Fr. Eric Tosi is the General Secretary for the Orthodox Church in America and he talks with us about the logistics of the upcoming All-American Council in Pittsburgh November 10-13. Please note, the main hotel is full but an overflow hotel is available if you plan on attending.

Today on the program we feature a lecture by Fr. Stanley Harakas, the Archbishop Iakovos Professor of Orthodox Theology, Emeritus, at Holy Cross, given at the first annual Anne and Theodore Phillips Paschal Lecture Series in Chicago, Illinois.

Fr. Pat reflects upon the treasure of which Paul speaks in 2 Corinthians 4:6-7; what that treasure is, what is needed to take possession of it, and that in which it is contained.

In the Holy Communion, there is a change of substance. The bread and the wine have been transformed. We receive into our flesh the risen power of Christ.

Why are relics so important in the Church? Saints are sanctified in both body and soul, and in Scripture we see how their bodies continue to be temples of the Holy Spirit even after death. The relics of the martyrs are especially important, from early liturgies in the catacombs to their place in altars today.

“The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” (John 1:5) Politics are toxic and the world seems full of darkness. Is our job, as Christians, to fight that darkness? We'll review the advice of two greats saints (St Isaac the Syrian and St Poprhyrios of Kavsokalyvia) to see how we can bring the Light of Christ into a world darkened by toxic politics. As a special bonus, we've prepared a FREE downloadable workbook to help you act on what you'll learn. mailchi.mp/goarch/bethebee152

Kevin's guest is Fr John Breck, theologian of the OCA specializing in Scripture and ethics, and the topic is "Orthodox Bioethics: Contraception, Stem Cells, and Reproductive Technologies."

Amir Azarvan, progressive economic political science lecturer at Kennesaw State University and William Hinkle (SbDn Basil), Minority Whip in the Washington state house, speak about how their shared Orthodox faith has shaped some very different political thinking.

As we enter the election cycle in 2016 what biblical principles or Church canons should be priorities in selecting candidates and supporting party platforms? Should Christian teachings, moral and bio-ethical teaching and Orthodox canons be disregarded in a contemporary secular society? Kevin’s guest is George E. Demacopolous, a Professor of Theology and the Fr. John Meyendorff and Patterson Family Chair of Orthodox Christian Studies, as well as the Co-Director of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham University in New York.

Living Eucharistic Lives Colossians 3:4-11, Luke 17:12-19

A free version of Urchin, a company Google bought. (official blog post)

In the world of business, understanding unit economics is crucial for achieving scalability, profitability, and maintaining overall business health. It provides valuable insights into the financial performance of a company, allowing entrepreneurs and managers to make informed decisions about resource allocation, pricing, and profitability. I spend a decent amount of time talking about this in ... Read more

The post Scaling Your Business Requires Understanding Your Unit Economics appeared first on Chris Lema.

Ronnie O’Sullivan is frustrated by fans entering the Crucible arena while he lines up a shot, a drama which BBC pundit Steve Davis labels 'Doorgate' - much to presenter Rishi Persad's amusement.

As the Hong Kong Open begins, BBC Sport looks at squash's latest bid to participate in the Olympics with 2020 the target

As Wales head to Turkey in the Nations League, pick the team and approach you think Craig Bellamy should adopt in Kayseri.

A project invoving schoolchildren aims to present the story of Irish language revival in Belfast.

The woman said she had stolen £10,500 to help a daughter who was under paramilitary threat over a debt.

An Aberdeen ambulance crew deals with several alcohol-related calls in one tough shift.

Dr Reith came up with the idea for insulin pens, which soon replaced syringes as the way to take the drug.

Customers are some of your best leads. According to a 2022 HubSpot Blog survey of more than 500 sales professionals, more than 70 percent said that upsell and cross-sell drives up to 30 percent of their revenue.

Content may be king, but data sits behind the throne and has the king’s ear. 

