Samantha Shane Evangelista’s research while affiliated with Cebu Technological University and other places

Decentralized management of marine resources by local governments yields an enhanced opportunity to protect, restore, and create sustainable marine biodiversity in the provision of ecosystem services. However, due to the complexities associated with designing a level of protection for a specific marine resource, local stakeholders may find the process challenging, which may have adverse effects resulting from delayed conservation initiatives. Thus, under various criteria, a systematic approach that assigns a level of protection to marine resources is critical in managing these resources. Despite this criticality, such an agenda gains limited attention from the domain literature. This work advances this gap by proposing a multiple criteria sorting (MCS) method that comprehensively assigns marine resources to a pre-defined set of protection categories under the evaluation of several criteria. It utilizes (1) the entropy method in obtaining the priority weights of the identified criteria associated with evaluating the reef status of marine sites and (2) an extension of the combined compromise solution sorting method, termed CoCoSort, in evaluating marine sites to a pre-determined set of categories (i.e., Category 1, Category 2, Category 3), arranged in increasing order of protection. With the available indicators in the literature, the proposed CoCoSort was implemented in an actual case study of eight marine sites in an eastern Philippine municipality. Findings reveal that feather stars density, giant clams density, and butterfly abundance comprise the top priority criteria in evaluating the case sites. On the other hand, five identified sites are found to be under the maximum protection category, while three sites should be given moderate protection. Both sensitivity and comparative analyses show the efficacy of the proposed CoCoSort. The insights would help local governments manage the biodiversity protection of their marine environments.

As social platforms experience an influx of diverse content from users, the need to determine high-quality contributions becomes crucial, especially for educational purposes. This paper highlights the pivotal role of quality in assessing how educational-purposed user-generated content (UGC) shapes user experiences, fosters engagement, and establishes credibility. This study proposes a computational framework using a quasi-experimental evaluation through the sorting-based ELimination Et Choice TRanslating Reality, termed ELECTRE-SORT, with a dataset randomly generated from normally distributed user evaluations. Considering the diverse nature of contents, the method evaluates 16 educational-purposed UGC videos from different online media platforms (i.e. Facebook, YouTube, TikTok). These videos were categorized based on their concordance and discordance to three (3) main criteria: content quality, design quality, and technology quality. Employing the ELECTRE-SORT reveals that most UGC videos (i.e. 14 out of 16) fall into the “medium quality” category, possessing a considerable standard for the quality of educational purpose content. Their characteristics generally satisfy the quality attributes and can be used to guide the development of future relevant UGC videos. Finally, to demonstrate the robustness of the proposed approach, we presented a sensitivity analysis by designing different weight assignments to the quality attributes. Practical insights are outlined in this work.

The need to address the impediments to teaching numeracy in early childhood education necessitates a comprehensive approach, as an evident lack of exploration of impediments and their intertwined relationships exists in the domain literature. Thus, this work advances such agenda by utilizing the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) approach with q-rung orthopair fuzzy sets (q-ROFSs), referred to as q-ROF-DEMATEL. Unlike other fuzzy set extensions, q-ROFS offers a larger decision space, providing the capability to handle information with greater ambiguity. The proposed q-ROF-DEMATEL is applied to identify the critical factors impeding effective instruction of numeracy skills to early childhood learners. The findings suggest that the prominent impediments include inadequate teaching time, lack of teaching knowledge, and underestimation of learners’ knowledge. Moreover, among the identified impediments, the lack of teaching knowledge emerges as the key impediment, while language barriers, inadequate teaching time, and lack of educational resources are identified as minor key impediments. These findings could guide decision makers in academic institutions to allocate resources effectively, pool human resources strategically, and develop appropriate strategies to augment teaching numeracy. Investing in professional development opportunities, incorporating visual representations and culturally relevant materials, and seeking community partnerships for resources are some recommended initiatives to address these challenges. Insights for future work were outlined.

