Università degli studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia

This paper outlines an index of LGBT+ inclusion in universities and provides an initial ranking of Italian public universities based on this index. The LGBT+ University Inclusion Index incorporates an extensive set of indicators based on existing LGBT+ inclusion indices and expert opinions and is based on a fuzzy rule-based system of the Mamdani-Assilian type to measure inclusiveness. The index has a twofold aim: to help tertiary education institutions to assess their degree of inclusiveness, and to assess the level of LGBT+ inclusion in tertiary education by the National Agency for the Assessment of Higher Education and Research. Best practices in LGBT+ inclusion, implemented by Italian universities and identified in this study, are highlighted with the aim of suggesting and recommending guidelines helpful to fighting homo-bi-transphobic discrimination in higher education institutions.

Women’s participation in digital society is integral to achieving Agenda 2030 and an essential component in the EU strategy for digital transition. This article applies a poset-based approach to the European Women in Digital (WiD) Scoreboard, to examine women’s digital inclusion in European countries. The poset methodology allows us to identify the most significant indicators for each of the dimensions that compose the WiD, considering the whole EU-28 as well as different clusters of countries, and to construct a new ranking that avoids the shortcomings of the aggregative approaches and the pre-treatment of data. Our results show that two indicators, STEM graduates and the unadjusted pay gap, are the most relevant ones in attaining women’s digital inclusion. Our research contributes to better understand the dynamics and the underlying causes of women’s digital inclusion in the EU-28 countries, providing a clustering of EU countries into four performance groups depending on their women’s digital inclusion and contributes to the design of more targeted and effective policies for integrating gender equality in the EU digital transition strategy.

This paper examines the performance of regional innovation across the 60 southern European regions of Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain. A poset-based analysis is carried out in two phases. The first phase establishes a ranking of the clusters in which regions are grouped to identify patterns of comparable regions. The second phase focuses on the country level, where the regions of each of the four countries are ranked into five different performance levels. The outcomes of the two phases are compared with the results described in the Regional Innovation Scoreboard 2019, with a view to providing insights for policymakers.

.This paper analyses the impact on students’ performance of the introduction of team-based learning (TBL, for short) teaching methodology. TBL has proven to be a powerful and versatile teaching strategy that enables teachers to take small group learnings to a new level of effectiveness according to the empirical evidence of its implementation worldwide since 2020. The analysis involves various cohorts of macroeconomics students at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia Marco Biagi Department of Economics (DEMB). We exploit the structural break in the academic year 2017/2018 in which TBL was introduced in the Macroeconomics Course at the second year of the Bachelor Programme in Business and management to test the impact of TBL teaching methods in learning outcomes also considering students’ heterogeneity. Within this perspective of inclusiveness, special attention is given to gender bias in TBL effectiveness and outcomes in Macroeconomics measured by using Macroeconomics exam grades. Comparisons between groups were made using econometric and statistical analysis on a rich and self-constructed database. The latter, composed using multiple administrative and primary data sources, allows controlling for student socio-demographic characteristics and their academic careers. The econometric analysis starts with a multivariate regression to estimate the TBL’s effect on grades in macroeconomics, then moves to a probit analysis that returns the probability of passing the exam and concludes with a Cragg model (two-part Hurdle model) which offers improved estimates by correcting for the censored dependent variable. Regardless of gender, a positive impact of TBL on students’ performance is detected. Treated, especially if female, improves macroeconomic scores, and this is consistent with the literature reviewed. On the other hand, males benefit more from the treatment through a significant increase in the likelihood of passing the exam.

This paper examines the performance of regional innovation across 220 European regions. First, a cluster analysis is performed in order to detect patterns of comparable regions. Subsequently, a poset-based approach is adopted to obtain a ranking of the different clusters of European regions. The outcome is compared with the results described in the Regional Innovation Scoreboard 2019. Useful insights for policymakers are obtained.