ABSTRACT
Under the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is an accelerated transition from the traditional form of knowledge transfer to online learning. Our study of 344 automotive students showed that the success of this transition depends on the readiness to introduce special digital tools for organizing knowledge and conducting practical forms of classes. In this regard, a modern digital form of organizing and transferring knowledge to automotive service engineers in the form of virtual laboratories was developed and presented in the article. The work scenarios, functionality, and minimum technical requirements of virtual laboratories as software systems are described and reviewed in the paper. The rationale for the effectiveness of the application, based on the results of using 109 university students in training practice, is presented as a result of the research. An analysis of the distributions of the student survey results and their training progress revealed differences at the p = 0.05 significance level. This confirmed the hypothesis that the use of methods for teaching engineers special disciplines and language skills using VR technologies is much more effective than the traditional one. An increase in students' interest in learning was revealed, and their performance improved markedly. This proves that the immersive nature of VR technology makes it possible to better assimilate the studied material, increase the level of motivation of future car service specialists, and also allow the organization of the transfer of knowledge online. The very process of knowledge transfer becomes the point of acquiring new digital competencies necessary for high-tech industries. © 2023 by the authors.
ABSTRACT
The unexpected onset of the pandemic emergency placed so-called Distance Learning (DL) at the center of the academic world, affecting students and teachers across all formative steps. The DL experience has opened up the way for many queries in terms of research on the front of education, besides showcasing instances of innovation within the schooling institution, both increasingly urgent and no longer deferrable. The collective shock that started in March of 2020 was an opportunity to incentivize a leap in evolution, heavily digital in nature, within the educational system; howbeit, the generation of digital natives were already, prior to the onset of COVID-19, waiting to sense greater openness in the Italian school system toward newer technologies, in addition to less standardized, more innovative, creative and hybrid didactic formulas. In the presented study-a web survey launched in the spring of 2021-a large sample of students were invited to retrace their experience with DL, and express their relating assessments and reviews. Conducting the entirety of the study remotely turned out to be a winning data collection technique given a situation, comparable to the one experienced globally, in which face-to-face meetings had become impossible. Through in-depth analysis of the different contexts-social, cultural, technological, spatial, relational-in which the DL experience took hold, this contribution holds the purpose of illustrating the main DL adaptation profiles of the sample reached, valorizing the perceptual dimension, through the systematic comparison of online and in-person didactics. Analysis of the identified forms of adaptation created an opportunity to reconstruct the image of school that the interviewees held, how much they valued it, the trust they placed therein, the developments they predicted and desired for the institution. Focusing-responsibly, and taking stock of the possible ethical implications-on the future opportunities held by technological progress, in itself boosted by the pandemic, are located within a wider experimentation of VR-equipped classrooms, in a multidisciplinary perspective, offering a concrete solution to the needs of both students and teachers.
ABSTRACT
Having a healthy social life is an important part of our mental health, especially when it comes to children. Kids need to feel a connection between the environments in which they both live and play. In the last two years, COVID-19 pandemic has impacted our lives both personally and professionally. Because of the pandemic, meeting people in physical locations has been problematic. This situation has only amplified the need to foster connections. Technology plays a crucial role in helping children stay connected, however, we have found that children are more accepting of this when they are allowed to be able to take more active role in developing these platforms. Creating virtual environments, for example, has been shown to increase the interest of children in reaching out to their friends and family, and connecting with others across time zones, languages, and cultures. The children's Idea Booklet, from the 2022 ACM Interaction Design and Children (IDC) Research & Design Challenge identified significant interest in children using VR headset technology to connect with friends and family. Our research team, KidsTeam, built on these ideas to design KidConnect VR. KidConnect VR allows kids to connect with others via a virtual environment. This environment can be built to look like their surrounding area. In the virtual world, children can play, chat, and even study with friends. © 2022 Owner/Author.
ABSTRACT
In modern conditions, when the whole world is faced with the coronavirus pandemic, digital educational technologies have become an effective way of organizing the learning process, which has forced all educational institutions to revise this process radically in many ways. Currently, there is an active process of informatization in the education field, aimed at the formation of an intellectually developed creative person, information-oriented, ready for self-development and application of these knowledge in future professional activities. Therefore, it is important for teachers to know what services and for what didactic purposes they can also use in their teaching practice when applying modern technologies. virtual reality and augmented reality are some of the emerging elements that can be used in the modern learning process, including foreign learning. The relevance of the work is due to the fact that the use of virtual reality and augmented reality technologies in foreign languages teaching is a relatively new direction in humanitarian knowledge, but, nevertheless, it is a rather interesting area for research. The purpose of the study is to show the advantages in using virtual reality and augmented reality technologies for the development of students’ professional foreign language competence. To solve the set purpose, the methods of description, analysis, and forecasting are used. The article deals with the main stages in the historical background and development of virtualistics;definitions to the basic concepts used in this area are given. The authors present virtual reality as a new technical means in FL learning, as well as analyze the benefits of introducing virtual reality and AR technologies into the teaching process. It is emphasized that virtual reality and augmented reality technologies make learning more visual, enable students to become more active, and involve them in the training process more fully. These technologies make it easier for people who are at a distance to work together. For example, students can meet using virtual reality tools, prepare joint presentations, lead projects, and do much other work almost as effectively as with face-to-face contact in the real world. As a result of the study, material was obtained, the analysis of which made it possible to conclude that now teachers, students and researchers are expected a decisive step to accept the advantages of virtual reality and augmented reality in foreign languages education, so that these breakthrough technologies can become a truly effective tool in foreign languages teaching for students of technical universities. © 2021, National Defence University - Carol I Printing House. All rights reserved.