Building a Real-Time System to Monitor Students Electronically Based on Digital Images of Face Movement

The spread of the Corona Virus pandemic on a global scale had a great impact on the trend towards e-learning. In the virtual exams the student can take his exams online without any papers, in addition to the correction and electronic monitoring of the exams. Tests are supervised and controlled by a camera and proven cheat-checking tools. This technology has opened the doors of academic institutions for distance learning to be wide spread without any problems at all. In this paper, a proposed model was built by linking a computer network using a server/client model because it is a system that distributes tasks between the two. The main computer that acts as a server (exam observer) is connected to a group of sub-computers (students) who are being tested and these devices are considered the set of clients. The proposed student face recognition system is run on each computer (client) in order to identify and verify the identity of the student. When another face is detected, the program sends a warning signal to the server. Thus, the concerned student is alerted. This mechanism helps examinees reduce cheating cases in early time. The results obtained from the face recognition showed high accuracy despite the large number of students' faces. The performance speed was in line with the test performance requirements, handling 1,081 real photos and adding 960 photos. © 2022 IEEE.

HRM and the smart and dark side of technology

As part of this 60th anniversary edition of the Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, this paper provides a review of the impact of technology over the last decade on the role of HRM. This period was bookended by the global financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic and saw the emergence of fourth industrial revolution. The decade provided a platform and maturity of a wide range of technology-based processes requiring appropriate policies to guide and manage them. From social media and cyber-vetting, to electronic monitoring and surveillance and biometric testing, all have made a significant impact across the workplace and not least on the HRM aspect of work. The paper addresses these changes to show the significant impact on the workplace. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Privatized Justice: Ankle Monitors Are the New Private Prison

"17 The exploding prison population was undeniable-the DOJ reported 240,000 state and federal prisoners nationwide in 1975.18 In 2008, the U.S. prison and jail population peaked at 2.3 million.19 The upward trend has slowed, with just over 2 million at the end of 2019,20 but a March 2020 report estimates 2.3 million people are incarcerated across the United States.21 Unfortunately, even the releases triggered by COVID-19 are already proving to be short-lived-state prison and jail populations are "ticking back up" to prepandemic levels.22 B. Private Prisons Problems of prison overcrowding were widely known in the 1980s, with two-thirds of states under court order to improve conditions that violated the Constitution.23 But as the prison population grew,24 states struggled to balance the need for more facilities and the political pressure to be "tough on crime. The Corporate Duopoly Filling that need in the market, CoreCivic28 and GEO Group29 became the two largest players in the private prison industry. Since its founding in 1983, CoreCivic has become "the nation's largest owner of partnership correctional, detention, and residential reentry facilities and one of the largest private prison operators in the United States. "30 CoreCivic reported an annual revenue of $1.9 billion in 2020 and $1.86 billion in 2021,31 operating 113 facilities across 22 states.32 The corporation is also a major contractor in the temporary detention facility business (specifically immigration detention) and holds the longestrunning federal contract in the industry.33 In 2016, CoreCivic was awarded a $1 billion nounparalleled contest bill by the U.S. Administration to build and operate a detention facility for immigrants from Central America.34 In 2019, it was awarded a five-year contract worth $2.1 billion to provide guard services at a private San Diego immigrant detention center.35 GEO Group, considered the second-largest private prison corporation in the United States, was given the first federal government contract for a privately operated prison in 1997.36 Although traditionally showing a smaller profit margin than CoreCivic,37 GEO Group had an annual revenue of $2.35 billion for 2020 and $2.25 billion for 2021-an over $1 billion revenue increase since 2010.38 Worldwide, GEO operates and/or manages "approximately 86,000 beds at 106 secure and community-based facilities . . . and electronic monitoring and supervision services for more than 250,000 individuals. A 2017 study by the Prison Policy Initiative followed the money of mass incarceration-a $182 billion industry.43 While private prisons account for $3.9 billion of that industry, that does not even touch on the number of for-profit interests involved in everything from bail fees to commissary, telephone calls, and video visitation.44 A 2020 report lists over 4,100 corporations that profit from mass incarceration in the United States.45 Central to the success of the private prison industry has been its ability to offer diverse product offerings while maintaining ongoing profit margins.

The Impact of Emerging Technologies on Workplace Privacy Case Study-Electronic Monitoring

Due to the COVID-19 epidemic pandemic, the Internet invades our life aspects and activities, the way we work or shop has changed, the educational system has changed, and the social structure and many other things in our lives have changed. In this research work, we analyze three hypotheses regarding electronic monitoring during the COVID-19 pandemic. The first hypothesis is the relationship between Electronic Monitoring and safety, the second is the relationship between Electronic Monitoring and privacy, and the third is related to acceptance of electronic monitoring in the workplace. For that, we have surveyed the COVID-19 pandemic to measure the effects of new technologies-in particular-electronic monitoring on productivity, creativity, and the effect of social networks in increasing the acceptance of electronic monitoring in the workplace. Our results show that the attitudes toward electronic monitoring have not changed over the years and a higher percentage of employees who were polled do not accept being monitored at the workplace, which means the introduction of new technologies in our life has not changed the opinion of people about electronic monitoring. © 2022. Arwa Zabian and Sami Qawasmeh. This open-access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.

