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As virtual reality (VR) is labeled by many as 'an ultimate empathy machine,' immersive VR applications have the potential to assist in empathy training for mental healthcare such as depression [21]. In responding to the increasing numbers of diagnosed depression throughout COVID-19, a first-person VR adventure game called 'Schwer' was designed and prototyped by the authors' research team to provide a social support environment for depression treatment. To continue the study and assess the training effectiveness for an appropriate level of empathy, this current article includes a brief survey on data analytics models and features to accumulate evidence for the next phase of the study, an interactive game-level design for the 'Reconstruction' stage, and a preliminary study with data collection. The preliminary study was conducted with a post-game interview to evaluate the design of the levels and their effectiveness in empathy training. Results showed that the game was rated as immersive by all participants. Feedback on the avatar design indicated that two out of three of the non-player characters (NPCs) have made the intended effect. Participants showed mostly positive opinion towards their experienced empathy and provided feedback on innovative teleport mechanism and game interaction. The findings from the literature review and the results of the preliminary study will be used to further improve the existing system and add the data analytics model training. The long-term research goal is to contribute to the healthcare field by developing a dynamic AI-based biofeedback immersive VR system in assisting depression prevention. © 2023 IEEE.
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Despite the severe social, health, political and economic impacts of the outbreak of Covid-19 on Palestinians, we contend that one positive aspect of this pandemic is that it has revealed the perils and shortcomings of the teacher-centered, traditional education which colonizes students' minds, compromises their analytical abilities and, paradoxically, places them in a system of oppression which audits their ideas, limits their freedoms, and curtails their creativity. While Israeli occupation has proven to be an obstacle in the face of the Palestinian government's attempt to combat and contain the Corona crisis, on-line education, the sole arena that escapes this colonial system, has forced many instructors to give up their domination over the process of education and to create a more collaborative atmosphere of education that is based on dialogue, research and flexibility of the curriculum content. This study is designed to gauge English literature students' responses to this mode of digital learning. We interviewed a hundred students from six English literature programs between March and August, 2020. Thus, through critically examining students' answers, and by drawing on Freire's concepts of banking education, consciousness and dialogue, we propose that online education is an important step towards the decolonization of education and a call for a paradigm shift on the account that the existing paradigm of traditional education is stifling students' creativity and critical thinking.
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The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to light the need for greater participation of urban informal settlement dwellers in urban development. How this participation is envisioned, however, is influenced by how policy paradigms view such populations in relation to knowledge. How valuable is what they know? How relevant is their perspective to shaping policies? To explore these questions, this chapter analyses the limitations of the ways in which smart urbanism views the knowledge of the masses, using historical institutionalism as a perspective to trace the evolution of urban policy and its assumptions about knowledge in the context of Indore. It draws on a study undertaken by the Bahá'í Chair for Studies in Development to make visible how people resolve development issues through applying their own spiritual convictions and conceptions of wellbeing. It then discusses the implications this has for the way people's knowledge is viewed in policy. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023.
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Traditional learning has faced major changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting the necessity for innovative education methods. Virtual reality (VR) technology has the potential to change teaching and learning paradigms by providing a gamified, immersive, and engaging education. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact of virtual reality in academic context by using a VR software instrument (called EduAssistant). The system's features such as virtual amphitheater, search by voice recognition, whiteboard, and a video conference system have fostered a sense of connection and community interaction. The study involved 117 students for VR experience, out of which 97 watched a pre-recorded video and 20 students used the VR headset, and an additional 20 students for traditional learning. The students who used the VR headset achieved a significantly higher mean quiz score of 8.31 compared to 7.55 for the traditional learning group with a two-tailed p-value of 0.0468. Over 80% of the total number of participants were satisfied (4 or 5 out of 5) with the experience and the confidence level when searching through voice recognition was over 90%. The study demonstrates that virtual reality is an excellent approach for changing conventional education. The research results, based on samples, simulations, and surveys, revealed a positive impact of VR and its gamification methods on the students' cognitive performance, engagement, and learning experience. Immersion provided by a virtual assistant tool helped to promote active and deep learning. Experiments based on EduAssistant features suggest that virtual reality is also an effective strategy for future research related to students with disabilities. © 2023 by the authors.
