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Self-efficacy is an important variable that explains students? behavior of engaging in school activities and persevering in the face of academic challenges. High confidence in personal competencies and in the ability to successfully accomplish a particular task or a certain goal, acts as a stimulating factor of mental resources (cognitive, affective, motivational, volitional), contributing to students? success. In an educational context, the development of self-efficacy can be both a means of facilitating high achievement, but also an end in itself, a prospective goal of education. Perceived self-efficacy plays a major role in understanding how students perceive and experience academic courses. This research aims to identify the extent to which perceived self-efficacy with the course influences students' satisfaction with the class as a prerequisite for learning and academic performance. A structural model was developed and tested on two samples of students enrolled in the Psychoeducational Training Program, to prepare for the teaching career. The research results show that there is a significant relationship between perceived self-efficacy with the course and satisfaction with the class. Understanding this relationship, several educational implications can be formulated for the development of students' academic self-efficacy; by recognizing the main indicators of low self-efficacy, teachers can implement specific strategies and interventions to optimize students' self-confidence and performance.

With the start of the COVID-19 pandemic period, the need to continue the educational process imposed the exclusive move to the online environment - a new and insufficiently prepared experience, which generated controversies, but also reflections, and adaptation for teachers, students, decision-makers, and even parents. The major concern of the academic community was related to the quality of the educational process and how the student-centered education paradigm can be introduced in the online environment. The students and teachers of the post-pandemic generation are no longer the same, this period has strongly impacted society, mentalities, and the school's future. Analyzing online education from multiple perspectives, the advantages, and opportunities generated by the integration of ICT in the teaching process are obvious. However, many variables have an impact on the effectiveness of e-learning, and many unanswered questions, yet. This research aims to analyze the key drivers of technology acceptance and the role played by three external variables: content adaptation, facilitating conditions, and ease of access in the context of exclusive online education. For this purpose, an extended technology acceptance model has been conceptualized and tested on a sample of Romanian university students. The results illustrate that content adaptation represents an important predictor of both the perceived ease of use and usefulness. The model explained a lot of variance in the continuance intention which is due to the positive attitude towards using the online learning platform in the future.

With the unprecedented crisis created by the Coronavirus pandemic, online teaching and learning became a global solution - embraced by the whole world - that tried to cover, at least in part, in part the problems encountered by the educational systems. An exclusively online format of teaching and learning proved to be a challenge for both the didactic and the learning process. Although the extant research during the pandemic is very abundant, there are few approaches addressing the different perceptions reported by university students enrolled in various programs. This research aims to explore the usefulness of online learning as perceived by civil engineering students, from a multidimensional perspective. A multidimensional model has been developed that manifests on four dimensions: social usefulness of online lectures, the usefulness of online learning platform, learning effectiveness, and, usefulness for school performance. The results show a relatively low perception of the online learning usefulness in an exclusively online educational context, which disables active learning through hands-on experience in laboratory and real-life building sites (considering the regular study process). The model has been cross-validated on a sample of students enrolled in various educational programs then the differences between samples have been analyzed and discussed.

With the explosion of mobile technologies, mobile teaching and learning became an important educational challenge. Since both teachers and students are increasingly using mobile devices in their everyday life, the question is why so little progress has been made in this direction. Clearly, the initiative of introducing mobile technology in class should come from teachers. Existing research shows a large diversity of factors that are influencing their perception as regards the usefulness and opportunity of mobile teaching and learning. This research aims to understand the extent to which the expectancy of increased students' motivation and better understanding are influencing the perception of mobile teaching usefulness. A structural model has been developed and tested on two samples of science education teachers, one from Romania and the other from Lithuania. The results show that the expectancy of a better understanding of lessons by students has an important effect on the teachers' perception of mobile teaching and learning.

Academic self-efficacy and engagement are closely related to successful results in exams. On the other hand, test anxiety may negatively affect students' success. The negative effects of test anxiety are stronger at exams in fundamental disciplines, like mechanics for civil engineering students. In this case, passing the exam may be difficult and require a three-step trial. This research explores the relationship between success at exams and the students' perceptions as regards their academic self-efficacy, learning engagement, and test anxiety. The approach is based on a comparison between students' perceptions and multiple regression analysis. The findings show that students who passed this exam reported higher self-efficacy and engagement, and lower test anxiety. The regression analysis revealed that keeping up with academic work, getting involved in class discussions, and nervousness during the exam were the main predictors of test results. Gender analysis showed that male students reported higher involvement in class discussions and female students reported more time spent on their studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic resilience represents a critical variable in educational success, reflecting students’ ability to adapt and thrive in the face of academic challenges. Numerous studies have addressed the issue of academic resilience, as understanding the mechanisms underlying academic resilience as essential for the development of effective interventions to support students. Academic resilience is a multifactorial construct, influenced by personal, social and contextual factors, which needs a complex approach. Being an essential competence for the entire life, the academic environment provides the fertile ground for its development. The present research investigates the extent to which perceived self-efficacy and motivation - both intrinsic and extrinsic - impact students’ academic resilience. The study aims to explore how those psychological constructs interact to support adaptive responses in demanding academic environments. A structural equation model was developed and tested on a sample of university students. The findings reveal that academic self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation has a significant and direct positive effect on academic resilience. At the same time, even extrinsic motivation seems to influence negatively the academic resilience, it resulted that it has no direct significant influence on academic resilience. The results underscore the importance of fostering self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation in educational settings, offering critical psycho-pedagogical insights for enhancing students’ adaptive capacities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Educational applications based on augmented reality (AR) are integrating real objects into a computer environment thus creating a more engaging and enjoyable learning environment for students. The interaction with real objects in an AR setting may lead to usability problem that affect the extent to which the user learning experience is perceived as enjoyable. The objective of this paper is to measure and analyze the negative influence of usability issues on the perceived enjoyment of using a Chemistry AR-based application. In order to better understand and explain students' perceptions by measuring both direct and indirect effects a two-step approach was taken. During the first step a prediction model is developed based on multi-level multiple linear regression. In the second step the model is refined and estimated using path analysis. The results revealed four factors having a significant influence: quality of the see through screen, ease of reading the information on the screen, ease of Chemical elements selection, and fatigue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The accessibility of public administration web sites is a key quality attribute for the successful implementation of the Information Society. The purpose of this paper is to present a second review of municipal web sites in Romania that is based on automated accessibility checking. A number of 60 web sites were evaluated against WCAG 2.0 recommendations. The analysis of results reveals a relatively low web accessibility of municipal web sites and highlights several aspects. Firstly, a slight progress in web accessibility was noticed as regarded the sample evaluated in 2010. Secondly, the number of specific accessibility errors is varying across the web sites and the accessibility is not preserved in time. Thirdly, these variations suggest that an accessibility check before launching a new release for a web page is not a common practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The usability of public administration web sites is a key quality attribute for the successful implementation of the Information Society. Formative usability evaluation aims at finding and reporting usability problems as early as possible in the development process. The objective of this paper is to present and comparatively analyze the results of an expert usability evaluation of 4 municipality web sites. In order to document usability problems an extended set of heuristics was used that is based on two sources: usability heuristics and ergonomic criteria. The explanatory power of heuristics was supplemented with a set of usability guidelines. The evaluation results revealed that a set of specific tasks with clearly defined goals helps to identify many severe usability problems that occur frequently in the municipality web sites. A typical issue for this category of web sites is the lack of information support for the user. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]