Academic mentees thrive in big groups, but survive in small groups
Related Articles
The interplay between positive lifestyle habits and academic excellence in higher education
Systematically examining the correlation between the lifestyle habits of undergraduate students and their academic performance holds significant practical implications in advancing higher education. This study adopts an integrated perspective and analyzes a substantial dataset (3,123,840 data points) of 3499 undergraduates at a Chinese university. This study employs a Long short-term memory neural network to identify eating behavior indicators and develops a comprehensive model to evaluate the relationship between students’ lifestyle habits and academic performance; the lifestyle habits cover eating, hygiene, and studying habits. The findings challenge conventional wisdom by revealing that stringent eating schedules do not consistently correlate with superior academic performance. Instead, a higher degree of inertia in eating behavior (e.g., waking up early) correlates with better academic outcomes. Positive correlations also exist between students’ hygiene and studying habits and their academic performance. These results provide valuable insights into the relationship between students’ behavior and academic performance. This work carries implications for promoting the digitalization of higher education and enhancing education management for undergraduate students.
Not all who integrate are academics: zooming in on extra-academic integrative expertise
Solving complex problems requires integrating knowledge and skills from various domains. The importance of cross-domain integration has motivated researchers to study integrative expertise: what knowledge and skills help achieve cross-domain integration? Much of the existing research focuses on the integrative expertise of academic researchers who perform inter- and transdisciplinary research. However, academics are not the only ones facilitating integration. In transdisciplinary research, where academics collaborate with professionals, stakeholders, and policymakers, these extra-academic actors can contribute significantly to cross-domain integration. Moreover, many complex problems are addressed entirely outside of universities. This paper contributes to a broader, more inclusive understanding of integrative expertise by drawing attention to the diversity of extra-academic integrative expertise, providing examples of what this expertise looks like in practice, and reflecting on differences with its academic counterpart. The contributions are based on a case study of integrative expertise in Oosterweel Link, a large urban development project in Antwerp, Belgium.
How Shakespeare’s works have been reinterpreted, adapted and reshaped: a bibliometric review and trend analysis of Shakespeare studies from 2000 to 2023
Since transitioning into the post-theory era in 2000, Shakespearean studies have increasingly attracted interdisciplinary attention, engaging fields such as literature, performance studies, digital humanities, and cultural studies. Despite this broad interest, the discipline often lacks a cohesive framework to integrate these perspectives effectively. This study addresses this issue by applying bibliometric methods to data from the Web of Science Core Collection, using tools like VOSViewer and CiteSpace for analysis and visualization. By examining how Shakespeare’s works have been reinterpreted and adapted across diverse cultural and temporal contexts, the research employs the TCCM (Theory, Context, Characteristic, Methodology) framework to analyze thematic developments and interdisciplinary scope in Shakespeare studies from 2000 to 2023. Key findings reveal recurring research themes, including canonical text analysis, gender and performance, cross-cultural dissemination, adaptation, and the growing influence of digital humanities. The study identifies four distinct phases in the evolution of the field: the Initial Phase (2000–2005), focused on textual authenticity and literary value; the Transition Phase (2005–2010), marked by the integration of cultural studies and gender theory; the Mature Phase (2010–2019), exploring societal issues such as ethics and environmental humanities; and the Post-Pandemic Phase (2019–2023), emphasizing globalization and environmental concerns. These phases reflect shifts in academic priorities, methodologies, and interdisciplinary approaches, demonstrating the field’s responsiveness to global and technological developments. This study highlights the importance of deepening interdisciplinary integration and adopting emerging frameworks, such as new materialism, while combining distant and close reading techniques. These approaches offer a nuanced understanding of Shakespeare’s works, showcasing their enduring relevance and cultural transformation in a globalized and rapidly evolving academic landscape.
AI can outperform humans in predicting correlations between personality items
We assess the abilities of both specialized deep neural networks, such as PersonalityMap, and general LLMs, including GPT-4o and Claude 3 Opus, in understanding human personality by predicting correlations between personality questionnaire items. All AI models outperform the vast majority of laypeople and academic experts. However, we can improve the accuracy of individual correlation predictions by taking the median prediction per group to produce a “wisdom of the crowds” estimate. Thus, we also compare the median predictions from laypeople, academic experts, GPT-4o/Claude 3 Opus, and PersonalityMap. Based on medians, PersonalityMap and academic experts surpass both LLMs and laypeople on most measures. These results suggest that while advanced LLMs make superior predictions compared to most individual humans, specialized models like PersonalityMap can match even expert group-level performance in domain-specific tasks. This underscores the capabilities of large language models while emphasizing the continued relevance of specialized systems as well as human experts for personality research.
Toward change in the uneven geographies of urban knowledge production
More than four-fifths of the global urban population live in the Global South and East. Most urban theories, however, originate in the Global North. Building on recent efforts to address this mismatch, this paper examines the geographies of urban knowledge production. It analyzes the institutional affiliations of contributions in 25 leading Anglophone journals (n = 14,582) and nine urban handbooks (n = 252). We show that 42% of the journal articles and 17% of the handbook chapters were authored outside the Global North. However, only 15% of the editor positions (handbooks: 10%) were held by scholars based outside the Global North. This indicates that Global Northern institutions still dominate knowledge gatekeeping, whereas authors are more diverse. Additionally, more empirical journals and those with fewer Northern board members tend to publish more non-Northern authors. Our findings underscore the need for greater epistemic diversity in gatekeeping positions and broader understandings of what counts as theory to better incorporate diverse urban knowledge.
Responses