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The study investigates the impact of post-COVID-19 pandemic on library users' education course, specifically on examinations and survey practices upon the resumption of on-campus instruction. A descriptive survey research design was employed with 384 students from [university name] responding to the survey. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data collected. The study found that library users' education was significantly impacted post-pandemic in terms of examinations, questionnaire administration, lectures, and orientation exercises. The majority of students preferred computer-based tests (CBT) for exams and online methods for questionnaire administration, but the study also identified challenges such as rigid examination schedules, internet connectivity issues, and a limited number of computers available. The study, therefore, recommends that universities invest in technology infrastructure to improve internet connectivity, increase the number of computers available for students, and offer more flexible examination schedules to accommodate students who face internet connectivity issues. These measures would help ensure a smoother transition to online learning for library users in the case of a future pandemic and beyond.
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With the rapid spread of the coronavirus epidemic all over the world, educational and other institutions are heading towards digitization. In the era of digitization, identifying educational e-platform users using ear and iris based multi-modal biometric systems constitutes an urgent and interesting research topic to pre-serve enterprise security, particularly with wearing a face mask as a precaution against the new coronavirus epidemic. This study proposes a multimodal system based on ear and iris biometrics at the feature fusion level to identify students in electronic examinations (E-exams) during the COVID-19 pandemic. The proposed system comprises four steps. The first step is image preprocessing, which includes enhancing, segmenting, and extracting the regions of interest. The second step is feature extraction, where the Haralick texture and shape methods are used to extract the features of ear images, whereas Tamura texture and color histogram methods are used to extract the features of iris images. The third step is feature fusion, where the extracted features of the ear and iris images are combined into one sequential fused vector. The fourth step is the matching, which is executed using the City Block Distance (CTB) for student identification. The findings of the study indicate that the system's recognition accuracy is 97%, with a 2% False Acceptance Rate (FAR), a 4% False Rejection Rate (FRR), a 94% Correct Recognition Rate (CRR), and a 96% Genuine Acceptance Rate (GAR). In addition, the proposed recognition system achieved higher accuracy than other related systems. © 2023, Tech Science Press. All rights reserved.
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During the recent COVID-19 outbreak, many educational institutions had to operate fully remotely and conduct examinations online. Conducting hands-on software lab exams online raises serious issues and concerns such as: 1) the heterogeneity of examinees' personal computers, 2) the computers may not be powerful enough to run the required software for the hands-on exam, especially hardware intensive programs, 3) cheating and plagiarism are hardly controllable since examinees are using their personal computers and they can look up whatever information they need. The paper proposes a highly available and scalable software cloud architecture that utilizes modern cloud technologies, DevOps principles, and infrastructure as code tools of various categories to facilitate the construction of a highly available and scalable architectural solution that automates the delivery of software lab exams. Evaluation and results of the proposed architecture illustrate that a cloud instance that is preconfigured with all the required exam material can be instantiated and completely ready to use in an average of 149 seconds. Moreover, deploying the backend server on a Kubernetes Cluster allowed the system to automatically scale and handle sudden loads due to Kubernetes' auto-scaling and self-healing features. © 2022 IEEE.
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Background: The pandemic of Covid-19 brought significant changes to the education system and forcibly accelerated the process of digitizing teaching. Students and educators had to adapt to the new way of education, facing challenges such as technical problems and a lack of technical skills and social contact.Objectives: The purpose of the paper was to explore the attitudes of the university and high school educators and students towards the pandemic’s impact on digitization in teaching.Methods/Approach: Data were collected through a questionnaire distributed to university and high school educators and students in Croatia, Poland, Serbia and Germany in the field of accounting, finance, trade, tourism, and other areas of interest, resulting in 2,897 responses. The results were analyzed using descriptive statistics and non-parametric tests.Results: The research showed that: 1) high school students were less optimistic about the positive impact of the pandemic on applying digital tools in teaching than university students, 2) educators generally prefer traditional exams, while students generally prefer e-exams, 3) a higher proportion of university respondents believe that e-learning should be used as an important addition to traditional teaching when compared to high school respondents.Conclusions: The pandemic has changed how the teaching process will be performed, but we should learn from experience and address the issues with e-learning.
