Grounded Task Prioritization with Context-Aware Sequential Ranking

People rely on task management applications and digital assistants to capture and track their tasks, and help with executing them. The burden of organizing and scheduling time for tasks continues to reside with users of these systems, despite the high cognitive load associated with these activities. Users stand to benefit greatly from a task management system capable of prioritizing their pending tasks, thus saving them time and effort. In this article, we make three main contributions. First, we propose the problem of task prioritization, formulating it as a ranking over a user’s pending tasks given a history of previous interactions with a task management system. Second, we perform an extensive analysis on the large-scale anonymized, de-identified logs of a popular task management application, deriving a dataset of grounded, real-world tasks from which to learn and evaluate our proposed system. We also identify patterns in how people record tasks as complete, which vary consistently with the nature of the task. Third, we propose a novel contextual deep learning solution capable of performing personalized task prioritization. In a battery of tests, we show that this approach outperforms several operational baselines and other sequential ranking models from previous work. Our findings have implications for understanding the ways people prioritize and manage tasks with digital tools, and in the design of support for users of task management applications.

Exploring How Secondary STEM Teachers and Undergraduate Mentors Adapt Digital Technologies to Promote Culturally Relevant Education during COVID-19

The COVID-19 global pandemic presented unprecedented challenges to K-16 educators, including the closing of educational agencies and the abrupt transition to online teaching and learning. Educators sought to adapt in-person learning activities to teach in remote and hybrid online settings. This study explores how a partnership between middle and high school teachers in an urban school district and undergraduate STEM mentors of color leveraged digital tools and collaborative pedagogies to teach science, technology, and engineering during a global pandemic. We used a qualitative multi-case study to describe three cases of teachers and undergraduate mentors. We then offer a cross-case analysis to interpret the diverse ways in which partners used technologies, pedagogy, and content to promote equitable outcomes for students, both in remote and hybrid settings. We found that the partnership and technologies led to rigorous and connected learning for students. Teachers and undergraduates carefully scaffolded technology use and content applications while providing ongoing opportunities for students to receive feedback and reflect on their learning. Findings provide implications for community partnerships and digital tools to promote collaborative and culturally relevant STEM learning opportunities in the post-pandemic era.

THE BENEFITS OF DIGITALISATION ON THE GROWTH OF INDIAN SOCIAL SECTORS AND THE ECONOMY (IN THE PRESENT PANDEMIC CONTEXT)

Digitalisation is the use of modern digital tools in the nation, In Indian history there was no significant growth of digital tools during independence moment, but later on there is more scope for the usage of digital tools for the study, like study of archaeological sources, Historical tourism pictures, by the help of the ASI (Archaeological survey in India). India has good flora and fauna in the world, India can generate revenue by expanding its digital implementation in all the tourism centres in India, some of the most visited tourist places by Indians and the foreigners, were The Taj-Mahal, Agra, the gate way of India, The Red fort, Mecca Masjid, some temples like Tirupathi, shabirimala etc, these cities are well aware digitalisation, e-payments, advertisement, online booking availability and the availability of internet has made these Indian cities to invest more in digitalisation to make benefit of the customers and to make profit in their business. More over some the Indian recent schemes like “Digital India, Make in India” can try to implement in Tourism and development of tourism GDP / income. So Indian government can try to announce the benefits for the tourist guides, and create lakhs of employment in India, due to pandemic the tourist visitors has decreased and lakhs of tourists lost their lively income, it became unemployed for many months. So India has to face lot of challenges in the pandemic time and try to increase the tourism income of the nation, sources involves online transactions, social or business and economic transactions in electronic or online mode in the state or country, as it provides benefits for the consumers, producers or citizens by saving time, availability in lower cost and reduces the cost of transportation to purchase any products in the sovereign country like India, like education, hotel services, banking insurance, social services like DBT (Direct Benefit Transfer) and commerce sectors. KEY WORDS: Social sectors, use of Digital technology in tourism, Covid-19, E-governance and the Indian Economy.