Electronic Performance Monitoring: Review of Theories, Conceptual Framework, and Study Proposal

Use of electronic monitoring techniques in organizational settings has significantly gained in relevance in recent years, predominantly due to the increased availability of corresponding information and communication technologies. Moreover, the restricted social mobility due to COVID-19 and the resulting increase of home office has come along with an increased interest of employers to monitor the activities of their employees. Against the background of these developments, along with the general importance of theory-focused research, the goal of this review is to identify the theories used in the electronic performance monitoring (EPM) literature and to illustratively show how recently identified research gaps could be examined in future studies based on theory integration. A total of twelve theories were extracted from the literature and examined. Four of these theories were integrated in a conceptual framework. In addition, a study design for future research is outlined. The overall objective of the present contribution is to strengthen the theoretical foundation of the EPM research field. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Remote workers' experiences with electronic monitoring during Covid-19: implications and recommendations

Purpose>This conceptual article outlines the known effects of employee monitoring on employees who are working remotely. Potential implications, as well as practitioner suggestions, are outlined to identify how practitioners can create more supportive employee experiences as well as apply these to workplace health management scenarios.Design/methodology/approach>This overview is based on a selective and practically oriented review of articles that hitherto considered the health implications of remote workers being monitored electronically over the last two years. This overview is subsequently complemented by a discussion of more recent findings that outline the potential implications of monitoring for remote employees, employees' work experience and workplace health management.Findings>Several practitioner-oriented suggestions are outlined that can pave the way to a more supportive employee experience for remote workers, who are monitored electronically by their employers. These include the various health and social interventions, greater managerial awareness about factors that influence well-being and more collaboration with health professionals to design interventions and new workplace policies. Organizations would also benefit from using audits and data analytics from monitoring tools to inform their interventions, while a rethink about work design, as well as organizational reviews of performance and working conditions further represent useful options to identify and set up the right conditions that foster both performance as well as employee well-being.Originality/value>The article outlines practitioner-oriented suggestions that can directly and indirectly support employee well-being by recognizing the various factors that affect performance and experience.

A New Performance Metric to Estimate the Risk of Exposure to Infection in a Health Care Setting: Descriptive Study.

BACKGROUND: Despite several measures to monitor and improve hand hygiene (HH) in health care settings, health care-acquired infections (HAIs) remain prevalent. The measures used to calculate HH performance are not able to fully benefit from the high-resolution data collected using electronic monitoring systems. OBJECTIVE: This study proposes a novel parameter for quantifying the HAI exposure risk of individual patients by considering temporal and spatial features of health care workers' HH adherence. METHODS: Patient exposure risk is calculated as a function of the number of consecutive missed HH opportunities, the number of unique rooms visited by the health care professional, and the time duration that the health care professional spends inside and outside the patient's room without performing HH. The patient exposure risk is compared to the entrance compliance rate (ECR) defined as the ratio of the number of HH actions performed at a room entrance to the total number of entrances into the room. The compliance rate is conventionally used to measure HH performance. The ECR and the patient exposure risk are analyzed using the data collected from an inpatient nursing unit for 12 weeks. RESULTS: The analysis of data collected from 59 nurses and more than 25,600 records at a musculoskeletal rehabilitation unit at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, KITE, showed that there is no strong linear relation between the ECR and patient exposure risk (r=0.7, P<.001). Since the ECR is calculated based on the number of missed HH actions upon room entrance, this parameter is already included in the patient exposure risk. Therefore, there might be scenarios that these 2 parameters are correlated; however, in several cases, the ECR contrasted with the reported patient exposure risk. Generally, the patients in rooms with a significantly high ECR can be potentially exposed to a considerable risk of infection. By contrast, small ECRs do not necessarily result in a high patient exposure risk. The results clearly explained the important role of the factors incorporated in patient exposure risk for quantifying the risk of infection for the patients. CONCLUSIONS: Patient exposure risk might provide a more reliable estimation of the risk of developing HAIs compared to ECR by considering both the temporal and spatial aspects of HH records.

HRM and the smart and dark side of technology: Journal of the Institue of Personnel Management Australia

As part of this 60th anniversary edition of the Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, this paper provides a review of the impact of technology over the last decade on the role of HRM. This period was bookended by the global financial crisis and the Covid‐19 pandemic and saw the emergence of fourth industrial revolution. The decade provided a platform and maturity of a wide range of technology‐based processes requiring appropriate policies to guide and manage them. From social media and cyber‐vetting, to electronic monitoring and surveillance and biometric testing, all have made a significant impact across the workplace and not least on the HRM aspect of work. The paper addresses these changes to show the significant impact on the workplace.

