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Saudi universities have incorporated capstone projects in the final year of an undergraduate study. Although universities are following recommendations of the National Commission for National Commission for Academic Accreditation and Assessment (NCAAA) and Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), no detailed guidelines for management and assessment of capstone projects are provided by these accreditation bodies. Variation in the management and assessment practices of capstone project courses and analysis of the students' capabilities to align with industry demands, to realize Vision 2030, is challenging. This study investigates the current practices for structure definition, management and assessment criteria used for capstone project courses at undergraduate level for information technology (IT) programs at Saudi universities.

A web-based questionnaire is administered using a web service commonly used for questionnaires and polls to investigate the structure, management and assessment of capstone projects at the undergraduate level offering software engineering, computer science and information technology (SECSIT) programs. In total, 42 faculty members (with range of experience of managing/advising capstone projects from 1 to more than 10 years) from 22 Saudi universities (out of more than 30 universities offering SECSIT undergraduate programs) participated in the study.

The authors have identified that Saudi universities are facing challenges in the utilized process model, the distribution of work and marks, the knowledge sharing approach and the assessment scheme. To cope with these challenges, the authors recommend the use of an incremental development process, the utilization of a project-driven approach, the development of a national level digital archive and the implementation of homogeneous assessment scheme.

To contribute to the national growth and to fulfill the market demand, universities are recommended to align the capstone project courses with latest technology trends. Universities must collaborate with the industry and update the structure and requirements of capstone project courses accordingly. This will further facilitate to bridge the gap between industry and academia and will develop a win–win scenario for all the stakeholders.

Although universities are committed to increase innovative capacities of their students for enabling them to contribute to economic and social growth, it is still hard to know the knowledge creation and sharing at national level. Variations in the management and assessment practices for capstone projects further intensify this challenge. Hence, there is a need of smart assessment and management of software capstone projects being developed in Saudi universities. Incorporating latest technologies, such unified management can facilitate discovering the trends and patterns related to the domain and complexity.

This paper explores the convergence of Education 4.0 and Industry 4.0 and presents a Twin Peaks model for their seamless integration.

A high-level literature review is conducted to identify and discuss the important challenges and opportunities offered by both Education 4.0 and Industry 4.0. A novel Twin Peaks model is devised for the convergence of these domains and to cope with the challenges effectively.

The proposed Twin Peak model for the convergence of Education 4.0 and Industry 4.0 suggests that the development of these two domains is interdependent. It emphasizes ethical considerations, inclusivity and understanding the concerns of stakeholders from both education and industry. We have also explained how continuous incremental adaptation within the proposed Twin Peaks model might assist in addressing concerns of one sector with the opportunities of the other.

First, Education 4.0 and Industry 4.0 are reviewed in terms of opportunities and challenges they present. Second, a novel Twin Peaks model for the convergence of Education 4.0 and Industry 4.0 is presented. The proposed discovers that the convergence is adaptive, iterative and must be ethically sound while considering the broader societal implications of the digital transformation. Third, this study also acts as a torch-bearer for the necessity for more research of this kind to guarantee that our educational ecosystem is adaptable and capable of producing the skills required for success in the era of IR4.0.

The purpose of this preliminary study is to identify the e‐book utilization habit of postgraduate and undergraduate students from the Mathematics Department of Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), and to determine the reasons why students are feeling comfortable or uncomfortable with the e‐book services offered by the library and the role the librarians can play in solving the identified obstacles.

A qualitative approach which employs a face‐to‐face interview session was used to collect information on e‐book utilization habit and to capture perception of the e‐book services offered by UPM library.

This research found that most of the participants use one common e‐book reading habit. Factors such as easy access reduce physical visits to the library and user‐friendly features offer a comfortable platform for the participant to use the mathematics e‐books. However, unreliable service, eye fatigue, lack of manipulability of online features and flaws in the physical design and insufficient e‐book collection cause the participants to feel uncomfortable with the service. Moreover, the role of librarians, publishers and interface designers is perceived to be an important remedy for all the inconvenience incurred.