ABSTRACT
With the rapid spread of the coronavirus epidemic all over the world, educational and other institutions are heading towards digitization. In the era of digitization, identifying educational e-platform users using ear and iris based multi-modal biometric systems constitutes an urgent and interesting research topic to pre-serve enterprise security, particularly with wearing a face mask as a precaution against the new coronavirus epidemic. This study proposes a multimodal system based on ear and iris biometrics at the feature fusion level to identify students in electronic examinations (E-exams) during the COVID-19 pandemic. The proposed system comprises four steps. The first step is image preprocessing, which includes enhancing, segmenting, and extracting the regions of interest. The second step is feature extraction, where the Haralick texture and shape methods are used to extract the features of ear images, whereas Tamura texture and color histogram methods are used to extract the features of iris images. The third step is feature fusion, where the extracted features of the ear and iris images are combined into one sequential fused vector. The fourth step is the matching, which is executed using the City Block Distance (CTB) for student identification. The findings of the study indicate that the system’s recognition accuracy is 97%, with a 2% False Acceptance Rate (FAR), a 4% False Rejection Rate (FRR), a 94% Correct Recognition Rate (CRR), and a 96% Genuine Acceptance Rate (GAR). In addition, the proposed recognition system achieved higher accuracy than other related systems. © 2023, Tech Science Press. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
In this study, we evaluated the perception of distance online learning in undergraduate dental students in two different European countries during the second lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic to explore sustainable undergraduate educational and examination e-learning forms. Dental students from Dental school of Athens, National and Kapodistrian university of Athens (N1_3rd preclinical year = 131, N2_4th clinical year = 119) and Dental school of Copenhagen (3rd preclinical year N3 = 85) completed the mixed-designed Dental e-Learning process Questionnaire (DeLQ) distributed in a google form. Responses to closed-ended questions were collected on a five-point Likert scale. Descriptive statistics were applied, and non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to examine student groups. N1 (90% strongly agree) students reported that "e-learning is a suitable education method for theory in dentistry" at a significant level and more often than N2 (43% strongly disagree). N1 and N2 students strongly agreed that they preferred face-to-face teaching rather than distance e-learning. A relatively low number of N1 (31%) students believed that e-learning prepares them sufficiently for their practical training while none of the (0%) N2 cohort agreed. A low percentage of students in both years (N1 = 31%, N2 = 23%) believed that e-learning prepared them for their exams. Additionally, N1 = 60% and N2 = 66% preferred hybrid learning. Only 26% (N1) and 19.5% (N2) desired e-learning to continue after the COVID-19 pandemic. Nearly half of the participants believed the online exam model to be unreliable (N1 = 49%, N2 = 43%). Overall, students considered distance e-learning as an educational method applicable only to theoretical lessons. However, the lack of physical communication and interaction in distance learning led students to prefer a blended method. Students of the two faculties seemed to agree on many points, but there were also specific differences attributable to the differences in the programs and educational culture of the two countries.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Education, Distance , COVID-19/epidemiology , Communicable Disease Control , Education, Distance/methods , Humans , Pandemics , Students, DentalABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic had a huge impact on the learning and teaching processes, particularly in healthcare education and training, because of the principal position of the cutting-edge student-patient interaction. Replacing the traditional form of organization and implementation of knowledge evaluation with its web-based equivalent on an e-learning platform optimizes the whole didactic process not only for the unit carrying it out but, above all, for students. This research is focused on the effectiveness of the application of e-learning for computer-based knowledge evaluation and optimizing exam administration for students of medical sciences. The proposed approach is considered in two categories: from the perspective of the providers of the evaluation process, that is, the teaching unit; and the recipients of the evaluation process, that is, the students.
