Massive Open Online Courses have become a frequent platform for learners to acquire knowledge. This study aims to explore multiple factors influencing learner retention in MOOCs during the COVID-19 pandemic. To address this, we collected quantitative and qualitative data from questionnaires and qualitative data from interviews and then analyzed them through the Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modeling to test 14 research hypotheses. The proposed research model and research hypotheses are empirically tested with 243 participants across the world. According to the results, support is found for all of the 14 research hypotheses. We confirmed 14 factors influencing learner retention in MOOCs. The result is beneficial for designers and manufacturers of MOOCs to improve the quality of the products and facilitate online or blended learning during this special time. It could also help students improve their learning experiences. Future research could examine influencing factors of learner retention in MOOCs with interdisciplinary cooperation.

The spread of COVID-19 pandemic has inflicted severe blows on the global hospitality industry. In Taiwan, revenue from the food and beverage (F&B) department has decreased by more than 90%. This study aims to understand whether celebrity chefs can effectively help and enhance their corporates' business performance under COVID-19's severe impacts via leveraging their personal brand value, explores the influence of a celebrity chef on customer repurchase behavior during the epidemic and examines whether such a chef has a mediation effect on the relationship between corporate brand and customer satisfaction. The primary data were collected from the respondents through online questionnaire in Taiwan to get 245 respondents as a sample size of the research from Nov. 10 to Nov. 25 in 2021, and through validity and reliability analysis that processed by statistical software using factor analysis and structural equation modeling to see if celebrity chefs' personality branding could influence customer repurchase behavior, and also examine the relationship between corporate brand and celebrity chef. The findings show that corporate brand enhances both a celebrity chef's personal brand and customer satisfaction, and that a celebrity chef has a positive effect on both customer satisfaction and loyalty, which can partially mediate the effect of corporate brand; furthermore, a celebrity chef has a positive effect on customer repurchase behavior. In Taiwan relative studies into aspects of a celebrity chef's effect on consumer behavior are limited, and so this research offers new insights into the celebrity chef phenomenon there as well as elsewhere.

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly affected firm performance. As a result, many studies have examined the significance of supply network complexity. Our paper uses the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) method to investigate the causal relationships among the supply network complexity, geographic dispersion, inventory turns, and firm performance. Using a sample of 263 Chinese listed firms, we find that no single factor is necessary to achieve high firm performance during COVID-19 and reveal four paths to produce high performance: operational level driven, supply base complexity driven, and customer base complexity driven with supplier distance, and supply network complexity absence. Furthermore, our findings suggest that supply-based complexity-driven and customer-based complexity-driven can improve firm performance, but not all supply network complexity dimensions can improve firm performance. Hence, firms need to choose the suitable path based on their specific situations.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, which is one of the biggest epidemics of the last century and can be regarded as a global tragedy, leaders had to mobilize many resources of their countries quickly and persuade their citizens to change their routine behavior. The approach followed by the leaders of the country in their efforts to convince their people has been an important factor in their success or failure. This paper aims to examine with Michel Foucault's notion of biopower, and discourses and behaviors of women leaders in countries against the global pandemic which cost high life tool gave harsh messages to the humanity. For this purpose, leadership examples in Finland, Iceland, Taiwan and New Zealand will be examined in detail using the discourse analysis technique. As a result, in current times when populist and autocratic leader style is on the rise, women leaders not only took their countries to success, but they also managed to inspire other countries. More importantly, the struggle of women leaders against the pandemic revealed that a different management style is possible.

Whilst the coronavirus pandemic keeps threatening the world at large, little is yet known about the impoliteness implications of user-generated- Covid-related contents on social media such as Facebook. The aim of this study is to examine the comments made in response to Giuliani's Covid- 19 diagnosis, from an impoliteness perspective. A merely qualitative analysis of a dataset of 3,000 comments evenly collected from three different news outlets (i.e., BBC, CNN, Fox News), the findings reveal that the reactions to Giuliani's diagnosis are more focused on him being a politician, than him being a human being affected by the virus. The reactions attack his actions and the actions of others within his political party, which suggests that impoliteness has a strong dependence on previous actions and political engagement. Giuliani is seen by some users to be undeserving of compassion or empathy not just on the grounds of his active involvement in attempting to overturn the presidential election results, but also for his disregard toward mask wearing in public spheres. Not all the users, however, appreciate the attacks against Giuliani. Through metadiscursive comments, some users not just feel the need to treat Giuliani as a human being, but more importantly remind fellow users that Covid-19 should be a concern for all. What is particularly critical about these metacomments is that while the users advocate for civil interactions, they mostly do not condone Giuliani's actions. This so because these users understand what should be obligatory, permissible, or forbidden on the human level under the circumstances.

