scholarly journals Improving international attractiveness of higher education institutions based on text mining and sentiment analysis

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 431-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolina Leana Santos ◽  
Paulo Rita ◽  
João Guerreiro

Purpose The increasing competition among higher education institutions (HEI) has led students to conduct a more in-depth analysis to choose where to study abroad. Since students are usually unable to visit each HEIs before making their decision, they are strongly influenced by what is written by former international students (IS) on the internet. HEIs also benefit from such information online. The purpose of this paper is to provide an understanding of the drivers of HEIs success online. Design/methodology/approach Due to the increasing amount of information published online, HEIs have to use automatic techniques to search for patterns instead of analysing such information manually. The present paper uses text mining (TM) and sentiment analysis (SA) to study online reviews of IS about their HEIs. The paper studied 1938 reviews from 65 different business schools with Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business accreditation. Findings Results show that HEIs may become more attractive online if they financially support students cost of living, provide courses in English, and promote an international environment. Research limitations/implications Despite the use of a major platform with a broad number of reviews from students around the world, other sources focussed on other types of HEIs may have been used to reinforce the findings in the current paper. Originality/value The study pioneers the use of TM and SA to highlight topics and sentiments mentioned in online reviews by students attending HEIs, clarifying how such opinions are correlated with satisfaction. Using such information, HEIs’ managers may focus their efforts on promoting international attractiveness of their institutions.

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
T.M. Wong

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify the teaching innovations that have been implemented in higher education institutions in Asia and the perspectives of educators on them. Design/methodology/approach Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 28 educators who were affiliated with 23 higher education institutions in ten Asian countries/regions. The interviews covered information about the teaching innovations of the participants’ institutions, the characteristics of the innovative practices and the participants’ views on them. The relationships between the characteristics of institutions and their teaching innovations were also examined. Findings The results showed that the teaching innovations included two main categories, namely, those which involved the use of advanced technologies and those which did not. The innovations that involved the use of advanced technologies were mainly from larger institutions, while the other category was mainly from smaller ones and had been practised for less than 1.5 years. Differences were also identified between the two categories in terms of the aims and importance of innovations, innovative features, the evaluation of innovations and improvements needed for them. Originality/value The results highlighted that technology is only one of the many aspects of teaching innovations, which is different from the view prevailing in the literature. They also suggested that differences in the scale of institutions (in terms of number of students) possibly influences the kind of teaching innovations adopted.


2022 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Divya Mittal ◽  
Shiv Ratan Agrawal

PurposeThe current study employs text mining and sentiment analysis to identify core banking service attributes and customer sentiment in online user-generated reviews. Additionally, the study explains customer satisfaction based on the identified predictors.Design/methodology/approachA total of 32,217 customer reviews were collected across 29 top banks on bankbazaar.com posted from 2014 to 2021. In total three conceptual models were developed and evaluated employing regression analysis.FindingsThe study revealed that all variables were found to be statistically significant and affect customer satisfaction in their respective models except the interest rate.Research limitations/implicationsThe study is confined to the geographical representation of its subjects' i.e. Indian customers. A cross-cultural and socioeconomic background analysis of banking customers in different countries may help to better generalize the findings.Practical implicationsThe study makes essential theoretical and managerial contributions to the existing literature on services, particularly the banking sector.Originality/valueThis paper is unique in nature that focuses on banking customer satisfaction from online reviews and ratings using text mining and sentiment analysis.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco Elíseo Fernandes Sanches ◽  
Matheus Leite Campos ◽  
Luiz Eduardo Gaio ◽  
Marcio Marcelo Belli

Purpose Higher education institutions (HEIs) should assume their role as leaders in the search for a sustainable future. Consequently, such institutions need to incorporate sustainability into their activities. However, this needs to be done holistically and not with isolated and independent actions. Therefore, this study aims to develop a structure of sustainability action archetypes to help HEIs holistically incorporate sustainability in their strategies. Design/methodology/approach A systematic review of the literature was conducted focusing on the subject of sustainability in HEIs. Findings A structure of sustainability action archetypes for HEIs was proposed. Further, based on scientific literature, examples of actions were presented within each archetype. Practical implications This study provides HEI administrators and other organizations with a practical structure to enable the systemic incorporation of sustainability objectives and actions into institutional activities. Originality/value This study adapts the tool “sustainable business model archetypes” for a new purpose. This tool was initially developed to classify innovations of sustainable business models.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Laura Anne Bliss

