Chronic Kidney Disease of Uncertain aetiology (CKDu) has been the cause of devastation on patients, their families and the society alike in rural Sri Lanka. CKDu patients’ best hope for help lies in informal support of social mechanisms, due mainly to the absence of formal support mechanisms. Hence, this study attempted to explore how social capital affect the socio-economic condition of CKDu patients. Study mainly employed the survey method to gather data collected from 132 CKDu patients living in two villages in Rideemaliyadda. Data were collected using structural questionnaire having face-to-face interviews and analysed using Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modelling. Results revealed that relational social capital (RSC) plays a dominant role on the improvement of socio-economic conditions of CKDu patients. RSC has a positive significant impact on the flow of information and resources, which facilitate to improve socio-economic condition of CKDu patients. However, structural social capital (SSC) has no significant impact on the flow of information and resources, which affect the socio-economic condition of CKDu patients. Thus, this study conclude that social capital, especially RSC has a significant impact on the flow of information and resources and thereby improve the socio-economic condition of the CKDu patients in Sri Lanka.

Short messaging service (SMS) is perhaps the most popular mobile technology prevalent among students in higher education due to its ubiquitous nature and the capability of two-way communication. However, a major limitation in two-way text messaging is sending back a part of received data with the reply message. This limitation results in users of a mobile learning environment being unable to reply back to the correct destination. This article presents a two-way text messaging system that can be integrated into a learning management system (LMS) to provide an interactive learning experience to the user community. Initially, a database is integrated into the LMS that holds message information such as recipient's phone number, message body and user data header. A specific port associated with the SMS is used to conceal and exchange data of a particular course unit. Subsequently, software in the student's mobile device captures this message and sends back the reply message to the appropriate course unit allowing both teachers and students to view messages sent and replies received pertaining to a particular course. Results indicate the educational impact of the proposed system in improving the learning environment and benefits it offers to the community in a campus-wide implementation.

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The purpose of this paper is to discuss how to integrate secure, open-source and mobilebased system with the Moodle learning management system (MLMS) then describe the implementation of a campus-wide mobile learning environment with short messaging system (SMS) and how this platform is incorporated with the student's learning environment. Design/methodology/approach -This paper discusses how existing mobile-based systems are currently being used for academic activities and describes current research within the same area. Then, the paper gives the detailed design of secure, open-source and Moodle integrated mobile learning environment that facilitates sending short messages via an SMS gateway. Findings -Statistical analysis of results during a campus-wide implementation of the system revealed students' preference in studying with a group while using mobile technologies for academic activities. Originality/value -With the advent of mobile technology, integrating an open-source secure mobile learning environment, coupled with a short message service, into a learning management system (LMS) has been a challenging task in mobile learning platforms during the past few years. Hence, this research project presents a significant importance for both students and teachers by proposing a campus-wide mobile learning environment with open source software providing unlimited usage.

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PurposeThe purpose of this study is to evaluate the sustainability of the proposed mobile learning framework for higher education. Most sustainability evaluation studies use quantitative and qualitative methods with statistical approaches. Sometimes, in previous studies, machine learning models were utilized conventionally.Design/methodology/approachIn the proposed method, the authors use a novel machine learning-based ensemble approach with severity indexes to evaluate the sustainability of the proposed mobile learning system. In this severity indexes, consider the cause-and-effect relationship to identify the hidden correlation among sustainability factors. Also, the proposed novel sustainability evaluation algorithm helps to evaluate and improve sustainability iteratively to have an optimal sustainable mobile learning system. In total, 150 learners and 150 teachers in the university community engaged in the study by taking the sustainability questionnaire. The questionnaire consists of 20 questions that represent 20 sustainable factors in five sustainability dimensions, i.e. economic, social, political, technological and pedagogical.FindingsThe results reveal that the proposed system has achieved its economic and pedagogical sustainability. However, the results further reveal that the proposed system needs to be improved on technological, social and political sustainability.Originality/valueThe study focused novel machine learning approach and technique for evaluating sustainability of the proposed mobile learning framework.