educational experiences.

As a way to support teachers’ professional development activities and build communities of practice for teachers, education researchers and practitioners have put considerable effort into building an online learning community for K–12 teachers to create a venue to facilitate teachers’ joint knowledge construction. However, a substantial number of such online communities have failed due to lack of participation of members. Therefore, it is critical to understand how to design a sustainable community that fulfills members’ needs and elicits active participation of members. In this literature review, we adopted a sociological framework to investigate how to create a sustainable online community. This framework suggests that the sustainability of a community comes from individual members’ three types of commitments: instrumental, affective, and moral commitments. Such commitments are results of members’ cognitive, cathectic, and evaluative processes and lead to membership retainment, cohesive relationships, and socially regulated participation. Using this framework, we conducted a systematic literature review on online teacher community articles published from 1990 to 2018. Our findings provide insights on factors associated with teacher members’ instrumental, affective, and moral commitment to an online community. Based on these findings, we further provide design suggestions to build a sustainable community for teachers.

With the further deepening of the reform and opening up process, our country's economic level has continued to improve. Especially since the 21st century, science and technology have been constantly innovating and developing. In different industries and fields, science and technology have been integrated. Traditional methods that do not adapt to the development of the times have been abandoned. In this context, there is an urgent need for talents in all fields of life to make the development of the industry more integrated and professional. This article analyzes the current situation of human resources and future planning countermeasures, summarizes the main problems in the talent market at this stage based on some literature data, and puts forward several important roles of talent planning on the basis, and finally investigates the current situation of human resources. It is mainly to sort out and analyze the overall cultural level of human resources and the distribution of technical personnel, to provide a basis for future talent market forecasts and prospects. Data analysis shows that only 17% have a university degree or above. This shows the city's human resources the level of education is obviously low, and the overall quality of human resources cannot meet the needs of economic development, and is eager to further improve.

Response scales in auditory perception assessment are critical for capturing the true responses of listeners. Despite its impact on data, response scales have received the least attention in auditory perception assessment. In this study, the usability of visual analogue scales for auditory perception assessment was investigated. Five response scales (a unipolar visual analogue scale–negated to regular, a unipolar visual analogue scale—regular to negated, a bipolar visual analogue scale–positive to negative, a bipolar visual analogue scale—negative to positive, and a unipolar 11-point scale (ISO/TS 15666:2021)) for auditory perception assessment are presented. Music and traffic noise were presented to 60 university students at two different levels, i.e., 45 and 65 dBA, respectively. A web-based experimental design was implemented, and tablet pads were provided to the respondents to record their responses. The unipolar 11-point scale required the longest response time, followed by the two unipolar visual analogue scales and two bipolar visual analogue scales with statistical significance. All response scales used in this study achieved statistical reliability and sensitivity for the auditory perception assessment. Among the five response scales, the bipolar visual analogue scale (negative to positive) ranked first in reliability over repeated measures, exhibited sensitivity in differentiating sound sources, and was preferred by the respondents under the conditions of the present study. None of the respondents preferred the unipolar 11-point scale. The visual analogue scale was favoured over the traditional unipolar 11-point scale by young educated adults in a mobile-based testing environment. Moreover, the bipolar visual analogue scale demonstrated the highest reliability and sensitivity, and it was preferred the most by the respondents. The semantic labelling direction from negated to regular, or from negative to positive, is preferred over its opposite counterpart. Further research is necessary to investigate the use of response scales for the general public including children and the elderly, as well as that of semantic adjectives and their counterparts for auditory perception assessment.