A Case Study on Student Experiences of Social VR in a Remote STEM Classroom

Extended reality (XR) technologies continue gaining traction in multiple higher education contexts. As XR becomes more commercially accessible to students and universities, its convenience for educational purposes presents a renewed potential for exploration. Due to Covid-19 restrictions, there is also a growing interest in cross-platform, socially orientated software for remote educational practices. However, the precise role of XR technologies and how they contribute to student experiences of remote learning, particularly the unique affordances of social virtual reality (VR) for evoking an embodied sense of presence, is relatively unknown. Based on real-world experiences, we present a case study on a social VR intervention in a remote higher education classroom to inspire Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) researchers to investigate further the issues that arise from our practice-based research. Our motivations were to report, analyze, and summarize everyday virtual learning environment (VLE) challenges, identify design considerations for VLE technologies, and comment on social VR's utility in delivering Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) subjects in a remote setting. We apply a practical approach to investigate and identify potential HCI problems, capture the unique experiences of STEM students during the lockdown, and explore the effects of tutorial activities that give students agency in constructing VLEs. The findings of this student-focused case study draw attention to the design of social VR activities that support conventional, web browser-based VLEs. © 2023 Owner/Author.

Differences in stress levels between junior high school students and college students during online learning

The article discusses research which analyzed the differences in stress levels between junior high school students and college students during online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia. It discusses body change caused by stressors, the influence of sex on an individual's stress level, the potential of stress experienced by students to cause signs and symptoms of health problems, and factors influencing stress in male and female students.

Students Experience Testing in the Implementation of the 'Gather Town' Meeting Platform as an Alternative Learning Media other than Zoom Cloud Meeting Application

The COVID-19 pandemic has limited the mobility of everyone in the world. Education is one of the most affected sectors because education systems have been done face to face. Most educational institutions switch to online learning by using online meeting platforms. We discovered an online meeting platform called 'Gather town' which looks more attractive in increasing learning motivation and may be an alternative solution for online education. This paper aims to test student experience using 'Gather Town' as a new learning medium and compare the effectiveness with Zoom Meeting Application. We compare the User Experience of both applications by letting respondents try the application and ask for feedback from our questionnaire. The result from the questionnaire shows that Gather Town has excellent potential as an alternative new learning media. © 2022 IEEE.

"Eyes don't say it all” - Communication challenges while wearing facemasks in class

Facemasks are personal protective equipment worn to reduce the risk of the transmission of Covid-19. University students and teachers/lecturers in Serbia are required to wear facemasks in class at all times. However, such practice may cause challenges in student-teacher communication. We present students' experiences regarding speech intelligibility in the educational setting. We distributed an anonymous online questionnaire among students from various universities. Speaking with a facemask in class creates communication challenges for teachers and students alike. Students claim that teachers often have difficulties understanding students who speak wearing masks;teachers often ask students to repeat the sentence, and teachers often ask students to speak louder. Similarly, when teachers talk with their facemasks, students often report not hearing or understanding teachers back. In turn, students would ask teachers to repeat the sentence and raise voices. Students pay more attention to teachers' facial expressions, hand gestures, body language, and tone of voice. Students tend to engage their non-verbal interaction skills more often to facilitate communication. We further discuss the differences regarding students' gender and the type of facemask typically worn. We express concern that the inability to communicate clearly may cause annoyance and frustration in the academic setting. © 2022 Internoise 2022 - 51st International Congress and Exposition on Noise Control Engineering. All rights reserved.

