No abstract

Over the past decade, online social networks (OSN) have become ingrained in our daily lives. They have changed the way young people live and become one of the most important means of communication and entertainment. The use of social media by teens and young adults is on the rise. Higher education institutions recognise the value of social media as a tool of communication to provide information to target students and use its platforms to advertise their programmes to prospective students. Students also use Social Media and Facebook to access and analyse information to make informed study decisions. The current study examines how social media in general, and Facebook in particular, influences students' choice of study programme and Higher Education Institute (HEI). Quantitative research methods were employed as being most appropriate for this particular study. A total of 170 students from Oxford Business College (OBC), U.K., participated voluntarily in the survey; sixty-three (63) male and one hundred and seven (107) female students. All students completed a survey questionnaire based on four sections (A, B, C and D) comprising fifteen questions primarily based on the Likert scale. Simple descriptive statistics and SPSS were used to identify and analyse the factors students considered most important (influential) in their (the students’) choice of programme of study and HEI. The most popular social media site was Facebook, followed by Instagram. In regards to influence, Facebook seems to be more influential than other social media sites. It is also obvious that Facebook has been used as a marketing tool by the majority of HEIs. We do not make any claims regarding the generalisability of our study’s findings because of the small sample size and convenience sampling used in the study. However, the results generally support what is already known about the most popular social media site - Facebook - as having a positive influence on students’ choice of programme and Higher Education Institute. <p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0892/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

<p>The outbreak of COVID-19 caused severe disruption to most sectors of the global economy, creating a spectre of fear, anxiety and uncertainty. The education sector has been one of the worst affected by the pandemic. The education sector is one of the heavily affected sectors. The pandemic forced educational institutions worldwide to close, cancel classes and shift towards remote working and online teaching. The purpose of this study is to investigate the implication of the COVID-19 pandemic on private higher education. Moreover, the study's main objective is to assess the pandemic's academic management, especially in private higher education. For this, different landscapes were examined, including pre, during and Post COVID-19, focusing on the post-COVID-19 implications. In addition, various publications and surveys have been analysed to find out about the COVID-19 followed-up changes happening in higher education and its management. For this particular study, qualitative research was employed by conducting nine semi-structured interviews with academic managers working in the private higher education sector in the UK to capture their experience insights about the implications, advantages, disadvantages, and challenges faced during the pandemic. The findings showed that workplace accessibility was the most affected factor; during the lockdown, the private higher education institutions (PrHEIs) could recruit highly qualified and experienced part-time academic staff, as they need to teach online. However, most of these part-time academic staff wanted to quit when face-to-face teaching starts, as they live far from their institutions. Only online teaching motivated them to join during the lockdown because it provided ease and convenience, no travelling time &amp; cost, freedom and autonomy. In addition, the online teaching amazingly increased the student attendance; higher pass rates but difficulties in engaging students in group activities. Another one of the challenges was the immediate adoption of online teaching and training of academic staff. Moreover, the reinvention of a new workplace approach and the high level of technology implementation to abide by the safety regulations will permanently transform the work routine. Therefore, most of the employees want to continue remote working in future.</p><p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0891/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

In recent years, the newly emerging discipline of neuromarketing, which employs brain (emotions and behaviour) research in an organisational context, has grown in prominence in academic and practice literature. With the increasing growth of online teaching, COVID-19 left no option for higher education institutions to go online. As a result, students who attend an online course are more prone to lose focus and attention, resulting in poor academic performance. Therefore, the primary purpose of this study is to observe the learner's behaviour while making use of an online learning platform. This study presents neuromarketing to enhance students' learning performance and motivation in an online classroom. Using a web camera, we used facial coding and eye-tracking techniques to study students' attention, motivation, and interest in an online classroom. In collaboration with Oxford Business College's marketing team, the Institute for Neuromarketing distributed video links via email, a student representative from Oxford Business College, the WhatsApp group, and a newsletter developed explicitly for that purpose to 297 students over the course of five days. To ensure the research was both realistic and feasible, the instructors in the videos were different, and students were randomly allocated to one video link lasting 90 seconds (n=142) and a second one lasting 10 minutes (n=155). An online platform for self-service called Tobii Sticky was used to measure facial coding and eye-tracking. During the 90-second online lecture, participants' gaze behaviour was tracked overtime to gather data on their attention distribution, and emotions were evaluated using facial coding. In contrast, the 10-minute film looked at emotional involvement. The findings show that students lose their listening focus when no supporting visual material or virtual board is used, even during a brief presentation. Furthermore, when they are exposed to a single shareable piece of content for longer than 5.24 minutes, their motivation and mood decline; however, when new shareable material or a class activity is introduced, their motivation and mood rise. JEL: I20; I21 <p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0805/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

This study examined students' behaviour on the college website and the content of information they were able to obtain. With the eye-tracking sensor, this study aims to investigate the university websites' effectiveness, satisfaction, and efficiency and collect data regarding users' visual impacts. The research was carried out using mobile phone neuromarketing tools of eye-tracking, facial coding, and supplementary short memory post-survey. The study was focused on two web pages, the homepage, and the CARE page. The analysis results from both web pages were then compared and further discussed. The results suggest that participants mostly elicited sadness (29.55%), neutrality (33.19%), and puzzlement (13.60%) while browsing the homepage, regardless of the areas of interest (AOI). They also elicited slight disgust (4.33%), fear (3.51%), joy (5.21%), and surprise (29.55%). The heat map for the CARE page reveals that the top of the CARE page was a point of attraction for participants. The study found that participants' negative feelings were more intense than good ones concerning homepage scrolling. Also, their pleasant mood intensity increased moderately when they looked at regions with only photos in a subdued color scheme or where brighter colors were used to emphasize essential textual information such as upcoming events and student blogs. This reveals that the website's complexity further affects the cognitive load. Therefore, making it more accessible will be beneficial to students. According to the student's responses, change such as the page's design, color, and text could be implemented.