ABSTRACT
Experiments are essential in physics to help students comprehend concepts. Although studies had been conducted to explore whether virtual physics experiments could affect students' learning motivation, they showed inconclusive results. Therefore, this research aimed to investigate the influence of a virtual physics experiment learning environment on the physics learning motivation of Grade 9 students, combining quantitative (quasi-experimental design) and qualitative (student interviews) research methods. Participants of this research were from two different classes, divided into an experimental group (n=37) and a control group (n=37). The intervention lasted for three weeks, with one 45-min physics experiment class per week. Learning motivation was measured by the Physics Learning Motivation Test, which included dimensions like interest-enjoyment, tension-pressure, perceived choice, perceived competence, and perceived value. Based on the data analysis, we found that the virtual experiment learning environment could significantly increase students' learning motivation, especially for the perceived value dimension. Moreover, students who perceived a higher level of competence in the virtual environment were more likely to appreciate its value and utilize virtual experiments again. We expect that the implications of this study and intervention design can be a reference for teachers in incorporating virtual experiments in future physics education and provide a possible solution for conducting physics lessons during the COVID-19 pandemic. More in-depth teacher interviews are recommended to investigate the issues from different pedagogical perspectives. © 30th International Conference on Computers in Education Conference, ICCE 2022 - Proceedings.
ABSTRACT
The unexpected closure of schools, including kindergartens, due to the coronavirus pandemic in the past two years transformed face-to-face teaching into online teaching, which was not a common practice for kindergarten teachers. As research reveal, kindergarten teachers are generally inexperienced in teaching online, so they need ongoing support and interactive professional training like building a community of practice (CoP) for switching to online teaching. Yet, limited research has investigated the impacts of building an online CoP as a teacher professional development approach in early childhood education. Thus, this study examined the effects and sustainable factors of the CoP groups provided by a university for online teaching in early childhood education through intensive training and quadripartite collaboration among kindergarten teachers, teacher trainers, preservice teachers, and eLearning specialists. To have an in-depth investigation, this study employed a case study of three kindergartens, semi-structured interviews with eight kindergarten teachers and three university teacher trainers were conducted via Zoom. Then, multi-sourced data, including artifacts and interview data, were analyzed by thematic analysis based on the CoP Theory to elucidate participants' experiences of an online CoP as an approach for teacher professional development. Based on the findings, this study revealed that the CoP empowered kindergarten teachers to teach online by (1) developing their technical and leadership skills through (2) building up a supportive network for idea exchanges;and (3) accumulating resources, skills, and tools they needed for online teaching from the domain, community, and practice dimension accordingly. In addition, the findings indicated that content relevance to the school curriculum, availability of time for collaboration, continuous technical support, and self-learning resources are important factors for sustaining the online teaching practices learned from the CoP groups. This study recommended an establishment of an ongoing online CoP for facilitating more sustainable teacher professional development in early childhood settings. © 30th International Conference on Computers in Education Conference, ICCE 2022 - Proceedings.
ABSTRACT
The Internet has never been more important to our society, and understanding the behavior of the Internet is essential. The Center for Applied Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA) Telescope observes a continuous stream of packets from an unsolicited darkspace representing 1/256 of the Internet. During 2019 and 2020 over 40,000,000,000,000 unique packets were collected representing the largest ever assembled public corpus of Internet traffic. Using the combined resources of the Supercomputing Centers at UC San Diego, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and MIT, the spatial temporal structure of anonymized source-destination pairs from the CAIDA Telescope data has been analyzed with GraphBLAS hierarchical hypersparse matrices. These analyses provide unique insight on this unsolicited Internet darkspace traffic with the discovery of many previously unseen scaling relations. The data show a significant sustained increase in unsolicited traffic corresponding to the start of the COVID19 pandemic, but relatively little change in the underlying scaling relations associated with unique sources, source fan-outs, unique links, destination fan-ins, and unique destinations. This work provides a demonstration of the practical feasibility and benefit of the safe collection and analysis of significant quantities of anonymized Internet traffic.
ABSTRACT
Learning Objectives: 1. Provide a virtual learning experience showcasing EM for pre-clinical URM medical students with no prior EM exposure. 2. Guide students through a scholarly presentation exploring basic study design in EM specific topics. 3. Provide individualized mentorship with URM EM residents and faculty. : The EM Department at NYU Langone hosts a monthlong fully funded summer fellowship for rising second year underrepresented in medicine (URM) students from medical schools across the country. During the COVID-19 pandemic, our fellowship transitioned to remote learning to limit disease transmission. Learning objectives typically taught via in-person workshops and clinical shifts were presented in virtual presentations and interactive demonstrations. Equipment such as suture kits, splinting supplies, and wilderness medicine gear was mailed to students prior to the start date. Google classroom, Zoom, and Webex were used to facilitate the online classroom. 15 faculty and 8 residents participated through workshops, didactics, panel discussions, journal clubs, 1:1 mentoring, and Q&A sessions. Each student worked on a scholarly project throughout with their resident and faculty mentor and then presented it on the last day. The focus of the scholarly project was changed from a clinical focus to a social medicine issue in the students' local communities. We hosted 4 visiting URM students and 2 NYU students. The curriculum was rated from 0 to 10, with resident didactics (7) rated 8.17 (SD 1.91), faculty lectures (15) rated 8.05 (SD 2.20), resident simulation workshops (2) rated 8.75 (SD 1.60), and resident procedural workshops (2) rated 8.58 (SD 1.96). Every participant reported that they are more likely to pursue EM after the fellowship compared to before. This successful transition to a virtual classroom is a viable option to consider for programs seeking to continue education while reducing risk of disease transmission.
ABSTRACT
Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic has caused massive school closures worldwide and many schools were forced to adopt online teaching mode. Purpose: This survey study aims to examine the effectiveness of online teaching in physical education (PE) and support needed from the teachers’ perspective. Methods: Responses from 294 frontline PE teachers were collected via an online survey between 4 and 29 January 2021. Results: Four major findings were highlighted in our study. First, most teachers reported that online PE lessons were not effective to improve motor skill acquisition and physical activity level, the major reasons for which were “lack of practical training”, “students’ lack of learning motivation/interest”, and “limited interpersonal interactions”. Second, most teachers encountered difficulties in online teaching, with major difficulties comprising “limited interpersonal interactions’ and “difficult to retain students’ learning motivation/interest”. Third, most teachers felt that online teaching was stressful due to the increased workload in preparation and safety concerns of the home-exercise programme. Fourth, many teachers suggested that schools or governments should provide online teaching kits, such as suggested online lesson plans or home activity recommendations, for their reference. Conclusions: In summary, the effectiveness of online teaching in PE during COVID-19 school closures was generally perceived to be low and difficult by the frontline PE teachers. Schools and governments should provide sufficient support, such as online teaching kits and concrete teaching guidelines, for PE teachers to develop creative and interactive online lessons, which will in turn benefit students in motor skill acquisition and physical activity level. © JPES.