HybridMingler: Towards Mixed-Reality Support for Mingling at Hybrid Conferences

Mingling, the activity of ad-hoc, private, opportunistic conversations ahead of, during, or after breaks, is an important socializing activity for attendees at scheduled events, such as in-person conferences. The Covid-19 pandemic had a dramatic impact on the way conferences are organized, so that most of them now take place in a hybrid mode where people can either attend on-site or remotely. While on-site attendees can resume in-person mingling, hybrid modes make it challenging for remote attendees to mingle with on-site peers. In addressing this problem, we propose a collaborative mixed-reality (MR) concept, including a prototype, called HybridMingler. This is a distributed MR system supporting ambient awareness and allowing both on-site and remote conference attendees to virtually mingle. HybridMingler aims to provide both on-site and remote attendees with a spatial sense of co-location in the very same venue location, thus ultimately improving perceived presence. © 2023 Owner/Author.

Reflecting on Hybrid Events: Learning from a Year of Hybrid Experiences

The COVID-19 pandemic led to a sudden shift to virtual work and events, with the last two years enabling an appropriated and rather simulated togetherness - the hybrid mode. As we return to in-person events, it is important to reflect on not only what we learned about technologies and social justice, but about the types of events we desire, and how to re-design them accordingly. This SIG aims to reflect on hybrid events and their execution: scaling them across sectors, communities, and industries;considering trade-offs when choosing technologies;studying best practices and defining measures of "success"for hybrid events;and finally, identifying and charting the wider social, ethical, and legal implications of hybrid formats. This SIG will consolidate these topics by inviting participants to collaboratively reflect on previous hybrid experiences and what can be learned from them. © 2023 Owner/Author.

Emerging from the pandemic: instructor reflections and students' perceptions on an introductory programming course in blended learning.

Teaching an introductory programming course to first-year students has long been a challenge for many college instructors. The COVID-19 pandemic, which caused unprecedented shifts in learning modality across the globe, has worsened the learning experience of novice programmers. Instructors have to find innovative ways to keep students engaged and learning. Blended or hybrid learning has become a new preferred way of learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Blended learning is viewed as a combination of both in-person and online instructions. Such a learning environment offers instructors the flexibility to provide learners with an engaging face-to-face learning experience while promoting the well-being and safety of students. Starting Fall 2020, York College (and other CUNY colleges) has since offered several courses in hybrid mode. Two years have passed since the abrupt transition. There were several lessons learned from the experiences. In this paper, I discussed evidence-based pedagogical approaches that were used to teach students in an introductory computer programming class at York College, CUNY, where blended learning was used. Student perceptions of learning experience and obtaining coding skills in both online and in-person environments are also presented. The findings from the survey suggested that students benefited from face-to-face interactions and feedback, while those who preferred an online environment liked the flexibility that online components offer. Through careful design and implementation of pedagogical approaches used in the class, novice programmers could potentially benefit from both face-to-face and online components of blended learning.

Video conferencing (VC) software selection using fuzzy TOPSIS

The coronavirus-19 pandemic had bought drastic changes to the teaching and learning environments. With learning setups shifting entirely to the online medium, the higher education institutions were faced with the dilemma of selecting the video-conferencing software along with technical infrastructure setup, users training issues. The selection decisions were frequently done randomly with little IT expertise to guide. Even soon, the hybrid mode (physical teaching combined with online mode) would be the teaching mediums offered by the higher education institutions as for now they have some familiarity in terms of usage and technical setup of the software. Several advantages, as well as disadvantages of online teaching have been realized and experienced during the said times. Further, the institutions faced the dilemma of not selecting the most viable video conferencing solution as per their requirements. Therefore, the author attempts to provide a comprehensive guide for selecting the most apt video-conferencing software for the higher education institution based on their requirements and further attempts to rank the available options using Fuzzy-TOPSIS method. © 2023 Scrivener Publishing LLC. All rights reserved.