You want to be informed by data before you make changes to your marketing strategies. This is never truer than in the case of your website, which is a rich source of behavioural analytics and, therefore, a valuable insight into your audience’s interests.

It's a well-known rule in journalism that if the headline asks a question, the answer is invariably "no". So to see the question above on this blog will probably not surprise you.

What might surprise you is to learn it was also the headline of a prominently-featured article on the BBC website yesterday. Of course, as is the current fad, when they say "prostitutes" they mean "trafficking", and vice-versa.

It's been long known that there is no connection between major international sporting events such as the Olympics, the World Cup, and sex trafficking. But don't take my word for it. Take the word of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who hosted a meeting on this very topic earlier this year. Take the word of the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women, who produced a must-read report (pdf) on the actual effects of sports events on human trafficking. Go check out Laura Agustin's excellent summary too.

The facts:

• 2010 World Cup, South Africa: the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development did not find a single case of trafficking over the Olympics time period.

• 2010 Olympics, Canada: no evidence of trafficking and sex workers reported a fall in business.

• 2006 World Cup, Germany: 33 cases were referred to the police for further investigation, out of which 5 cases were confirmed to be trafficking (4 women and 1 man). No other cases were found, despite the fact that the police conducted 71 brothel raids (these raids did not identify the 5 confirmed trafficking cases, but did lead to 10 deportations).

• 2004 Olympics, Greece: When trafficking statistics were compared for all of 2004 with all of 2003, there was an increase of 181 trafficking cases (which is a 90% increase). According to both the police and the International Organization for Migration, none of these cases were linked to the Olympics.

• Super Bowls in the USA in 2008-2011: Although law enforcement increased, they made no additional arrests for sex work-related offences during this time.

You might be wondering, and it is a good question, why there isn't sex trafficking during these events. The answer is simple. Criminals may be criminals, but organised crime does not exist for the purpose of being evil. It exists to make loads of tax-free dosh. Does it make financial sense for sex trafficking to occur at these events? With London rents skyrocketing around the venues, with the Home Office plans to tighten border security, with the police already well misinformed about the magnitude of the trafficking problem, you'd have to be mad to pursue this as a business plan.

There was perhaps a time, back in the 90s, when sex trafficking in some parts of Eastern Europe might have netted you some cash if you already had the distribution network, but it's not the case now. Add to that a large native population willing and legally able to exchange money for sex and you'd be laughed out of Dragon's Den for even suggesting it as a goer. I've met a lot of dodgy characters in my day - drug dealers and worse besides - and to a person they were not in it to lose money. In many cases the black marketeers I know were actually better businesspeople than anyone in legit trading.

In spite of all this, we are still treated - almost daily now in the run-up to London 2012 - with the same old guff such as stories that sex trafficking 'almost doubled' during the Athens Olympics.

In this particular case, 'almost doubled' means that the number of reported incidents was 181, a 90% increase over the previous year. So yes, they did 'almost double'.

However if you too are underwhelmed by that number, it's with good reason. Applying all the usual disclaimers - any instance of forced sex trafficking is abhorrent and should be prosecuted vigorously, this is an argument about best use of police time, tax money and other resources - what does the reported change from just-shy-of-100 people to 181 actually represent?

Prostitution is legal and regulated in Greece, however, not everyone works legally and not everyone registers, because hello, do you want your name on the Greek government's hooker list? Probably not. Anyway, estimates put the number at about 1,000 legal prostitutes and 20,000 illegal ones. Given that these numbers are the ones put about by the US State Department which does not have a great track record on accuracy, it's a little suspect. But let's say for the sake of saying that represents some kind of starting ballpark figure and probably even an overestimate. The 21,000 total gives us about 1 in every 250 women in Greece working as a prostitute - actually a realistic enough proportion for Europe.

