The Global Research Network for Verified Scholars

This chapter presents a comprehensive qualitative investigation into the transformative implementation of metaverse technologies combined with gamification mechanisms in Hong Kong's TVET wine education sector. Drawing on purposive interviews with 12 respondents comprising wine educators, students, technology implementers, and industry stakeholders, this study examines how immersive virtual environments create engaging, accessible, and practically relevant learning experiences in vocational wine education. The findings reveal that metaverse-gamified learning environments substantially enhance student engagement, motivation, and practical comprehension in TVET wine schools through simulated vineyard exploration, virtual wine tasting scenarios, and collaborative problem-solving challenges. However, significant barriers, including technological infrastructure constraints, content development capacity, pedagogical readiness, and cost implications, impede wider adoption.

Automation boosts productivity but may endanger professional identity and well-being when generative and agentic AI enter knowledge jobs quickly. Human elements of AI adoption are understudied, especially qualitative methodologies that capture lived experiences. Productivity improvements are clearly established. Explore knowledge workers' emotional and psychological reactions to AI-driven developments and how they handle the automation-augmentation conundrum. This study contrasts technology-focused research with employee psychological adaption. Semi-structured interviews with 25 knowledge workers in financial services, creative industries, and professional services. Data evaluated using reflexive thematic analysis to discover perceptual, affective, and coping tendencies. Ambivalent acceptance – excitement and anxiety; identity friction – perceived deskilling versus augmented creativity; coping through re-crafting – proactive role redesign; and organisational buffers – psychological safety and transparent communication mitigate negative outcomes. Employee psychological adaptation to AI is modelled in this research, expanding the automation-augmentation conundrum with unique coping mechanisms and practical suggestions for human-centered AI governance. Organisational support, effective communication, and identity rebuilding are crucial to optimal adaption results.

The objectification of women is a communal problem in every developed and underdeveloped society of the world. Women make a major population of the world, and serve the society in multidimensional modes, but still they are considered feeble to men. The subject of women objectification has remained focus of various researchers globally. This research focused three short stories drawn from “In Other Rooms, Other Wonders” of Daniyal Mueenuddin to bring forward disparities and inequalities prevailing in patriarchal society of Pakistan. Additionally, it investigated the impact of these inequalities and injustices on downtrodden women of Pakistan. The objectification of women is such a discrimination that women are subjected to undergo in a patriarchal social set up. This study analyzes the objectification of women through the lenses of female characters selected from three short stories. This study uses theoretical frameworks of Martha Nussbaum and Rae Langton’s to draw outcomes for this study. Study findings exhibit that female characters undergo objectification and are treated as things by male in a male dominated strata of Pakistan.

English has a paramount role in this digital world of internet and mobile technology. Digital technology has facilitated language learning. This study focused on identifying English language problems of novice engineering students in this modern age of scientific advancement. Convenience sampling method was used since the principal researcher taught the subject of Functional English to participants. Eighty engineering students were surveyed. Research instruments were document analysis and classroom observation. Data were analyzed through an interpretative approach to drawing study outcomes. Results exhibited engineering students faced English language problems in the English language classroom context. Multiple English language problems surfaced, such as poor vocabulary, spelling errors, grammatical errors, writing problems, comprehension problems, and accepting teacher dictation. Additionally, psychological problems were shyness, low self-confidence, nervousness, fear of peer criticism and stage fright.

This study investigates the impact of Quality Enhancement Cell (QEC) practices on academic performance in private universities in Pakistan. Employing a quantitative research design, data were collected from 250 faculty members across ten Higher Education Commission (HEC)–recognized private universities. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was applied to examine the hypothesized relationships between QEC practices and academic performance. The results reveal that QEC practices—specifically quality assurance mechanisms, curriculum review, faculty evaluation, and feedback management—exert a significant positive influence on key academic performance indicators, including teaching quality, research productivity, and student satisfaction. Among these dimensions, feedback and improvement mechanisms emerged as the strongest predictor of academic performance. The findings underscore the importance of embedding internal quality assurance processes to foster continuous improvement and enhance academic excellence in higher education institutions. The study countries by integrating Total Quality Management (TQM) and Institutional Theory as guiding frameworks. Practical policy implications are proposed to strengthen QEC autonomy, capacity building, and data-driven decision making to enhance institutional effectiveness and sustain quality culture within private universities. Keywords: Quality Enhancement Cell, academic performance, quality assurance, private universities, higher education, Pakistan.

