Virtual Learning and Student Wellbeing during COVID-19: Gender Matters?

During Covid-19, virtual learning gave strong support and life to the education system and saved students from being deprived of their learning. This research is an attempt to find the impact of virtual learning on the wellbeing of male and female university students in India during Covid-19. Multigroup analysis (MGA) method of PLS-SEM is used to assess the significant difference among male and female university students for the impact of virtual learning on their wellbeing. Online questionnaires have been floated to collect data from 466 respondents segregated into 209 male and 257 female university students. The result revealed that virtual learning banes and technological challenges have significant difference for the wellbeing of male and female university students whereas study also shows no significant difference among gender for the impact of virtual learning boons and interpersonal challenges on students wellbeing. © 2022 IGI Global. All rights reserved.

Design and Implementation of Patient's Health Care Robot for Covid'19 Wards

Due to the obvious challenges created by COVID-19 and the resultant lockdowns, many people and businesses have appealed to robots in wards to assist them in dealing with the pandemic's issues. Perks of traditional human labour, robotics and similar technology provide a variety of advantages through-out the covid'19 pandamic. Despite natural viral immunity and the impossibility of any disease-causing virus to be transmitted from people to robots, the robotics industry still confronts a number of technological challenges.In this experiment, the robot examines the severity check of the patient with the temperature and pulse rate sensor and are demonstrated to be an overall suitable technique of dealing with many of the issues provided by COVID-19 wards.As a normal human it is difficult to enter the covid wards as it may cause transaction of virus from patient to a healthy individual, hence this robot combined with the treatments with possible circumstances to help the patient is been done. Convenient working of the robot also self sanitizes itself and has the dispensing methods to sanitise the area around the patients. The project's scope is to make a methodological approach to make social robots implemented to enhance the well-being of these persons who are most affected by the symptoms in covid wards. © 2022 IEEE.

Improving Smart City Frameworks based on Enterprise Architecture with territorial governance to manage covid -19 crisis

In this paper we propose to improve smart cities frameworks based on enterprise architecture with territorial governance for managing Covid-19 crisis using GIS technology. With GIS technology, smart cities are able to meet their technological challenges through the information and technology infrastructure. In the same context, we found that many Enterprise Architecture frameworks are used to build smart cities but we found also that they do not completely explore data, application, and technology aspects and they didn't take business process and services into consideration. In this paper we propose to improve theses frameworks by considering territorial governance which will rise to a more sustainable territorial development. Territorial governance is considered as a modality or mechanism for effective coordination of actors or organizational entities in a territory. We think that EAF are the only frameworks which are able to support all the perspectives and roles defined in a territorial governance approach. Through using GIS technology, we will be able to implement effectively these artifacts. © 2022 IEEE.

An assessment of requirements in investments, new technologies, and infrastructures to achieve the SDGs.

Background: The implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires much planning and the provision of resources, especially regarding the necessary investments, technologies and infrastructures needed. Yet, it is presently unclear how available these elements are, what gaps exist, what changes have taken place in terms of their availability since the adoption of the SDGs and what their requirements will be in the future. The knowledge gap has become even more concerning because of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a bibliometric analysis, an assessment of the global progress of SDG implementation and requirements, identifying challenges through the development of a matrix, and a set of 11 case studies to triangulate the holistic analysis, an assessment of the global progress of the SDGs implementation and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on this process was carried out. Results: The findings suggest that the scope and width of resources limitation are currently undermining the implementation of the SDGs. Apart from the fact that the pace of progress has been insufficient, the potential of the SDGs in pursuing sustainability and improving life quality is not fully realised. This trend suggests that a substantial acceleration of the efforts is needed, especially for the five SDGs whose progress since 2015 has not been optimal, namely SDG2, SDG11, SDG13, SDG15, and SDG16, while SDG3, SDG7, SDG9, SDG14, and SDG17 show signs of progress. The case studies showed that different industries have dissimilar effects on achieving the SDGs, with the food sector correlating with 15 SDGs, as opposed to the energy sector correlating with 6 SDGs. Accordingly, the priority level assessment in terms of achieving the SDGs, points to the need to further advance the above-mentioned five SDGs, i.e., 2, 11, 13, 15 and 16. Conclusions: This study fills in a knowledge gap in respect of the current need for and availability of investments, new technologies, and infrastructures to allow countries to pursue the SDGs. It is suggested that this availability is rather limited in specific contexts. In respect of the needs to be addressed, these include resource-related constraints, limited technologies and infrastructures, affecting SDG2, SDG11, SDG13, SDG15, and SDG16, whose progress needs to be enhanced. Since the global progress in the process of implementation of the SDGs depends directly and indirectly on addressing the resource gaps, it is suggested that this topic be further investigated, so that the present imbalances in the three dimensions of sustainable development: the economic, social and environmental, be adequately addressed. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12302-022-00629-9.