Online peer support programs could address mental wellbeing concerns reported by Black students. The current evaluation explored Black university students' motivations, experiences, and perceived impacts of an online mental wellbeing peer support group (Black Students Talk [BST]) in England and Wales. We conducted two focus groups with Black Students Talk attendees and one with facilitators. Data were analyzed using inductive thematic analysis. Three main themes and eight sub-themes where identified related to (i) Motivation: Impact of racism on mental wellbeing; (ii) Experience: The Black Students Talk experience; and (iii) Impact: Mental wellbeing outcomes. Benefits of Black Students Talk for Black students included advice, rest, validation, and support in the context of their race and experiences of racism. Facilitators had a unique sub-theme concerning their training and support. While racism exists at universities, online peer support can offer valuable benefits for Black students' mental wellbeing, social connectedness, and Black-only networks. Programs need to be co-created and delivered by trained Black students who receive reflective practice with a Black practitioner. Further independent evaluations using insights from survey and interview data are needed.

Studies on the going-on COVID-19 pandemic face small sample issues. In this context, Bayesian estimation is considered a viable alternative to frequentist estimation. Demonstrating the Bayesian approach's advantage in dealing with this problem, our research conducted a case study concerning ASEAN economic growth during the COVID-19 pandemic. By using Monte Carlo standard errors and interval hypothesis testing to check parameter bias within a Bayesian MCMC simulation study, the author obtained significant conclusions as follows: first, in insufficient sample sizes, in contrast to frequentist estimation, the Bayesian framework can offer meaningful results, that is, expansionary monetary and contractionary fiscal policies are positively associated with economic growth; second, in the face of a small sample, by incorporating more information into prior distributions for the model parameters, Bayesian Monte Carlo simulations perform so far better than naïve Bayesian and frequentist estimation; third, in case of a correctly specified prior, the inferences are robust to different prior specifications. The author strongly recommends applying specific informative priors to Bayesian analyses, particularly in small sample investigations.

This paper analyzes how Digital Transformation (DT) processes have influenced the Attitude of local governments (LGs) toward the COVID-19 pandemic and their effect on achieving the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The data were collected from LGs in Spain ( = 124) through a questionnaire in which the IT skills of their workers, the DT processes, budgets, degree of regulatory compliance, and implementation of trust seals were measured, together with the IT security measures adopted. The contrast between the proposed model and the results showed that the direct influence of IT security influences the government's attitude toward COVID-19 and DT implementing actions to achieve SDGs. The findings of this work are of great value both for the actors involved in the design and implementation of public policies and for those responsible for local governance in their objective to improve citizens' experience of the services provided and in exceptional situations such as the one experienced as a result, of-COVID-19.

Remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic comes as an "enforced experiment," where companies and individuals have turned to work from home to preserve business continuity. Drawing on a theoretical framework that integrates the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), Social Capital Theory (SCT), and Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), this research uses a sample of 134 survey responses to assess the factors affecting the acceptance and use of remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic among workers of the insurance industry in Jordan. The results suggest that social trust, perceived usefulness, and perceived ease of use can help elevate employee's acceptance and use of remote work, whereas social norms have no significant effect. Considering these results, we further discuss implications and recommendations for the insurance sector.

To analyze the directions for future research suggested and to project future research plans, we extract relevant text from these publications with respect to COVID-19-related research based on 54,136 relevant academic journals published from the initial outbreak of COVID-19 in January 2020 until December 2020. First, we extract and preprocess the corpus and then determine that, according to the Elbow method, the optimal number of clusters is 7. Then, we construct a text clustering model based on an autoencoder, with the support of an artificial neural network. Distance measurements, such as correlation, cosine, Braycurtis, and Jaccard are compared, and the clustering results are evaluated with normal mutual information. The results show that cosine similarity has the best effect on clustering of COVID-19-related documents. A topic model analysis shows that the directions of future research can mainly be grouped into the following seven categories: infectivity testing, genome analysis, vaccine testing, diagnosis and infection characteristics, pandemic management, nursing care, and clinical testing. Among them, the topics of pandemic management, diagnosis and infection characteristics, and clinical testing trended upward in proportion to future directions. The topic of vaccine testing remains steady over the observation window, whereas other topics (infectivity testing, genome analysis, and nursing care) slowly trended downward. Among all the topics, medical research comprises 80%, and about 20% of the topics are related to public management, government functions, and economic development. This study enriches our scientific understanding of COVID-19 and helps us to effectively predict future scientific research output on COVID-19.