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Territorial planning is key to ordering the territory based on equity for public and private services, which is why the how, where and why it is planned becomes relevant. The COVID-19 pandemic put in check several territorial paradigms that were believed to have been resolved, one of them was related to how the population interacted with services in an asymmetric way and in the hardest moment of the crisis, services in order to "adapt” to the new times, they generated a symmetrical relationship where these went towards the people, therefore, the distance to relevant services such as education, health or security play an important role in being able to plan the day to day and this is where the problem arises of access to services related to territorial planning. In order to know the spatial accessibility, one of the ways is to use the two-factor spatial accessibility econometric formula (2SFCA) for the district of Quinta Normal, located in the northwestern zone of the Metropolitan Region, Province of Santiago, Chile. Where, it is sought to know what is the existing spatial accessibility from the blocks of Quinta Normal towards the respective services of education (establishments basic level - average of public character), health (establishments corresponding to the public system) and security (Carabineros de Chile and Police de Investigaciones de Chile), using ArcGIS Pro software. © 2022 Published by Scientific Scholar on behalf of Indian Journal of Palliative Care.
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Mobile computing is one of the significant opportunities that can be used for various practical applications in numerous fields in real life. Due to inherent characteristics of ubiquitous computing, devices can gather numerous types of data that led to innovative applications in many fields with a unique emerging prototype known as Crowd sensing. Here, the involvement of people is one of the important features and their mobility provides an exclusive opportunity to collect and transmit the data over a substantial geographical area. Thus, we put forward novel idea about Quality of Information (QOI) with unique parameters with opportunistic uniqueness of people's mobility in terms of sensing and transmission. Additionally, we propose some of the viable improved ideas about the competent opportunistic data collection through efficient techniques. This work also considered some of the open issues mentioned by previous related works.
ABSTRACT
Traditional learning has faced major changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting the necessity for innovative education methods. Virtual reality (VR) technology has the potential to change teaching and learning paradigms by providing a gamified, immersive, and engaging education. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact of virtual reality in academic context by using a VR software instrument (called EduAssistant). The system's features such as virtual amphitheater, search by voice recognition, whiteboard, and a video conference system have fostered a sense of connection and community interaction. The study involved 117 students for VR experience, out of which 97 watched a pre-recorded video and 20 students used the VR headset, and an additional 20 students for traditional learning. The students who used the VR headset achieved a significantly higher mean quiz score of 8.31 compared to 7.55 for the traditional learning group with a two-tailed p-value of 0.0468. Over 80% of the total number of participants were satisfied (4 or 5 out of 5) with the experience and the confidence level when searching through voice recognition was over 90%. The study demonstrates that virtual reality is an excellent approach for changing conventional education. The research results, based on samples, simulations, and surveys, revealed a positive impact of VR and its gamification methods on the students' cognitive performance, engagement, and learning experience. Immersion provided by a virtual assistant tool helped to promote active and deep learning. Experiments based on EduAssistant features suggest that virtual reality is also an effective strategy for future research related to students with disabilities.
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This chapter critiques Western development paradigms that have been utilised by African countries for decades in their quest to develop themselves in the post-colonial era. The former have been touted by Western development institutions and theorists for many years as the most effective modalities for advancing the continent. The discussion argues that Western development paradigms failed to extricate Africa from its inherited underdevelopment, stemming from colonial rule and antecedent imperialistic forays into Africa. In many respects, ‘development' was introduced to Africans as a non-African construct that was superimposed on the continent's superstructures and its various sociopolitical and economic systems. If there is anything that the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has exposed to the world, it is how ineffectual Western development tools are for Africa's advancement. The pandemic has also shown that Western development paradigms failed to provide solutions to a plethora of challenges that African countries have encountered for decades and which have been compounded by COVID-19. Furthermore, the neo-liberal economic model that has been promoted by Western development institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, which, inter alia, eschews universal social service provision, has been called into question by COVID-19 as tens of thousands of people died from the virus in the West. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.