"It's Really Hard to Have Your Own Place": The At-Home Experiences of Latina/o/x Undergraduates During COVID-19

The purpose of this study was to understand the at-home lived experiences of Latina/o/x college students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using Critical Race Theory as the guiding framework, the authors used storytelling to capture the at-home experiences of 19 Latina/o/x college students during the pandemic. Findings revealed how the pandemic shifted meaning of the home space, increased roles and responsibilities, and increased stress and mental health demands for students. (English) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] El propósito de este estudio fue el entender las experiencias vividas en casa por los estudiantes universitarios latina/o/x durante la pandémica de COVID-19. Usando la teoría de Raza Crítica como marco de referencia los autores usaron el cuento para capturar las experiencias en casa de 19 estudiantes universitarios latina/o/x durante la pandémica. Los resultados revelaron cómo la pandémica cambió el significado del espacio de casa, incrementando papeles y responsabilidades, e incrementando la tensión y las demandas de salud mental para los estudiantes. (Spanish) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Journal of Hispanic Higher Education is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Relevance of Digital Education and its different aspects of development

The ongoing digitalisation of the learning processes has both opportunities and obstacles for the educational attainment of students in STEM subjects. In this paper, we summarise student experiences with digitalisation during the COVID-19 pandemic and provide recommendations for how to improve teaching methods of STEM education. The research was conducted through focus groups in a workshop format at 15 European STEM universities across 8 different countries obtaining 147 responses from students. This paper also aims to analyse how the digital competency of both students and professors has been impacting the effectiveness of new teaching methods and education tools during online classes since the start of the pandemic. Students have a variety of needs, with some students preferring the flexibility and anonymity online work gives them, while others thrive better when they are face to face with instructors and dislike the limitations that exist in virtual communication. In addition, we looked at how students view changes in the evaluation of projects and tests that have occurred to prevent cheating. The results show the relevance of digital education and which aspects of it need to be developed further. The paper further explores possible solutions for the issues identified in this research, including learning, methodological and skill development aspects. Overall, we propose hybrid classrooms where students have the choice to explore which method of learning best fits them and how professors can support them to ensure the best educational outcome. © 2022 SEFI 2022 - 50th Annual Conference of the European Society for Engineering Education, Proceedings. All rights reserved.

Should Physical Education be Taught Online Post Covid-19?

The purpose of this study is to collect students' opinions at a vocational college in Vietnam and find out students' preferences about online learning which was an alternative method as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. This shift in education from traditional classroom learning to online learning at nearly all levels of education in Vietnam can be considered as the biggest teaching method change to date. As online learning has become more popular in Vietnam due to the COVID-19 pandemic, research is needed to understand student experiences and most importantly reveal views on students' online learning preferences. This study is designed to understand the views, challenges and attitudes about online learning being carried out in a vocational college with simple descriptive statistics research method. Data were collected from 140 students via an online survey system. The survey results show that students face many challenges in terms of networking, interaction between lecturers and students as well as limited direct contact with friends and the percentage of students who do not like online learning is rather high. However, according to the students in this survey, online learning provides many advantages in terms of increasing students' autonomy as well as increasing the number of tech-savvy students. © 2022 IEEE.

Online Distance Instruction in Higher Education Through the Lens of Students' Experience

The main objective of the research is to monitor online distance instruction at the higher education level and to discover whether there were any changes in the process within the period of 18-month period, when schools were closed due to the covid-19 pandemic. The ex-post-facto method was applied in the research. Data were collected by questionnaire. In total, almost 300 (resp. 642) respondents from three institutions participated in the research. Four statements were under focus: (1) Teachers invested much effort in online distance teaching;(2) Students invested much effort in online distance learning;(3) I appreciate online distance instruction;(4) I did not learn much through online distance instruction. Respondents' dis/agreement with statements was considered on a four-level Likert. A quantitative approach was used to calculate the frequency of occurrence of responses in single statements. We anticipated that there will be both supporters and rejectors of online distance instruction. Particular expectations are reflected in the responses to the statements. However, the results are limited by the convenience of the sample and also/mainly by the ability and willingness of the students to consider their learning objectively, to confess whether they are able to learn autonomously, in particular, whether they have sufficient level of inner motivation to learn. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Experiences of gifted students during the COVID-19 pandemic in Turkey

