ABSTRACT
The urgent virtualisation of academic activity in educational centres forced by the confinement decreed in Spain between the months of March and May 2020 posed a challenge previously unknown to the entire educational community. Information and communication technologies became essential tools to guarantee the continuity of the course. This situation highlighted the lack of technological equipment for the most vulnerable groups of the population and further increased the << digital divide >>, putting at risk the monitoring and school performance of pupils in these sectors. Among the most affected groups is that of gipsy students, as demonstrated in schools such as CEIP Nueva Segovia, (Segovia, Spain). This paper is the result of a qualitative and quantitative research carried out in this school, which has made it possible to identify and analyse the technological devices available to gipsy students, the perception of the different members of the educational community on the use of technologies and, finally, the training of these members in relation to new technologies. The results reveal the needs not only for equipment, but also for training in new technologies that both families and students have. These results show the importance of a new curricular approach for pupils with educational compensation needs to eliminate this situation of inequality.
ABSTRACT
The use of technological tools has robustly come to the forefront in form of e-learning with the onset of COVID-19. In the light of the accelerated shift to online classes by the educational institutions in response to the outbreak of the pandemic, the study aims to apply the technology acceptance model (TAM2) to examine the impact of students' social influence, perceived usefulness, and perceived ease of use on e-learning intention in higher education during COVID-19. Data collected from students of different universities from the Northern region of India were analysed using structural equation modelling. The results revealed that a significant relationship exists between social influence and perceived usefulness of e-learning behavioural intention. The study also confirms the mediation of perceived usefulness between social influence and e-learning behavioural intention and the mediation of perceived usefulness between perceived ease of use and e-learning behavioural intention. The study revealed that social influence and perceived usefulness are the key factors for the acceptance of e-learning in higher education during COVID-19 pandemic. The main contribution to the study is developing a better understanding of variables that influence the adoption and use of e-learning with special reference to an outbreak of COVID-19. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
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Increasing numbers of people have turned to playing boardgames with physically distant friends and family via technological tools, particularly since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, commercial hybrid digital boardgames (HDBs) are designed for co-located, rather than distanced, play and there is a need for more specific tools to support hybrid game design. This paper introduces the SMeFT Decks, a set of card decks to aid in the design of HDBs for distanced play, which support Story, Mechanism, Function and Technology. We describe the use of these cards for design ideation and demonstrate four game concepts for distanced play stemming from the use of these decks in participatory workshops. We report evaluative feedback from a pilot study and from 46 participants who used these cards across nine design workshops and reflect on what we learned from observing this process. Results suggest that the SMeFT Decks are a productive ideation tool for aiding in the design of HDBs for distanced play in collaborative workshop settings. © 2022 ACM.
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The research aims to explore the positive and negative impact of customer intention (CI) to use technology in India's tourism sector. The study proposes a framework and Structural Equation Modeling is applied to determine the validity of the model and hypotheses are tested. This research uses mixed-method research where both qualitative and quantitative data are taken. The results showed that perceived ease of use, innovativeness, and benefits lead to customers' intention to use innovative technologies in tourism. Insecurity, unemployment, cyber security, and people unwilling to use technology are the main factors influencing the perceived risk of technology use in India. © 2023, Success Culture Press. All rights reserved.
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Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, educational agents have been forced to apply strategies and methodologies and use new technological tools that allow them to continue with the teaching–learning processes. Because of this, the present research implements an innovative methodology to analyze the contribution of the Lyrics Training method in the development of listening skills for English language improvement. The experiment was carried out with high school seniors from an academic unit in the city of Ambato. A sample of 62 students was divided into two groups, an experimental group and a control group, each of 31 learners. When comparing both groups through a t-student test for independent samples, the results showed a p-value lower than 0.05 and a Cohen's d coefficient higher than 0.8, establishing that the teaching process through the Lyrics Training methodology is efficient. Finally, to verify if the Lyrics Training method is suitable for the selected experimental group, the usability scale (SUS) was applied, in which an average acceptance of more than 70 points was obtained, indicating that, in general terms, the Lyrics Training method through a web page is efficient for teaching the English language. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
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Among the different approaches to implementing Agility, the Scrum, created in the late 1980s, has stood out as the most used tool by the software development industry. Understand how the concepts underlying this approach, such as ceremonies and time boxes, have been adapted to meet the situation of telework imposed by social distancing to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus, experienced by the elements of the software development teams, presents an opportunity to learn what are the most efficient ways to use its process. It was observed how Scrum was applied in practice by software development teams during the mandatory telework period and from there, it will be look for better ways to do it, either by developing new technological tools, or using existing tools, to support the ceremonies, or, by creating new processes to support such evolution on methodology's process. © 2022 IEEE.