Hand hygiene compliance of healthcare workers before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: A long-term follow-up study.

BACKGROUND: Information about the long-term effects of hand hygiene (HH) interventions is needed. We aimed to investigate the change in HH compliance (HHC) of healthcare workers (HCWs) once a data-driven feedback intervention was stopped, and to assess if the COVID-19 pandemic influenced the HH behavior. METHODS: We conducted an observational, extension trial in a surgical department between January 2019-December 2020. Doctors (n = 19) and nurses (n = 53) were included and their HHC was measured using an electronic HH monitoring system (EHHMS). We compared the changes in HHC during 3 phases: (1) Intervention (data presentation meetings), (2) Prepandemic follow-up and (3) Follow-up during COVID-19. RESULTS: The HHC during phase 1 (intervention), phase 2 (prepandemic follow-up) and phase 3 (follow-up during COVID-19) was 58%, 46%, and 34%, respectively. Comparison analyses revealed that the HHC was significantly lower in the prepandemic follow-up period (46% vs 58%, P < .0001) and in the follow-up period during COVID-19 (34% vs 58%, P < .0001) compared with the intervention period (phase 1). CONCLUSIONS: Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the HHC of the HCWs significantly decreased over time once the data presentation meetings from management stopped. This study demonstrates that HCWs fall back into old HH routines once improvement initiatives are stopped.

Light-guided nudging and data-driven performance feedback improve hand hygiene compliance among nurses and doctors.

BACKGROUND: Evidence-based practices to increase hand hygiene compliance (HHC) among health care workers are warranted. We aimed to investigate the effect of a multimodal strategy on HHC. METHODS: During this 14-month prospective, observational study, an automated monitoring system was implemented in a 29-bed surgical ward. Hand hygiene opportunities and alcohol-based hand rubbing events were measured in patient and working rooms (medication, utility, storerooms, toilets). We compared baseline HHC of health care workers across periods with light-guided nudging from sensors on dispensers and data-driven performance feedback (multimodal strategy) using the Student's t test. RESULTS: The doctors (n = 10) significantly increased their HHC in patient rooms (16% vs 42%, P< .0001) and working rooms (24% vs 78%, P= .0006) when using the multimodal strategy. The nurses (n = 26) also increased their HHC significantly from baseline in both patient rooms (27% vs 43%, P = .0005) and working rooms (39% vs 64%, P< .0001). The nurses (n = 9), who subsequently received individual performance feedback, further increased HHC, compared with the period when they received group performance feedback (patient rooms: 43% vs 55%, P< .0001 and working rooms: 64% vs 80%, P< .0001). CONCLUSIONS: HHC of doctors and nurses can be significantly improved with light-guided nudging and data-driven performance feedback using an automated hand hygiene system.

Impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on the adherence of stroke patients to direct oral anticoagulants: a secondary analysis from the MAAESTRO study.

BACKGROUND: The negative impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on stroke care has been reported, but no data exist on the influence of the lockdown on medication adherence to antithrombotic treatment for stroke prevention. We present a comparison of electronic adherence data of stroke patients treated with direct oral anticoagulants (DOAC) prior to and during the COVID-19 lockdown in spring 2020 in Switzerland. METHODS: This is a secondary analysis using data from the ongoing MAAESTRO study, in which stroke patients with atrial fibrillation electronically monitor their adherence to DOAC treatment. Eligible patients for this analysis had at least four weeks of adherence data prior to and during the COVID-19 lockdown. Three adherence metrics (taking adherence, timing adherence, drug holidays) were calculated and compared descriptively. RESULTS: The analysis included eight patients (median age 81.5 years, IQR 74.8-84.5). Five patients had a pre-lockdown taking adherence over 90% (mean 96.8% ± 2.9), with no change during lockdown, high timing adherence in both periods and no drug holidays. The remaining three patients had pre-lockdown taking and timing adherence below 90%. Of those, two patients showed a moderate decline either in taking or timing adherence compared to pre-lockdown. One showed a substantial increase in taking and timing adherence during lockdown (both + 25.8%). CONCLUSION: Our data suggest that a major disruption of social life (i.e., the imposed COVID-19 lockdown) is unlikely to relevantly affect the medication intake behaviour of patients with high pre-established adherence, but might have an impact in patients with previously suboptimal adherence. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: MAAESTRO: electronic Monitoring and improvement of Adherence to direct oral Anticoagulant treatment-a randomized crossover study of an Educational and reminder-based intervention in ischaemic STROke patients under polypharmacy, NCT03344146.