STEM/STEAM education is an interdisciplinary pedagogical approach that cultivates skills in science (S), technology (T), engineering (E), arts (A), and mathematics (M) while also fostering 21st century skills like teamwork, problem-solving, critical thinking, and creativity in learners. Enhancing STEAM and 21st century skills for engineering students facilitates their swift adaptation to STEM/STEAM employment demands in the 4.0 industrial revolution and the ongoing digital transformation in Vietnam. This study aims to investigate the effect of STEAM project-based learning on the 21st century skills of 47 mechanical engineering technology students at a public university in Vietnam. The findings of a one-group pretest-posttest design and an analysis of engineering student groups’ STEAM project-based learning products revealed that there was a significant improvement in students' 21st century skills at a 95% confidence level. Among the three 21st century skills studied, engineering students’ collaboration skill showed a moderate effect size, while problem-solving and creative thinking skills demonstrated a large effect size after implementing STEAM project-based learning in the “Workplace Skills” course. Some significant limitations were identified, including (a) the lack of a comparison group, which may have influenced the difference between the pretest and posttest; and (b) the sustainability of 21st century skills developed through STEAM project-based learning in the “Workplace Skills” course was not investigated. Therefore, studying the effect of other factors on engineering students’ 21st century skills and exploring their sustainability were main recommendations for further research.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has revolutionized higher education. The rapid adoption of artificial intelligence in education (AIED) tools has significantly transformed educational management, specifically in self-directed learning (SDL). This study examines the factors influencing Indonesian higher education students' intention to adopt AIED tools for self-directed learning using a combination of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) with additional theories. A total of 322 university students from diverse academic backgrounds participated in the structured survey. This study utilized machine learning it was Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) to analyze nine factors, including attitude (AT), subjective norms (SN), perceived behavioral control (PBC), optimism (OP), user innovativeness (UI), perceived usefulness (PUF), facilitating conditions (FC), perception towards ai (PTA), and intention (IT) with a total of 41 items in the questionnaire. The model demonstrated high predictive accuracy, with SN emerging as the most significant factor to IT, followed by AT, PBC, PUF, FC, OP, and PTA. User innovativeness was the least influential factor due to the lowest accuracy. This study provides actionable insights for educators, policymakers, and technology developers by highlighting the critical roles of social influence, supportive infrastructure, and student beliefs in shaping AIED adoption for self-directed learning (SDL). This research not only fills an important gap in the literature but also offers a roadmap for designing inclusive, student-centered AI learning environments that empower learners and support the future of SDL in digital education.

In recent years, particularly over the last 10–15 years, the scientific value of oral history in relation to historical and social knowledge has been increasingly recognized. Since the 1980s, oral history researchers have pioneered new approaches to interpreting human experience, highlighting oral biographical narratives and recounted experiences as valuable material for social research. According to Tsiolis, the biographical narrative approach has become an established scientific methodology for studying how social actors interact with their environment and respond to social changes, as these are reflected through their subjectivity. Based on the above, this study involved four academic lecturers who narrated their academic and professional journeys, the factors that influenced them, the challenges they faced, and the positive impact of their engagement with teaching in the context of Greek higher education. The research employed the methodology of narrative biography, allowing the participants to recount their academic trajectories spontaneously, recalling personal experiences and memories. Through these narratives, qualitative data emerged, which were analyzed and coded into common themes, leading to conclusions about the conditions, aspirations, and disappointments experienced by academics in higher education institutions. The paper concludes some limitations of the current study and offers suggestions for future research.

This study investigates how undergraduate art majors at the National University of Art Education in Vietnam perceive the cultural integration into their English curriculum. A quantitative design was employed using a researcher-developed questionnaire administered to 214 students. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics, independent-samples t-tests, and multiple regression. Findings indicated that students valued culturally relevant content, particularly materials connected to both Vietnamese and international art as well as experiential and student-centered instructional strategies. Reported challenges included limited cultural background knowledge, cognitive overload, and reduced confidence when discussing culture in English. Crucially, results from multiple regression revealed that how culture is taught may have a greater impact on students’ experiences than the content itself. Therefore, these findings underscore the importance of aligning instructional approaches with learners’ disciplinary identities and offer implications for culturally responsive curriculum design, professional development, and the implementation of context-specific teaching strategies in English language instruction for art students.