ABSTRACT
There is an increasing interest for people to meet and interact in virtual online environments, including Gather.Town, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic and in the post-pandemic world. We present a scoping review of 11 empirical studies in Gather.town - a 2D Metaverse using a game-like interface with video-chat in which people can create their own virtual spaces and act as avatars to interact with each other for various purposes. To identify knowledge gaps, we summarized the included articles in terms of their application contexts, research issues, research methods, and key findings. We found that most of them were conducted in educational settings with a focus on students' learning experiences and perceptions. The findings of the reviewed studies generally suggested that the use of Gather.town benefited users' engagement. However, the available evidence was mostly based on short interventions (e.g., one session) and self-reported measures (e.g., surveys and interviews). This review concluded by presenting several research gaps for future research (e.g., studies with a longer duration and using more objective measurements of learning achievement and work results). © 2023 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Ambient noise causes annoying difficulty for listeners, especially in online learning and work-from-home environments such as during the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of this work was to employ the neural network to mitigate such ambient noise in the online environment. The software was designed, implemented, and tested on 4 types of noise. The algorithm used was a fully connected network. The results indicated that the standard fully connected network might not be an effective solution for a specific situation. Nonetheless, the processing time was very low, making it possible for real-time application on standalone devices. The implementation using leaky ReLu, creating leaky networks, offered slightly better results in English speeches, i.e. an average of 1.382 and 0.4389 in the PESQ and STOI, respectively. The Thai leaky networks, on another hand, exhibited an average of 3.111 and 0.7096 in PESQ and STOI, respectively. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
With the outbreak of COVID-19, the lecture environment at universities has increasingly turned into online environments. In addition to those delivered entirely by online tools, there are hybrid, online and in-person, lecture environments. Hybrid casting environments are growing not only in the classroom, but also in various conferences. In an online-only meeting environment, web conferencing tools such as Zoom and Webex can be used to approximately achieve the objective. In a hybrid environment, however, a face-to-face environment is also necessary, and it is essential to build an environment that is aware of both online and face-to-face interaction. It would be fine if the venue already has the equipment to serve the purpose, but in some cases, there are no facilities and the equipment must be carried in and arranged. At this point, the most difficult point is in the audio system configuration. This requires a certain level of technical knowledge and monetary costs. For a reasonable price, it is possible to outsource to a specialized service provider to create a perfect casting environment. However, in many situations, it is difficult to take significant costs and many people are trying to manage the situations by trial and error. We have experienced various hybrid casting situations. Recently, we try to consider how to reduce costs from various aspects, such as "avoiding high costs in terms of manpower, equipment, and expenses,""not requiring operators to have lots of knowledge,"and "minimizing the amount of equipment to be carried in, as it is integrated with the existing equipment at the venue. In this presentation, we provide actual examples of hybrid casting environments in which the author experienced, mainly by bringing in, setting up, and operating equipment by one person, and outlines the key points of these operations, as well as considering what kind of casting environment can reduce various costs and achieve hybrid casting more easily. We would like to share with the SIGUCCS community what kind of total peripheral environment is needed to make hybrid delivery more familiar, not just the delivery technology itself, such as Zoom or Webex, and to think together about how it should be. © 2023 Owner/Author.