NATIVE: Network Aggregation based Tiled Live Video Streaming

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced most interactions to move to online space, starting from online lectures, conferences in hybrid mode, and work-from-home office works. Hence, it is essential for live video streaming to be reliable and provide a good quality of experience (QoE) to users. However, in large sections of the world, the cellular network is not reliable enough to be used for online participation in such events. To quantify this problem, we first measure the QoE in terms of lag, video resolution, and dropped calls on a popular video conferencing platform Google Meet over three different cellular ISPs in New Delhi, India. We observe significantly worse quality of experience metrics compared to a study recently performed in the US. To mitigate this problem, we propose NATIVE (Network Aggregation-based Tiled lIve Video strEaming), a system of aggregating the cellular network connectivity using a secondary or helper device in the vicinity trusted by the user. The implementation of NATIVE uses tiled encoding of video, where the video frames are divided into rectangular units known as tiles. All the tiles are divided into two subsets which are scheduled independently via the available network interfaces depending on its importance. The receiver device receives video segments from the two network paths and stitches back the tiles in them to play. We show the demo of NATIVE using two laptops and a cloud server where the server acts as a streamer. © 2023 IEEE.

Future Vehicles May Arrive Soon [Automotive Electronics]

After the two last virtual conferences in 2019 and 2020 run by Prof. Pablo Arboleya from the University of Oviedo (Spain), the IEEE Vehicle Power and Propulsion Conference (VPPC) was held for the first time in Merced, California, USA, last November. The conference was organized by a very motivated team from the University of California, Merced, led by Prof. Ricardo De Castro. With the motto 'connect green e-motion' worldwide in a complete network, the four-day conference delivered insight and intelligence from several key players at the forefront of hybrid and electric vehicle (EV) development. A very attractive program was prepared, including four outstanding keynote speeches, three tutorial lectures, and the in person or virtual presentation of 143 papers. During the last conference day, attendees had the opportunity to visit two technical sites: TRC California and the University of California, Berkeley. VPPC 2022 was the first VPPC after the COVID-19 lockdowns and was run in hybrid mode, with in-person and online attendees. VPPC 2022 continues to be the venue for researchers, educators, and engineers to share the latest results in research, teaching, and development of EV and hybrid vehicles and related technologies, as shown in Figure 1. It was an important forum where the academic and industrial communities and policymakers discussed new technology trends and collaboration for mutual development at a crucial time just before the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference. © 2005-2012 IEEE.

Effective Application of One Minute Paper and Muddiest Point Technique to Enhance Students' Active Engagement: A Case Study

Outcome based education involves a student centric approach. Active participation of students in the classroom plays a significant role in the Outcome Based Education model. This paper explains the use of two active learning techniques viz. 1) Muddiest Point Technique 2) One Minute Paper for three courses taught to third year Mechanical Engineering undergraduate program. The Muddiest Point Technique was used for the course Computer Oriented Numerical Methods (CONM) by using Padlet as a tool to record the conceptual difficulties. One Minute Paper (OMP) was applied to the two courses, Analysis and Synthesis of Mechanisms (ASM) using traditional One Minute Paper and to another course namely Automation and Control Engineering (ACE) using goggle form. Students' responses to the survey questionnaire showed that implementation of these techniques improved overall understanding of the course content. It gives students a chance to communicate their conceptual difficulties without any hesitation. © 2023, Rajarambapu Institute Of Technology. All rights reserved.

Assessment of a Hybrid Research Experience for Undergraduates Program During the COVID-19 Pandemic

This paper reports on the fourth year of a cybersecurity-focused research experience for undergraduates programs site in the summer of 2021. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the site operated in a hybrid mode during this summer, after operating entirely virtually during the summer of 2020. The paper compares the results of operating in a hybrid mode with two years of in-person operations and one year of virtual operations. It discusses the lessons learned when operating in the hybrid mode and makes recommendations for future hybrid REU implementations. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2022.

