Within Industry 4.0 research, the spotlight shines on technological and organisational challenges. This study shifts the focus to worker readiness, beginning with an analysis of twenty-three models to establish the state of research. Findings demonstrate that existing models are mostly early-stage proposals addressing competences featured in mainstream 21^st-century and digital-competence frameworks. Worker-level factors explicitly aligned with emerging cyber-physical systems receive little attention. To construct a worker-readiness model calibrated to the needs of Industry 4.0, the authors devised a research procedure based on a two-phase integrative review of 135 publications. Firstly, they deployed an activity-system apparatus to produce a structured description of the target environment. Secondly, major worker competence groupings, aligned with this target, were extracted, tagged and reduced to five dimensions. The resulting model consolidates prior research and introduces two original competence groupings addressing human-machine partnering and decision-making in Industry 4.0. This study is a foundational step by the Educational Informatics Lab, Ontario Tech University, Canada, toward deploying a global online profile tool for generating, analysing and aggregating worker readiness profiles. This cross-disciplinary project will help researchers, educators, corporate trainers, human resource managers, policymakers, and systems designers more effectively diagnose the readiness of workers for Industry 4.0.

The onset of the pandemic catalyzed a paradigm shift in educational methodologies, bringing various forms, such as hybrid, distance, and fully online models, into focus. The following study explores the affective domain in online learning, focusing on how emotions, facial expressions, and body language influence engagement and support community building in fully online learning environments. This research explores the role of emotional intelligence in Fully Online Learning Communities (FOLC) and examines the impact of positive and negative emotions on interpersonal engagement and participation. Findings indicate positive emotions to be closely linked to increased engagement and active participation. The study also highlights the importance of exploring body language in digital learning environments and addresses challenges posed by technological barriers in fully online learning spaces. Emotional intelligence is pivotal in online learning and community building, emphasizing the need to understand how to create emotionally supportive digital learning environments. Outcomes indicate a need for future research to focus on understanding the role of cultural dimensions in supporting learner agency and community building in the fully online learning context.

This study aims to provide support for the efficacy of the Fully Online Learning Community (FOLC) Model by examining communication between participants within a series of recorded online focus groups and by investigating the behaviours that are undertaken by participants. A coding system based on body language expressions is proposed as an outcome of this study and the affective domain of the participants is analyzed through facial expressions, body language and content (words) employed. Findings suggest that affects (emotions) have a preeminent role in the social presence in FOLC environments. Positive emotions are easier to detect as individuals exhibit them without masking, with some possible exceptions arising from personal dispositions and cultural inferences. Negative emotions can also be detected through a combination of facial expressions and body language coding. However, findings were not consistent for determining sadness and surprise states and further studies will have to explore ways to differentiate these affects from others. The instigations set forward by the participants and affective responses to the behaviours of instigators provided support for the empirical study about the efficacy of facilitation and interactions within fully online learning environments.

Online social environments provide opportunities for authentic social engagement through unique affordances such as increased user control, accessibility, convenience, and access to a larger community. To date, limited research has been conducted on the intentional and independent social engagement of autistic adults. This systematic literature review explores (1) how the intentional and independent online social engagement of autistic adolescents and adults relates to basic psychological needs (BPN) for autonomy, competency and relatedness and (2) the generative mechanisms of the online social engagement for autistic adolescents and adults. Our findings suggest that autistic individuals can actively and effectively engage in online social activities and develop meaningful social relationships, contrary to the assumptions of social deficits associated with autism. Furthermore, the results indicate that an online social environment can fulfill the basic psychological needs (autonomy, competency, and relatedness) of autistic adolescents and adults. The study also identified critical generative mechanisms at the individual, educational, and societal levels that promote feelings of autonomy, competency, and relatedness in an online social context. These mechanisms include agency, purpose, competence, scaffolding, control, authenticity, accessibility, intersubjectivity, and transferability. This review supports the need for a strength-based, holistic approach to understanding the social engagement of autistic individuals that considers the generative mechanisms of their intentional and independent social engagement. Future research should explore the various factors that influence the online social engagement of autistic individuals and how they can be leveraged to enhance their well-being and quality of life.