ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic brought confinement that caused a drastic change throughout society. Mobility was reduced, education suffered a substantive change, distance learning, and digital skills were developed. Climate change and environmental pollution indicators indeed decreased. However, the quantification of the environmental footprint of the new form of remote work (digital carbon footprint) has not been considered in systematic studies. There are not many tools to calculate the corresponding emissions. The main objective of this educational research work was to determine the carbon footprint of digital activities in a company during the confinement caused by COVID-19 through a Challenge-Based Learning methodology. A one-semester academic program was designed to develop energy auditing skills for students of Sustainable Development Engineering. A company (training partner) was determined to validate the evaluation instruments. Techniques for data collection, questionnaires, and analysis of energy consumption data were designed. A helpful protocol was defined to determine the digital carbon footprint generated in the pilot company, allowing us to scale our research towards quantifying Greenhouse Gas emissions in Institutions or Companies of greater size. The soft and disciplinary graduation competencies of the students were solidly developed and evaluated through internal instruments and by the training partner standards. Finally, we propose mitigation measures aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals, in line with the new Green and Sustainable Digital Education trend. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
The Covid-19 pandemic demanded educators to explore new methods to provide their students with practical activities, despite the lockdown measures around the world. The use of Extended Reality (XR) technology, which includes Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and Mixed Reality (MR), offers special tools to transform the learning experience in engineering education with immersive environments. This study presents a comparison of the process followed to design XR resources for engineering education applications at three different universities in Latin America. The motivation of this work is to share the design experience, as well as the lessons learned and recommendations for educators that are looking into adopting XR technology in their courses. Even though the group of professors worked together along the project, the design of the immersive experience and the XR resource was different for each university according to its specific context and needs. The design process comprises the resource conceptual definition, the technological development, and the final product with academic use. The three design processes were compared to identify lessons learned, best practices, and recommendations for future XR resources in engineering education. XR technologies have a great potential in engineering education closing the gap between the classroom and the real-life practice using the principles of educational innovation. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
The Covid-19 pandemic forced Higher Education classes to shift to online education. This sudden change required universities to respond rapidly, adapting their classes to remote courses maintaining quality educational delivery. In this context, our university implemented the Digital Flexible Model (DFM) to continue with its academic offer. The challenge involved moving 55, 000 classes per week to the DFM, attending 90, 000 students with 9, 400 professors, all in one week. At the end of the semester, a strategic survey was applied to a statistical sample of professors and students from the Engineering School to get feedback about their experience with the DFM. The results highlight takeaways to improve the instructional model and offer interesting reflections by gender from the experience of faculty and students. © 2021 IEEE.