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine assessed seminars in law modules across first-, second- and third-year students at a higher education academy in Lancashire (England). This form of assessment is essentially a 1 h tutorial, where students are given marks for their oral contribution to class discussions. Assessment is a feature in all degree programmes conducted throughout higher education institutions. Recently, a move has been made from traditional examinations and coursework to assess students learning, to more inclusive forms of assessment following the changing nature of those entering higher education. Design/methodology/approach Using a quantitative survey, participants were asked to answer ten questions on their perceptions of assessed seminars as a form of assessment. To enhance the findings, interviews also took place with members of staff who had experience in teaching both assessed and non-assessed seminars. Findings This research found that although some students were daunted by assessed seminars, over the course of three years, their key legal skills had improved. Key skills enhanced through assessed seminars include communication-based skills and public speaking, whilst also being a positive form of assessment that maintains student retention. Research limitations/implications This is a small-scale research project, completed in the fulfilment of the authors PgCert. However, it does provide a template for other legal institutions to follow. Originality/value With a growing concern across the higher education sector around student retention, assessed seminars are proven to be a form of assessment that ensures student attendance, whilst enhancing skills ready for the workplace.


2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-64
Author(s):  
Nikola Nikolić ◽  
Olivera Grljević ◽  
Aleksandar Kovačević

Purpose Student recruitment and retention are important issues for all higher education institutions. Constant monitoring of student satisfaction levels is therefore crucial. Traditionally, students voice their opinions through official surveys organized by the universities. In addition to that, nowadays, social media and review websites such as “Rate my professors” are rich sources of opinions that should not be ignored. Automated mining of students’ opinions can be realized via aspect-based sentiment analysis (ABSA). ABSA s is a sub-discipline of natural language processing (NLP) that focusses on the identification of sentiments (negative, neutral, positive) and aspects (sentiment targets) in a sentence. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a system for ABSA of free text reviews expressed in student opinion surveys in the Serbian language. Sentiment analysis was carried out at the finest level of text granularity – the level of sentence segment (phrase and clause). Design/methodology/approach The presented system relies on NLP techniques, machine learning models, rules and dictionaries. The corpora collected and annotated for system development and evaluation comprise students’ reviews of teaching staff at the Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Novi Sad, Serbia, and a corpus of publicly available reviews from the Serbian equivalent of the “Rate my professors” website. Findings The research results indicate that positive sentiment can successfully be identified with the F-measure of 0.83, while negative sentiment can be detected with the F-measure of 0.94. While the F-measure for the aspect’s range is between 0.49 and 0.89, depending on their frequency in the corpus. Furthermore, the authors have concluded that the quality of ABSA depends on the source of the reviews (official students’ surveys vs review websites). Practical implications The system for ABSA presented in this paper could improve the quality of service provided by the Serbian higher education institutions through a more effective search and summary of students’ opinions. For example, a particular educational institution could very easily find out which aspects of their service the students are not satisfied with and to which aspects of their service more attention should be directed. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study of ABSA carried out at the level of sentence segment for the Serbian language. The methodology and findings presented in this paper provide a much-needed bases for further work on sentiment analysis for the Serbian language that is well under-resourced and under-researched in this area.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 355-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugénia Pedro ◽  
João Leitão ◽  
Helena Alves