This study determines the critical success factors of teaching mathematics to special education (SPED) students wherein a list of success factors is identified through a literature survey and analyzes the causal relationships among the identified factors to evaluate the key success factors using the integration of the grey system theory and decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL), named as the grey-DEMATEL. Results reveal that professional development (PD), institutional support (IS), and individual factors (IF) are categorized as net causes. They influence other factors considered as net effects, including mentoring, self-efficacy, teaching capacity, student feedback, teaching knowledge, instructional accommodation, and use of technology. Among those net causes, only PD yields as the key factor, while IS and IF are the minor key factors. Thus, decision-makers must allocate resources that provide PD to teachers in delivering SPED mathematics teaching. A sensitivity analysis suggests these findings are robust to linguistic evaluation scale changes. The insights outlined in this study would aid educational managers and decision-makers of educational institutions in carefully designing initiatives to improve the quality of mathematics education provided to SPED students. Some potential directions for future research agenda are also discussed.

Quality and inclusive education, especially for people with disabilities, finds priority in academic and policy initiatives for special education (SPED) programs. Several scholars have highlighted the significance of SPED in the domain literature; however, a comprehensive analysis of critical factors contributing to successful teaching, especially mathematics, is currently missing. Hence, the structural relationship among the critical success factors is established in this study through an interpretive structural modeling approach and Matrice d’impacts croisés multiplication appliquée á un classment (MICMAC) analysis. Results from the adopted methodology show that a teacher’s mathematical knowledge is the most significant factor contributing to the success of teaching mathematics with SPED students. Allocating resources to improve and address this particular driving factor will influence the remaining factors. The study findings offer valuable insights for decision-makers and relevant stakeholders in academic institutions.

The factors influencing consumer purchase decisions in electronic commerce platforms and the interrelationships of each element are prevalent in the domain literature. However, a comprehensive analysis of the complex interrelationships among the success factors remains unexplored, especially in a social commerce context. To address the gap, this work evaluates the relationship structure and determines the critical factors using interpretive structural modelling (ISM). On the other hand, the Matrice d’Impacts Croisés Multiplication Appliquée á un Classement (MICMAC) is introduced to analyse the interaction of the factors and recognise the most relevant among them. In demonstrating the ISM-MICMAC analysis, this work performed a case study evaluating 13 factors of social commerce success for food products derived from a previous study. The findings of this work suggest that timeliness, data privacy policy, and Internet connectivity drive most other factors. Thus, focusing the resources on augmenting these factors consequently improves other factors. These findings suggest that sellers must streamline their overall service chain to maintain timeliness in their transactions, safeguard consumers’ data privacy, and uphold consumer communication efficiency to maximise Internet connectivity. These insights provide useful information to help decision-makers in the food industry allocate resources and encourage more consumers for social commerce. Several managerial insights were discussed.

The barriers to implementing circular supply chains are well explored, but very little is provided to understand how these barriers play in public sector supply chains. Consequently, the role of digital technologies in addressing these barriers in the circularity of supply chains in the public sector remains a gap. Thus, this study bridges these gaps by evaluating digital technologies according to their relevance in addressing the identified barriers. In particular, eight domain experts who have sufficient knowledge and expertise in the domains of the public sector and circular economy were asked to elicit judgments in order to (1) set a threshold that defines the list of barriers that are significant to supply chains in the public sector, (2) obtain the priority weights of these barriers through the criteria importance through intercriteria correlation (CRITIC), and (3) rank the identified digital technologies based on their relevance in addressing the identified barriers in public sector supply chains using combinative distance-based assessment (CODAS) method, all under a Fermatean fuzzy set environment to account for epistemic uncertainties in judgment elicitation processes. This novel integration of the CRITIC and CODAS methods augmented by Fermatean fuzzy sets forms the methodological contribution of this work. Findings show that barriers associated with regulations restricting the collection of wastes, poor demand or acceptance for environmentally superior technologies, lack of expertise, technology, and information, operational risk, immature recycling technologies, and information sharing and communication were considered critical in managing circular public sector supply chains. The analysis also revealed that ripple effect modeling, simulation, and artificial intelligence are the priority digital technologies. These digital technologies offer efficiency and flexibility to decision-makers in analyzing complex and dynamic scenarios before the deployment of any circularity initiative, providing crucial information in its design and implementation. This paper outlines several managerial insights and offers possible agenda for future research.