In the year before the Athens Olympics, the reports of sex trafficking at 95 represented 0.45% of all prostitution in Greece. And after the Olympics? 0.86%. Less than 1% of prostitutes in Greece were trafficked both before and after the Olympics.

There is no particular evidence, statistical or otherwise, to suggest that the fluctuation in this rather small number was due to the Olympics per se. In fact it is certainly within the bounds of what we call the 'law of small numbers' which dictates that they can and do fluctuate in a way that represents a high percentage of the values themselves, but given the rarity of the events involved, this is expected and not necessarily significant.

Here's an example. Let's say in the year 2008, there was 1 death in all of Scotland from a vending machine falling on someone. Then let's say a year later, in 2009, there were 2 such deaths. While it would be technically true to say that the number of vending machine accidental deaths 'doubled', is this a fair representation of the data? Is this a significant trend that is likely to continue? (Which would mean that by 2032, there would be 8.38 million such deaths in Scotland, or approximately... er, 150% of the population). No, obviously not. The change from 1 to 2 in a given year seems clearly attributable to chance. You'd be silly to conclude the change from one small number to another "means" very much without a lot of additional evidence.

If you've read my paper on the effects of lap dancing on sexual violence in London, you'll already be aware of how over time these small numbers fluctuate wildly. For context, the UNHCR gives the number of trafficked persons for Greece as 137 in 2005, 83 in 2006, 100 in 2007, 162 in 2008, 125 in 2009, 92 in 2010.

Now if these things had no knock-on effect, and if police resources and tax money were infinite, then sure, why not go after human trafficking even if it's only a very tiny proportion of all sex work in Greece - or in the more immediate case, London? But alas, it is not a matter of infinite police time and tax money. And it is definitely not a matter of no knock-on effects.

According to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, "Police crackdowns and brothel closures tend to displace sex workers from flats and saunas to less safe work venues, including the street, and make them wary of all authorities so they are less likely to access services or to report episodes of violence or crime to the police."

Given that the anti-sex lobby are so dead keen to keep claiming that all sex workers are inevitably the victims of violent and sex crimes, that seems like it's going to affect a hell of a lot more than a couple hundred people, no? Why does a small number of people matter to them more than a potentially far larger pool of people? Is it because that's where the grant money and column inches are at?

Not only is this increased danger the outcome in previous incidents of trafficking panic, it's happening right now in London. The Moratorium 2012 campaign, organised by x:talk, confirms:

Stop the Arrests Campaign is aware of ‘clean up efforts’ already underway in London, particularly east London, in the run-up to the Olympics ... Last December in Barking and Dagenham a violent gang carried out a series of robberies on brothels at knife point. Sex workers were deterred from pursuing the attacks after police threatened them with prosecution. Thus many more were attacked and one woman was raped.

Got that? Send the police after non-existent sex trafficking, and they end up cracking down on non-trafficked sex workers. When that happens, people in sex work are put in more danger. No one is made safer by doing this. No one is saved. Moratorium 2012 is calling on an end to the pointless and dangerous harassment. Please, sign the petition.

One of the more persistent criticisms I get these days is that by being public about my really rather normal experience of sex work, I am "silencing" people who label themselves a victims.

I'm not going to rehash the particular arguments regarding Happy Hookers vs. Abused Victims here, in part because Maggie McNeill has already done it. Suffice it to say that people who have read my writing know my experience of sex work, while useful, positive, and not abusive, was not quite the shopping-and-shoe-buying fantasy critics paint it as. But then most people who think that about me have never encountered my writing firsthand and are instead basing their impressions off a half-remembered advert featuring Billie Piper's tits. I understand. It's easy to get confused.

But it did give me a moment of pause: is my writing crowding out other voices in the market? I decided to examine this further.

Since many people purport to tell the story of sex workers for them, I excluded books that were either not written by or not straight biographies of a particular sex worker. I also excluded all that were fiction (such as my own Playing the Game) or deal with post-sex work life (such as Lily Burana's I Love a Man in Uniform).

