Student Perspective of Online Pedagogy Post COVID-19. A Missed Opportunity?

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly changed education and caused unprecedented disruptions. These changes may disappear once the schools resume face-to-face classes in full force. Likewise, a positive change may not be necessarily what we want in education. This may be due to the existence of digital divide among students which cannot be ignored. During the COVID-19 pandemic, OneNote Class Notebook is used as an interactive digital whiteboard and has been evident as one of the best alternatives to the traditional whiteboard in the teaching and learning process. In this study, we aim to analyze students' perceptions of OneNote Class Notebook and the level of their continuous intention to use OneNote Class Notebook as an interactive digital whiteboard to replace the traditional whiteboard when school reopens with face-to-face lessons in the classroom in full force. The findings show that the students perceived that OneNote Class Notebook is indeed a useful tool to be used for calculus learning. But, it cannot be perceived as suitability to continue to be used during post COVID-19 period, when school reopens with physical classes in full force. In this regard, it reminds educators of the importance of rethinking education in the new normal post COVID-19 era from the perspective of curriculum studies. © 2023 IEEE.

A modern online interview platform for recruitment system

Video conferencing applications have become an integral part of today's world for attending interviews, classes, meetings, and assorted gatherings as well in the COVID-19 era. Alongside the increased use of such applications to facilitate the process of conducting interviews, the quality interview has taken a hit overall. This is largely because prospective candidates resort to fraud by switching tabs and using their phones during the course of an interview, and so come through with flying colors despite a clear lack of skills. Consequently, deserving candidates with the requisite skill set lose out to impostors who manage to clear the interviews. In this paper, we propose an approach to make interviews straightforward and fair to all candidates. Our Online Interview Platform, a web application built using Node.js and Express.js, offers indispensable features that are prerequisites for an interview. These include a real-time collaborative code editor that uses an operational transformation algorithm which allows users to collaborate in real time, test and run code;a video/audio conferencing feature using Peer JS;a chat box for communication, and a real-time collaborative whiteboard that lets users design or draw diagrams. The features are included in the same tab, thus ensuring that the candidate does not switch tabs. Using this application, candidates will be screened based on their technical knowledge, appropriately assessed, and performance-based hiring decisions made. The proposed approach proved that the malpractices strictly restricted while comparing with existing approaches. © 2021

Unveiling the Process of Collaborative Learning Through the Use of Digital Whiteboard Historical Action Logs

The Covid-19 pandemic has forced many educational institutions to transit from face-to-face to online delivery of lessons. Precluded from meeting face-to-face in a classroom due to pandemic curbs, a digital whiteboard affords both teacher and learners to be collaborating and completing a task from home instead. In this paper, we first used a survey to assess learner's acceptance and use of digital whiteboard. We next web-scraped and visualized historical action logs recorded by the digital whiteboarding tool to uncover the process of problem-solving between and within the teams. This is significant as social-loafing and free-riding are typically difficult to detect and prevent in collaborative learning. In addition, instructors traditionally evaluate only the product but not the process of collaborative learning as most collaborative work of learners occur outside scheduled teaching hours. From the results of the survey, we can conclude that the digital whiteboard is accepted by the learners. It also encourages collaboration and leads to higher learning motivation of learners. From the visualizations of the historical action logs, we were able to discover differing interaction and collaboration practices among the teams as well as the contributions of team members within each team (e.g. some teams exhibiting uneven effort distribution). We believe that our findings are significant as to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that uses historical action logs from digital whiteboard to gain insights into the process and evidence of collaborative learning through visualization techniques. © 30th International Conference on Computers in Education Conference, ICCE 2022 - Proceedings.

A Systematic Review on Interactive Virtual Reality Laboratory

Virtual Reality (VR) has became a significant element of education throughout the years. To understand the quality and advantages of these techniques, it's important to understand how they were developed and evaluated. Since COVID-19, the education system has drastically changed a lot. It has shifted from being in a classroom with a whiteboard and projectors to having your own room in front of your laptop in a virtual meeting. In this respect, virtual reality in the laboratory or Virtual Laboratory is the main focus of this research, which is intended to comprehend the work done in quality education from a distance using VR. As per the findings of the study, adopting virtual reality in education can help students learn more effectively and also help them increase perspective, enthusiasm, and knowledge of complex notions by offering them with an interactive experience in which they can engage and learn more effectively. This highlights the importance for a significant expansion of VR use in learning, the majority of which employ scientific comparison approaches to compare students who use VR to those who use the traditional method for learning. © 2022 ACM.

A Playful Approach to Learn Scrum through Distant Collaboration using Online Whiteboards

We present an approach for teaching introductory Scrum concepts through a playful online collaborative activity. It was conducted with 1st-semester students who never had any in-person contact and started their course under emergency online teaching during the Covid-19 pandemic. We adapted the Lego4Scrum approach and instead of plastic bricks, we combined an online whiteboard (Miro) with a communication tool (Discord) for teams. © 2022 Owner/Author.

Portraying What is in front of You: Virtual Tours and Online Whiteboards to Facilitate Art Practice during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The arts and education fields recognize the importance of museums and art galleries as not only buildings that house hundreds, often thousands, of specialized objects, artworks, research, and conservation but rather as institutions sharing the history of people and their environment, thus they play a substantive role in modern society. For art students, practitioners, and hobbyists, these institutions are often visited to provide inspiration and practice, although the COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact. National lockdowns and restrictions, and social distancing measures meant museums and art galleries underwent mandated temporary closures, and socially distanced specified visitor routes often meant onsite art practice was no longer permitted. This exploratory pictorial takes a first-person research method to present a collection of reflections, experiences, and example artworks by facilitators of an art practice group that moved from on-site to online practice during the pandemic. © 2022 ACM.

Effects of Virtual Reality on Students’ Creative Thinking during a Brainstorming Session

Brainstorming is a well-known technique for fostering student creativity. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, brainstorming sessions were recently held online, using web-based tools and video calls. Virtual Reality (VR) can also be an alternative for brainstorming sessions. However, there is currently limited research on brainstorming sessions using VR, and its impact on students’ creative thinking is still unknown. We conducted a preliminary study that compares brainstorming in VR and brainstorming with a web-based online whiteboard to study how each communication method affects students’ creative thinking. Given that students had the same amount of time for both VR and web sessions, the results reveal that there is no significant difference in the quality or quantity of ideas. Even though participants said VR was difficult to use, the results of VR and web sessions were similar. We believe that if the students become familiar with VR, they will be able to develop more ideas in the virtual space. © 2021 29th International Conference on Computers in Education Conference, ICCE 2021 - Proceedings. All rights reserved

MITIGATING GROUP DISCUSSIONS in DESIGN ACTIVITIES for JAPANESE HIGH STUDENTS during COVID-19 PANDEMIC

The purpose of this study is to clarify the factors that affect effective group discussions when using online whiteboard during face-to-face design activities for high school students in the classroom during the pandemic. Using a case study approach, the research was conducted at Fukusho High School in Fukuoka, Japan. Through the questionnaire survey, face-to-face discussions when combined with the use of online whiteboard, offers real-time verbal and non-verbal feedback that enabled effective group discussions during the design process. In addition, students’ competencies in using digital devices may not influence the effectiveness of communications during group discussions and their motivations in using online whiteboard. The current findings may provide a useful hypothesis for further study to verify the correlations between students’ competencies, effectiveness in communications when using online whiteboard during face-to-face discussions, and students’ motivations in using online whiteboard. © PDE 2021.