ABSTRACT
This paper investigates the automated building of verified software environments that can be used in university courses. Over the last couple of years, it has become obvious that using online environments, video meetings, virtual lectures, online teaching, and learning is not a matter of choice. The coronavirus pandemic forced all parts of the education systems, and even of life, to go online. Deepening the research and development in the software automation field can lead to using various ways to allow university students and learners to "get in touch with” the real-world problems in software development. We developed such an approach by defining the steps, developing and evaluating specific automation processes of building an environment for secure software development. We defined both the functional and nonfunctional requirements for such a system, and the next major steps in development, such as virtualization setup (kvm), virtual environment (virtual machines) definition and creation, database configuration and management of user settings, have been defined and developed. The evaluation is performed according to the specifics defined in the Web technologies course, but the results and use are not limited to that course alone. In conclusion, the results of the evaluation conducted in a laboratory setting have been presented and appropriate scenarios, applications and future work have been defined. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
Spatial skills are critical for understanding the relations among objects and people, playing an important role in how we interact with the world. Spatial relationships are built through interactions with physical objects;however, in computational/online environments, these change to bi-dimensional media and computer-assisted design comprised of 3D representations viewable through a flat screen. Due to spatial immersion and interaction limitations, a traditional 2D and 3D approach presents challenges to partially sighted, blind, and sighted individuals. This paper presents the prototyping of a co-design Augmented Reality (AR) authoring tool by recruiting inclusive emerging affordances of consumer-level AR technologies within the context of current e-learning provisions in subject matters, including inclusive design, engineering design, game hardware design, and health sciences. This work has been inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic that has shown the need to level the field in inclusive design for teaching a subject typically oriented to the sighted. Our prototype allows users to create e-learning content for visualization, interaction, collaboration, and inclusive learning. Future work will investigate our tool's impact on skills development and content creation. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Many studies have shown the efficacy of pair programming for students learning to program. However, most of these studies have taken place in an in-person environment, where the driver and navigator are physically sharing a keyboard and screen and can communicate verbally and non-verbally. With the increase in online learning, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is important to know whether these results generalize to an online environment. In this work, we develop a methodology to replicate existing pair programming research in a remote context. Students can fulfill the same driver and navigator roles and share access to a single IDE. However, communication is limited to video chat, and participants can never physically interact. This will allow us to replicate various studies, evaluating the efficacy, perceptions, impacts, and perceptions of solo vs. pair programming. An initial study of 116 students enrolled in an introduction to programming course validated our experimental setup and showed that pair programming positively impacted the completion and correctness of programming exercises in an online environment. With 67.3% of pair programming submissions passing at least one test case, vs. 55.3% in the solo programming condition, and 63.5% of pair programming submissions passing all test cases vs. 45.0% of solo submissions (p < 0.02). This work validates our experimental design and shows promise that future work will be able to replicate many additional pair-programming studies in an online environment. © 2022 Owner/Author.
ABSTRACT
Online synchronous classes and seminars are increasing in universities along with the outbreak of COVID-19. Since the online classes are not in-person condition, it is difficult for a teacher to monitor the learners. In the field of distance education, the need to support learner's concentration has been identified. More effective methods adapted to online classes in universities should be discussed. In this paper, we focus on the teacher's and learners' attention to the material in online real-time classes. We then propose a system that provides feedback on the differences in learners' gaze in order to improve the followability of learners. The proposed system assumes an online environment using Microsoft Teams PowerPointLive and acquires the "gazing point" at every slide-material and "page change history" of the teacher and learners. The results of using the proposed system suggest that it can improve the learner's followability to the teacher. © 2022 Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age, CELDA 2022. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
The emergence of Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) presented numerous solutions in the institutions of higher learning without connectivity challenges. The outbreak of COVID-19 in 2019 exerted more pressure on institutions of learning still reluctant to utilize technology in teaching and learning. The current study purposes to evaluate the technology integrated in the first-year level within the Mechanical Engineering department in the School of Engineering at the University of South Africa to ascertain performance encountered. The specific technology is a three-dimensional viewing tool to improve students understanding of isometric and orthographic engineering drawings. The research study targeted a previous assessment without the integration of the technology and compared with a current assessment after the intervention, for three first year drawing modules. Online technology adoption survey was utilised to measure the performance during the intervention. The findings of the research indicated that student's performance with respect to average grade drastically improved from approximately 55% to 70%. This result demonstrates a significant benefit from the intervention for students to develop their mental visualization skills required for technical drawing. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