Only 70 participants participated in this preliminary study. Furthermore, e‐books from a single publisher (SIAM) were used to collect data from the participants. Hence, the size of the population surveyed and usage of a single mathematics e‐book publisher placed certain limitations on the level of detail in which the data collected could be analysed and summarised.

The study is important in terms of obtaining a better understanding of e‐book reading habits among mathematics students and the factors that cause them to feel comfortable and frustrated with the e‐book service offered by the library.

This is believed to be the first published study of mathematics students' reading habits and their perception using e‐book in UPM.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a model that will demonstrate how the integration of Salam (exclusive agricultural commodity trade) with Takaful (micro-Takaful – a subdivision of Islamic insurance) and value chain can address major challenges facing the agricultural sector in Kano State, Nigeria.

The study conducted a thorough and critical analysis of relevant literature and existing models of financing agriculture in Nigeria to come up with the proposed model.

The findings indicate that measures undertaken to address the major challenges fail. In view of this, this study proposed Bay-Salam with Takaful and value chain model to solve a number of challenges such as poor access to financing, poor marketing and pricing, delay, collateral requirement and risk issues in order to avail farmers with easy access to finance and provide effective security to financial institutions.

The paper is limited to using secondary data. Therefore, empirical investigation can be carried out to strengthen the validation of the model.

The study outcome seeks to improve the productivity of the farmers through enhancing their access to finance. This will increase their level of production and provide more employment opportunities. In addition, it will boost financial inclusion, income generation, poverty alleviation, standard of living, food security and overall economic growth and development.

The novelty of this study lies in the integration of classical Bay-Salam with Takaful and value chain and create a unique model structure which the researchers do not come across in any research that presented it in Nigeria.

Eyewitness testimony can determine the outcome of criminal investigations. The cognitive interview (CI) has been widely used to collect informative and accurate accounts. However, face-to-face interviews have been restricted during the current pandemic, raising the need for using video-conferencing. The authors tested whether virtual interviews could produce elaborate accounts from eyewitnesses and if the CI superiority effect against a structured interview (SI) could be fully replicated online.

The authors used a 2 × 2 factorial design with interview condition (CI vs SI) and environment (face-to-face vs virtual) manipulated between-subjects. A total of 88 participants were randomly assigned to one of the four conditions. Participants watched a mock robbery and were interviewed 48 h later using either the SI or the CI. Both interviews contained the same structure and interview phases but only the CI included its key cognitive mnemonics/ instructions. Both sessions were either face-to-face or online.

Participants interviewed with the CI recalled more information than participants interviewed with the SI, regardless of the interview environment. Both environments produced a comparable amount of recall. Report accuracy was high for all groups.

This can be crucial to inform police practices and research in this field by suggesting investigative interviews can be conducted virtually in situations such as the current pandemic or when time and resources do not allow for face-to-face interviewing.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study showing that the CI superiority effect can be replicated online and that a fully remote CI can produce elaborate accounts.

This study aims to obtain methods to identify and find the place of damage, which is one of the topics that has always been discussed in structural engineering. The cost of repairing and rehabilitating massive bridges and buildings is very high, highlighting the need to monitor the structures continuously. One way to track the structure's health is to check the cracks in the concrete. Meanwhile, the current methods of concrete crack detection have complex and heavy calculations.

This paper presents a new lightweight architecture based on deep learning for crack classification in concrete structures. The proposed architecture was identified and classified in less time and with higher accuracy than other traditional and valid architectures in crack detection. This paper used a standard dataset to detect two-class and multi-class cracks.

Results show that two images were recognized with 99.53% accuracy based on the proposed method, and multi-class images were classified with 91% accuracy. The low execution time of the proposed architecture compared to other valid architectures in deep learning on the same hardware platform. The use of Adam's optimizer in this research had better performance than other optimizers.

This paper presents a framework based on a lightweight convolutional neural network for nondestructive monitoring of structural health to optimize the calculation costs and reduce execution time in processing.