Anyway, here are the results:


As you can see, my books are outnumbered by hooker memoirs that predate mine (Tracy Quan and Xaviera Hollander in particular). Outspoken strippers also chalk up plenty of contributions to the genre.

But outnumbering all of us by far are the 'misery memoirs' about prostitution. (Don't get angry at me for the sweeping generalisation. That is what the genre actually is called.) There are, to use the technical term, fucking shedloads of these books. You'll notice more than a few bestsellers in that stack as well. These were just the ones I could fit into the graphic; there are dozens upon dozens more. Many if not most of which were published after my books first came out.

It's probably fair to conclude that not only has my writing not stopped others from contributing their experience to the general debate on sex work, but that you're actually more likely to get noticed if you're unhappy with prostitution than generally satisfied with it.

With the swirling vortex of Kristof/trafficking/concern porn making the rounds, in fact, now might just be the right time to do it. If you were of a mind to write a book like that.

I encourage people with real firsthand views on the topic, whatever they are, to write. In fact moreso if you are not white, or not a cis woman, or not from the US or Western Europe. Women who look and sound approximately like me are already pretty well represented in the hallowed halls of sex worker lit. Let's diversify it all over the damn place until the orientalists and anti-migration-disguised-as-anti-trafficking types have to eat every last one of their words.

Just so long as we all understand that there is no such thing as one story of sex work - they are as diverse as the people in it. My story is my story. Your story is your story. None of us speak for all sex workers. And be honest. As Bob Dylan memorably put it “If you live outside the law you must be honest.” So long as we are all on the level, then getting as many true voices out there as possible is no bad thing.

Now back to the critics...

For pity's sake don't come crying to me if you're not as popular as you like. As the objective evidence shows, it categorically is not down to me whether or not people want to read your writing.

As regards writing as a career, it is dangerous to assume I or anyone else is getting "vastly rich" off of writing (as one bitter soul recently accused). Many people seem to think that writing a book, even a bestselling one, is a ticket to financial freedom and nets far beyond what even your common-or-garden escort can potentially make. I hate to break it to the dreamers, but that is not so.

If it was, do you think I'd still be writing? Hell, no. I'd be kicking back with J.K. Rowling and E.L. James in our secret volcano fortress warming my toes on a fire built by our minions entirely out of £50 notes and cackling madly. As opposed to the reality - sitting in my home office in a very average house in one of the poorest areas of the country. I'm not bankrolled by any grant-grabbing NGOs, my personal appearances usually only cover expenses, and nuisance legal threats from people with a lot of time on their hands cost more than all my living expenses combined. I've done better than most by writing and am still a long way off being a millionaire.

As it turns out, I hear the person who made that accusation supposedly comes from family money herself and spends her time as a dilettante poetess. If that's true, well, good luck with that. Whatever works amirite?

Best of luck, former fellow hos. This is not exactly the road less traveled but is no less bumpy for it.

(no podcast this week - Boo! Check back next week) Chrome for Android Google has just released a beta of Chrome for Android, which is available for those running Android Ice Cream Sandwich (aka "the 1%"). This isn't JavaScript-specific news per se, but it is HUGE news for web devs ...

Online journal dedicated to nursing informatics

To reduce the location cost of cross-border e-commerce logistics sites, this article proposes a multi-logistics site location method based on return uncertainty. Firstly, a site selection model is established with the objective function of minimising site construction costs, transportation costs, return costs, and operating costs, and the constraint conditions of return recovery costs and delayed pick-up time; Then, using the Monte Carlo method to simulate the number of returned items, and using an improved chicken swarm algorithm based on simulated annealing, the cross-border e-commerce multi-logistics site location model is solved to complete the location selection. Experimental results show that this method can effectively reduce the related costs of cross-border e-commerce multi-logistics site selection. After applying this method, the total cost of multi-logistics site selection is 19.4 million yuan, while the total cost of the five comparative methods exceeds 20 million yuan.