CONTEXT This paper is concerned with the delivery of a large scale, highly practical, design-and-build engineering course through the transition to online learning during 2020 and blended learning in 2021. While the nature of face-to-face project-based learning can be very engaging, delivery faced enormous challenges with lockdowns and online requirements during 2020. The unprecedented nature of this situation, and compressed timeframes in which to adapt provided an opportunity to try a range of novel delivery methods. Some of these methods created for 'emergency teaching' can provide value even as the situation returns to normal - while we believe others should be noted as lessons learnt. PURPOSE OR GOAL In this paper, we analyse the efficacy of strategies used in transferring a large project-based course to an online environment in the short timeframe dictated by COVID19. We aim to: • Determine, where possible, the key parameters that dictated success/failure in this case. • Discuss application of these learnings to a second, semi-online delivery and evaluate their effectiveness for the future. We are particularly interested in;informal platforms for content delivery (Discord and YouTube livestreams), involving students in course design delivery and assessment, and facilitating design and build by students in an online environment. APPROACH OR METHODOLOGY/METHODS This is a case study of the Course ENGG1500 running over 2020 and 2021 as compared to pre COVID offerings. The Student Feedback on Courses is the main source of both qualitative and quantitative data. Interviews with teaching staff on their experience have also been used to best capture the relevant data. The course ran several parallel discipline specific projects - each with different levels of difficulty and utilising a range of strategies. ACTUAL OR ANTICIPATED OUTCOMES Creating less formal engagement platforms for students has been widely successful. Discord was shown to be a superior platform over Blackboard Collaborate and YouTube over Zoom. Students and staff were found to remain highly engaged and supportive when brought into the change process and this involvement of students is believed to be a major success factor. CONCLUSIONS/RECOMMENDATIONS/SUMMARY While the workload was significantly higher than in face-to-face environment, practical, design and build, project-based learning can be successfully conducted in an online environment. However, consideration must be given to the varying levels of student success. Copyright © D. Cuskelly, 2021.
ABSTRACT
This work aims to advance on the systematization of teaching experiences in the formulation of evaluation activities, mediated by ICT, for academic and professional training in the field of Political Science. It explores the usefulness of student podcasting as a didactic strategy for theoretical-active learning in digital university environments during COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the design of an assessment questionnaire and a non-probabilistic convenience sampling strategy, a survey has been administered to N=40 students from two theoretical undergraduate courses of the School of Political Science at the University of Costa Rica, taught during two semesters in 2020. The article reviews the related results according to the degree of satisfaction with podcasting as a way of evaluating the appropriation of theoretical content. It is concluded by arguing that this teaching-learning methodology helps to facilitate among students' new ways of "putting theory into practice", this through the exercise of creative, reflective skills and theoretical-conceptual argumentation according to the creation of student-made podcasts, based on work on theoretical lines and conceptual proposals of relevance to Political Science.
ABSTRACT
In this Full Paper on Innovative Practise, we sum up our teaching experience during the COVID-19 pandemic. We focus on several courses taught at the Department of Computer Systems. The main technique to cope with COVID-19 restrictions in higher education is to use online teaching solutions. The first step was to make the traditional lectures available online through recordings enabling students to attend lectures as needed. Yet, for several courses, a quick reconfiguration was required for laboratory exercises as COVID restrictions were established in the middle of the study semester. Thereby, an irreplaceable solution was to use remote laboratories. One of the main concerns was how to set up the online environment within days and weeks and not in months. In addition to remote laboratories, we propose an online teaching and custom assessment setup that to the best of our knowledge has not been used before. For example, instead of using Proctorio for online assessment, we propose a two-stage, licence-free, online examination setup. The proof of concept was carried out with more than 200 students. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic forced a dramatic change from face-to-face learning environments to intensive learning environments. This study aimed to identify and quantify the determinants of student learning effects and their conduction mechanism in intensive online environments. Using a structural equation model and a questionnaire survey, this study proposed and validated the relationships among six constructs including student engagement, perceived learning, satisfaction, instructor behaviours, student characteristics, and the state of health, well-being, and sense of community-related (HWC) issues. 306 valid responses from civil engineering students in 19 universities in China were used to validate the proposed relationships. The measurement and structural model evaluation indicated that the model fit of the fitted model is acceptable with x(2)/df = 2.548, RMSEA = 0.071, AGFI =0.78, and CFI = 0.93. The results first showed the key factors for student learning effects from the instructor, the student, and the HWC issues with a factor loading greater than 0.8. This study further inferred from the different path coefficients in the fitted model and the mediating model that instructor behaviours greatly influence student perceived learning and satisfaction through student engagement with a contribution of 100% and 58%, respectively;student characteristics have a decisive impact on student perceived learning with a path coefficient of 0.59;HWC issues negatively impact student satisfaction with a path coefficient of -0.11. The findings enrich online education theories in an intensive online environment by clarifying and quantifying the influencing mechanism of the determinants. The findings also advance education practices for students, instructors, and educational administrators by helping them find out their contribution to learning effectiveness and the key factors to improve future online teaching levels.