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The direct and indirect mental health stressors, especially associated with the "tele-burden of pandemic” added due to the adoption of the remote learning paradigm, have led to increased online fatigue, distress, and burnout. This research aims to comprehend the perception of psychological distress experienced by Indian students placed in the new online learning setting. Subsequently, the observed symptomatology is used to predict the student's susceptibility toward developing specific psychological challenges. Primarily, a phenomenological study is conducted on 732 student participants to understand their psychological well-being during this ongoing COVID-19 crisis. Subsequently, machine learning is used to train a model with learned features from the data extracted to detect six psychological states, amusement, neutral, low stress, high stress, depression, and anxiety. Two supervised machine learning algorithms, namely random forest and artificial neural network, are used to perform the predictive analytics of psychological well-being. Experimental evaluation reports a classification accuracy of 90.4% for the random forest and 89.15% for the neural network. The qualitative research findings help foster the need to look for coping strategies involving counselors and psychologists to decrease the risk of psychological distress and preserve students' psychological health and well-being in the current setting. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
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Orientation: With the significant changes in the organisational context and the nature of work, greater focus on employee well-being is central to the quality of work life (QWL) and effective organisations. Research purpose: This article examines the complex and dynamic interplay between the multidimensional affective, behavioural, relational and socio-cultural dimensions in mediating employee well-being and organisational performance in a transforming South African provincial government. Motivation for the study: Theoretical models and public reforms have focused on the formal, transactional and technical aspects in understanding organisational performance and employee well-being, with less attention given to the behavioural, socio-cultural and interpersonal dimensions. Research approach/design and method: This qualitative study in two provincial government departments with 43 public servants (rank levels 6–15) applied the integral theory-based, four-quadrant model. The Dynamic Inquiry (DI) interview method and inductive thematic analytical processes were used. The Management Performance Assessment Tool (MPAT) assessment reports of the two departments were analysed. Main findings: The four dominant themes that emerged from this study – social exclusion, leadership behaviours, public service orientation and governance – display complex patterns and relationships related to well-being and performance. Among these are the negative effects of power and bureaucratic cultures;hierarchical, command and control governance systems and dissonant leadership behaviours. Practical/managerial implications: The results have public policy and practice implications for public governance, management and leadership development, organisational design and culture, and performance management. Contribution/value-add: By applying an integrated research approach, multiple determinants of well-being and their intermediation were elucidated. The findings offer epistemological and methodological implications for human resource management (HRM) scholarship.
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Since the early period of the COVID-19 pandemic concerned groups of people have produced knowledge refused by institutional science of how to manage public health and individual well-being in everyday pandemic life. Research in science and technology studies seeks to understand the social and cultural conditions under which contestation over scientific knowledge claims occurs. In the Italian case, ‘refused' knowledge claims emerging outside institutionalised science play a performative role in questioning the current models for managing individual and public health. Such refused claims ascribe novel meanings to the COVID-19 pandemic and orient the ways in which people manage their own health and well-being during their everyday life. Two interrelated dimensions are at stake in the production and enactment of refused knowledge: (1) how experiential expertise is mobilised to reframe one's body in a process of self-care, thus validating a corpus of refused knowledge through personal experience, and (2) how narratives demarcate between a body of refused knowledge and the prevalent biomedical paradigms as a way of gaining experiential epistemic autonomy.
ABSTRACT
Territorial planning is key to ordering the territory based on equity for public and private services, which is why the how, where and why it is planned becomes relevant. The COVID-19 pandemic put in check several territorial paradigms that were believed to have been resolved, one of them was related to how the population interacted with services in an asymmetric way and in the hardest moment of the crisis, services in order to "adapt” to the new times, they generated a symmetrical relationship where these went towards the people, therefore, the distance to relevant services such as education, health or security play an important role in being able to plan the day to day and this is where the problem arises of access to services related to territorial planning. In order to know the spatial accessibility, one of the ways is to use the two-factor spatial accessibility econometric formula (2SFCA) for the district of Quinta Normal, located in the northwestern zone of the Metropolitan Region, Province of Santiago, Chile. Where, it is sought to know what is the existing spatial accessibility from the blocks of Quinta Normal towards the respective services of education (establishments basic level - average of public character), health (establishments corresponding to the public system) and security (Carabineros de Chile and Police de Investigaciones de Chile), using ArcGIS Pro software. © 2022 Medicinska naklada. All rights reserved.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has encouraged many to engage with determining what is most effective in the realm of teaching and learning and how we can negotiate what we have done in the past with what makes sense for the future. In proposing a framework in which to encourage the community of physical education teacher educators to redefine physical education teacher education (PETE) practices, we argue that we need to start by revisiting, embedding and challenging Zeichner's [(1983). Alternative paradigms of teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 34(3), 3–9] paradigms at a programmatic level. Drawing on Rink's [(1993). Teacher education: A focus on action. Quest (Grand Rapids, Mich), 45(3), 308–320] main thesis of considering the different philosophical orientations as complementary, and not competing ideologies, this paper is a response to the call of Carmi and Tamir [(2020). Three professional ideals: Where should teacher preparation go next? European Journal of Teacher Education] to improve strategies for blending paradigms in teacher preparation programmes, by providing some specific directions and reflective prompts for PETE programmes. We introduce the reader to the consideration that decisions made around the paradigms and the blending of paradigms across a programme may be essential to provide pre-service teachers (PSTs) with transformative experiences that enable their understanding of the different contexts and ontologies to succeed in their pedagogical and professional endeavours. We develop a double-pyramid approach evidencing how more than one paradigm of teacher education can co-exist to create a holistic and comprehensive plan to facilitate PETE. We convey that a programmatic structure with decisions around the paradigms and their blending, and how those might shape PSTs' educational experience will provide a starting point if teacher educators are to re-define PETE practices.