Technological Challenges and Strategies in Implementing e-Learning in Higher Education

During the current COVID-19 pandemic, e-learning was the only option for continuing education at various levels. As a result, all education stakeholders should turn to online or virtual learning notwithstanding their different readiness levels. This study examines the technological challenges that lecturers confront when teaching e-learning at the university and the working strategies used in e-learning classrooms. The data were gathered through an online poll of 100 university lecturers at a private university in West Jakarta. The responses were then evaluated numerically and qualitatively to determine the respondents' perceptions of the difficulty of virtual learning activities. The findings show that the technical issues faced by lecturers can be separated into three categories: connectivity, teaching technology and inter activity. To increase efficiency, they require better internet connection, boosting engagement with certain technologies, as well as technical and pedagogical training. © 2022 IEEE.

The Impact and Challenges of Covid-19 Pandemic on E-Learning

COVID-19 has caused havoc on educational systems around the globe, impacting over 2 billion learners in over 200 countries. University, college, and other institutional facility cutbacks have impacted more than 94% of the world’s largest population of students. As a result, enormous changes have occurred in every aspect of human life. Social distance and mobility restrictions have significantly altered conventional educational procedures. Because numerous new standards and procedures have been adopted, restarting classrooms once the restrictions have been withdrawn seems to be another issue. Many scientists have published their findings on teaching and learning in various ways in the aftermath of the COVID-19 epidemic. Face-to-face instruction has been phased out in a number of schools, colleges, and universities. There is concern that the 2021 academic year, or perhaps more in the future, will be lost. Innovation and implementation of alternative educational systems and evaluation techniques are urgently needed. The COVID-19 epidemic has given us the chance to lay the groundwork for digital learning. The goal of this article is to provide a complete assessment of the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on e-learning and learning multiple papers, as well as to suggest a course of action. This study also emphasises the importance of digital transformation in e-learning as well as the significant challenges it confronts, such as technological accessibility, poor internet connectivity, and challenging study environments. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Face Verification Experiments on Moodle Quiz

The Covid-19 pandemic imposed technological challenges so that education could continue during the imposed social isolation. One of the challenges of this pandemic is online assessments. This work presents experimental results of two plugins, one for facial verification and another for access reporting, both open source, available in the Moodle Learning Management System. The first plugin was tested with 31 users. The results show the feasibility of use, with an average approval rate of 76% through a questionnaire applied to 16 users in optional online activities performed in Moodle at the end of 2020 and beginning of 2021. © 2021 IEEE.

Experiencing the Unprecedented COVID-19 Lockdown: Abu Dhabi Older Adults' Challenges and Concerns.

This study focused on older adults (60+ years old) of both genders in Abu Dhabi during the COVID-19 pandemic before vaccines were made available (age ranged from 60 years to 75 years). They faced more strict rules of movement restriction and isolation that might have resulted in certain psychological feelings and social reactions. The main objective was to understand Abu Dhabi older adults' psychological feelings during the pandemic and to identify their main concerns and challenges considering the various COVID-19-related policies and restrictions. The psychological feelings focused on fear, loneliness, sadness, irritability, emotional exhaustion, depressive symptoms, sleeping disorders, overeating, and excessive screen use. The objectives also included the changes in the psychological feelings concerning time. Other objectives covered better understanding the differences in (some activities) compared to the other age categories. Data were gathered through an online survey of community members from February to July 2020 as part of government initiatives (Department of Community Development). Responses were collected from 574 older adults in Abu Dhabi (60.1% male and 39.9% female). The analysis mainly used descriptive analysis, t-tests, analysis of variance (ANOVA), and simple trend analysis. For all tests, a p-value less than 0.05 was used for significance. The results pointed to the significant rise in feelings related to excessive screen use, fear, loneliness, and stress. The most significant concerns were related to more restrictions being imposed and not being able to see the grandchildren.The impact of new technologies on their quality of life was significantly reflected by respondents. The influence of the pandemic on older adults' health and weight was also investigated. Analysis of variance, t-tests, and regression analysis with relevant tests were employed. The relevant results showed that some negative psychological feelings were common among older adults during the pandemic. However, the psychological feelings did not portray significant changes with time, except for sleeping disorders and overeating. Overall, older adults scored significantly different from other age groups on many challenges, concerns, and views regarding new technologies during the pandemic. No significant differences were observed regarding gender and marital status for the challenges and concerns. The research summarizes some policy guidance while noting some limitations of this study and future research directions.

COVID-19: Challenges and its Technological Solutions using IoT.

COVID-19 is a global pandemic that has affected many countries in a short span of time. People worldwide are susceptible to this deadly disease. To control the prevailing havoc of coronavirus, researchers are adopting techniques like plasma therapy, proning, medicines, etc. To stop the rapid spread of COVID-19, contact tracing is one of the important ways to check the infected people. This paper explains the various challenges people and health practitioners are facing due to COVID-19. In this paper, various ways with which the impact of COVID-19 can be controlled using IoT technology have been discussed. A six-layer architecture of IoT solutions for containing the deadly COVID-19 has been proposed. In addition to this, the role of machine learning techniques for diagnosing COVID-19 has been discussed in this paper, and a quick explanation of the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAVs) applications for contact tracing has also been specified. From the study conducted, it is evident that IoT solutions can be used in various ways for restricting the impact of COVID-19. Furthermore, IoT can be used in the healthcare sector to assure people's safety and good health with minimal costs.