The current study has outlined slow fashion (SF) research trends and created a future research agenda for this field. It is a thorough analysis of the literature on slow fashion. Numerous bibliometric features of slow fashion have been discussed in the paper. This study comprises 182 research articles from the Scopus database. The database was utilised for bibliometric analysis. To identify certain trends in the area of slow fashion, a bibliometric study is done. For bibliometric analysis, the study employed R-software (the Biblioshiny package). Here, VOSviewer software is used to determine the co-occurrence of authors, countries, sources, etc. The study has outlined the gap that still exists in the field of slow fashion. Here, the research outcome strengthens the domain of slow fashion for sustainable consumption. The study findings will be useful for policymakers, industry professionals, and researchers.

We propose that technological, service-dominant and design logics must interplay for an IT artefact to succeed. Based on data from a project aiming at a B2B platform for manufacturing small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Europe, we explore these three logics in an agile software design context. By using an inductive approach, we theorise about what is needed for the alignment of the three logics. We contribute with a novel theoretical lens, the Framework for Adaptive Space. We offer insights into the importance of continuously reflecting on all three logics during the agile software design process to ensure mutual understanding among the agile team and the B2B platform end-users involved.

This paper examines the growing aspect of perceive organisational politics (POPs) in organisations by understanding their employee engagement with mediating effect of emotional intelligence. This study is cross-sectional, wherein a survey is conducted on executives of different sectors holding strategic positions. The purposive sampling technique is applied to find the 117 most suitable executives for this survey. The survey is self-administered, and a questionnaire is used as an instrument with 43 measurement scale items adopted from previous similar studies. Construct's reliability and validity followed by PLS-SEM is performed using JASP statistical application. The result revealed that the dimensionality support and validation of POP based on a new set of measures centred on generalised beliefs of the application and abuse of power, infrastructure, credibility, choice making, and line-of-sight. In line with previous findings, the current findings also showed that POP works as a barrier to individual behavioural demand and can negatively affect work efficiency. Existence of perceive organisational politics due to the normative belief of the situation happing in the organisation, disengagement of employees, and also evaluates new empirical insight into the organisation by mediating emotional intelligence.

Work-life balance (WLB) is a widely explored topic in the academic discourse. The researchers are trying to find strategies to effectively balance their work and home responsibilities for women in management. This study aims to analyse how gender roles and inequalities shape the strategies of female academics in higher education institutions. Eighteen faculty members participated in the semi-structured interviews. The trustworthiness of qualitative inquiry was ascertained by using triangulation, thick descriptions, and peer reviews. Three major themes emerged from the analysis: emotional, religious and social strategies. Despite available support, faculty noted challenges in managing work and family roles and fighting with gender stereotypes. This research adds to the emerging concept of WLB literature from the developed countries' viewpoint. It also shows how WLB discourse varies from Western sensibilities and collaborates with the previously established strategies that female academics formulate in WLB.

Prior work demonstrates the importance of introducing young children to programming and engineering content before gender stereotypes are fully developed and ingrained in later years. However, very little research on gender and early childhood technology interventions exist. This pilot study looks at N=45 children in kindergarten through second grade who completed an eight-week robotics and programming curriculum using the KIWI robotics kit. KIWI is a developmentally appropriate robotics construction set specifically designed for use with children ages 4 to 7 years old. Qualitative pre-interviews were administered to determine whether participating children had any gender-biased attitudes toward robotics and other engineering tools prior to using KIWI in their classrooms. Post-tests were administered upon completion of the curriculum to determine if any gender differences in achievement were present. Results showed that young children were beginning to form opinions about which technologies and tools would be better suited for boys and girls. While there were no significant differences between boys and girls on the robotics and simple programming tasks, boys performed significantly better than girls on the advanced programming tasks such as, using repeat loops with sensor parameters. Implications for the design of new technological tools and curriculum that are appealing to boys and girls are discussed.