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In the previous article in this issue (S Afr J Sci. 2022;118(11/12), Art. #13165), the emergence and spread of COVID-19 pari passu with climate change and planetary degradation were interpreted as late manifestations in the trend towards gradual decline into disorder (entropy) in an unstable and ecologically threatened planet. In this article, as we contemplate a post-COVID world, the question is whether new insights could generate courageous, prescient leadership towards new paradigms of health, politics, economics, society, and our relationship with nature. A gloomy prognosis is postulated because of the power of many impediments to such changes, both in an increasingly polarised world and in South Africa as a microcosm. Despite many squandered opportunities and a decline in local and global cooperation between all who have a stake in the future, some hope is retained for innovative shifts towards sustainable futures. © 2022. The Author(s). Published under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence.
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Digital technologies have a significant potential for collaboration, designing, and implementing better business initiatives. COVID-19 global lockdowns have increased the emergence of the Digital Social Entrepreneurship (DSE) phenomenon, which has been key in responding to social needs using digital technologies. The DSE scholarly discussion has been limited to a few studies. Therefore, little is known about theoretical foundations that explain the intersection between digital, social, and entrepreneurship. Based on an integrative literature review and a thematic case study, this study theorizes the micro-foundations of digital-social value-creation and explores the flourishment of the DSE phenomenon during/after the global lockdowns. Our findings contribute to the literature by extending the DSE definition and identifying the fostering (micro, meso, and macro) conditions involved in the digital-social value-creation process. Several implications emerged from the DSE learning, adaptation, and co-creation strategies/practices. © 2023 Elsevier Inc.
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BACKGROUND: Intravenous thrombolysis (IVT) in acute ischemic stroke (AIS) is a time-dependent treatment with a narrow therapeutic time window, in which the time delay could result from the deadline effect. METHODS: One hospital-based cohort was recruited to detect the factors contributing to the deadline effect, where patients with the deadline effect were defined as those who were presented with the onset-to-door time (ODT) in the first 50%, while the door-to-needle time (DNT) was in the last quartile. DNT (in-hospital delay) was further subdivided into several time intervals [door-to-examination time (DET), door-to-imaging time (DIT), door-to-laboratory time (DLT), and decision-making time (DMT) of the patients or their proxies. RESULTS: A total of 186 IVT cases were enrolled, of which 17.2% (32/186) suffered a delay of the deadline effect. The median age was 66 years, and 35.5% were female. Baseline characteristics were similar between the two groups (all p > .05). For the comparisons of the time intervals, DIT (26 versus 15 min, p = .001) was significantly longer in the group with deadline effect, while the differences of DET, DLT, DMT, and ONT did not reach statistical significance (all p > .05). Upon multivariable adjustment in the binary logistic regression model, longer DIT [odds ratio (OR), 1.076; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.036-1.118; p < .001], and history of coronary heart disease (OR, 3.898; 95%CI, 1.415-10.735; p = .008) were independently associated with deadline effect in the binary logistic regression model, while admitted in the working day (OR, 0.674; 95%CI, 0.096-0.907; p = .033), and having medical insurance (OR, 0.350; 95% CI, 0.132-0.931; p = .035) were negatively associated with the deadline effect. CONCLUSIONS: A speed-safety tradeoff phenomenon from the deadline effect was observed in 17.2% of IVT cases during the COVID-19 pandemic, where longer DIT contributed a lot to this time delay. Patients without medical insurance, or admitted in official holidays were more likely to experience a delay of the deadline effect.
