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The aim of the International Society for Technology, Education, and Science (iHSES) conference is to offer opportunities to share ideas, discuss theoretical and practical issues, and connect with the leaders in the fields of "humanities," "education" and "social sciences." It is organized for: (1) faculty members in all disciplines of humanities, education and social sciences; (2) graduate students; (3) K-12 administrators; (4) teachers; (5) principals; and (6) all interested in education and social sciences. [Individual papers are indexed in ERIC.]

Optometry is becoming more and more interdisciplinary and gives new opportunities for collaborative research due to the accumulative complexity of knowledge and the rapid transformation of the technological capabilities in domains such as information technology, optics, applied engineering, health sciences, and entrepreneurship and management. Therefore, the paper presents a study case of a master organized at the University Politehnica of Bucharest related to the current challenges of optometrist education in Romania. The master program is carried out within the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Mechatronics of the University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest, being organized by the Department of Mechatronics and Precision Mechanics and it falls within the Field of Mechanical Engineering specialization, according to Government decision no. 1609/30.09.2004, published in the Official Gazette of 18.10.2004. Conceived as a continuation of the bachelor's studies, the Advanced Optometry master program ensures the deepening in the field of the Optometry license program. It is an attractive option for the graduates of the Optometry program, accredited for the first time in 2007 and reaccredited in 2011. It ensures the development of scientific research capacities and is a mandatory preparatory basis for doctoral studies. [For the full proceedings, see ED652228.]

Nurses are a vital resource of health care systems, a resource that must be valued, bearing in mind that their work has a role in social indicators of health, and also determines topics such as equality and equity, fairness and justice, which support the kind of societies we all want to live in. In the training process, they learn, in the middle of a team, to plan, to put into practice and evaluate general medical care based on acquired knowledge and skills. Future nurses must not only be prepared to meet the needs of the individual, the family, the community, but also to have confidence in their own intellectual and clinical abilities so that they can work responsibly and autonomously, facing at the same time with increasingly complex requirements of healthcare. The refinement of medical training is subsequently achieved by developing the ability to solve problems, to make decisions, to practice leadership in medical care. The acquisition of leadership skills has been identified as a need in training nurses, both from the researches of internal and international professional bodies and from those of clinical units. By harmonizing this need with public educational policies, the unit of learning outcomes "Leadership and professional communication" was implemented in the professional training standard. This paper aims to gain insight into the relationship between the values of leadership and the development of a good educational policy in training nurses, with a fundamental impact on the provision of health care in an efficient, integrated and safe manner for the patient. [For the full proceedings, see ED654100.]

In many countries, opportunities for higher education are reduced for some under-represented groups in society. One such group are young women from rural and underdeveloped areas who due to traditional, patriarchal lifestyles have much less chance to go to college and get education that their peers from urban areas have much more access to. Online education opens doors for these women, but they still need support and guidance. WINnovators, a 3-year EU Erasmus+ project started in late 2021, has made steps towards providing such support and guidance. It focuses on providing online learning content in different areas of STEM/STEAM and aims at encouraging young women from rural areas to go through such content, develop their entrepreneurial skills, and possibly come up with ideas of how to start their own businesses. Of course, this vision largely contradicts traditional lifestyles. Still, it creates some chance for at least partial leveling with other groups in society. To provide guidance to these women, university students guide them in using the online learning content and taking the learning challenges that eventually lead to raising their awareness of how to break on through to the other side. The paper explains this process and illustrates it by a case study. [For the complete proceedings, see ED655360.]

The performance of any economy is based on scientific knowledge and technological innovation. Consequently, a highly motivated workforce with skills in science and engineering is key to any prosperous economy. Science education has a critical role in providing scientific literacy to students, as well as in training young people to choose careers linked to STEM education. Understanding the science concepts and their application is nowadays challenging for students, due to lack of interest and motivation. "Science is not for me" is, unfortunately, a frequent phrase heard when discussing with young people. It is clear that the way science is taught must be adapted to the student's profile and needs. In this respect, in Romania, the CONNECT project comes to meet this gap by designing and implementing four structured scenarios, embracing the format of Science actions. In order to evaluate the impact of each Science action in terms of students' perceptions and attitudes concerning science, an instrument based on a 5-point Likert scale was developed in the frame of the project partnership. The feedback of 83 students who participated in the Rewilding Science action was collected, being emphasized that students are feeling more confident to solve problems in science and consider that learning science is enjoyable, even learning science is not easy. Although the majority of the respondents would like to do projects with others using science to improve the world, they -- in the same ratio -- would not like to be seen as experts in science. [For the full proceedings, see ED629086.]