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This study aimed to determine the effectiveness of the "engage,study, activate” (ESA) approach using interactive technological tools at a private university in southern Ecuador. The participants were 67 undergraduate and postgraduate students enrolled in two English as a foreign language (EFL) programs. The study was conducted over a period of ten weeks in three different courses, in which the ESA approach was implemented in an online remote learning environment due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The research instruments included an online diagnostic questionnaire, an observation checklist, an online perceptions questionnaire, and semi-structured interview. In each stage of the ESA approach, activities focusing on developing students' knowledge were designed using interactive technological tools such as Zoom, Canvas, Quizizz, Canva, and Padlet. The results show that in the engage stage, participants felt comfortable, relaxed, and motivated about learning something new. In addition, dialogues and groupwork were the favorite activities during the study stage, where participants shared their ideas with one another. The use of ICT tools was especially effective in the activate stage, because it allowed participants to work collaboratively and receive feedback. All the stages of the ESA approach helped the participants improve their linguistic and pedagogical skills since the use of technological tools allowed them to be actively involved in the learning process. © 2023 Society for Research and Knowledge Management. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
The emergence of educational technological tools and applications have changed the ways of teaching and learning among students and teachers in online learning, especially with the sudden outbreak of COVID-19 all over the place, forcing the educational sector to completely be shifted from traditional classroom to online learning. However, despite the rise of the educational technologies in online learning setting, the problem of English communication skills especially in written form faced by students is being emphasized as one of the urgent matters that requests more attentions and solutions. The problem also includes the students lost their motivation to communicate in English language, in online learning setting particularly. Through literature, it is found that the implementation of feedback provision and the utilization of learning analytics are regarded as one of the effective ways in improving students' written communication skills and motivation to communicate in online learning setting. However, very limited studies focusing on such area are found in language education. As a result, it is necessary to propose a conceptual framework of implementation of both feedback provision and learning analytics in language education context to improve English communication skills in online learning. Therefore, this study is intended to provide a conceptual framework on improving English communication skills in online learning through the utilization of feedback provision and learning analytics. This could serve as a roadmap for future research into this topic. Furthermore, the ways to implement this framework and the implication of the framework are also discussed in this paper that can contribute for literatures. © 2022 Association for Computing Machinery.
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Software development teams depend on the constant and varied use of technological tools that contribute to the fluidity of development activities. The communication channels provided by these tools contribute to the participatory culture of software development, where requirements include getting involved, learning and co-producing the code. However, the choice of channels to support development is still an open question in the scientific community. Through an investigation of closed remote software teams from a large public educational institution in Brazil during the COVID-19 Pandemic, we identified their preferred communication channels and analyzed them to learn how to improve collaboration. We also drew some comparison with social developers and took a look at the challenges that these channels impose and solutions adopted to mitigate these problems. © 2023 ACM.
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The effectiveness of the joint application of the OVA and RA technological tools was evaluated in two Chemistry courses of the first year of engineering careers of two Chilean universities. The results obtained showed that the use of this technology was positive, since the statistical tests showed that 85.7% and 94.6% of the students of the evaluated universities improved their performance. Students in general do not know these tools to study, but they feel very comfortable in applying them when reviewing the contents covered in the Chemistry course. © GKA Ediciones, authors.
ABSTRACT
The objective of this work is to identify the effectiveness of virtual learning objects (VLOs) in the acquisition of chemistry competencies among first year students of two universities in Coquimbo, Chile, and to evaluate the development of competencies for employment and life in society. The research is limited to a quasi-experimental methodology of pre-and post-test with a control group. The instruments used have a Cronbach's Alpha index of 0.8 and 0.9 respectively. The results show the effectiveness of the VLOs in the appropriation of competencies, with statistical significance between 79 % and 100 %. In the competencies there is evidence of articulation between them, which leaves indications to continue investigating the relationship between attitudes and competencies. It is concluded that the VLOs, in the online teaching-learning process supervised by the teacher, motivate students to learn and enhance the skills of interpretation, analysis modeling and execution of procedures to solve chemistry problems.
