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The SIR Iber highlights the geographical location of Ibero-American universities by positioning them according to the indicators grouped into three main factors: research, innovation and social impact. The 2020 edition highlights the formation of three groups of countries according to the production capacity of higher education institutions. In group 1 we have: Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, and Colombia as Latin American countries that managed to publish more than 60,000 papers in the period 2014-2018. This paper analyzes and compares the indicators from the five (05) Latin American countries in group 1 of the SIR Iber 2020 referring to investment in I+S as a percentage of its Gross Domestic Product (PIB), the number of full-time equivalent researchers (Inv JCE), the production (%) of scientific works in the university education sector, to name a few. A conglomerate formed with the Normalized Impact (NI) of public and private IESs is presented, regarding the global average of citation, with the data published in the SIR IBER 2020 Report, and highlights that Chile has a normalized impact above the World average for both public and private IES publications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper profiles Australian universities’ website communications about sustainability initiatives, especially relating to Talloires Declaration signification and the ten recommended actions. The research involves a content study of Talloires signatories’ websites and their semiotic and signaling theory aspects across time. The source is publicly available information (time period 2014 and 2015 respectively) in context with education for sustainable development (ESD) in society and the transaction model in communication theory. It is found that some of the signatory universities in Australia exemplify a few of the Talloires ten agreed actions in their public communications, but each point is not emphasised with equal priority. The variance may be due to divergent underlying objectives; such as public communication of Talloires toward genuine benefit for the environment, or to create a strategic positioning tool to signal the university as an environmental champion within the broader society. Focusing upon secondary data from signatory university websites in Australia, the paper provides a study of higher education signification of Talloires. It assists the initial understanding of signaling theory in the public communication transactions that promote Talloires action and implementation. The findings encourage further studies of related communication issues in universities in other countries. The paper also deepens local and global understanding of perceptions of sustainability and contributes to the body of comparative literature of sustainability in higher education as a development component of strategic management of ESD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies exploring campus greening in Romania and Bulgaria are limited. Overall, sustainability-related topics and actions are more theory-, rather than practice-oriented in both countries, being particularly addressed by universities dealing with Earth (e.g., geography, ecology) and technical sciences (e.g., environmental engineering). Using literature review and an on-line questionnaire survey, the paper aims to analyse in a comparative manner how campus greening initiatives are integrated into the universities of Romania and Bulgaria, which are the main gaps and needs in terms of campus greening initiatives as well as the similarities vs. differences in implementing campus greening initiatives in both countries, with a view to outline the national specificity. The main findings suggest that universities in both countries have made a significant progress to address sustainability aspects in theory, and practice. However, a delay may be noticed in terms of framing a whole institution approach to the sustainability concept, with more singular and disparate initiatives being identified. Although the level of awareness in terms of the need for and importance of carrying out greening activities in their universities is relatively high for the respondents in both countries, more initiatives have been identified by the respondents in Romania than by the ones in Bulgaria. The main measures and initiatives associated with greening actions at university level are related to green infrastructure and waste management, which mainly contributed to increasing the aesthetic aspect of campuses and to cost reduction. There is a general top-down approach in undertaking green campus initiatives, with less or little involvement on the side of teachers and students (especially in Bulgaria), and more importance being attributed to the management body. The results of the survey can have practical implications and can be used by the universities in both countries to better understand the campus greening concept and to use examples and suggestions provided by the involved stakeholders as best practices to further integrate or promote campus greening practices in universities. • Comparative analysis on how campus greening initiatives are integrated into the universities of Romania and Bulgaria. • The awareness level in terms of the importance of carrying out greening activities in universities is relatively high. • The main measures and initiatives at university level are related to green infrastructure and waste management. • A general top-down approach in undertaking green campus initiatives with a more importance role of the management body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participatory approaches can be seen as a requirement, but also as a benefit to the overall paradigm change towards sustainable development and contribute towards the integration of sustainability concept into the