COVID-19 began to spread all over the world in the Spring of 2020. All schools, including the institutions serving students with special needs, were closed to decrease the spread of the virus. The schools had to shift to online education, which was a new experience for most students. In addition to the negative effects of the pandemic itself, the new learning format required extra effort from students. Gifted and talented students as a special group with special educational and socio-emotional needs may have experienced the pandemic differently. In the present study, we aimed to explore gifted and talented students' subjective well-being, feelings of hope, and stress coping strategies with a quantitative method. In addition, we used a qualitative method and asked a few open-ended questions to dig deeper into these students' experiences during the pandemic. We found a statistically significant correlation among subjective well-being, hope, and stress coping strategies. Effective stress coping strategies are used more frequently than negative ones. We revealed that although there are some positive sides to the process, the students described some difficulties with social interaction, access and use of technology, motivation, and physical health. Based on the findings, we suggested some important implications and recommendations for parents, educators, and policymakers. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Interrupted trajectories: university students' reasons for temporarily suspending their studies during the pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic has affected the continuity of the educational trajectories of many students who have had to suspend their studies temporarily or permanently. In the case of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (unam), the General Secretary's office stated in 2020 that 20% of students were at risk of dropping out of school due to the pandemic, while by 2021 the number of students requesting temporary suspension of their studies increased by 228%. In order to identify the reasons put forward by the student body for submitting to the Technical Council of their entity a temporary suspension of studies, a mixed convergent study was conducted in which the causes given by 268 students of the Psychology degree of the Faculty of Psychology of the unam, both open and attendance systems, for temporarily suspending their studies are analyzed. The purpose is to understand, based on the voice of the students, the problems they have been experiencing during the pandemic without being able to achieve continuity with the theoretical trajectory typified by the school administration. The results indicate the interrelation of factors associated with socioeconomic or labor conditions of the students and their families, responsibilities and problems at home, lack of appropriate technological infrastructure, health and emotional problems, educational conditions and prior academic lag, as well as dissatisfaction and demotivation regarding the online education received and the reduction of the school semester. Proposals for attention and prevention of college dropout during the pandemic are discussed. © 2022 Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. All rights reserved.

PEER MENTORSHIP: EXPLORING THE UNMET NEEDS OF CURRENT MENTEES DURING COVID-19

Peer mentorship is a mutually beneficial relationship that allows two individuals who are at approximately the same experience level to interact with one another with the goal of providing personal, professional, or both types of support. It has been found that peer mentorship within academic settings have generally positive retention, persistence, and student experience outcomes for both mentors and mentees. While peer mentoring research and initiatives are growing, very few instances exist of determining student perceived needs regarding peer mentorship. As such, at a western institution in the United States, students were surveyed to self-report their perceived peer mentorship needs. This survey occurred during Fall 2021, just after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Out of 223 participants, 79 students indicated that they currently had a peer mentor at the time the survey was administered. Students were given both a definition and examples of peer mentorship before indicating they had a peer mentor. Their mentors may have been formally assigned through an existing program at the college of engineering of interest or informally obtained through their own efforts. These 79 participants were asked what additional support they wish their peer mentor could provide. Through phenomenological analysis of open-ended responses, common avenues for additional support were determined. These findings allowed for development of recommendations for shaping the future implementation of more targeted and beneficial peer mentoring initiatives. The recommendations include providing flexibility in peer mentorship, training on resources and events, and a variety of peer mentoring opportunities early and consistently. © 2022 SEFI 2022 - 50th Annual Conference of the European Society for Engineering Education, Proceedings. All rights reserved.

Collaborative Learning and Emergency Remote Teaching in Interpreter Training: Teachers' and Students' Experiences During COVID-19

Mandatory social distancing due to COVID-19 presented the challenge of shifting on-site education to virtual learning environments in order to resume lessons in universities around the world. In this context, Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas (UPC) had to shift its Educational Model to Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT). This study aims to analyze Collaborative Learning in the process of adapting the virtual learning environment (VLE) used in the four Interpreter Training courses belonging to UPC's undergraduate program in Professional Translation and Interpretation (TIP) during the two academic terms of ERT in 2020. Six interpreter trainers were interviewed to explore their perspectives on adapting the VLE to allow and promote Collaborative Learning in their classes during ERT, while eleven interpreting students shared their perceptions on this VLE's effectiveness in a focus group. Results show how Collaborative Learning was developed through bonds of Positive Interdependence and Promotive Interaction between members of the learning community, both teachers and students. © 2022 IEEE.