Science actions represent specific initiatives and demarches that involve investigation, experimentation, and even research, for raising the interest of the young generation in science, through particular approaches of STEM education. Important topics are promoted to students in various approaches, addressing nowadays problems, answering scientific questions, or trying to make them aware of sensible issues. In this respect, the topic of plastics biodegradability embraced the clothes of a Science action, a format based on the Care-Know-Do model, proposed in the frame of the CONNECT project. Having the view to evaluating the students' interest in science after the implementation of the project-designed science actions, the partnership proposed a 5-point Likert scale instrument. In Romania, 373 students who participated in the Biodegradable Plastics action expressed their feedback, underlining--in an important proportion--their strong confidence in science, being ready to participate in collaborative science projects or benefit from their family support who consider that understanding and knowing science is useful for the entire life. Moreover, the students offered positive feedback related to teachers' ability to emphasize the importance of science for their life and future, but also in society, in general. [For the full proceedings, see ED629086.]

The university admission test comes after the high school graduation exam - the baccalaureate. The baccalaureate results of each candidate must be known by the university admissions committee. They provide information on the degree of intelligence, the skills acquired up to this date, but also the presence of inclinations and skills indispensable to the fulfillment of professional aspirations. The university entrance exam should not be focused only on quantity and quality of knowledge. Besides that, one of the objectives of this exam must be to test the interest in completing the studies through the university level for which he opts, but also the candidate's skills that "offer" him the productive and satisfying course of the entire cycle of higher education, even the perspective of future achievements. To realize that three psychological investigation tools of candidates (tests) can be used, necessary to highlight: (1) personality profile of the candidate; (2) interest profile, motivational; and (3) aptitude profile. The paper proposes a new admission methodology: the data collected through the proposed tests and correlated with the high school graduation data can accept the candidates, as admitted to the profile they opted for, or can redirect them to choose the right path. [For the full proceedings, see ED630948.]

The 21st century is witnessing a growing movement of people from one corner of the world to another, either for business or personal reasons, like never before. These people will be bringing with them their own differences, values, beliefs, and communication styles. Cultures will clash at the workplace, at a party, in the supermarket, in the subway, when dealing with the authorities, and the list can go on. That is why, this paper aims at providing students (i.e. future employees or managers, who will undoubtedly come into contact with different cultures in their future careers) with notions related to intercultural communication, mainly non-verbal communication. The paper also posits that one way of acquiring the intercultural communication competence in the classroom is by providing real-life examples of what such communication means, i.e. through accounts and stories told by expats, who are people who travel and decide to relocate to another country (embracing or not the new culture) mainly for business-related reasons. [For "NORDSCI International Conference Proceedings (Online, October 12-14, 2020). Book 1. Volume 3," see ED616185.]

PhD students are a valuable asset for universities as they are able to perform a varied number of activities. Moving on from their basic role of students, their main focus becomes researching on their theses' topics, however a PhD student life does not happen only between the walls of a library. Sometimes, PhD students perform in a benevolent or mandatory way teaching activities within their universities, which upgrades their status to collaborators of the university. However, this sort of activities bring along serious responsibilities which might require the diminishing of time dedicated for the thesis' writing. This paper's aim is to investigate which are the factors that contribute to the engagement PhD students feel for their work as teachers. According to the found driving elements, we intend to define the levels of engagement teachers-PhD students show and to layer them down in a structured way. As the research work is a complex enough work by itself, adding an activity such as the teaching one in the life of a PhD student might affect the well-run of the PhD program. Hence, a second objective of this paper is to determine if the teaching experience helps the students to cope better with the PhD requirements. Overall, the contributions of this paper can be of important value firstly for the PhD students that want to seek academic career opportunities during their PhD degree. Secondly, the paper can as well as benefit the universities that would like to manage better their PhD students and learn how to integrate them in their organizational teaching charts. Learning about their engagement drivers can lead to designing fitted win-win partnerships between the university and the PhD students that could bring added value for both sides. [For "NORDSCI International Conference Proceedings: Education and Language Edition (Athens, Greece, August 19, 2019). Book 1. Volume 2," see ED603411.]

As a nation strives to meet the challenges posed by globalization, which is an issue of the information economy, its strength relies heavily on its citizens' intellectual prowess and critical thinking skills. Thus, institutions of teacher education play a key role in producing teachers who will be able to meet the needs of the time, with empathy, while promoting critical thinking, creative ability and the value system as a priority. Educating teachers to incorporate soft skills is critical for the profession's success. The term 'soft skills' refers to a wide range of personal and interpersonal attributes that are aimed at transforming the individual as well as society as a whole (Apple, 1996). The purpose of this research is to highlight the degree of preparation of future teachers in four large primary education universities in respective European countries. To achieve this, a mixed-mode technique was used by the researcher (questionnaires and semi-structured interviews) to gather information. The target group came from the teaching staff at the faculties of education in four European countries (Spain, Romania, France and Greece). Ten academics from each nation were handpicked to participate in face-to-face interviews. At the same time, the teaching staff of the teacher training departments participated in a focus group, in groups of 5 people each. The most crucial soft skills in their teaching profession were identified to be social skills. [For the complete Volume 20 proceedings, see ED622631.]