university culture. So far, there have been comparatively few research studies on participation within sustainability implementation at university level, and a more differentiated understanding of these processes is still missing, both in the practice of conducting a participatory process and in the sustainability assessment. This paper addresses some of the failures and successes experienced within participatory approaches in campus sustainability initiatives, and deduces a set of critical success factors and emergent clusters that can help to integrate the dimensions of participation more inclusively into sustainability assessment. Following a qualitative approach and inspired by the Delphi-method, semi-structured expert interviews ( N = 15) and four focus group discussions ( N = 36), with participants coming from twenty different countries in total, were conducted and compared according to qualitative content analysis. Findings give empirical evidence to some of the characteristics related to stakeholder engagement, and associate higher education for sustainable development to empowerment and capacity building, shifting away from a previous focus on environmental sustainability. The success of participatory approaches is interdependent with structural institutional conditions and the persons engaged, highlighting the importance of specific skills and participatory competencies. A better integration of the dimensions of participation into sustainability assessment practices can help in defining and establishing participatory approaches on institutional level and fostering a culture of participation in the transition to sustainable universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mining a large origin-destination dataset of journeys made through London's Cycle Hire Scheme (LCHS), we develop a technique for automatically classifying commuting behaviour that involves a spatial analysis of cyclists' journeys. We identify a subset of potential commuting cyclists, and for each individual define a plausible geographic area representing their workplace. All peak-time journeys terminating within the vicinity of this derived workplace in the morning, and originating from this derived workplace in the evening, we label commutes. Three techniques for creating these workplace areas are compared using visual analytics: a weighted mean-centres calculation, spatial k-means clustering and a kernel density-estimation method. Evaluating these techniques at the individual cyclist level, we find that commuters' peak-time journeys are more spatially diverse than might be expected, and that for a significant portion of commuters there appears to be more than one plausible spatial workplace area. Evaluating the three techniques visually, we select the density-estimation as our preferred method. Two distinct types of commuting activity are identified: those taken by LCHS customers living outside of London, who make highly regular commuting journeys at London's major rail hubs; and more varied commuting behaviours by those living very close to a bike-share docking station. We find evidence of many interpeak journeys around London's universities apparently being taken as part of cyclists' working day. Imbalances in the number of morning commutes to, and evening commutes from, derived workplaces are also found, which might relate to local availability of bikes. Significant decisions around our workplace analysis, and particularly these broader insights into commuting behaviours, are discovered through exploring this analysis visually. The visual analysis approach described in the paper is effective in enabling a research team with varying levels of analysis experience to participate in this research. We suggest that such an approach is of relevance to many applied research contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Despite the growing interest in health data science education, it is not embedded in undergraduate medical curricula and little is known about best teaching practices. This paper presents a highly innovative course in a UK university that introduces undergraduate medical students to data science. It also discusses a study on student perspectives on the learning and teaching of health data science.Methods: The pedagogical design elements of the Data Science in Medicine course are discussed, along with its syllabus, assessment methodology and flipped classroom delivery. The course has been offered to approximately 630 students over three years. Student perspectives were investigated through three focus groups with the participation of 19 students across different study years in medicine. An experiment was conducted regarding instructor-led vs. video-based modalities of online programming labs, with the participation of 8 students.Results: The course has led to improved data competency among medical students and to a positive change in their opinions about data science. Motivating the course and showing relevance to clinical practice was one of the biggest challenges. Statistics was perceived by focus group participants as an essential data skill. Including data science in the medical curriculum was perceived as important by Year 1 students, while opinions varied between Year 4/5 participants. Video-based online labs were preferred over instructor-led online labs, and they were found to be more useful and enjoyable, without leading to any significant difference in academic performance.Conclusions: Teaching data science to undergraduate medicine students is highly desirable and feasible. We recommend including statistics in the curriculum and practical skill development through simple and clinically-relevant data science tasks, supported through video-based online labs. Further reporting on similar courses is needed, as well as larger-scale studies on student perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]