Remote learning through a mobile application in gifted education

During the school closure in the COVID-19 pandemic, students with special needs including gifted students faced many challenges in terms of educational support. The Turkish Ministry of National Education released a mobile app named "I am special, I am in education" to overcome these challenges. This study aimed to explore how gifted children perceived the experience of learning through this mobile app. Using a phenomenological design, the data were collected from 10 gifted students through focus group interviews and student journals. An inductive approach was used to analyze the data. The findings indicated that although gifted students referred to this experience as weird and different, they also stated that using the app helped their learning. They foregrounded that the app needed improvements and a section for live interaction with other gifted students and teachers to increase their motivation. This study suggests some implications for mobile app developers, educators, and parents. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Learning Online During a Pandemic: Student Perspectives

This study explores student experiences of online learning during the global COVID19 pandemic. The paper assesses whether the outcomes of constructivist inquiry-based learning can still be achieved online. A qualitative research approach was used to survey online learning experiences of students. A total of 27 registered Construction Studies university students conveniently sampled across all levels of study completed a questionnaire with close ended questions. The data collection was computed and analysed using SPSS version 27. Mean values, standard deviations and reliability values were computed. Results of the survey indicated that most students spent more time doing work during online learning. Students indicated that they were able to think more critically and discuss concepts and collaborate with other students. There was a handful of students that were more stressed, socially inactive and lacked outdoor activity due to online learning. The sample is drawn from a single university in South Africa and findings cannot be generalized across all student populations. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Children as co‐researchers in pandemic times: Power and participation in the use of digital dialogues with children during the COVID‐19 lockdown

This paper documents co‐participatory research with children in six primary schools in Ireland during the COVID‐19 pandemic. It explores the use of what we term digital dialogues with diverse groups of children aged 9–10 years as members of Child Research Advisory Groups. The paper conceptualises the digital dialogues as sites of resistance as well as constraint, empowering children to articulate their voices in relation to schooling and the pandemic, whilst mediated by power dynamics—between adults and children, and between children, in the articulation of those voices.

College Students' experience of using online video and educational video

The COVID-19 has made it impossible for students to have face-To-face classes in the classroom. Online education provides a practical method for learning. This article makes an online questionnaire survey in S University (n = 57), describes and analyzes the online behavior characteristics of students in S University and the attitude evaluation of online educational videos. The survey found that watching videos is the main entertainment way for college students to surf the Internet. Students watch 4.5 hours of video every day. The statistical comparison of GPA shows that students can acquire knowledge in online education just like face-To-face teaching. Further research found that the quality of video played a significant positive role in students' complete viewing of video. Therefore, improving the quality of video education will provide better learning services for students. © 2022 IEEE.

African Diaspora Engineering Education Student Experiences in the US: A Collaborative Autoethnographic Study

The number of students of African origin traveling abroad for postgraduate engineering education has increased over the last 30 years. Studying abroad provides unique experiences and benefits for African students and the host country. These experiences place international scholars in an ideal position to reflect on the different experiences between the practices, attitudes, social diversity, and competency development they find in their new study destinations and hence can make suggestions for improvement in their home and host countries. This paper explores the experience, reflections, and adaptation of African scholars to their international educational context during the COVID pandemic, using a collaborative autoethnography methodology. Elements of the theoretical frameworks of acculturation theory and adaptability theory were used in the collection, analysis, and discussion of the paper to address the following research questions: 1) What are the experiences and perspectives of African Diaspora graduate scholars in undertaking engineering education studies in the US? 2) What improvements are suggested for the study environments in their home countries and in the US? The findings raise provocative thoughts about the culture of and the philosophies behind the present nature of instruction, assessment, student supervision, experiences, and workload in the US and African countries. We argue for a need to disrupt several realities that have become a norm for African diaspora students and suggest how this can be done drawing from our own experiences within these unique environments. © 2022 IEEE.