Aim/Purpose: The present study investigated and compared students’ attention in terms of time-on-task and number of distractors between using a touchscreen and a pen tablet in mathematical problem-solving activities with virtual manipulatives. Background: Although there is an increasing use of these input devices in educational practice, little research has focused on assessing student attention while using touchscreens or pen tablets in a mathematics classroom. Methodology: A qualitative exploration was conducted in a public elementary school in New Taipei, Taiwan. Six fifth-grade students participated in the activities. Video recordings of the activities and the students’ actions were analyzed. Findings: The results showed that students in the activity using touchscreens maintained greater attention and, thus, had more time-on-task and fewer distractors than those in the activity using pen tablets. Recommendations for Practitioners: School teachers could employ touchscreens in mathematics classrooms to support activities that focus on students’ manipulations in relation to the attention paid to the learning content. Recommendation for Researchers: The findings enhance our understanding of the input devices used in educational practice and provide a basis for further research. Impact on Society: The findings may also shed light on the human-technology interaction process involved in using pen and touch technology conditions. Future Research: Activities similar to those reported here should be conducted using more participants. In addition, it is important to understand how students with different levels of mathematics achievement use the devices in the activities.

Aim/Purpose: To identify positive and negative aspects for learning of interactive tablet technology learning activities that promote student engagement and learning. Background: Engaging students in mathematics classes is an on-going challenge for teachers. In 2008 we were offered the opportunity to run interactive activities with a class set of tablet PCs that had just been released on to the market. Since then, we have run these interactive activities continuously with mathematics classes for computing students, albeit with two changes in hardware. Methodology: In the interactive activities, students submit full worked solutions to various problem types (classified as table, text, open or multi-choice) which can then be displayed to the class anonymously, discussed and annotated by the teacher. We surveyed student and staff perceptions and monitored academic performance. Contribution: We have over 10 years of results, observations, and experience from 2008, when tablet technologies were new and expensive, to the current time, when modern tablets with styli are now affordable. Findings: There was a significant increase in higher grades although pass rates did not increase significantly. Over the ten year period of the study, perceptions of students and staff about how this technology impacted on student learning were consistently positive. The majority of students found all problem types useful for learning even those they rated “too hard” or “too easy”. Benefits included increased feedback, peer learning and engagement. Recommendations for Practitioners: We recommend using tablet learning activities to engage students and teachers and to contribute to learning. Impact on Society: This study shows how using tablet technologies for interactive classroom activities can enable and enhance known pedagogies of feedback, peer instruction, and student engagement for mathematics classes. Future Research: We recommend extending this study to include larger classes, and other technical subjects that use symbols and diagrams. In addition, we suggest considering control groups.

Aim/Purpose: This research aims to describe and demonstrate the results of an intervention through educational robotics to improve the computational thinking of student teachers. Background: Educational robotics has been increasing in school classrooms for the development of computational thinking and digital competence. However, there is a lack of research on how to prepare future teachers of Kindergarten and Elementary School in the didactic use of computational thinking, as part of their necessary digital teaching competence. Methodology: Following the Design-Based Research methodology, we designed an intervention with educational robots that includes unplugged, playing, making and remixing activities. Participating in this study were 114 Spanish university students of education. Contribution: This research helps to improve the initial training of student teachers, especially in the field of educational robotics. Findings: The student teachers consider themselves digital competent, especially in the dimensions related to social and multimedia aspects, and to a lesser extent in the technological dimension. The results obtained also confirm the effectiveness of the intervention through educational robotics in the development of computational thinking of these students, especially among male students. Recommendations for Practitioners: Teacher trainers could introduce robotics following these steps: (1) initiation and unplugged activities, (2) gamified activities of initiation to the programming and test of the robots, (3) initiation activities to Scratch, and (4) design and resolution of a challenge. Recommendation for Researchers: Researchers could examine how interventions with educational robots helps to improve the computational thinking of student teachers, and thoroughly analyze gender-differences. Impact on Society: Computational thinking and robotics are one of the emerging educational trends. Despite the rise of this issue, there are still few investigations that systematize and collect evidence in this regard. This study allows to visualize an educational intervention that favors the development of the computational thinking of student teachers. Future Research: Researchers could evaluate not only the computational thinking of student teachers, but also their didactics, their ability to teach or create didactic activities to develop computational thinking in their future students.

