Continuing professional development for college teachers in Bangladesh

Purpose: Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is a fundamental issue for knowledge management in teaching. Teachers get more benefits from it because of the opportunities for participation in training, workshops, seminars, symposiums, mentoring programs, research work, coaching, and others. This study explores college teachers’ perceptions about CPD at the college level for knowledge management and lifelong learning and identifies the factors that contribute to designing CPD. Methodology: An organizational case study with mixed methods and a multistage cluster sampling technique were applied to carry out this research. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, college teachers’ face-to-face appointments were converted to e-mail communication to capture data. Findings: Of the 63 scheduled appointments, 37 (58.73%) respondents sent their responses via e-mail. For proper empirical evaluation, we used the non-parametric Mann–Whitney and Shapiro–Wilk tests. Tested and confirmed result of the study suggested that age, subject, length of service, gender, in-house training, necessary skills, administrative support, networking capacity, and online facility are the important contributors to CPD and knowledge management. Implications of the study: The facts and findings of our study are very important for policymakers and stakeholders to formulate appropriate policies.

Students' awareness and perceptions regarding copyright infringement

Purpose: The main purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which students of the Dhaka University are aware of the existing copyright law and its infringement. Methodology: Students from different departments of the Dhaka University were the sample population for this study. An online survey was used for collecting data and a questionnaire was designed using Google Forms including both open and close ended questions which was distributed to the students using different social media platforms. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS software and Microsoft Excel. Chi-square and Mann-Whitney U tests were performed to analyze students’ awareness regarding copyright issues.Findings: A total of 260 students participated in the survey. The study showed that 82.6% students are aware of copyright and 80.2% are aware of copyright infringement. 61.2% students violated copyright once or more by plagiarism, photocopy and other means particularly because of the high price and unavailability of the original materials. Most of the students opined that developing citing and referencing practice among students and introducing copyright in university curricula can help in reducing copyright infringement.Research limitations: The study was limited to only one public university of Bangladesh because of time limitation and COVID-19 outbreak.Practical implications: The present study can create greater awareness and respect for copyright law in the university as well as in the whole country.Originality/value: This research is one of the first attempts to study Dhaka University students’ awareness and perceptions regarding copyright infringement and can act as the building block for future research on this topic.

Achieving sustainable development goals at local levels

Purpose: This study aims to assess the effectiveness of open budget meeting as a means of ensuring public participation in the budget making process at local government bodies in Bangladesh’s Sylhet region, and also compares the extent of public participation among urban local government and rural local government bodies.Methodology: This study followed both quantitative and qualitative approach conducting a social survey. Among 13 Upazilas of Sylhet district in Bangladesh, Kanaighat upazila was selected randomly. The study was conducted at Kanaighat paurashava and Satbak union. Findings: This study reveals that the most of the people participate in open budget meeting with a motive to get some personal benefits. Moreover, a few elected officials prefer not to involve the general public in the OBM, considering public participation as a source of disruption.Research limitations: Sample size is a limitation of this study. Due to Covid-19 situation, a larger sample could not be collected. Additionally, the study covers only one district, out of 64 districts in Bangladesh.Practical implications: This study suggests that the government and local bodies may take appropriate measures to enhance citizen’s capacity as well as access to information regarding budget making process for the purpose of ensuring inclusive and participatory decision making at OBM in Bangladesh’s local government bodies, leading to achieving SDG 16.7 declared by the United Nations. Originality/value: This is an original study conducted in Sylhet district of Bangladesh. The study findings confirm similar findings elsewhere in the world.

Library transformation

Purpose: The main objective of this study is to examine the importance of digital libraries during the COVID-19 pandemic in dissemination of information services, to know the users’ perspectives towards its success and also examines the challenges faced by the libraries during this pandemic and also about how the librarians cope up with the challenges and function in the new normal situation.Methodology: An online Pan-India survey was conducted among library professionals and user communities. By using survey instrument, Google Form, a total of 12 questions were asked from general to specific towards use of digital libraries during pandemic period. Total 250 responses were received. The responses received were categorized, analyzed and presented in this paper. The research data were primarily collected from blogs, social media and online survey which were carried out among various library professionals to know their perspective towards digital libraries, new skill requirement and current challenges faced by the libraries in the new normal imposed on us due to COVID-19 pandemic.Findings: This study reveals that the library professionals are eager to learn online technologies for developing and delivering information services. It also identifies that to remain connected and to spread knowledge, large numbers of online webinars are conducted in library fields. The major challenges the librarians faced during COVID-19 are physical distancing from workplace, fear of disease contraction, Lack of high speed internet connection, low response of users in social media platforms etc.Originality/ value: This is an original study conducted in India which gives an overview on the transformation of libraries by using digital library services to meet the need of the users during COVID-19.