COVID-19 pandemic and post-pandemic had led to the confrontation of higher education system with enormous challenges. That necessitated the urgent transition from face-to-face teaching to online-teaching. The change was an innovation in higher education. A comparative study of digital education based on the survey in 2020-2021 in seven different countries was conducted at Shanghai University. The study was based on grey comprehensive evaluation model. In general, developed countries had high comprehensive evaluation value, while Finland, United States of America, South-Korea and Latvia had relatively low grey correlation coefficient in several certain indicators, leading to a sharp drop in the overall score. Romania ranked last while China ranked second as a developing country as well. The study launched a conclusion that research and development personnel, infrastructure funds and university financial investment in digital education had relatively more obvious effects on improving the innovations and quality of higher education system including the leadership system of universities. [For the full proceedings, see ED639633.]

This paper aims at analyzing and comparing the approach of Task-based language teaching (TBLT) to bachelor students taking classes of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) at two universities in Bulgaria and Romania. The outcomes of the research show that both Bulgarian and Romanian students express their favorable preferences towards using this approach. This is a case study implemented on a local level in two neighboring countries in the region of Southeastern Europe. [For the complete Volume 17 proceedings, see ED596826.]

COVID-19 pandemic has led to the confrontation of higher education system with enormous challenges. This necessitated the urgent transition from face-to-face teaching to online teaching. A comparative study of digital education in seven different countries was conducted. This study established grey comprehensive evaluation model based on entropy weight method, which was successfully validated by reliability test. In general, developed countries tend to have high comprehensive evaluation value while Finland, South-Korea and Latvia have relatively low grey correlation coefficient in several certain indicators, leading to a sharp drop in the overall score. Romania ranked last while China ranked second as a developing country as well. This is followed by model optimization though input-output analysis method based on the upgrading of higher education system due to the pandemic's influence. The study launched a conclusion that research and development personnel, infrastructure funds and university financial investment in digital education have relatively more obvious effects on improving the quality of higher education system. [For the full proceedings, see ED621892.]

Edmodo has a significant role and place in the language teaching and learning contexts. However, there is no conclusive evidence on how Edmodo affects the language learning process. This study aims to present a review of the studies to make recommendations for teachers and researchers for further research. The study concludes that learners and teachers mainly have positive perceptions of and attitudes towards the use of Edmodo in the language learning process. It is also concluded that the use of Edmodo is efficient for fostering basic language skills, overall language proficiency, and communication skills. On the other hand, there are several drawbacks encountered during the utilization of Edmodo in language classes.

Nowadays, any modern company or organization is focusing on the strategic management of human resources, many of them through dedicated applications, enabling the attraction and the retention of the best employees and a better management of human resources in general. Studies have been conducted showing that training represents a source of motivation for the human resources and a large number of the employees in general are feeling motivated by non-material benefits, one of the most important of those being the possibility of developing new skills, through training. The training methods are pursuing at the present moment two main trends: first, a part of the companies will get in touch with external companies, whose specialization is based on training and team building, and second, the other part of the companies will hire people that have the task of providing that specific training. Given the advantages known about the modern learning platforms, like diminishing the costs by eliminating transportation costs, the possibility to make modifications on the information provided, the collaboration between learners, the fact that it can be done anywhere at any time, this article aims to find out what is the degree of e-learning platforms implementation within companies in Romania. At the same time, this paper will present the employers' perception on e-learning, identifying and measuring it by means of a questionnaire, analyzing the human commitment degree due to the training, showing the benefits of developing new skills and how this is influencing their evolution. [For the complete proceedings, see ED590269.]

This paper provides insights in the development of a skill matching test which addresses soft skills integrated videos as media to provide information about situations to be rated. The design of the skill testing and matching tool is situated in the educational ERASMUS+ project SMART which is presented as well. With a specific view on team work and the necessary skills, traits and interests this article provides insights into the representation of these aspects in the test and offers impression of the video and media design. These topics are combined with a presentation of the results of a qualitative study concerning this testing tool, which was conducted by expert interviews and analysed by using content analysis. These results highlight the advantages and challenges in the use of the testing tool. [For the complete proceedings, see ED579395.]

