ABSTRACT
Our practice programs have changed drastically after the appearance of COVID-19. The practical sessions designed for all Automation subjects until 2019 were face-to-face. But the arrival of the pandemic and health restrictions resulted in the closure of our university facilities, which forced us to redo the laboratory experiences. It is in this context that simulation and gamification helped us to move forward, since the solution we followed was the virtualization of the laboratory. Although the degree of satisfaction of the students with the new practical sessions is quite good, the purpose of this paper is not to present a detailed analysis of all the simulation and gamification tools we studied, but to explain what our situation was like before COVID-19, how we faced the change, what we learned in the process, what the new practice programs we are currently following are like, what tools have helped us, and what goals we still have to achieve. We hope that our experience can be useful to other teachers. Copyright © 2023 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
ABSTRACT
The Covid-19 pandemic has brought with it dramatic environmental changes, forcing organisations to adopt digital technologies on a wider scale, under significant time pressure. While the pandemic tested the agility and resilience of organisations, team dynamics and the implications of virtualisation on collaboration and creativity have become increasingly important for research (George et al., 2020) as the daily working routines in which employees have been embedded in for decades have become disrupted. The abrupt move to "working from home” that the pandemic created is arguably the most significant organisational design change in our lifetimes. Organisations are now asking how the virtualisation of work has impacted on the collaboration and communication necessary for driving innovation behaviour, and what strategies are available to develop remote innovation solutions. In this study, we explore organisational culture theory against the backdrop of digitally transforming innovation development as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. This multi-layered model offers a useful framework for thinking about processes that foster innovation. By doing so, we investigate how organisations have adapted their approach to remote, collaborative innovation from the perspective of nineteen industry experts. The purpose of this study is to present the determinants of organisational culture to develop digital innovation in a hybrid working environment. Our findings reveal twelve distinct variables across the artifacts, values, and assumptions required to ensure digital innovation. These findings have implications for theory and practice, as it provides organisational leaders with a strategic understanding as to how a remote innovative culture can be developed, and subsequently exploited. © 2022, Academic Conferences and Publishing International Limited. All right reserved.
ABSTRACT
The digital transformation of the IT consulting domain recently gained momentum due to the Covid-19 pandemic. However, the range of IT consulting services that are fully digital is still very limited. Plus, there are no standardized and established methods for describing digital IT consulting services, nor there is any suitable tooling for digital IT consulting service provisioning. The present work aims to reduce this gap by contributing to establishing a well-defined approach to formally describing digital IT consulting services that could possibly be a candidate for standardization. Building upon (i) the ontology DITCOS-O, which provides the semantic basis for our approach, and (ii) the YAML-based description notation DITCOS-DN, which we leverage to describe digital IT consulting service models, we propose a graphical, web-based editor (called DITCOS-ModEd) to simplify service model maintenance. Following a design science based research process, we developed a prototype and empirically evaluated its applicability with the help of IT consultants. This first evaluation allowed us to identify some limitations and to plan specific improvements, both to the underlying artifacts DITCOS-O and DITCOS-DN, as well as to DITCOS-ModEd itself. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
With the growth of IoT devices and edge computing technologies, a challenge is to deal with the network capacity and response latency in real-time applications. Such an approach to the solutions is to deploy the Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Thing (IoT) applications, namely AIoT and Internet of Things (IoT) applications at the edge. In this paper, we introduce a smart AIoT solution to support the control of covid-19 epidemic with two main features: social distance application to control social distance violators in different areas and facemask detection to identify violators who didn't wear a mask. The proposed design architecture comprises three layers: the first one is the Centralized Cloud, which implements the backend, a web server connects to a secure database. The web dashboard helps the administrators manage the streams of surveillance cameras, visualize the number of social distance violators in different areas, and show recorded facemask violators in table for convenient;the second layer is the Edge, social distance and facemask services are packaged into Docker container and deployed in a lightweight Kubernetes (K3s) cluster which have GPU. The Cluster should be deployed on both Jetson Nano and Raspberry Pi 3 devices. This design intends to increase high availability, scalability, self-healing, resource utilization, stability, and automation deployment for the edge services;and the final layer - the End Devices, which includes multiple cameras connected directly to the AI services at Edge. These cameras help us collect and send data to the edge servers for analyzing purpose. The results show that the proposed system works correctly, edge services run at an acceptable framerate. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
The virtualization of the Tourism Master's Degree at the University of Huelva during the COVID-19 pandemic was a success and this study analyzed the key factors in this successful virtualization, according to the perception of its students. For this, it was decided to carry out a causal analysis using the methodology of fuzzy cognitive maps and the results achieved glimpsed the role of the teacher in this success. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
In only two years, COVID-19 has forced the transformation of the educational system with emergency and radical changes concerning the digitalisation and virtualisation of classrooms. A new hybrid teaching-learning context is opening in which learning analytics becomes relevant as teaching support to adapt instruction to the different learning rhythms of connected learners. As well as for students to make decisions in their self-regulated learning. However, for its proper implementation at the micro, meso and macro educational levels, it is necessary to detect and fill those gaps through training to have a sufficient level of data literacy of the roles involved. However, the educational inquiry doesn’t provide any data literacy self-assessment tools. This paper aims to provide an instrument for self-assessment of data literacy at micro, meso and macro levels in the educational context. The methodology of the work has been designed considering two phases. The first is based on the development and validation of the questionnaire through a documentary methodology with a qualitative approach. The second is based on its implementation, through a descriptive methodology with a quantitative approach. Aiming to precisely determine the wording according to the population of interest, the validity of the banks of items constructed and their content, have been carried out employing the expert consultation method. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