The Importance of Digital Transformation in International Business

This study was developed under the scope of a Portuguese project focused on the entrepreneur’s perspective and perception on the internationalization process of his company: more specifically, about the factors that enhanced the company entry into foreign markets as well as the constraints found in this process. This work focuses on the importance of using digital transformation to integrate technological tools in international business practice and strategy and the obstacles encountered with introducing these new technologies. This study aims to determine the relationships between technology categories and obstacles. The final goal is to assess the impact of these characteristics of the companies by the sector of economic activity, size, and percentage of profits resulting from international expansion. A questionnaire was designed and sent by email to 8183 companies from the AICEP database, distributed by three main activity sectors. A total of 310 valid answers were gathered from the Portuguese internationalized companies. The research limitations are related to the reduced number of interviews. These interviews showed that managers were not aware of the concept of digital transformation and misunderstood the use of digital technologies in the internationalization process of the business. This limitation can add some bias to the qualitative results. In addition to these limitations, the number of responses per sector was also not homogeneous. The practical implications of this study are that managers and top-level executives can use that to better understand how companies could use digital tools and what obstacles they should avoid when they want to internationalize their business. This paper is one of the first research contributions to analyze the impact of digital transformation in the internalization of Portuguese companies.

Digital Entrepreneurship via Sustainable Online Communication of Dentistry Profession, Oradea, Romania: A Longitudinal Analysis

Dentistry is an entrepreneurially oriented public interest profession that must maintain a balance between professional specificity and business sustainability. Communicating with patients is vital in a competitive system, and the dentist needs to use handy resources such as websites and social media. The aim of this research is (a) to examine whether websites and social networks are a digital entrepreneurship tool used in the dentistry profession in Oradea, a city in full economic development in Romania, to promote the profession nationally and internationally, (b) to compare the changes made using digital tools in the period between 2018–2021 for all licensed dentists in the mentioned city (between 430–450 people, depending on the stage of analysis) using the content analysis method and (c) to identify how the lockdown period imposed by the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic influenced not only the sustainability of the medical services provided to the population but also the communication practices of the dental offices. The results of examining the dentist’s online presence reveal that there is an interest among practitioners to grow their business sustainably through a digital presence that is increasingly relevant to them and their clients, but the potential remains under-exploited.

Integrating financial literacy into economics courses through digital tools: the Finlite app

Purpose This study aims to analyze the effect of the Finlite mobile app on the financial literacy of undergraduate business students in Malaysia. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a quasi-experimental pre-intervention design. The data are collected using a quiz and a questionnaire. Cluster sampling is adopted for three different zones in Malaysia. A total of 400 business students enrolled in economics courses participated in the intervention. Findings The results indicate that Finlite significantly promotes students’ savings intentions, practices, decision-making, accountability, values and financial literacy. All results are analyzed based on gender and race. However, Finlite does not significantly help overcome students’ financial issues such as credit card debt and poor spending behavior. Practical implications Financial literacy may be efficiently promoted through digital tools integrated into economics courses. Young adults can make optimal financial decisions after graduation. Future research should explore different courses, addressing undergraduate and high-school students. Originality/value Previous studies predominantly examine attitudes and behaviors related to financial literacy. In contrast, this study measures the ex post impact of the Finlite mobile app on savings intentions, practices, decision-making, accountability, ability to overcome financial issues and value for money.

Digital tools towards transplant first policy: Improving health literacy

End stage kidney disease (ESKD) is a prevalent health issue across the world and it is well established that kidney transplantation (KT), specifically from a living donor, is currently the best value-based treatment method. Ergo, it is crucial to invest heavily in making this care strategy the best possible option for the majority of eligible patients. Barriers to the kidney transplant process are mainly related to education and accessibility: awareness of the clinical and societal relevance of the therapy must be promoted at the level of patients, clinicians and health providers. A health-literacy-focused website has been developed as part of this, aiming to provide the general population, particularly potential organ receptors and donors, with better access to trustworthy information and data. This was meant to be the effective expression of knowledge diffusion and innovation as a result of an academic master thesis. This communication-focused digital resource is designed to combat these obstacles and to create a long-lasting, positive and significant impact.

Thinking across Frames – Temporally Extended Consciousness and the Animation Timeline

This article explores ways in which animation production technologies (including pre-cinema, film, and digital tools) have evolved as a system that abstracts time, primarily through its spatialization. This abstraction necessitates certain assumptions about the nature of time, including its linearity and directionality. Animation technologies have evolved so as to support various modes of temporally extended consciousness; an animator’s craft thinks and works through time. Embedded within digital production technologies, the animator is faced with a new philosophical instrument: the animation timeline. The main timeline utility in most animation software adopts a linear, mechanical model of time with the individual frame as the base unit. However, digital animation timeline can also complicate the spatialized temporal dimension, as the timeline is also embedded within animated objects in motion paths and other interface elements . As animated objects always exist through time, not merely within individual frames, the animation software tools for working with time both confine and unlock opportunities for working with time.