Are the Technological Tools used in Virtual and Hybrid Classrooms Still Useful in a Fully In-Person Setting? An Assessment of the Effectiveness of the Technological Tools in Enhancing the Pedagogy in the New Normal

The development and advancement of technology during the COVID-19 pandemic have been a major contributor to the innovation in pedagogy. Teaching in virtual or hybrid classrooms brought challenges as well as opportunities, particularly for classes with large student enrollment. Many educators quickly learned to use the appropriate instructional technology to be able to not only teach in remote or hybrid mode, but also to keep the students engaged in the process. Keeping in mind the social distancing rules as prescribed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and personal preferences of both the students and the instructors alike, several large Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) courses at the University of Connecticut were offered either remotely or in a hybrid setting during the academic year (AY) 2020-21. This transition was feasible with the financial as well as instructional support from the university. This paper discusses three such courses taught by the authors: Applied Mechanics I and Soil Mechanics in Fall 2020, and Mechanics of Materials in Spring 2021. All these courses had large enrollment (over 100) and were taken primarily by upper-class students to fulfil the requirements of their majors. Several changes were made in the course delivery, method of student engagement, and assessment techniques to adjust for remote as well as hybrid teaching modes. To verify the effectiveness of those changes, both mid-semester surveys and annual student surveys were conducted in all three courses and the results are shared in this paper. With the availability of vaccines and by enforcing the mask mandate, most of the CEE courses were offered in person in the Fall of 2021. During this new normal, two of the large civil engineering courses (Principles of Construction I and Soil Mechanics) were taught by the authors in person. Based on the lessons learned during the pandemic (AY 2020-21), some of the virtual instructional tools were used in these in-person courses to improve student engagement. The purpose of this paper is to describe those instructional tools and their effectiveness in improving the pedagogy as well as the students' learning using the data collected during the mid-semester and annual student surveys. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2022.

The Effectiveness of a Leadership Subject Using a Hybrid Teaching Mode during the Pandemic: Objective Outcome and Subjective Outcome Evaluation.

Positive youth development (PYD) is an innovative approach to protect students from mental health problems and promote their positive and holistic development. Although there are many studies on the beneficial effects of PYD programs on youth in high school and community contexts, it is not clear whether subjects adopting PYD principles can promote positive development for university students. Moreover, it is unclear whether such subjects are effective under COVID-19, where subjects are commonly taught via the "hybrid" mode (i.e., face-to-face plus online teaching). The present study examined students' changes in the PYD, wellbeing, and desired graduate attributes after they had taken a leadership subject utilizing PYD principles taught by the "hybrid" mode (N = 630). Adopting the one-group pre-test and post-test design (i.e., objective outcome evaluation), we found that students showed significant positive improvement in PYD indicators, wellbeing, as well as desired graduate attributes. Additionally, students had high satisfaction with the course design and teaching staff, and perceived many benefits from this subject based on the subjective outcome evaluation conducted at the end of the subject. Results also showed that students' satisfaction with the curriculum significantly and positively predicted their positive change in PYD indicators, indicating the convergence of subjective outcome evaluation and objective outcome evaluation. The results highlight the positive impacts of the hybrid mode leadership subject with PYD principles in higher education.

Development of a Model of Design Thinking Hybrid Implementation in the Post-pandemic World

In the given research project possible means of adapting design thinking to the most promising work mode of the post-covid area-a hybrid mode-are going to be elaborated. Along with an in-depth study of the latest papers on Covid-19 impact on the workflow hybridization as well as on innovation creation process via design thinking application, an empirical study of the considered approach applied in a hybrid mode will be also conducted. The result of the given project will be an experiment conducted in the business environment on the implementation of the proposed design thinking hybrid and an analysis of the results obtained for further research in this direction. © 2022 FRUCT Oy.

