ABSTRACT
Currently, the implementation of chatbots or virtual assistants presents great benefits for the companies or institutions that use them, since their use allows the user to establish a communication through a program that is integrated to a certain messaging system. Virtual assistants are programmed to communicate with the client and solve their doubts without a person attending them, and their main advantage is that they are always available to interact with users at any time the person requires it. This research aims to evaluate how it affects the use of chatbots in the process of counseling students of the Technical University of Manabi, since with all the technological advances that have been occurring over the years with the implementation of chatbots in the area of education has increased, the application of these virtual assistant systems in schools and universities has increased its popularity of implementation in these times, where virtual education is widely used as a result of the pandemic of covid-19, a situation that has faced the vast majority of countries worldwide. The methodology used for this research is quantitative, bibliographic and experimental. Bibliographic because a research is carried out on works related to the proposed topic. Experimental because it is based on the development of a chatbot in Telegram, which will be executed and subsequently evaluated through a Likert scale survey that aims to determine the QoS of users with respect to the chatbot. The results obtained from the student surveys show a high level of acceptability and satisfaction with the chatbot service, therefore, it is recommended that this service be incorporated at the institutional level, in order to provide information support to users without time constraints. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
Including ethical concepts and considerations in engineering education has attracted significant interest in recent years, mainly due to the impact of some AI applications in different areas of our life. The use of case studies in teaching ethics is a well-known and useful approach. The debate related with a given case study helps students think about the implications, motivations and foreseeable impact of the technologies. This fact is in contrast with the common easy-thinking that technologies are neutral and that an engineer should not bother about ethics and does not have any responsibility at all. While many basic technologies may be considered neutral, more developed and complex systems are not so neutral;they have a motivation and some foreseeable impact and consequences. Thence, the main message is that engineers have a responsibility when developing these systems. This paper presents a case study used in a course for Ph.D. students in a Technical University to introduce the concept of ethics by design and to stress the idea of responsible conduct in engineering. The case under study is the design and development of tracing applications for fighting against the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. The analysis of the case requires to understand the basic technologies proposed, the different alternatives considered at that time, the basic facts related with the contagion chain and the main factors to be addressed, the consideration of the balance between public health rights and individual privacy rights, and the social aspects related with the acceptability by citizens. © 2022 SEFI 2022 - 50th Annual Conference of the European Society for Engineering Education, Proceedings. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
This paper presents the second part of the research conducted at Riga Technical University aimed to explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Generation X (Gen X) and Generation Y (Gen Y) consumer behavior and purchasing priorities. While the changes in consumer behavior have already been analyzed and published earlier [1], the changes in purchasing priorities which might have caused changes in consumer behavior, are going to be studied in this work. The choice of these two generations is not made randomly;on the contrary, it was an intentional selection among other consumers, as they make a very active and prominent part of buyers all over the world. The research methods used are comparative descriptive analysis, Chi-square test and qualitative content analysis of data collected in an electronic survey of respondents from Asia, Europe, and America. The findings show that statistically significant differences between the changes in purchasing priorities of both generations are found for: meat and dairy products, fruit & vegetables, non-alcoholic and alcoholic drinks, clothes & shoes, body care & cosmetics, entertainment (pay TV services, computer games, etc.) and transport. Altogether, purchasing priorities of Gen X consumers were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic less than Gen Y consumers. Copyright 2022. © by the International Institute of Informatics and Systemics. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Online teaching has become a decisive factor to keep growing in higher education settings. The present analytical correlational study examined the predictable factors that would help EFL Jordanian students engage in online learning in English courses after COVID-19 pandemic. To achieve the objective of the study, a validated and a reliable survey was administered to investigate the students' perceptions toward various factors that would affect their success and engagement in online EFL classroom. Additionally, the relationship among some factors was investigated. Fifty-nine EFL students in an English Language Skills course in a technical university college in Jordan were randomly selected to respond to a questionnaire which was adapted from Bernard [7]. Data of the study were analyzed using the descriptive statistics (means and standard deviations) and Person Correlation Coefficient. Findings of the study confirmed that relationship among some factors has uncovered the importance of having basic skills in building other skills. A positive relationship was also found between the factors that help students engage in online learning and self-management. Findings of the study would be helpful for teachers, instructors, and course designers when designing and delivering online courses as well as policy makers. © 2023,International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning.All Rights Reserved.
ABSTRACT
In this article, the authors describe the evaluation of safety-oriented teaching at a technical university during the COVID pandemic under the long-term closure of universities in the Czech Republic. Three practical case studies are presented to illustrate the current level of sophistication of virtual reality technology for industrial safety teaching. The case studies are focused on the environment of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and cooperation with them. The proposed affordable and simple approaches describe virtual teaching at universities providing education in the field of safety engineering. © ESREL 2021. Published by Research Publishing, Singapore.