ABSTRACT
The coronavirus pandemic forced Brazilian schools to move to an online environment rapidly. Consequently, many schools just took the traditional classroom approach to screens. This paper aims to reflect on our practices and share an innovative pedagogy that is adaptable to different scenarios and engages all learners. We will describe two cases to illustrate how a constructionist approach has sparked student agency and learning. We observed how a maker workshop contributed to a child with learning loss to complete his literacy process in the first one. In the second, we share the affordances of The Circle of Inventions practice, which allows for the implementation of constructionist moments in any learning environment. Ultimately, we aim to spark interest in more widespread constructionist practices in diverse learning contexts and leverage collaborations for new investigations, design, and implementation of innovative pedagogies in this field. © ISLS.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic the past years has forced Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to fast-track digital transformation, specifically moving to an online environment. The online environment requires students to have access to the Internet, mobile technologies and data. The past years, a number of HEIs have become a smart campus, using networked technologies to facilitate teaching and learning, communication, campus security and advanced information technology (IT). HEIs constantly need to monitor and improve Internet management practices and relevant IT resources for their users. The Internet has become the foundation on which most IT resources rely and thus Internet management is a distinctive competency for a HEI. South African HEIs have limited Internet resources and are expected to use these resources optimally to ensure efficient and effective Internet connectivity on all campuses for all users and applications. The aim of this study was to determine the present Internet management practices at South African HEIs and to determine which elements may require change to optimize South African HEIs' Internet provision to their users. A best practices HEIs Internet management business model is presented. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
In response to the coronavirus pandemic, COVID-19, the use of online media and teaching tools has soared, leading to rampant cheating and plagiarism. To provide a better online environment, A copyright-aware Blockchain-enabled Knowledge Sharing platform named as BeSharing, enables students to share part of their assignments or ideas without the worry of being plagiarized. Thanks to blockchain technology which ensures the safety of encrypted shared files and the immutability of the shared records, the intellectual property rights of students can be protected whenever plagiarism issues occur. At present, we have released the platform with the realization of relevant functions and finished the alpha test. We believe this platform has great potential to foster collaboration among students while protecting their ideas. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
This Evidence-Based Practice paper contains a study about the similarities and differences in team development among first-year engineering students during an introductory design course at a major university in the eastern United States. The study contained ten teams that operated in a totally online environment in Spring 2021, due to COVID-19 restrictions, and ten teams that operated in person in Spring 2022. All teams consisted of students in their second semester of college. © 2022 First-Year Engineering Experience, FYEE 2022. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
While the lockdown significantly reduced face-to-face meetings, video conferencing platforms began to be used widely to leverage different sectors, such as academia. In this scope, scientific events such as seminars and conferences were migrating to the online environment. However, online events usually do not dedicate time to group activities, decreasing the chances of building academic and professional partnerships and decreasing social interactions and networking opportunities that naturally occur in face-to-face events. This paper aims to present a series of dynamics carried out using Zoom and Mentimeter platforms within the scope of the “ehSemi” Conference to create interaction between people and encourage potential scientific networking, which happens in face-to-face conferences and is significantly lost online. Furthermore, the paper discusses the role of timing, and moderators, among other essential factors that boost the social components in the online environment. Despite, given the current pandemic situation, studying the new role of videoconferencing and interactions therein appears timely and interesting, limitations and ideas for future work are presented to improve results and provide details that were not covered in this work. © 2022 15th International Conference on ICT, Society and Human Beings, ICT 2022, 19th International Conference on Web Based Communities and Social Media, WBC 2022 and 14th International Conference on e-Health, EH 2022 - Held at the 16th Multi Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems, MCCSIS 2022. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic substantively impacted educational processes and posed urgent questions regarding how teachers can adapt their practices to create supportive learning communities in online environments. The purpose of this study was to understand how teachers provided dialogic feedback using technologies to create learning communities despite the unexpected switch to online learning during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Ten pre-service teachers and six in-service teachers were interviewed to understand their experiences using technology-assisted feedback during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Our findings show that the focus of feedback shifted during the pandemic. Over time, both teachers and students became more comfortable navigating online environments, going from self-level feedback that provided little support for learning to using technologies in innovative ways to create opportunities for dialogue around feedback and learning. We provide directions for future research and suggestions on how these findings can inform the creation of teacher training opportunities. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