Subject(s)
Brain Ischemia , COVID-19 , Ischemic Stroke , Stroke , Thrombosis , Humans , Female , Aged , Male , Stroke/therapy , Ischemic Stroke/drug therapy , Thrombolytic Therapy/methods , Pandemics , Fibrinolytic Agents/therapeutic use , Brain Ischemia/drug therapy , Treatment OutcomeABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to a different learning paradigm than before, from offline learning to online learning. This paradigm is, of course, still popularly used today even until the pandemic ends in the future. The learning paradigm in question is the online learning method. Online learning method not only provides convenience for students or educators but also creates problems that are very interesting to observe. One of the variables that become a problem in this learning method is the students' level of focus in online learning because online learning requires a lengthy screen time, and students use different devices. In this study, we will analyze the level of focus of students participating in online learning using smartphones and laptops. The problem with online learning is the different focus conditions due to differences in the use of devices, affecting the delivery of material received by students. The age limit of students used as the research object is 18-20 years. The approach used to analyze this problem is measure the level of focus using a brain wave recorder Electroencephalogram (EEG). As many as 25 students will observe their level of focus when participating in online learning using laptops and smartphones. Based on research conducted, the focus level of students using smartphone devices has an attention level of 54.72% and laptops by 60.80%. Laptop use has a higher level of attention by 5.76% than smartphone use. © 2022 IEEE.
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Agroecology is established in the scientific field through different techniques, disciplines, theoretical-methodological contributions in line with the traditional knowledge of the peasantry, who seek, from a critical analysis of the socio-environmental crisis, to advance in the consolidation of productive resistance in the agroecological sphere, such as this is the case of agroecological baskets in Primavera (SP), which has consolidated itself as an important instrument of struggle and productive resistance for the MST, and is the object of study in this work. The basket project contributes to the productive transition process of peasants and the formative-political process of consumers, allows for the debate of food sovereignty via donations of baskets in this period of the COVID-19 Pandemic, creates bonds of affection between producers and consumers and takes consumption of healthy foods free of pesticides to the population.
ABSTRACT
In the previous article in this issue (S Afr J Sci. 2022;118(11/12), Art. #13165), the emergence and spread of COVID-19 pari passu with climate change and planetary degradation were interpreted as late manifestations in the trend towards gradual decline into disorder (entropy) in an unstable and ecologically threatened planet. In this article, as we contemplate a post-COVID world, the question is whether new insights could generate courageous, prescient leadership towards new paradigms of health, politics, economics, society, and our relationship with nature. A gloomy prognosis is postulated because of the power of many impediments to such changes, both in an increasingly polarised world and in South Africa as a microcosm. Despite many squandered opportunities and a decline in local and global cooperation between all who have a stake in the future, some hope is retained for innovative shifts towards sustainable futures. Significance: Precarious local and global instabilities are vivid reminders of our interconnectedness with each other and with nature. Insights into local and global threats and opportunities, call for paradigm shifts in thinking about and taking action towards a potentially sustainable future in a country that has its own unique history and problems but is also a microcosm of the world. The impediments to making appropriately constructive paradigm shifts in many countries with their tendencies to authoritarianism that threaten peace and democracy, are even more complex in South Africa, where opportunities for dialogue and cooperation are diminishing. Retaining some hope, with vision and courage for innovative shifts towards a sustainable economic/ecological paradigm locally and globally, is arguably essential.
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The goal of this study is to suggest a radical shift in the way we think about extending the marketing paradigm. Since the writers believe that there is not enough of a balance between consumer and brand thinking, this is both theoretically and practically required. Despite the fact that the marketing paradigm centers on the clientele, the marketing technique considers the two sides of the market, the demand and the supply. Due to rising costs and increased competition, business owners are scratching their heads to come up with innovative marketing strategies. Although they get some insight into the historical alterations in marketing theory and practice, this information is less helpful in terms of understanding the marketing paradigm adjustments that will be necessary to thrive in the VUCA world. The purpose of this essay is to analyze and evaluate recent marketing trends and to suggest the introduction of a new marketing paradigm.