This volume includes four sections of the 2020 NORDSCI international conference proceedings: (1) Education and Educational Research; (2) Language and Linguistics; (3) Philosophy; and (4) Sociology and Healthcare. Education and Educational Research includes 15 papers covering the full spectrum of education, including history, sociology and economy of education, educational policy, strategy and technologies. This section also covers pedagogy and special education. Language and Linguistics includes 6 papers covering topics related to theoretical, literary and historical linguistics, as well as stylistics and philology. The Philosophy section includes 2 papers and covers the full spectrum of philosophy history, methods, foundation, society studies and the interpretation of philosophy. The Sociology and Healthcare section has 9 papers covering topics related to human society, social structures, and social change, healthcare systems and healthcare services. [Individual papers from the Education and Educational Research section of these proceedings are indexed in ERIC.]

Corpora are valuable technology-supported learning resources to be used by autonomous language learners or during teacher-guided lessons. This study explores the potential of corpus consultation approaches for the improvement of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) students' academic writing skills. We investigated the effects of three types of Data-Driven Learning (DDL) activities in a sample group of 29 first-year and second-year students majoring in Geography for Tourism at a Romanian university, consisting of writing tasks supported by: a Learner Corpus (LC), a Native-Speaker Corpus (NSC), and a Web-based Corpus (WBC). The research methodology involves the combination of quantitative and qualitative data, extracted from pre- and post-intervention corpus analyses, with the results of a learner-satisfaction questionnaire. The findings indicate a significant differentiation in the complexity of the lexico-grammatical features used by learners in consequent intervention stages and a better integration of L2-related academic writing strategies into their written productions. The study yields first conclusions on the integration of computer-processed language databases in DDL strategies for ESP learners in the Romanian university context. [For the complete proceedings, see ED600837.]

To examine the challenges encountered by Eastern European students within a sixth form college in the United Kingdom. This paper aims to consider the difficulties encountered by this particular ethnic group examining the impact the challenges may have on their performance, success and achievement. This paper will also highlight equality and diversity implications and examine the social mobility of this particular group. [For the complete Volume 13, Number 1 proceedings, see ED568595.]

The report of AROMA project (AROMA project consortium, 2018) summarizes a detailed study performed within project partner countries (Belgium, Czech Republic, Greece, Malta, Romania, Spain and Sweden) aimed at identifying the training needs connected with augmented reality technology (AR) and entrepreneurial skills and mapping an awareness about the AR technology. For the project, the research also serves as a first step to identify gaps that need to be addressed to offer a holistic syllabus integrating AR with selected skills and competencies. [For the full proceedings, see ED619611.]

The main aim of the research was to identify the attitude of pre-service and in-service Biology teachers towards the use of the Internet. In this research, the Internet Attitude Scale has been applied, a validated and standardized instrument. The scale was applied to 210 Biology teachers, of whom 155 are pre-service teachers and 55 are in-service teachers in secondary and high schools from Romanian education. The research results indicated the existence of positive attitudes of preservice and in-service Biology teachers to the educational use of the Internet. [For the full proceedings, see ED619611.]

The purpose of research is to explore the attitudes of university teachers towards the use of mobile technologies and to explore their perception of the ethical aspects related to the integration of new technologies. There was applied a questionnaire with closed-ended and open-ended questions. The results of this research highlight university teachers' positive attitudes towards the use of mobile technologies in higher education. These technologies become pedagogical tools in higher education with multiple valences on teacher professional learning. [For the full proceedings, see ED619611.]

A globalized reform of quality management for the educational system in Romania is tolerated today. A careful analysis and critical evaluation of the literature suggests a big question as to how reasonable, honest and sustainable this system is. A series of studies show that the reality of education in Romania is facing the need for an innovative structure, considering an analysis of the gaps. This study provides an overview of critical success factors from the study of strong and weak sustainability. Awareness of the need for continuous improvement in the context of policies to encourage quality culture aims to harmonize and strike a balance between the continuity of total quality management and the necessary changes to its sustainability. The authors used methodological activities such as the exploratory literature review, Deming and EFQM models in education, the Triple Bottom Line model, an analysis of the gaps. Finally, the result of this research provides an overview of gaps and policy and strategy models to ensure a strong sustainability of quality management. [For "NORDSCI International Conference Proceedings: Education and Language Edition (Athens, Greece, August 19, 2019). Book 1. Volume 2," see ED603411.]

This volume includes two sections of the 2019 NORDSCI international conference proceedings: (1) Education and Educational Research; and (2) Language and Linguistics. Education and Educational Research includes 11 papers covering scientific topics in the full spectrum of education, including history, sociology and economy of education, educational policy, strategy and technologies. This section also covers pedagogy and special education. Language and Linguistics includes 11 papers covering scientific topics related to theoretical, literary and historical linguistics, as well as stylistics and philology.