Content uploaded by Azharul Islam
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Azharul Islam on Aug 06, 2017
Content may be subject to copyright.
Factors Influencing Perceived Community Connectedness among University Students
Abstract
A large body of research shows that individual’s perceived sense of connectedness with his or her community has a robust association with health, well-being, and productivity. However, little is known about the factors that might influence one's community connectedness (CC). This study was undertaken to fill this gap up. Three hundred university students from three higher education institutes responded to a self-administered questionnaire that included demographic, behavioural and psychological measures such as i) perceived community connectedness, ii) depression and iii) Internet addiction. Results revealed that there was a significant positive association of CC with age, number of siblings and SES and a significant negative association with Internet addiction and depression. Multiple regression found age, socio-economic status (SES), Internet addiction and level of depression were the significant factors influencing participants’CC [F (7, 292) = 26.406, p< .001, Adj. R2 = 0.373]. Findings are discussed in the light of existing literature.
... Social connectedness has been reported to be related to lower depression in students [7] and reduced risk-taking in youngsters [8]. The need for social connectedness is also influenced by many personal factors of students, such as sibling presence, economic strata of society, age of the person and time spent on the Internet [9]. ...
The global pandemic has affected almost every aspect of life across the globe including medical services, essential services, production units and educational institutes. People have been forced to physically and socially isolate themselves. This study focuses on the sudden shift that design schools in India had to make from having traditional face-to-face (F2F) classes to starting virtual classrooms online. This paper reports the results from semi-structured qualitative interviews conducted with ten design tutors from ten different design schools across India. The authors attempt to understand how the design instructors compared the online classes with traditional F2F classes, and how they perceived the effects of instructor–student connectedness and interaction on teaching motivation and satisfaction in online design teaching. This study found that most instructors felt a lack of social connectedness with the students during the online classes. The paper discusses details of some of the reasons for this lack of felt connectedness and how it affects the teacher satisfaction and learnability of the design students. In addition, it reports the insights given by the instructors about some of the creative learning practices in design courses that they are currently finding challenging to replicate online.
Designing products considering logistic costs and improved customer service in the field of supply chain management is termed as design for logistics (DfL). By improving the design of the products for logistics, organizations can reduce the costs spend on logistic and delivery. Some of the critical factors of adopting DfL are ease of transport, ease of packaging, ease of loading/unloading, minimize logistic cost, and so on. To improve the DfL characteristics at the product design stage, five strategies, namely flat packaging strategy, design for non-circular subparts, modular design principles, and design for ease of fabrication, have been identified. Quality function deployment (QFD) approach, a successful method often used for new product development, was used in the selection of strategies for designing products from a logistics viewpoint. The results of QFD show that flat packaging strategy and ease of handling are the critical DfL strategies for the improvement of logistics characteristics of the product at the design stage. The methodology has been tested through a real-case application in a packaged drinking water manufacturing organization.
The design industry including design knowledge and practice is constantly evolving itself to fulfill the evolving needs of society in order to deliver a larger social impact. Social design is a field that stresses the positioning, responsibility and collective societal impact of designers and designed products. The underdeveloped and developing world can benefit largely from social design interventions. India is a developing country with social problems like poverty and poor health care—giving a large scope for social design work. However, major development of social design is limited to other countries. A qualitative study was conducted with 14 global design practitioners to understand the social design theory, knowledge and practice existing globally and identify directions and opportunities for the Indian context, by using a cultural lens. The study suggests creating open dialogue, simplifying vocabulary, bias-busting, fostering cross-cultural social design and encouraging mindfulness as the main opportunities. These opportunities can be applied both in social design practice and design education.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.