ABSTRACT
Nowadays under COVID 2019, e-learning has become a potential prop approach of technology in education that provides contemporary learners with authentic knowledge acquisitions. As a practical contribution, electronic examination (e-exam) is a novel approach in e-learning designed to solve traditional examination issues. It is a combination of assorted questions designed by specialized software to detect an individual's performance. Despite intensive research in this area, the performance of e-exams faces challenges such as authentication of the examinee's identity and answered papers. This paper aims to present the experiences of educational organizations in e-exam and e-evaluation as an essential tool of e-learning in various countries. The paper recommends that under the global pandemic COVID 2019 evaluating students using intensive continuous evaluation, including e-exam supported by authentication methods, which may help detect and reduce or even prevent student violations. The results show that the most used LMS tools were the Moodle and proprietary solutions which were 75% both among many other LMS tools i.e., Blackboard and eFront. The least develop countries are prefer to use open source and proprietary due to the zero cost of these solutions. The internet speed, cost and authenticity were the most challenges faced e-exams centers, which were 99%, 82%, and 68%, respectively.
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BACKGROUND: Since the emergence of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), distance education has been extensively implemented in all educational institutes and remote electronic exams (E-exams) have been adopted as a primary mode of assessment. OBJECTIVES: This cross-sectional study aimed to evaluate the experience of students at faculties of Medicine, Dentistry, Pharmacy, Nursing and Applied Medical Sciences at Jordan University of Science and Technology regarding remote E-exams preferences and academic dishonesty during the pandemic. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The survey composed of 16 questions, prepared using Google forms and distributed through students' E-learning platforms. The survey explored factors affecting students' preference for remote E-exams, methods for course assessment/evaluation, factors related to students' exam dishonesty/misconduct during remote E-exams and measures that can be considered to reduce this behavior. Data were analyzed using descriptive, cross tabulation and Chi-square tests. RESULTS: Among 730 students, approximately only one third preferred remote E-exams. This was significantly (P < 0.05) associated with academic major, efforts/time for remote E-exam preparation, questions appropriateness with study material, and academic achievements (students Grade Point Average (GPA), curriculum objectives). Combining both exams and quizzes was the most preferred method of assessment (30%), while submission of reports or short written assignments were the least preferred ones. Exam dishonesty/misconduct appears as one of the major challenges with remote E-exams. The main measures considered by students to reduce exam dishonesty included substituting the exam with other forms of assessment, using different exam forms, the use of online proctoring solutions and considering compulsory pass/fail grades. CONCLUSION: Results suggested less preference of remote E-exams among students at medical faculties. Findings from this study are highly valuable to plan for academic strategies to overcome difficulties and challenges of remote E-exams. These might include improvement for the distance teaching methodologies, rearrangement of assessment options, modification of the academic curriculum to fit the current situation, and adopting certain measures to prevent exam dishonesty and maintain academic integrity.
ABSTRACT
Emergence of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) forced the worldwide higher educational institutes to adopt distance learning mode. Further, remote electronic exams (E-exams) were considered as mode of assessment. Objectives: This cross-sectional study evaluated the students' experience of remote E-exams during the COVID-19 pandemic among Medical Sciences students in Jordan. Materials and Methods: A survey of 29 questions was prepared on Google forms and distributed among students at Faculties of Medical Sciences (Medicine, Dentistry, Pharmacy, Nursing and Applied Medical Sciences) at Jordan University of Science and Technology. The questions include students' demographics, stress experience, and factors contributing to stress as well as behavioral changes related to remote E-exams. Responses were analyzed using descriptive, cross tabulation and Chi-square tests. Results: Among 1019 respondents, 32% reported more stress with remote E-exams. This was associated with academic major and gender. Among students with more stress during remote E-exams, the exam duration, mode of questions navigation and technical problems (exam platform and internet connectivity) appeared as the main factors related to stress in 78%, 76% and >60%, respectively. Other factors include concern regarding the teaching methods, exam environment and students' dishonesty. Remote E-exams had negative impact on students' dietary habits (increase consumption of caffeine and high energy drinks, high sugar food, fast food), sleep (reduction in sleeping hours, more consumption of insomnia medications), physical activity (less exercises) and smoking habits (increase). Conclusion: Results suggested a negative impact of E-exams on students within Medical Faculties. Robust exam platform and remote mock E-exams are recommended to reduce students' potential stress. A stress-free environment is very essential to encourage students to adopt remote E-exams, particularly if the pandemic will take longer. Various awareness programs about students' habits related to dietary, sleep quality, physical activity and smoking are highly valuable for students' health benefits. This is of particular importance since the current students at Faculties of Medical Sciences are the future health care providers.