ABSTRACT
This article presents the analysis of the result of the application of the SERVPERF model that allows knowing the perception of the service of the users of the student attention management model of the Private Technical University of Loja. The method used is empirical through the use of a Likert scale, reliability and factorial analysis of the proposed items, which were collected through a survey of students. The results found allowed knowing the student's perception and the validity of the instrument used, which reflects the relationship with the results of other similar studies. The evaluation of the experience is the most relevant result according to the model and the least is found in response times. © 2022 IEEE Computer Society. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
In recent years, with the remarkable development in game engines, virtual reality (VR) technologies, which immerse users inside a synthetic environment, became very popular and were increasingly integrated into the visualisation of geospatial data. In the Covid-19 pandemic, restricting people's mobility, the interest in VR visits was rapidly increased. In the scope of a scientific research project, a three dimensional (3D) virtual tour for Gebze Technical University Campus was generated by integrating very high resolution unmanned air vehicle (UAV) data into a virtual environment utilizing Unity game engine. Regarding high geolocation accuracy and spatial resolution, low cost, short processing time, and 3D realistic model generation performance, UAV data is largely demanded in varied scientific and commercial applications. In this study, the campus area was collected with 2.18 cm ground sampling distance (GSD) from 80 m flight altitude using 20 MegaPixel UAV digital camera. The UAV data was processed by Agisoft Metashape, structure from motion (SFM) based image matching software, and then high-quality 3D textured models were generated. The aerial imagery was oriented by ground control points (GCPs), carefully distributed in the study area. The geometric accuracy of the image orientation was calculated as ±8 mm (∼0.4 pixels). For virtual reality integration, first, the 3D textured models derived from UAV data were imported into the Unity game engine. After that, optimization techniques including occlusion culling, space subdivision were applied to the models to prevent problems that may arise due to transferring high poly models to game engines. Thus, objects and textures have been transferred with the highest resolution to achieve a realistic virtual experience. For creating a more detailed and realistic environment, 3D models of trees, lighting poles, benches, arbours, and information panels were added to the model using available assets in Unity. Also, the metadata about buildings (e.g. building name, floor area and the number of staff) were added to the 3D building models. Finally, a player with a first-person camera is implemented for the virtual tour in the integrated 3D models. In this study, the encountered problems and recommended solutions for creating a virtual campus are presented. © ACRS 2021.All right reserved.
ABSTRACT
The pandemics of COVID-19 unprecedently changed the world how we knew it. The schools and universities have been also influenced a lot by ongoing pandemics. Until now all students in Slovakia attended schools and universities in person. The pandemics caused a sudden switch from face-to-face classes to distance learning which has been difficult for both students and teachers. To better understand and negate the impact of the pandemics on various aspects of our lives a lot of research is being made. The article deals with the influence of the COVID-19 pandemics on electronics students studying at the Technical University of Košicein Slovakia. The impact of distance form on students, students' education, and their experience is analyzed. Later the suggestions on how to improve distance learning are presented. The data about students' experiences have been collected using questionaries. Collected results have shown most students had no experience with online classes before the pandemics. Conducted surveys have also been focused on class quality in distance learning. Results indicated that most of the students think the lectures classes can be taught online without significant change in gained knowledge. On the other hand, most of the students think the opposite about the practices classes. Therefore, the suggestion to preserve practices classes in face-to-face form is made. Later, the video conferencing systems and students' experience with them is analyzed. In the conclusion, the results are summarized, and it is noted that the pandemics influenced the lives of students both negatively and positively in respective aspects. © 2021 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Current article try to find the answer to the question - how to make public transport system safer during the pandemic and after? Introduction shows the effect of pandemic to transport sector and to public transport system in particular. Second chapter deals with the recommendations for adapting the public transport system to the COVID-19 challenge, ensuring its sustainability. The short framework should help to return the public transport system to sustainable position. Third chapter deals with technologies for disinfection developed by Riga Technical University and partners, to reduce the effect of pandemic. These technologies are automated and robotic equipment for air and surface disinfection;disinfection gate and equipment for surface, as well as, air disinfection with UV radiation and ozone. Authors hope, that all offered devices could be used in different premises to make public transport system safer from the epidemiological point of view by making the working environment cleaner from viruses and helping all the employees to feel safer. © 2021 Kaunas University of Technology. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Faced with the restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, universities, as providers of higher education, have been forced to provide their students exclusively through a digital interface. For this, the institutions were challenged to select resources and platforms to support online education. The World Health Organization (WHO) advocates for research focusing on the impact and prediction of post-Covid evolution on education, in order to obtain adequate explanations for these challenges. The Technical University of Moldova (UTM) is the only technical higher education institution in the Republic of Moldova. TUM invests continuously in information technology infrastructure, as well as in the digital education of both students and academics. The aim of the study is to evaluate the university potential, from the perspective of digital technologies, in providing now, but also in the future, e-Learning. The most dominant form of providing learning content to TUM, during the pandemic, was online lectures via real-time video conferencing, which is confirmed by the continuous increase in the number of active MTeams users. And e-Learning did not negatively influence students’ learning. The obtained results show that TUM has demonstrated its potential to ensure the continuity and good development of the teaching process during the pandemic, maintaining the good quality of studies. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.