The mechanisms of the connections among anxiety, mental healthcare needs, and adherence to the COVID-19 pandemic guidelines are unknown. The study aims to explore model assumptions: (H1) Anxiety about COVID-19 will influence the perception of mental health needs via knowledge about COVID-19 as a mediator. (H2) Anxiety will influence adherence to guidelines via knowledge about COVID-19 as a mediator. (H3) Trust in health care will positively influence adherence to guidelines. We conducted a cross-sectional design study with a convenience sample. Participants consisted of 547 people across Israel. The questionnaire included trust in health care, anxiety, knowledge, adherence to guidelines, and mental health care needs regarding COVID-19 variables. Path analysis revealed knowledge about COVID-19 as partly mediating anxiety and mental healthcare needs during the pandemic, as well as partly mediating anxiety and adherence to the pandemic guidelines. Moreover, we found that trust in healthcare affects adherence to the pandemic guidelines. Therefore, it is important to design an intervention program for the public providing accessible, reliable information about the pandemic, including, and emphasizing mental healthcare needs and rationale of adherence to the guidelines.

The study examined the comparative assessment of destination image according to the perception of COVID-19 and travel risk among international students. The online survey was administered to 786 international students enrolled in universities in Korea. Cluster analysis was performed, and three distinct clusters were identified based on risk perception. Destination image attributes were generated into four underlying dimensions: social environment, tourist environment, destination environment, and imagery, using the exploratory factor analysis. A revised Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) method was utilized to assess the destination image of Korea and used to compare the expected performance of the attributes on each cluster. In addition, a revised IPA grid of each cluster was presented to unveil the satisfaction attributes of the destination image and suggest communication strategies. This study provides practical insights to destination marketers and organizations to design marketing strategies for international students. Further practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

Social media are important channels to propagate health information and influence preventive behavior during a public health crisis, as witnessed during the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19). This study explored the association between social media use and preventive behavior during the outbreak of COVID-19 in South Korea. Using the national survey data ( = 1,500), the study examined the mediating role of social norms in the association between social media use for news and information about COVID-19 and preventive behavior. In addition, the study tested the moderating effect of self-efficacy on the mediating path of social media use for preventive behavior via social norms. Conducting a moderated mediation analysis method, this study found that social norms mediated the relationship between social media use and preventive behavior ( = 0.046). Moreover, the study revealed that the indirect relationship between social media use and preventive behavior through social norms becomes stronger as an individual's level of self-efficacy decreases (low:  = 0.044, middle:  = 0.036, and high:  = 0.030). The study provides empirical evidence of the beneficial impact of social media use on preventive behavior. The findings of the study recommend promoting messages on social norms through social media for facilitating preventive behavior.

The coronavirus pandemic changed the academic world in many ways, and most academic institutions continue operating through teleworking. The aim of the present study was to determine how satisfied the university community (faculty/staff members and students) in Iran has been with remote work, and the ways in which they have dealt with the lockdown and working from home during the coronavirus pandemic. A survey was conducted among 196 academics from different universities in Iran. The results show that a majority of our participants (54%) are very or somewhat satisfied with the current work-from-home arrangement. The most frequently used methods for managing the challenges of teleworking were , and . The least used coping method was . The coping strategies that have the highest impact on overall teleworking satisfaction are ",""," and "." The findings were discussed in detail, taking into consideration the theoretical approaches, as well as bringing forth more dynamic aspects of the culture.

Statistically robust evidence that the pandemic (C19) has had an adverse impact on academic research carried out in Universities is limited. The new results presented are based on a survey of Business School academics who were entered into the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021 assessment of research quality, confirming that C19 had a major effect during the March to September 2020 period on research activities. In terms of which sub-groups of staff have been most affected, the largest negative effects are associated with those (almost all female) staff who took paternity/maternity leave during the 7-year REF period; followed by female staff, those (mid-career researchers) in the Associate Professor grade, then staff classified as "other white ethnic" (as opposed to White British). The implications of this for equality, diversity, and inclusion are likely to be significant, as is discussed when looking at what universities might do to overcome the negative impacts of C19.

COVID-19's arrival in Zimbabwe and South Africa in early 2020 caused disruptions to all facets of life including education. It disrupted traditional notions of media studies' teaching and learning. In the contexts of these disruptions, the present study interrogates how selected universities in Zimbabwe and South Africa adjusted to the new normal in so far as teaching and learning of media studies is concerned. It is a comparative analysis of selected Zimbabwean and South African universities. In-depth interviews with students and lecturers and participant observations were used to gather data whilst thematic analysis was utilized to analyze the data. The study found out South African universities adjusted far much better and easily than their Zimbabwean counterparts. This is because both lecturers and students were capacitated as opposed to the scenario in Zimbabwe where lecturers and students alike were not given gadgets to smoothen the transition to online learning. The data that was given to lecturers was too little whereas the data for e-learning was too exorbitant for the students. Furthermore, both lecturers and students noted that it is difficult to teach and learn practical modules online. However, universities in both countries utilized platforms such as classroom though students from rural areas in both countries were affected by the digital divide.