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The COVID-19 pandemic affected the proselytizing activities of all presidential candidates, forcing them to resort to technological tools. This study analyzed how the 2021 presidential candidates managed communication on Twitter and TikTok during the first election round in Peru. To achieve this objective, quantitative netnography was used. The results indicate that the candidates used social networks as means of unidirectional dissemination, a condition that hinders dialog and feedback in the communication strategy. Especially on Twitter, message planification was deficient, so the conjunctural component prevailed. On TikTok, the phenomenon of personalization is evident, imposing the personal component. Finally, on Twitter, issues such as the pandemic, the economy and campaign activities predominated, in the other hand on TikTok predominated the respective candidate's image. Gender equality and constitutional change were the least addressed issues on both social networks. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
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The COVID-19 pandemic destabilized the prevailing grammar of schooling and forced schools to rely on digital technologies to create new routines and practices. This offers a unique opportunity to examine the interplay between digital technologies and the temporospatial features of schooling, and how these relations were mediated via contextual features. Based on semi-structured interviews with principals and teachers in Muslim-Palestinian and secular-Jewish schools in Jerusalem, this paper qualitatively analyzes the main technological tools used by educators: instant messaging (WhatsApp), video-conferencing (Zoom) and school-wide platforms (Google Classroom). Our findings stress how technological affordances varied according to socioeconomic status and diverging perceptions of schooling. Specifically, we found that lower-SES Palestinian schools, who faced more acute challenges, utilized digital technologies to restabilize the grammar of schooling in order to monitor and support students' basic needs, whereas average-SES Jewish schools focused on facilitating informal interactions that catered to students' emotional wellbeing. © ISLS.
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Today, educators are part of the pedagogical renewal through teacher-student interaction supported by digital technology. In this sense, current education requires new digital tools that promote and boost the interest of students. For this reason, the objective of this study was to analyze the reality of education in Latin American schools and universities in the digital age and establish perspectives on the financial cost in the education sector in times of pandemic (Covid-19). The type of research is documentary-bibliographical of a descriptive nature that analyzed the scientific literature in a global context that allowed to systematize definitions and make known to the educational community some methods, trends and emerging technological tools, which determines the scope and importance that they have given the current socio-technological and communicative conditions that are developing in a modern education system that fosters creativity, innovation, autonomy, among other skills. In this sense, financial investment in education is vital, considering the risks and potentialities of the future challenges that those involved in the educational process will face: parents, states, educational units and researchers. © 2022, University of Cienfuegos, Carlos Rafael Rodriguez. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
The Covid-19 pandemic has become a great challenge to maintain practices in laboratories from a distance, with a quality educational service through interaction with virtual platforms. The objective of this study was to analyze the experience of using the digital platform for teachers of the Cafam University Foundation (Unicafam) in the area of Engineering, in Colombia. The study was carried out under the qualitative approach, with the methodology of hermeneutic analysis and observation techniques, bibliographic review, semi-structured interviews within the university environment. Results show the optimization of a digitized university management system and the use of collaboration platforms such as Share Point, guarantee access and facilitate the successful permanence of students in the university educational system, in addition to contributing to the training of highly qualified professionals. qualified, in environments characterized by innovative technology. It is concluded that the use of collaborative technological tools such as Share Point, are pertinent and relevant for the optimization of university management, from the formalization in the use of the structure, as the guarantee of comprehensive care for students who face to post-pandemic challenges. © 2022, Universidad del Zulia. All rights reserved.
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This study presents the perception of Higher Education students on the effect of the use of the technological tool Wooclap on their learning experience, after returning to the classroom after the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. In this study, 74 students of Geography subjects of the Primary Education Degree and the Tourism Degree of the University of Seville completed an online survey -using the SurveyMonkey survey platform -on their perception of the use of the Wooclap tool in class. Most of the students felt that Wooclap was a dynamic and easy-to-use tool, that it had helped them to concentrate better, that its use had facilitated the learning process and had allowed them to interact more with the teacher. These results demonstrate how the use of the Wooclap technology tool can facilitate the learning process, as well as communication between students and teachers. However, most students prefer to be assessed by combining classical assessment with technological tools (and not only by being assessed by combining classical assessment with technological tools). The results of the present study corroborate the benefits of promoting the use of the Wooclap tool in graduate teaching.
