How a Sense of Collective Efficacy Influences Teacher Learning during Change: The Role of Academic Optimism and Shared Vision

Purpose: The purpose of this study is twofold. First, this study reflects on the development of professional capital through understanding collective cultural factors, namely, academic optimism and shared vision. Second, it aims at exploring teacher learning. Teacher learning resulting in changes to teacher knowledge, attitudes and practices is crucial for the necessary changes education is continually confronted with. This learning is too often studied as a result of individual traits or structural factors, such as motivation or time. The authors investigated how teacher learning is influenced by academic optimism and shared vision. Design/methodology/approach: The authors administered an online web-based survey to 278 teachers in higher education, using the educational change to online learning due to the COVID pandemic as a unique chance to study the role of collective cultural factors in teacher learning. Findings: Results showed how teachers characterized their learning, academic optimism and shared vision during the educational change to online learning resulting from the COVID pandemic. The authors found that teacher learning was greatly influenced by teachers' collective sense of efficacy, an aspect of their academic optimism. Teachers' strong belief in each other, that they as fellow professionals could handle the challenging changes that the COVID pandemic required, strongly enhanced teacher learning during the COVID pandemic. Teachers' feeling of a professional community helped teacher to make sense of, and push through, the undeniable chaos that was the COVID pandemic. Originality/value: Collective cultural factors are rarely studied in conjunction with educational change. Insights into how a collective culture of professionalism enhances or hinders teacher learning are important for theory, policy and practice as it helps understand how teacher teams can be supported to build their professional capital by learning from educational change.

Asymptotic and transient dynamics of SEIR epidemic models on weighted networks

We study the effect of population mobility on the transmission dynamics of infectious diseases by considering a susceptible-exposed-infectious-recovered (SEIR) epidemic model with graph Laplacian diffusion, that is, on a weighted network. First, we establish the existence and uniqueness of solutions to the SEIR model defined on a weighed graph. Then by constructing Liapunov functions, we show that the disease-free equilibrium is globally asymptotically stable if the basic reproduction number is less than unity and the endemic equilibrium is globally asymptotically stable if the basic reproduction number is greater than unity. Finally, we apply our generalized weighed graph to Watts–Strogatz network and carry out numerical simulations, which demonstrate that degrees of nodes determine peak numbers of the infectious population as well as the time to reach these peaks. It also indicates that the network has an impact on the transient dynamical behaviour of the epidemic transmission.

Development of Serious Games for the Rehabilitation of the Human Vertebral Spine for Home Care

With the occurrence of pandemics, such as COVID-19, which lead to social isolation, there is a need for home rehabilitation procedures without the direct supervision of health professionals. The great difficulty of treatment at home is the cost of the conventional equipment and the need for specialized labor to operate it. Thus, this paper aimed to develop serious games to assist health professionals in the physiotherapy of patients with spinal pain for clinical and home applications. Serious games integrate serious aspects such as teaching, rehabilitation, and information with the playful and interactive elements of video games. Despite the positive indication and benefits of physiotherapy for cases of chronic spinal pain, the long treatment time, social isolation due to pandemics, and lack of motivation to use traditional methods are some of the main causes of therapeutic failure. Using Unity 3D (version 2019.4.24f1) software and a personal computer with a webcam, we developed aesthetically pleasing, smooth, and attractive games, while maintaining the essence of seriousness that is required for rehabilitation. The serious games, controlled using OpenPose (version v1.0.0alpha-1.5.0) software, were tested with a healthy volunteer. The findings demonstrated that the proposed games can be used as a playful tool to motivate patients during physiotherapy and to reduce cases of treatment abandonment, including at home.