The Internet and networking have evolved substantially into new forms and types. These technologies are used by everyone in the 21st century. After the COVID pandemic, everything has become more virtual, and most transactions, including studies, were accomplished online. With the growth in technology and services, the risk of them being exploited increases. Cybersecurity is a collection of technologies, procedures, and practices aimed at preventing attacks, damage, and illegal access to networks, devices, programs, and data. Overcoming the cybersecurity challenges is even more complicated due to the lack of training and unavailable cybersecurity environments. Cybersecurity experiments must be run in a realistic and controllable environment. In this work, we have set up a virtual environment to provide the required resources for the user to learn cybersecurity skills. We have demonstrated eight cyber attacks. Each attack is provided with a demo video and an automated version of the attack. The user is provided with steps to practice how the attack works and instructions to mitigate these attacks. These resources are made available on-demand to the user through a web portal. The performance analysis has been done for every attack. The launch time of the automated attacks is also recorded and analyzed. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
ABSTRACT
The given paper elaborates on the main models and approaches for the innovation development applicable to IT companies in the context of Covid-19 pandemic impact for short and medium terms. Authors examine the experience of creating innovations in IT industry giving the context of epidemiological constraints with the aim to prepare a research base for the future implementation of the concept of a virtualization solution for design thinking as an approach to creating innovations. Along with an in-depth study of the latest papers on the impact of pandemic-induced virtualization on the workflow, an empirical study of the features of creating innovations in the IT industry during Covid-19 was also conducted. The paper conclusion offers the authors’ proposal for adapting design thinking approach in accordance with the industry considered conditions previously obtained and processed by the research results, as well as the possibilities of their further practical implementation. © 2022, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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With the immense opportunities to make a communication network programmable, the virtualization of network functions and software defined networking are gaining momentum in both industry and research circles, being a fundamental skill-set for both electrical engineers and computer scientists. Therefore, in this article, we present and evaluate the educational framework for Service Function Chaining (SFC) practical teaching to undergraduate students aiming to prepare them for future Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and communication networks market that will demand skillful professionals in the domain. The educational framework was designed for the Network Management course at the University of Antwerp, with the goal to bridge the gap between network programmability concepts applied in industry and those taught at the University. We evaluate the educational framework with two extensive surveys as a feedback from students that provided us with the opportunity to measure and quantify students’experience and satisfaction with the framework.In particular, based on the challenging environment imposed by COVID-19, we identify the gaps in this educational framework and address improvements for both theoretical and practical components according to the students’needs. Our educational framework and the thorough evaluation serve as a useful guideline on how to modernize the engineering courses and keep up with the pace of technology. IEEE
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Touch enabled sensation and actuation is expected to be one of the most promising, straightforward and important uses of the next generation communication networks. In light of the next generation (B5G/6G) system’s need for low latency, the infrastructure should be reconfigurable and intelligent in order to be able to work in real time and interoperable with the existing wireless network. It has a drastic impact on the society due to its high precision, accuracy, reliability and efficiency as well as the ability to connect a user from far away or remote areas. Such a touch-enabled interaction is primarily concerned with the real time transmission of the tactile based haptic information over the internet, in addition to the usual audio, visual and data traffic, thus enabling a paradigm shift towards establishing a real time control and steering communication system. Due to the existing system’s latency and overhead, it creates delays and limits the usability of the future applications. In light of the aforementioned concerns, this study proposes an intelligent touch-enabled system for B5G/6G and IoT based wireless communication network that incorporates the AR/VR technologies. The tactile internet and network slicing serve as the backbone of the touch technology which incorporates intelligence from techniques such as artificial intelligence and machine/deep learning. The survey also introduces a layered and interfacing architecture complete with its E2E solution for the intelligent touch based wireless communication system. It is anticipated for the next generation system to provide numerous opportunities for various sectors utilizing AR/VR technology in robotics and healthcare facilities, all with the intension of helping in addressing severe problems faced by the society. Conclusively the article presents a few use cases concerning the deployment of touch infrastructure in automation and robotics as well as in intelligent healthcare systems, assisting in the diagnosis and treatment of the prevailing covid-19 cases. The paper concludes with some considerable future research aspects of the proposed system with few of the ongoing projects pertaining to the development in the incorporation of the next generation (6G) system. Author
ABSTRACT
Introductory surveying engineering courses include several outdoor labs that introduce students to proper use instruments and equipment. Through practice and experiential learning students develop technical skills and learn about surveying techniques and methods. In addition, through review and reflection of their surveys, students are able to reinforce concepts learned in lectures. Outdoor labs have several challenges such as being affected by weather leading to cancellations that disrupt the educational process. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has introduced new challenges and forced virtualization of outdoor labs. Development of virtual and immersive technologies in the past decade have sparked applications in engineering education, offering viable alternatives, and enhancing traditional instructional approaches. Indeed, virtual reality and gamification technologies offer different learning approaches while various learning outcome can be achieved. In this paper two promising approaches, Web-based game and virtual reality, for virtualization of experiential educations and remote field delivery have been investigated. This study uses data collected in different institutions but in similar introductory surveying courses. The first dataset is from civil engineering students who used a game-based Web application to simulate topographic surveying. Being a game-based implementation, emphasis is placed on following best field practices rather than faithful replication of surveying instruments. The second dataset is from surveying engineering students who completed leveling labs in immersive and interactive virtual reality using Oculus hardware. The environment and instrument were faithfully modeled in Unity from their physical counterparts, giving a sense of realism. Both game-based and virtual reality approaches have different advantages and disadvantages, that makes them effective in different learning settings. A comparison of these two approaches demonstrates the synergies of future integrated implementation. Lessons learned will help instructors in understanding and identifying the proper technology to address experiential educational challenges that are related with virtually training engineering students. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021