Work From Home After Covid-19: Machine Learning-Based Approach to Predict Employee's Choice

Well before the Covid-19 pandemic, Work from Home (WFH) had become an increasingly common practice among employees. With the pandemic outbreak, millions of employees across the globe were forced to shift into full-time WFH in response to continuous lockdowns or health restrictions. It is expected that a considerable number of organisations will continue the WFH practice in a hybrid mode along with Work From Office (WFO) even after the pandemic. This study aims to predict employees' choice on continuing WFH after the pandemic. The data set was collected using an online questionnaire shared among a sample of employees engaged in WFH during the pandemic. Naïve Bayes, Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Random Forest, and Ensemble Learning-based approaches were used to generate the prediction models. Ensemble Learning-based approach was the best classifier compared to the other three classifiers, and it obtained a 91.6% accuracy value. Naïve Bayes showed the lowest performance. © 2022 IEEE.

Hybrid Learning Challenges and Knowledge Management: Role of Information Technology

Coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) has made the situation challenging for higher education institutions. Students have been given the option to study either in offline or online mode. This has forced higher education institutions to conduct classes in a hybrid mode. Teaching in a hybrid mode has its unique challenges. Apart from the issues in delivering lectures, it has made Knowledge Management difficult. This study examines the problems faced by the educators from higher education institutions in delivering lectures in the hybrid mode and the problems faced by the institutions in Knowledge Management. The role of Information Technology in facilitating Knowledge Management is studied. This study uses a qualitative approach. The findings show that educators are facing challenging to deliver lecturers in a hybrid mode dually at the same time assimilation and dissemination of knowledge has become a challenge. It is also observed that Information Technology tool like Internet of Things (IoT) can play a significant role in capturing data and Knowledge Management. © 2022 Bharati Vidyapeeth, New Delhi.

A Faculty Roundtable on Instructional Challenges during the Pandemic

This article highlights instructional experiences from various disciplines at SHSU during the COVID-19 pandemic. The serious global health threat has hit us hard, posing enormous challenges to the educators who had to switch to virtual and hybrid modes of instruction through major modifications of teaching methodologies, lab strategies, and even grading criteria. The authors of this paper participated in a series of roundtable discussions to share their course delivery experiences during the pandemic. We attempt to share our key findings, which may benefit other educators and help them adopt alternative instructional approaches in other institutions. Instructional challenges in a wide variety of courses such as Digital Electronics, Industrial Robotics, Programmable Logic Controller (PLC), Software Engineering, System Modeling, Epidemiology, Human Diseases, Environmental Health, and Intermediate Business Analysis were mitigated using alternative or modified approaches. Hands-on and in-person learning activities (e.g., laboratory experiments and data analysis) were substituted by innovative strategies such as online exercises via simulation, statistical software, enhanced use of audiovisual tools, and synchronous and asynchronous online instructions. Instructors also reported more frequent troubleshooting experience while using blended formats of instruction. Several other sociocultural barriers of effective teaching were also noted. While individuals with children struggled to cope up due to school and daycare closures, individuals living alone struggled with depression and anxiety due to limited in-person interactions amid widespread stay-at-home order. The struggle was exacerbated for students who were tested coronavirus positive or caregivers for immediate family members. The pandemic also had a major psychosocial impact on individuals in academia who lost their loved ones or became unemployed. In a nutshell, both students and instructors were not able to perform their academic responsibilities effectively and had to sacrifice learning goals to some extent. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021