Aim/Purpose: The main aim of this study was modeling a collaborative process for knowledge visualization, via the creation of infographics. Background: As an effective method for visualizing complex information, creating infographics requires learners to generate and cultivate a deep knowledge of content and enables them to concisely visualize and share this knowledge. This study investigates creating infographics as a knowledge visualization process for collaborative learning situations by integrating the infographic design model into the team-based and technology-mediated Bridge21 learning model. Methodology: This study was carried out using an educational design perspective by conducting three main cycles comprised of three micro cycles: analysis and exploration; design and construction; evaluation and reflection. The process and the scaffolding were developed and enhanced from cycle to cycle based on both qualitative and quantitative methods by using the infographic design rubric and researcher observations acquired during implementation. Respectively, twenty-three, twenty-four, and twenty-four secondary school students participated in the infographic creation process cycles. Contribution: This research proposes an extensive step-by-step process model for creating infographics as a method of visualization for learning. It is particularly relevant for working with complex information, in that it enables collaborative knowledge construction and sharing of condensed knowledge. Findings: Creating infographics can be an effective method for collaborative learning situations by enabling knowledge construction, visualization and sharing. The Bridge21 activity model constituted the spine of the infographic creation process. The content generation, draft generation, and visual and digital design generation components of the infographic design model matched with the investigate, plan and create phases of the Bridge21 activity model respectively. Improvements on infographic design results from cycle to cycle suggest that the revisions on the process model succeeded in their aims. The rise in each category was found to be significant, but the advance in visual design generation was particularly large. Recommendations for Practitioners: The effectiveness of the creation process and the quality of the results can be boosted by using relevant activities based on learner prior knowledge and skills. While infographic creation can lead to a focus on visual elements, the importance of wording must be emphasized. Being a multidimensional process, groups need guidance to ensure effective collaboration. Recommendation for Researchers: The proposed collaborative infographic creation process could be structured and evaluated for online learning environments, which will improve interaction and achievement by enhancing collaborative knowledge creation. Impact on Society: In order to be knowledge constructors, innovative designers, creative communicators and global collaborators, learners need to be surrounded by adequate learning environments. The infographic creation process offers them a multidimensional learning situation. They must understand the problem, find an effective way to collect information, investigate their data, develop creative and innovative perspectives for visual design and be comfortable for using digital creation tools. Future Research: The infographic creation process could be investigated in terms of required learner prior knowledge and skills, and could be enhanced by developing pre-practices and scaffolding.