Mapping knowledge structure of artificial intelligence research in Bangladesh based on co-word analysis

Purpose: This article aims to map the knowledge structure of artificial intelligence (AI) in Bangladesh through detecting the interdisciplinarity and topic hotspots in the light of co-word analysis. Methodology: This study adopted bibliometric analysis of publications collected from the Web of Science (WoS) database. The WoS database was searched and 1557 publications were found. 1359 papers were selected for final analysis after eliminating duplicates. Co-occurrence words matrix, keyword clusters, hot topics were mapped using co-word analysis. The results were mapped, clustered and presented by VOSviewer.Results: The result showed a rapidly increasing publication trajectory with 12 sub-domain cluster under the AI knowledge domain in Bangladesh. It also identified that AI, machine learning, classification, neural network, deep learning, artificial neural network, convolutional neural network, support vector machine and data mining are hot topics during the period of studied time. However, the findings also suggest that many research areas in the research domain of AI of Bangladesh is still nascent.Limitation: VOSviewer often avoid having overlapping terms when multiple terms are positioned very close to each other. So, the overlapping terms remain invisible sometimes.Practical implications: This study may have potential usefulness in uncovering the AI research fields’ intellectual structure within a discipline and also to anticipate future innovation pathways of AI field in Bangladesh.Originality: Bibliometric methods to explore the research trend and growth of AI research field as a ‘knowledge base’ in Bangladesh is one of the first attempts.

Digital information marketing initiatives

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the digital marketing initiatives taken up by the central universities of northeast India through their library websites to promote the use of their information products and services by their clienteles.Methodology: For the present study, websites of nine central universities of northeast India have been surveyed for evaluation. All features of the websites have been examined. A checklist has been designed for collecting the necessary data. To analyze the results, simple statistical calculations were used.Findings: It is found that the majority of the library websites (66.69%) have a direct link to the parent website, and they provide general information, such as library rules, library team/staff, about library, library staff directory, timing, library notices, news, and events. With regard to language, 77.77% of the websites used both English and Hindi languages. The majority of them also provide information about services such as OPAC, internet access, circulation, membership, current awareness service, reprographic service, anti-plagiarism, library orientation, and newsletter. However, the University Libraries under study are yet to exploit the full potential of the website as the clienteles are lagging behind the effective use of the same. The use of social networking sites by the libraries, as the study shows, is also not much encouraging.Research limitations: The paper is limited to nine central university libraries of northeast India. Researchers in the future can take up other problems associated with private and state-owned universities in this regard.Practical implications: Central universities of northeast India must come forward to improve their library websites featuring other portals and provisions to enhance in marketing their information products and other services in the digital environment to serve the community effectively.

Online user education

Purpose: This study aims to describe online user education activities during the COVID-19 pandemic at the UIN Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta Library. Design/Methodology/Approach: The approach taken in this paper is an empirical approach related to activities at the UIN Sunan Kalijaga Library. Findings: This paper provides an overview of the impact of the pandemic on services at the UIN Sunan Kalijaga Library. It also highlights the implementation of online user education during the COVID-19 pandemic at the UIN Sunan Kalijaga Library which was previously carried out physically. It further observes user behavior after online user education is implemented. Originality/Values: The library's effort to organize online user education is one of the innovations made by the library of UIN Sunan Kalijaga in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Online user education must continue to be carried out to help users get to know the library orientation at the UIN Sunan Kalijaga Library. The implementation of online user education at the UIN Sunan Kalijaga Library can be imitated and can be used by other libraries as a model for implementing user education during the pandemic.