Engineering Student's Flexibility for Learning During Education Disruption

Due to the recent education disruption, engineering-related module classes have to rapidly and effectively move online because of unpredictable changes. For design-related technical modules, not much literature focused on how students and tutors can adopt the latest technologies in a relatively short span. This paper is an effort to find students' experiences and preferences around various interactive educational tools used in online synchronous teaching, such as interactive live zoom lectures, slide annotations, breakout rooms, recorded videos, and many more, which have been used at the University of Glasgow, Singapore, for the module known as Design and Manufacture 1, during the 2021 COVID-19 crisis and beyond. From this work, we were able to find how an online synchronous learning approach affects design engineering students' learning experience. To understand students' perception of online learning tools to be effective in enhancing their learning during a sudden change in the arrangement of physical classes to online classes due to the pandemic situation. Survey results were collected using google forms at the end of the trimester, which was offered to 65 students enrolled in the module based on the student experience. The response rate is around 70%. The survey result showed that students engaged very well with the technologies and took little time to adjust to online learning. Students found learning very comfortable using the latest online teaching tools during their online learning journey in the design engineering module. © 2022 IEEE.

Understanding University Students during COVID-19: A Longitudinal Mixed-Methods Analysis of Their Experiences of Online Learning, Mental Health, Academic Engagement, and Academic Self-Efficacy.

INTRODUCTION: Research has consistently demonstrated that the COVID-19 pandemic, and resulting sudden shift to online learning (OL), had detrimental impacts on the motivation and mental health of university students. To date however this research has been cross-sectional and quantitative. METHOD: This study employed a mixed-methods design to examine the experiences of students at a large national Australian University both at the outset of the pandemic in 2020 (n = 824) and again 6 months later (n = 254) at the conclusion of their academic year. RESULTS: Key findings from this study highlighted that despite quantitative findings suggesting poorer attitudes toward learning during the pandemic, qualitatively students perceived both positives and negatives to studying online. The qualitative results further highlighted that this experience was not the same for all and suggests the need to reconsider the standard approaches to offering support for students. CONCLUSION: Students reported poor mental health in both time points, but outlined avenues which improved not only their mental health but also their motivation for studying such as increased peer engagement and self-care activities. Students reported that OL negatively impacted on both their engagement with studies and their mental health, highlighting the need for universities to prioritize supporting their students' mental health as much as their development of academic skills.

Online Learning Experiences of Graduate Students in Türkiye: Could This Be the Footsteps of a Reform?

With the recent Covid-19 pandemic, the way of teaching has rapidly turned into online learning environments. This situation has brought along various difficulties in the implementation of online teaching. From this point of view, this research focuses on the experiences of graduate students in the online teaching process and the multifaceted effects of this process on them. The research is a case study examining the opinions of 16 graduate students from various state and foundation universities in Türkiye. The maximum diversity sampling method, one of the purposeful sampling methods, was taken as a criterion in the determination of the participants. The data of the study were obtained with a semi-structured interview form developed by the researchers. Thematic analysis technique was used in the analysis of the obtained data. Research results show that online education facilitates access to education, develops students' self-discipline and awareness of taking responsibility;however, it has disadvantages in terms of social and psychological aspects. In addition, it has been concluded that online teaching is not yet ready to be considered as a stand-alone teaching delivery model, and it is more appropriate to use it as an alternative model to traditional face-to-face education. It is thought that the results obtained within the scope of the research will contribute to the improvement and development of online learning experiences of graduate students, as well as being a guide to higher education stakeholders and policymakers. © 2023, Ozgen Korkmaz. All rights reserved.