Aim/Purpose: Business analytics is a cross-functional field that is important to implement for a college and has emerged as a critically important core component of the business curriculum. It is a difficult task due to scheduling concerns and limits to faculty and student resources. This paper describes the process of creating a central video repository to serve as a platform for just in time teaching and the impact on student learning outcomes. Background: Industry demand for employees with analytical knowledge, skills, and abilities requires additional analytical content throughout the college of business curriculum. This demand needs other content to be added to ensure that students have the prerequisite skills to complete assignments. Two pedagogical approaches to address this issue are Just-in-Time Teaching (JiTT) and scaffolding, grounded in the Vygoskian concept of “Zone of Proximal Development. Methodology: This paper presents a case study that applies scaffolding and JiTT teaching to create a video repository to add business analytics instruction to a curriculum. The California Critical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST) and Major Field Test (MFT) scores were analyzed to assess learning outcomes. Student and faculty comments were considered to inform the results of the review. Contribution: This paper demonstrates a practical application of scaffolding and JiTT theory by outlining the process of using a video library to provide valuable instructional resources that support meaningful learning, promote student academic achievement, and improve program flexibility. Findings: A centrally created library is a simple and inexpensive way to provide business analytics course content, augmenting standard content delivery. Assessment of learning scores showed an improvement, and a summary of lessons learned is provided to guide implications. Recommendations for Practitioners: Pedagogical implications of this research include the observation that producing a central library of instructor created videos and assignments can help address knowledge and skills gaps, augment the learning of business analytics content, and provide a valuable educational resource throughout the college of business curriculum. Recommendation for Researchers: This paper examines the use of scaffolding and JiTT theories. Additional examination of these theories may improve the understanding and limits of these concepts as higher education evolves due to the combination of market forces changing the execution of course delivery. Impact on Society: Universities are tasked with providing new and increasing skills to students while controlling the costs. A centrally created library of instructional videos provides a means of delivering meaningful content while controlling costs. Future Research: Future research may examine student success, including the immediate impact of videos and longitudinally using video repositories throughout the curriculum. Studies examining the approach across multiple institutions may help to evaluate the success of video repositories. Faculty acceptance of centrally created video libraries and assignments should be considered for the value of faculty recruiting and use in the classroom. The economic impact on both the university and students should be evaluated.

Aim/Purpose: This paper focuses on designing and implementing the rubric for objective JAVA programming assessments. An unsupervised learning approach was used to group learners based on their performance in the results obtained from the rubric, reflecting their learning ability. Background: Students' learning outcomes have been evaluated subjectively using a rubric for years. Subjective assessments are simple to construct yet inconsistent and biased to evaluate. Objective assessments are stable, reliable, and easy to conduct. However, they usually lack rubrics. Methodology: In this study, a Top-Down assessment approach is followed, i.e., a rubric focused on the learning outcome of the subject is designed, and the proficiency of learners is judged by their performance in conducting the task given. A JAVA rubric is proposed based on the learning outcomes like syntactical, logical, conceptual, and advanced JAVA skills. A JAVA objective quiz (with multiple correct options) is prepared based on the rubric criteria, comprising five questions per criterion. The examination was conducted for 209 students (100 from the MCA course and 109 from B.Tech. course). The suggested rubric was used to compute the results. K-means clustering was applied to the results to classify the students according to their learning preferences and abilities. Contribution: This work contributes to the field of rubric designing by creating an objective programming assessment and analyzing the learners’ performance using machine learning techniques. It also facilitates a reliable feedback approach offering various possibilities in student learning analytics. Findings: The designed rubric, partial scoring, and cluster analysis of the results help us to provide individual feedback and also, group the students based on their learning skills. Like on average, learners are good at remembering the syntax and concepts, mediocre in logical and critical thinking, and need more practice in code optimization and designing applications. Recommendations for Practitioners: The practical implications of this work include rubric designing for objective assessments and building an informative feedback process. Faculty can use this approach as an alternative assessment measure. They are the strong pillars of e-assessments and virtual learning platforms. Recommendation for Researchers: This research presents a novel approach to rubric-based objective assessments. Thus, it provides a fresh perspective to the researchers promising enough opportunities in the current era of digital education. Impact on Society: In order to accomplish the shared objective of reflective learning, the grading rubric and its accompanying analysis can be utilized by both instructors and students. As an instructional assessment tool, the rubric helps instructors to align their pedagogies with the students’ learning levels and assists students in updating their learning paths based on the informative topic-wise scores generated with the help of the rubric. Future Research: The designed rubric in this study can be extended to other programming languages and subjects. Further, an adaptable weighted rubric can be created to execute a flexible and reflective learning process. In addition, outcome-based learning can be achieved by measuring and analyzing student improvements after rubric evaluation.