Teaching Materials Science Labs Online Asynchronously

After an eight year hiatus, I was asked suddenly to teach eight sections, each consisting of twelve students, of the Materials Science Lab course (306) in fall 2020 following the COVID-19 pandemic. During the past eight years, my instructional materials for 306 had been adopted by other instructors who left online quizzes and online surveys unchanged, and made modest changes to my presentation slides, and lab report templates and formats. In fall 2020, faculty at my university chose their own modality of instruction - in-person, online or a hybrid mode. I chose asynchronous instead of synchronous because of issues related to the large number of lab sections, and the unpredictability of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. In spring 2021, I am teaching ten sections of this lab course. I have made significant improvements to my instructional materials from the fall semester that are included in this paper. I wanted to give my students a lab experience that would be equal to or better than the traditional in-person experience prior to the pandemic. In most traditional in-person experiments, students measure physical dimensions such as thickness, width and diameter at various length scales using instruments such as an ordinary ruler, a Vernier caliper, or a micrometer. To implement similar measurements online, I decided to integrate image analysis using FijI based on ImageJ software, and use it as a video caliper tool to measure features in ordinary and high resolution images. Traditionally, 306 and courses similar to it at other universities focus almost exclusively on experimental techniques to measure properties and characterize materials. In restructuring the course, I decided to add comparable emphasis on structure and processing of materials as it relates to testing and characterization of metallic materials. This paper describes the first three of the seven experiments that were developed focusing on: (1) Introductory Image Analysis and Brinell hardness testing, (2) Strengthening mechanisms and tensile testing, and (3) Cold working and Rockwell hardness testing. In each experiment, students are instructed in theory, principles, and methods using a YouTube video of narrated slides and board work, and laboratory demonstration. They are given images and data from the experiment, and data and report templates. Students make their own measurements using FijI, perform data analysis using Excel, and submit a concise lab report with critical evaluation of results and summary conclusions. The paper includes the course schedule listing the topics for each lab, grading policy, objectives for the first lab, and supporting instructional elements including the lab report grading rubric, and sample quiz questions. It also includes the survey collected after each lab, and response statistics from the first lab. Actions taken in response to the student feedback are also included. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021

HOW REMOTE/DISTANCE CLASS INSTRUCTION WHEN WORKING with INDUSTRY/INSTITUTIONAL PROJECT SPONSORS on A STUDIO PROJECT CAN BE MANAGED to PROVIDE A ROBUST EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE

This paper will examine how remote communication tools such as “BlueJeans” or Microsoft “Teams” can be employed in a studio project to enhance the undergraduate educational experience in the context of remote class instruction. Junior level students in the School of Industrial Design at the Georgia Institute of Technology take specific themed studio courses, one of which is “Health and Well Being” which is being taught in a “hybrid” delivery mode in response to COVID related concerns. Recognizing that remote instruction could compromise learning opportunities, the course was organized to follow a model used professionally by this author when managing multiple team projects as a design director. Three projects championed by outside sponsors included (1) the design of paramedic equipment transport solutions;(2) systems to reduce the acuity of Nexxspan medical headwalls in behaviour health or end-of-life scenarios;(3) and development of a system for arterial dialysis. Sponsors included a former fireman/paramedic/alumni, a commercial company that offers a range of hospital equipment management products and a transplant surgeon with the School of Medicine at the University of South Carolina. Sponsors pitched the projects to the students at the outset of the semester. Students formed teams of 3-4 students based on their affinity to individual projects;5 teams being fielded out of a class of 20 students. Teams initially met in person or remotely with their project sponsors to better understand their chosen projects. Users and/or subject matter experts were interviewed remotely during the research process. Remote sessions were held twice weekly with each team to review progress and provide feedback/advice. Each team presented their work to sponsors and the class as a whole at three points during the semester using the BlueJeans application to summarize research, concept development and concept refinement/documentation. In comparison with comparable projects conducted during previous semesters, it was observed that the option to participate remotely permitted outside sponsors to be MORE available to students with transportation and parking no longer being an impediment. Furthermore, by scheduling focused feedback/input to individual teams via a remote application, the effectiveness and efficiency of the instruction process was optimized for both the students and instructor. The drawbacks of this remote instruction relate more to issues of poor team dynamics or individual students lacking key design skills (which might be better addressed in person). Additionally, it has been observed that students not meeting face-face in studio limits peer-peer competition which decreases individual motivation for improvement in problematic students. © PDE 2021.