This research is designed to answer questions: do Islamic teachings offer relevant perspectives on human resource (HR) issues? Are the treatments of HR issues in Islam compatible with evolving organizational concepts? Do current HR practices in countries with Muslim majority (CMM) resemble Islamic prescriptions? It aims to address these and other questions in line with early Islamic instructions.

This paper surveys Islamic texts and treaties. It then compares Islamic instruction to what prevails in Christianity and Judaism.

Islamic prescriptions view the interests of employees and employers as complementary. Workers are treated as the creators of value in the marketplace and by necessity the primary force for economic growth and prosperity. It is argued that the application of the philosophy of ehsan in the workplace offers a useful framework for positively safeguarding societal concerns.

This paper offers practitioners and researchers various avenues on how to address the issues of HR in Islamic societies. In contrasting Islamic and Western HR foundations, the paper identifies certain minefields.

This paper offers a unique insight on the nature of HR instruction and policies. In this paper, it is argued that Islamic prescriptions on HR, if internalized, may guard against violating human dignity and ensure a fine balance between organizational and societal interests.

The purpose of this study is to apply the concept of organizational ambidexterity as a conceptual lens to increase the understanding of tensions between exploitation (continuity) and exploration (change) in Agile software development (ASD) project teams, and particularly the balancing (ambidextrous) strategies utilized.

A conceptual framework was constructed from interdisciplinary sources on ambidexterity. A literature review of publications on ambidexterity in ASD was then performed, and the results from the selected publications were classified according to an extension of the conceptual framework.

Contextual ambidexterity in ASD is affected by the four basic coherent concepts: time, task, team and transition. The study found that most ambidextrous factors and strategies were task and team-related. In addition, a mixture of hard (performance) strategies and soft (social) strategies is needed in order for people/teams to (be able to) become ambidextrous.

To provide a better understanding of ASD, it is important to identify a broader set of ambidextrous factors and strategies that can impact ASD project teams. The expanded conceptual framework can serve as a basis for future empirical research and provide insights to practitioners on how to strengthen ambidexterity in ASD projects.

The contribution is of great importance for ASD research and practice, as ASD methods are a popular method for managing projects within ASD and in other nonsoftware organizations. In addition, as more and more organizations struggle to deal with rapidly changing environments, interest in the phenomena of paradoxical tensions and the strategy (ambidexterity) to deal with these tensions increase.

The aim of the article is to define the way of understanding of agile in enterprises, to verify the factors limiting agility implementation, as well as to understand what the expectations of enterprise management towards agile implementation are.

The article uses both literature studies and empirical research. The research was conducted in 2019 in 152 companies located in Luxemburg, Croatia and Poland, which have implemented an agile approach to management.

In most of the surveyed organisations, agile is understood as a methodology for creating projects or applications. The most common barriers to implementing agile in the surveyed enterprises are culture too deeply rooted in traditional methodologies and the lack of funds to introduce transformations. Growth in productivity and competitiveness and reducing delivery time stand out among the most common expectations of the management of the surveyed enterprises.

The article is in line with the idea of analysing the key factors of a successful agile implementation, which can be a guideline for an enterprise to manage the adoption of agility. The article utilises original research tools, provides comparisons between countries and presents implications for practitioners and researchers.

This chapter discusses the development of public opinion polls in Malaysia, especially those related to politics and elections in the state. It traces the early attempts at public opinion polls and their relatively recent development in estimating electoral outcomes in Malaysia. In analysing the efforts, the chapter relates the conduct of opinion polls with changing trends in Malaysia’s elections, particularly the shift from a dominant party system to one of two-coalition systems since the 12th general elections (GE12) in 2008. The chapter also discusses the role of the various actors who are involved in opinion polling, and the usual contents in such polls. It evaluates the possibility and difficulty of the polls in estimating outcomes of elections. In view of the new norms developing since the spread of COVID-19 in 2020, the chapter also explores the challenges and opportunities of public opinion polls in articulating public sentiment.