This study examines the impact of digital consumer engagement, human resource innovation and sustainable marketing practices on the performance of the organization and customer loyalty in emerging business markets. In today's fierce business world, companies are becoming more reliant on digital platforms, creative employee practices and marketing centred around sustainability if they want to boost performance and foster customer relations with end users. The study is quantitative in nature, and a structured questionnaire is utilized to gather responses from individuals who are associated with the SMEs, Startup, Entrepreneurial ventures and the service-based companies. The data obtained were analyzed using descriptive analysis, reliability analysis, correlation analysis and regression analysis with the total of 250 respondents. Results indicate that digital engagement with consumers, innovation in HR practices and sustainable marketing approaches have positive and significant impacts on both organizational performance and customer loyalty. Human resource innovation was identified as the best predictor of organizational performance, and digital consumer engagement was the best predictor of customer loyalty. Based on the results, other companies in emerging markets can reap better business results by integrating three elements: digital interaction with customers, innovative HR practices, and responsible marketing. The study presents a framework that integrates digital engagement, HR innovation, sustainable marketing, performance of organizations, and customers' loyalty to contribute to the digital engagement literature, HR innovation literature, sustainable marketing literature, organization performance literature, and customer loyalty literature.

Employee turnover presents a persistent challenge for healthcare organizations because workforce instability can affect operational continuity, staffing capacity, and human resource planning. This study examined the potential of AI-driven workforce analytics for predicting employee turnover and supporting strategic retention decisions. A healthcare workforce dataset comprising 1,676 employees was analyzed using demographic, occupational, compensation, satisfaction, and career-related characteristics. Employee attrition was treated as the prediction outcome, and Logistic Regression, Random Forest, and Gradient Boosting models were developed using a stratified training-test approach. Model performance was assessed using accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, and ROC-AUC. Overall attrition was 11.87%, with employees experiencing turnover characterized by younger age, lower monthly income, shorter organizational tenure, lower job satisfaction, and poorer work-life balance. Overtime showed a marked association with turnover, with attrition rates of 29.2% among employees working overtime and 5.0% among those without overtime. Gradient Boosting achieved the highest accuracy (0.909) and ROC-AUC (0.911), while Logistic Regression achieved the highest recall (0.760). The findings demonstrate that predictive workforce analytics can identify meaningful turnover patterns while supporting risk-informed retention planning. Integrating predictive evidence with workforce characteristics may help healthcare organizations prioritize workload management, employee engagement, compensation, career development, and work-life balance initiatives.

This piece of research reflections addresses an important part of parents’ training and professional development, which unfortunately was overlooked previously. After reviewing opinion papers, program descriptions, theoretical frameworks, empirical studies, literature reviews on parental involvement, the study found a substantial gap in research, programs, and practice. The literature on parents’ involvement and its barriers, the study presents epistemological foundations for the overlooked part of parents’ training. The study recommends Internet Coupled Information and Communication Technologies (ICICTs) based parents’ training with synchronous and asynchronous modes providing quality content for enhancing parents’ knowledge, skills, and competence in educational aspects. These trainings on educational aspects target to create common knowledge constructs that can facilitate parents and teachers to establish complementary communication; leading to effective parental involvement beneficial for children and schools in the effective implementation of the whole-child approach. As parents' knowledge, skills, and competencies in educational aspects grow, it will increase their involvement, assistance, and interaction with their children and the school. Enhanced technology skills can also help parents overcome barriers that hindered their involvement in children education.

This study was conducted to determine the role of metaphysics in education. The purpose of the study, according to George Berkeley, is to learn the role of metaphysics in education, define metaphysics in education, and examine the metaphysics of idealism in education. A questionnaire was used to collect data from a sample selected through random sampling techniques. The questionnaire uses a Likert scale. SPSS software was used to find the mean, standard deviation and percentage of the product. Most of the respondents found that the teacher has an important role in the learning process, focusing on the teacher's brainstorming to get ideas and meaning through discussion, dialogue, and that the school encourages students to work together, listen, and respect others. In addition, the curriculum must include the philosophical concept of metaphysics as a theory of education. The initial stage. Curriculum should provide possibilities for conducting research and putting idealism's educational and philosophical ideas into new contexts.

This paper discusses the effec t of the growth of regul atory au thority in the Pakistani higher education system, which has res ul ted i n a state of accountability without autonomy. Hereby the faculty i s bei ng increasingly dem anded to c om ply with new rules and regulations and yet the institutions do not ha ve s uffic ient authority to perform their professional func ti ons. It was a The oretic al study that reviewed the previous ly avai lable literature to reach the conclusion. It is concluded that the centralized control and bureaucratic press ures i n Pakistan’s higher education have undermined faculty autonomy and quality-focused research. Sus tai nable improvement requires systems that em power and trust faculty as central agents of academic exc ellence . Reorient the Higher Educ ation Comm is si on toward outcome-based accountabi li ty by setting quali ty benchm arks while granting universi ties autonomy in curriculum, teaching, and research decisions.