Using Design Thinking Method in Academic Advising: A Case Study in a College of Pharmacy in Saudi Arabia

Purpose: The current study was conducted to evaluate academic advising services in a pharmacy college in Saudi Arabia. This will result in developing solutions to overcome the identified challenges. Methods: Design thinking method uses five steps: empathising, defining, ideating, prototypes and testing. Results: Several issues were identified with students: limited awareness of academic rules and regulations; work-family life imbalance; lack of trust in academic advising and emotional support; unfamiliarity with different learning strategies; and lack of social life at the university. Discussion and conclusion: This study provides a model for enhancing students’ experiences with academic advising. It suggested several prototypes that have proven to be effective in enhancing students’ experiences in university life and how to overcome challenges. The prototypes include a peer academic advising club, personal development workshop and a series of lectures on college rules and regulations.

The Digitalization of Self-Access and Advising Services in Times of a Global Pandemic

The global pandemic forced educational institutions worldwide to adapt to a new, fully online concept of education and a rapid digitalization to keep providing their services to learners. This paper reports on the digitalization process of the Independent Learning Center (ILC) and the Learning Advisory Program (LAP) unit at Ankara Yildirim Beyazit University (AYBU), Turkey. The interrelated digitalization stories of the two units include the provision of learning resources and activities to learners with digital tools and their responses to the new format. Despite the challenges involved, the ILC has offered a considerably higher number of extracurricular activities than in face-to-face education days and reached a higher number of learners in the 2020-2021 academic year. As for the LAP, the participants’ reflections showed how opportunities for offering engaging activities in the LAP created a cascading impact of affordances for both the individual learners and the members of the larger community.

Human–Robot Interaction: When Investors Adjust the Usage of Robo-Advisors in Peer-to-Peer Lending

We study the human–robot interaction of financial-advising services in peer-to-peer lending (P2P). Many crowdfunding platforms have started using robo-advisors to help lenders augment their intelligence in P2P loan investments. Collaborating with one of the leading P2P companies, we examine how investors use robo-advisors and how the human adjustment of robo-advisor usage affects investment performance. Our analyses show that, somewhat surprisingly, investors who need more help from robo-advisors—that is, those encountered more defaults in their manual investing—are less likely to adopt such services. Investors tend to adjust their usage of the service in reaction to recent robo-advisor performance. However, interestingly, these human-in-the-loop interferences often lead to inferior performance.

Quality of Academic Advising and Student Support Services from the Perspective of Preparatory Year Students at the University of Najran

This research aimed to measure the level of quality of academic advising and student support services from the perspective of students of Preparatory Year at the University of Najran. To achieve this, the descriptive analytical method was followed by administering a questionnaire consisting of (37 items) which were distributed over four dimensions (the academic advisor – the quality of the academic support for outstanding and struggling students – the quality of supporting talented and creative students – the quality of complaints and suggestions services). The sample consisted of (300) students selected from among the preparatory year at the University of Najran. The results indicated that the level of quality of academic advising services and student support services was (medium level) with a mean of (2.24). There were statistically significant differences at (α = 0.05) in the level of quality of academic services and student support services according to the level (first-second) in favor of the second level. There were also differences in the level of academic advising and student support services according to student status at (α = 0.05) in favor of struggling students. Results also indicated that there were no statistically significant differences in the students' assessment of the quality of services due to the gender variable. The study concluded that academic advising services need more efforts to improve the quality of services, especially in providing the necessary support to students, as well as the services for gifted and creative students, complaints and suggestions services. The study recommended the need to adopt clear mechanisms for academic advising and student support through which these services can be provided to all student categories and to evaluate the quality of these services. Keywords: academic advising, preparatory year, quality, Najran University.

Commodifying a “Good” Weather Data: Commercial Meteorology, Low-cost Stations, and the Global Scientific Infrastructure

Since the 2000s, European open data policies have given a strong boost to commercial meteorology by giving free access to weather observations and models produced by public organizations. This article examines the efforts and challenges met by a French company that developed an offer of weather services based on the commodification of both open weather data and local observations produced by low-cost stations used by farmers. However, the paper shows that such commercialization of stations’ data is hampered both by their material friction with the weather infrastructure and by an economic friction related to data’s heterogeneous valuations. As solving the economic friction generated by data’s valuation is the priority of commercial meteorologists, they finally differentiate their offer using simulated weather data produced by computing models. Finally, the paper claims that the commercial process inherent to the use of this other type of data subordinates weather science to a logic of services: when designing a service for agriculture, the company considered that simulated data were more suited to digital farm advising services. In the end, it is the capacity of weather data to be integrated into private services and tools that valuate them as suited to guide farming practices.