ABSTRACT
The development and advancement of technology during the COVID-19 pandemic have been a major contributor to the innovation in pedagogy. Teaching in virtual or hybrid classrooms brought challenges as well as opportunities, particularly for classes with large student enrollment. Many educators quickly learned to use the appropriate instructional technology to be able to not only teach in remote or hybrid mode, but also to keep the students engaged in the process. Keeping in mind the social distancing rules as prescribed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and personal preferences of both the students and the instructors alike, several large Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) courses at the University of Connecticut were offered either remotely or in a hybrid setting during the academic year (AY) 2020-21. This transition was feasible with the financial as well as instructional support from the university. This paper discusses three such courses taught by the authors: Applied Mechanics I and Soil Mechanics in Fall 2020, and Mechanics of Materials in Spring 2021. All these courses had large enrollment (over 100) and were taken primarily by upper-class students to fulfil the requirements of their majors. Several changes were made in the course delivery, method of student engagement, and assessment techniques to adjust for remote as well as hybrid teaching modes. To verify the effectiveness of those changes, both mid-semester surveys and annual student surveys were conducted in all three courses and the results are shared in this paper. With the availability of vaccines and by enforcing the mask mandate, most of the CEE courses were offered in person in the Fall of 2021. During this new normal, two of the large civil engineering courses (Principles of Construction I and Soil Mechanics) were taught by the authors in person. Based on the lessons learned during the pandemic (AY 2020-21), some of the virtual instructional tools were used in these in-person courses to improve student engagement. The purpose of this paper is to describe those instructional tools and their effectiveness in improving the pedagogy as well as the students' learning using the data collected during the mid-semester and annual student surveys. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2022.
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The coronavirus has prevented face-to-face consultations of procedures in the entities, so Ecuadorian companies have opted to use technological tools to provide smooth service to their customers. Among them is the Chatbot, which allows users to receive personalized attention through a computer. This paper presents the development of a chatbot for the Prefecture of Los Rios in Ecuador. The main objective is to present the development of a chatbot for the attention and management of services offered to citizens of the Prefecture of Los Rios. Direct research for collecting the necessary information and a qualitative approach study for the development of this project involved interviews in learning about the needs and requirements of citizens. The Chatbot Prefectura Los Ríos uses frameworks for natural language processing developed from a Dialog flow tool, resulting in users' acceptance. © 2022 IEEE Computer Society. All rights reserved.
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In the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, the teaching-learning process moved to a virtual modality, experiencing changes in teacher-student interaction, for which it was necessary to use technological tools, such as YouTube and Zoom, the which became the most used due to their accessibility and diversity of collaborative functionalities. The objective of this work was to determine the application of the technological tools YouTube and Zoom, as interactive resources in the development of the teaching-learning process of a primary institution in Ecuador. For this, a case study is presented, where a quantitative methodology was applied, with a descriptive-correlational type of study, considering the total population of fifth grade students to whom a previously structured survey and interviews with teachers were applied. In this context, it is concluded based on the results that the use of YouTube and Zoom contribute significantly to the teaching-learning process, however, little knowledge is reflected in the teachers regarding the use of its functionalities, which compromises the adequate development of the apprenticeships. © 2022 IEEE Computer Society. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Universities and institutions of higher education have been forced to move study and work activities remotely to contrast the spread of the pandemic due to Covid-19. Given the differences in roles, opportunities and operational functions of students, faculty members and university employees, it was deemed important to investigate whether any difficulties encountered in this condition of isolation may have led the three different groups to behave in an ethically inappropriate manner. To this end a questionnaire was developed and administered to a sample of 706 respondents, i.e. faculty members, students and technical and administrative staff. The study participants filled in a questionnaire aimed at investigating the operating conditions of working and studying at a distance, relating them to the perception of possible misbehavior by their own group and the other two subgroups. Results put in evidence that the three groups considered faced different difficulties that had different effects on perceptions in relation to the misconduct they experienced or perpetrated. Faculty appear to be essentially suffering from problems experienced even before the pandemic, such as an excess of competition that leads them to see their own colleagues as unfair. Students have less satisfactory housing conditions and demonstrate an awe of faculty that leads them to express less dissent when they witness misconduct. Technical and administrative staff appear disadvantaged in terms of technical tools and less equipped to process the negative feedback they receive about their work. However, they more than the other two groups are convinced that misbehaviors have decreased during home quarantine. On the contrary, faculty and students reported that misconduct have increased during the period of isolation. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.