Romanian consumers have started to buy and consume more organic products. Their decision-making process is influenced by multiple variables. The theory of planned behaviour is widely accepted and used to predict behaviours in certain contexts, including the buying of organic food products. Other researchers have identified values that the consumer of organic products hold and that influence their buying behaviour. This study analyses the factors that have an impact on buying intention and behaviour of Romanian organic products from these two perspectives. A proposed model was designed by combining the two frameworks. It was evaluated by using structural equation modelling with the SmartPLS 3 software package (v. 3.2.7, SmartPLS GmbH, Bönningstedt, Germany, 2017). Results confirm the model proposed in the theory of planned behaviour while integrating the relationships of consumer values. Health consciousness was found to have a significant effect both on buying intention as well as on personal attitude. Food safety has a significant effect on buying intention regardless of personal attitude. Environmental concerns, social consciousness, perception of quality and lifestyle although important in personal attitude, do not affect buying intention directly.
Stimulating students for learning is a regularly recurring theme that never seems finished, remaining in the frontline of teachers' day to day struggle, and this recurrent factor is exponentiated when the subjects are directly related with Mathematics.In November 2018 the European Project EngiMath started work the development of a common Mathematics course for engineering students from the 6 countries of the consortium -Estonia, Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Spain. This course will be an online course with all the usual features and e-contents, however the project partners have been particularly focused on the pedagogical features and real digital competences when developing all the materials and interactive e-contents. An exhaustive search has been developed for the best way to build interactive content that would stimulate students to improve their basic mathematical skills, dealing with all the time and financial constraints, common to European higher education. This paper will describe, in a detailed way, all the steps of the construction of the theoretical contents, in English, which are the basis of the course proposed by the project and that are now being translated to each of the five distinct mother languages to avoid the frequent interpretation misleading problems for students and other cultural hitches. These e-contents are based on the construction of SCORM packages (Shareable Content Object Reference Model) for the Moodle platform, created over animated presentations to promote students' interaction and avoid drop out behaviours.
The COVID pandemic has touched many aspects of everyone’s life. Education is one of the fields greatly affected by it, as students and teachers were forced to move online and quickly adapt to the online environment. Assessment is a crucial part of education, especially in STEM fields. A gap analysis was performed by expert groups in the frame of an Erasmus+ project looking at the practices of six European countries. Specialists teaching university-grade mathematics in seven European institutions were asked about their perception of gaps in the assessment of students both before (2019) and during (2021) the pandemic. This qualitative study looks at the difference in perception of such gaps after almost one year of online teaching. The analysis of their responses showed that some gaps were present before the pandemic, as well as others that are specific to it. Some gaps, such as the lack of IT infrastructure and the need to adapt materials to an online environment, have been exacerbated by the outbreak.
Embracing tertiary education system represents the beginning of a transition and adjustment period for several students. Most of these have just finished high school where the environment is strictly defined, controlled, stable and attendance is mandatory. Higher Education changes the role of students’ responsibility and this can cause stress and difficulty in the transition to self-directed learning and autonomy promotion. The purpose of this paper is to present an Erasmus+ project that brought together six Higher Education Institutions from different European countries and to describe its current stage. This project aims to develop a shared understanding of engineering mathematics at an early stage of tertiary education and to raise awareness of cultural, professional and educational issues. The initial focus of the work is on the partners’ mutual interest in active learning, particularly the application of Information and Communication Technology in the field of engineering education. When finalised, the project hopes to provide students with a new authentic engineering mathematics subject which meets their needs. This is also the core reason why the on-line course will be composed using innovative pedagogics and ICT tools, as appropriate pedagogics supports students’ procedural, conceptual and application understanding in mathematics and enhances digital competencies, literacy and skills.
Digital impression devices are used alternatively to conventional impression techniques and materials. The aim of this study was to evaluate the precision of extraoral digitalization of three types of photosensitive resin polymers used for 3D printing with the aid of a digital extraoral optical scanner. The alignment of the scans was performed by a standard best-fit alignment. Trueness and precision were used to evaluate the models. The trueness was evaluated by using bias as a measure and the standard deviation was used to evaluate the precision. After assessing the normality of the distributions, an independent Kruskal–Wallis test was used to compare the trueness and precision across the material groups. The Mann–Whitney test was used as a post-hoc test for significant differences. The result of the analysis showed significant differences (U = 66, z = −2.337, p = 0.019) in trueness of mesiodistal distances. Upon visual inspection of the models, defects were noticed on two out of nine of the models printed with a photosensitive polymer. The defects were presented as cavities caused by air bubbles and were also reflected in the scans. Mean precision did not vary too much between these three photosensitive polymer resins, therefore, the selection of 3D printing materials should be based on the trueness and the required precision of the clinical purpose of the model.
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