Opportunity areas are primarily selected to improve the social mobility of citizens using education. This paper explores teachers' perspectives on school transitions, particularly emphasizing the role of school transition intervention activities in supporting students' resilience, behavior, academic understanding, and positive parental involvement. Informed by Multiple and Multi-dimensional Transitions (MMT) theory, the paper focuses on the outcomes of school transition intervention activities applied to new Year 7 students in a UK opportunity area. Data was collected through document review, teacher survey, and semi-structured interviews. As a result, 14 interventions were identified, such as a summer school program, peer mentoring, and interschool visits, aiming to make primary to secondary school transition smoother. However, the findings suggested that many schools did not employ some of the school transition intervention projects. Moreover, the data indicated that the COVID-19 pandemic negatively affected the implementation of many of the school transition projects. The paper contributes to understanding the impact of school transition projects on students' confidence, wellbeing, and academic achievement.

In existing festival research, trust is often placed at the post-experience stage by scholars, and there is no research to explore the relationship between festivalscape, trust, and experience. In addition, the main function of trust is to reduce uncertainty and risk perception. Existing festival-related research scenarios do not have typical risks, which will limit the findings of the research. This research focuses on festivals under covid-19 pandemic, which is a typical risky scenario. Exploring the antecedent variables and the consequences of the trust of the festival participants in this context may therefore make up the deficiency of existing research. Several interesting findings have been made: the perception of the festivalscape during the pandemic has been significantly simplified. Epidemic prevention measures and staff may increase trust, but trust cannot have a direct and significant impact on festival satisfaction. While staff positively strengthen trust, they will have a significant negative impact on satisfaction.

The coursebook-centered approach adopted by the Hellenic Open University's Master's program in TEIL/TEFL has lost momentum during the coronavirus lockdown periods. This study addresses synergies between institutional policy and involved participants through the experience of an EFL teacher with a Computer-Mediated Intercultural Communication-based assignment about the online archivability of teaching and learning reflections. Relying on her study journal, the EFL teacher proposed a reflection-based inquiry into the compilation of a student-generated coronavirus memory archive on the e-me digital platform. Three journaling spaces emerged in the context of teacher development: the physical, the digital and the academic archive. The results indicated the transformative effects that archival procedures have on the dominant training practices of a graduate-level TEFL program. This study holds implications for flipping a switch on the educator-educatee relationship, while examining how reflective teaching pedagogy assimilates the learners' creative response to remoteness.

The study aims to examine the mediation effects of physical literacy and physical activity behavior in a relationship between psychological distress and life satisfaction among Chinese college students during the real-life Coronavirus disease pandemic (COVID-19) circumstance. This study implemented a cross-sectional design, and 1,516 participants from 12 universities participated in this study. Structural equation modeling was used to examine a hypothesized model. The findings indicated an acceptable model fit ( [61] = 508.2, Comparative Fit Index [CFI] = 0.958, Tucker Lewis Index [TLI] = 0.946, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation [RMSEA] = 0.076, 90% CI [0.070, 0.082], Standardized Root Mean Square Residual [SRMR] = 0.047). The results indicated that college students with low participation in physical activity could experience less than healthy living conditions. The findings offered empirical support to the theory that physical literacy could advance individuals' healthy living by promoting physical activity participation. The study suggested that educational institutions and physical activity programs should cultivate individuals' physical literacy in order to promote lifelong healthy living.

This paper explores the ways in which Mexican immigrants experience, narrate, and describe stress and the extent to which it impacts their efforts at engaging in physical activity using a biocitizenship framework. Data were derived from a mixed-method study among Mexicans living in New York City recruited from a large Catholic church. The qualitative sample of 25 participated in quantitative and qualitative components of the study and as such we include some of these quantitative indicators as descriptors. Our main qualitative findings reveal that study participants experience stress and time constraint as factors that contribute to the waning of their physical and mental well-being. As such, time constraints for many of our participants were among the factors that contributed to high perceived levels of stress. They attributed this to their difficulty maintaining a physically active lifestyle due to factors like the fast-paced lifestyle in New York, working long hours, and not having enough time to exercise, though some important differences in narratives were noted across gender. Findings have implications for interventions aimed at improving the health of immigrants in general and Mexican immigrants in New York City specifically.