Teaching and learning environments include two basic modes - face-to-face and online environments. It is a known fact that most students prefer a face-to-face environment to an online environment for one main reason - engagement. Within the context of learning, engagement relates to how well students' senses are engaged and stimulated for learning. The design of course delivery and instructional technologies aim to engage students for effective learning. Teaching online has its advantages, but it also falls short of effective student engagements. Due to the COVID 19 pandemic, educators were forced to teach online and to find creative ways to deliver the courses in an engaging format. One of those course delivery and instructional technology is the use of the lightboard (glass board) system. Lightboard is a writing board with clear glass as the writing surface and special neon markers for writing. The instructor faces the camera/students when he/she writes, and the writing on the board glows from the light beam on the glass. Lightboard is set up in a low-light space with only the focus light directed at the glass board and the instructor writing on the glass board. In addition, a dark drop cloth hug behind the instructor is used to enhance the background and help to make the writing on the glass board crisp and clear. Lightboard setup allows instructors to write, diagram, illustrate, gesture, demonstrate, or explain a formula without blocking the board with their body and without turning their back to the camera/students. Because the writing on the glass board is backward in the direct view of a recording camera, the writing must be flipped in the video streaming system, and what the students see in real-time is a horizontally flipped video streaming from the online video-conferencing application. In this research, lightboard system as a tool is evaluated from the point of student engagement and the ability to reduce the transactional distance that may exist between the students and the instructors. This research follows a qualitative research method. The research examined the design, configuration, setup, and use of lightboard system for teaching synchronous online courses from home during the COVID 19 pandemic. The research evaluated students' perception of lightboard system as an effective course delivery and instructional technology. The research findings indicate that there are a few easy to find, affordable components, and open-source video recording and live streaming software that can be configured to create a lightboard system. The research findings also show that majority of the students found the use of the lightboard system as engaging. The research strongly recommends the use of lightboard system for online course lectures requiring drawing details, writing formulas, showing step-by-step computations on the board. In addition, the research recommends lightboard system for flipped classroom in cases where video capture of lectures entail diagrams, formulas, and computations. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2022.
ABSTRACT
An online learning environment can be effective but presents additional challenges with regard to academic integrity compared to in-person education. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic forced many institutions to an online learning environment with less than two weeks' notice. Even before migrating to the online learning environment, violations of academic integrity have been shown to be alarmingly prevalent in United States institutions. In an online environment where students have unfettered access to online resources, “availability” would be expected to be a substantial factor making cheating easier and, thus, more prevalent. The goal of this research is to analyze student perceptions of adherence to academic integrity rules before and after the initial COVID-19 response in Spring 2020, where classes were forced to an online learning environment. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, our university made a sudden shift from fully in-person instruction to entirely remote online learning with less than two weeks' notice to both students and faculty. This sudden shift left faculty scrambling to convert in-person lectures, which relied heavily on chalkboards and document cameras as the interface to communicate to students in the classroom, to an entirely online format using only computers from home. The faculty decided to survey the students to obtain their perspective to determine if students felt that they and their peers would adhere to academic integrity rules during this change to an online learning environment. Student surveys were administered during the first and last week of the change from in-person to online instruction for 12 engineering classes at an undergraduate institution, including civil, mechanical, electrical, and general engineering classes. Paired t-tests were performed to determine if students initially felt others would, and afterward did, adhere to academic integrity rules. Results indicate that while students had a positive perception of themselves adhering to academic integrity rules they did not feel that their peers would - with a statistically significant difference. These results are concerning since students may be more predisposed to cheat if they feel they are at a disadvantage because others are cheating. Also, grades are not an adequate assessment of learning objectives being met if students are not adhering to academic integrity requirements. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2022.