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present an innovative operational proposal for measuring the intellectual capital (IC) of higher education institutions (HEIs) through a strategic prospective lens of analysis.Design/methodology/approachAfter providing a literature review on the methods for measuring IC that focuses on the organisational IC of HEIs, four case studies applied to Portuguese HEIs are presented, using a matrix of cross-referenced impacts – multiplications applied to a classification (MICMAC) approach.FindingsThe empirical findings reveal how human capital, structural capital and relational capital make up the core components and provide a fairly diversified list of the measurement indicators for the operational evaluation of the IC of HEIs.Practical implicationsIt contributes into the literature of strategic prospective analysis of HEIs by: analysing the measurement systems for the organisational IC interrelated with HEIs; identifying the key components to the organisational IC of HEIs and their respective measurement indicators; and draufting a new method for operationally implementing organisational IC through the systematic application of the components and indicators identified.Originality/valueThrough an innovative vision, the present study reconciles and systematically structures the methods already proposed by other authors before presenting an innovative operational approach and an alternative to the already existing methods. In addition, the structure of this proposal itself enables HEIs to choose from among the various indicators proposed for IC, correspondingly those that best align with the type of institution under evaluation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 297-309
Author(s):  
Sufyan Rashid ◽  
Hasrina Mustafa

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic review of studies on antecedents of the corporate reputation of higher education institutions (HEIs) from the perspectives of employeesDesign/methodology/approachThe approach is an examination of previous literature on antecedents of corporate reputation in HEIs, published between 2010 and 2020.FindingsThe findings show that general and specific factors of corporate reputation in HEIs are being employed as strategic tools to survive the competitive nature of the higher education landscape.Originality/valueFactors of corporate reputation in HEIs from the perspectives of employees are an understudied area with little academic literature available.


2022 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  

Purpose Higher education institutions need to increase their capacity to learn in order to respond effectively to unanticipated major crises. Exploiting knowledge of past situations can help them exploit governance structures and adjust policies in order to create effective strategies to help deal with challenges and boost well-being and resilience going forward. Design/methodology/approach This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context. Findings Higher education institutions need to increase their capacity to learn in order to respond effectively to unanticipated major crises. Exploiting knowledge of past situations can help them exploit governance structures and adjust policies in order to create effective strategies to help deal with challenges and boost well-being and resilience going forward. Originality/value The briefing saves busy executives and researchers’ hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tingting Zhang ◽  
Bin Li ◽  
Ady Milman ◽  
Nan Hua

Purpose This study aims to examine technology adoption practices in Chinese theme parks by leveraging text mining and sentiment analysis approaches on actual theme park customers’ online reviews. Design/methodology/approach The study text mined a total of 65,518 reviews of 490 Chinese theme parks with the aid of the Python program. Further, it computed sentiment scores of the customer reviews associated with the ratings of each categorized technology practice applied in the theme parks. Findings The study identified two major categories of technology applications in theme parks: supporting and experiential technologies. Multiple statistical tests confirmed that supporting technologies consisted of three types: intelligent services, ticketing and in-park transportation. Experiential technologies further included five aspects of technologies according to Schmitt’s strategic experiential modules (SEMs): sense, feel, act, think and relate. Originality/value The study findings contribute to the current understanding of theme park visitors’ perceptions of technology adoption practices and provide insightful implications for theme park practitioners who intend to invest in high technology solutions to deliver a better customer experience.


2016 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 252-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liz Atkins ◽  
Mark Vicars

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to draw on concepts of “female masculinity” to interrogate how hegemonic gendering discourses, forms and performances are inscribed in neoliberal narratives of competency in higher education in the Western Hemisphere. Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on individual examples, the authors consider how these narratives are omnipresent in the sector, and systematically act to exclude those who do not conform. In doing so, the authors draw extensively on bodies of literature exploring gender/identity, and neo-liberalism. In particular, the paper draws on the work of Halberstam (1998, 2011), and of Drake (2015). Findings – There are comparatively few women in senior positions in Higher Education and the authors argue that as gendering institutions they reproduce hegemonic gendering discourses. The authors find that hegemonic gendering discourses are instrumental in maintaining and privileging specific forms and perceptions of masculinity and femininity as inscribed within and reproduced by perceptions of professional competency. Originality/value – This paper examines neo-liberal practices from a more nuanced perspective than some traditional polarised critiques which regard gender as a binary. In doing so, it contributes to debates on masculinity, but more importantly, opens discussions about the implications of gendering discourses for the role of the few women in senior positions in higher education institutions globally.


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