The Need for E-Learning Standards for Online Laboratory Management Systems

E-Learning education, Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) and Small Private Online Courses (SPOCs) have been ex-panding in the last decade. However, it increased in giant strides during the COVID-19 pandemic when the schools and universities did not have another option than to use remote education. Having a general understanding of E-Learning technology is not enough to implement an engineering virtual classrooms and laboratories. E-Learning standards are needed in all areas of E-Learning Systems such as online educational web applications, Learning Management Systems, and online labs, among others to gain interoperability, scalability, sustainability, security, privacy, and safety. The main objective of this paper is to discuss in general the current standards and technologies applied to E-Learning systems and analyze the need for a specific standards for Online Laboratory Management Systems (OLMS). © 2022 IEEE.

A Domain Model for SARS-Co V-2 Rational Vaccine Design to Engineer a Prediction Tool for Binding Affinity and Antigenicity

One of our greatest present challenges are designing vaccines against SARS COV2 and its variants. Rational vaccine design uses computational methods prior to development of a vaccine for testing in animals and humans the latest methods in rational vaccine design use machine learning techniques to predict binding affinity and antigenicity but offer the researchers only isolated stand-Alone tools. A difficulty that software engineers and data scientist face in development of tools for doctors and researchers is their lack of knowledge of the medical domain. This paper presents a set of domain model developed in collaboration between software engineers and a medical researcher in the process of building a tool scientists could use to predict binding affinity and antigenicity of potential designs of SARS COV2 vaccines. A domain model visualizes the real-world entities and their interrelationships, that together define the domain space. This domain model will be useful to other software engineers trying to predict other characteristics of vaccines, such as potential autoimmunity response. © 2021 IEEE.

Addressing the need for online engineering labs for developing countries

Before the pandemic, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals included cutting learning poverty in half by 2030. The COVID-19 pandemic has had severe negative impact on education throughout the world and set back progress toward this goal. Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education include laboratory experiences. Engineering and Technology program Accreditation Agencies deem labs critical to an engineer's education and require it in the criteria for international accreditation. While converting traditional instruction to virtual instruction posed a challenge to all, developing countries faced higher constraints of limited bandwidth, connectivity, and household access to technology. Once the access problems are resolved, universities still have the challenge of providing inclusive access to online laboratory experiments, particularly for engineering students. This paper presents current solutions for online Engineering laboratories and proposes an online lab management system and a federated lab model appropriate for developing countries that the Latin American and Caribbean Consortium of Engineering Institutions (LACCEI) is currently developing and piloting. © 2021 IEEE.