Geometrical Tolerances Android Application Developed for Student for a Better Understanding of Orientation Tolerances According to the Latest ISO Standards

In the year 2021, a virtual reality training application has been developed, specifically for the Oculus Quest 2 headset, in order to allow the users to view and analyse 3D models for a wide variety of geometrical tolerances, tolerance zones and even the conformity condition and the datum features. This application allows the students to better understand the geometrical tolerances in accordance with the latest ISO GPS standards by using different 3D interactive models in order to highlight different types of geometrical tolerances and tolerance zones. In order to try to make the virtual reality training application more mobile and accessible for students, a mobile application, designed for the android operating system smartphones, has been developed. This application can facilitate better learning outcomes within the teaching-learning process by enabling the students to visualize a wide variety of 3D models representing different types of geometrical tolerances. Due to the dramatic evolution of technology in the past 20 years and the need to constantly keep up with it, the learning and teaching process suffered a massive change. The Covid pandemic has closed Universities all over the world and so, for the teaching process to continue, a sudden shift from traditional teaching to a more modern one involving the digital world was needed. Thanks for the fact that, nowadays, students are more inclined to use different types of mobile devices, the shift to the new learning paradigm has not left a great "scar” on student and teachers. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Augmented Reality in Education: An Interactive way to Learn

In recent times the world has gone through a situation where the people were forced to be in a lockdown amidst the covid-19 pandemic. Various business fields were affected by this phenomenon, some business units have evolved through this staying at home and carrying the work culture. One of the most affected fields was education where the children were made to attend online classes and read from E-textbooks. People are being educated from various methods including offline classroom lectures, physical textbooks etc. The choice of learning methodology is dependent on an individual's access to various technologies, environment, and a person's surroundings. Augmented Reality (AR) is a technology that enables the superimposing of artificially made 3D models on top of reality. This paper describes Augmented Reality (AR), how it can be used for interactive education, and help children visualize the concepts for gaining an improved understanding over the educational concepts. © 2022 IEEE.

Transmission Dynamics of COVID-19 with Saturated Treatment: A Case Study of Spain

In this paper, an epidemic compartmental model with saturated type treatment function is presented to investigate the transmission dynamics of COVID-19 with a case study of Spain (in Europe). We obtain the basic reproduction number of the model which plays a very important role in disease spreading. We show that if the basic reproduction number is less than unity then the disease-free equilibrium point is locally asymptotically stable, but making the basic reproduction number less than unity is not sufficient to eradicate COVID-19 infection which is shown through backward bifurcation. The model is validated with the real COVID-19 data of Spain (in Europe), Algeria (in Africa), and India (in Asia) and also estimated important model parameters in all cases. The effect of an important model parameter for controlling the disease spreading is also investigated for the infection scenario of Spain only. We establish that the asymptomatic class plays a very important role for spreading this pandemic disease. The effective reproduction number has been estimated which varies in time in Spain. Finally, the model is reformulated as an optimal control problem which shows that the social distancing due to adapting a partial lockdown by some countries is highly effective for controlling COVID-19.

3D Augmented Reality Marker-based Mobile Apps Design of Face Mask Layer

The outbreak of COVID-19 has spread rapidly across the globe, affecting how people interact, work and experience their daily lifestyles. The face mask is essential to personal protective equipment (PPE) even though COVID-19 is endemic today. A face mask is required to protect humans, and its description is important. Augmented reality is one new attractive technology for distributing information. This research presents a 3D augmented reality mobile application that visualizes a protective face mask and its material layers called 3DAR-FML. It was designed by utilizing 3D marker-based images on an Android smartphone platform. Ten types of protective face masks and each layer were designed in 3D images using Blender Animation and Unity 3D software. Vuforia Engine applications were used to build a personalized mobile Augmented Reality application. This initiative educates society and markets products in interactive ways that allow visualization of the 3D model of various face masks from android phones. Results present that successful mobile apps were developed. A survey shows that 70% of respondents agreed on the design app based on menu interactivity. This app also has been identified as a helper tool for The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) agency Malaysia for safety and health apps for the market and public. This product is significant in societies to gain information on face mask characteristics that help to contribute content based on the standard mask in Malaysia. © 2023, Politeknik Negeri Padang. All rights reserved.

Linking Judging Moral to Acting Moral: A Relational Motivations Approach to Judging and Practicing Covid-19 Behaviors.

Building on the Relational Motivation Theory, the present research argues that relational motivations (RM) underlie both the regulation and the moral judgment of socially (un)responsive Covid-19 behaviors (e.g., physical distancing) and links these two via moral identity. We hypothesize that different types of socially unresponsive behaviors are judged morally wrong through perceptions of RM violations and that a stronger concern for unity predicts the extent to which individuals self-report to perform socially responsive Covid-19 behaviors. Additionally, the role of moral identity as an individual-level moderator variable linking perceptions about RM violation to the practice of Covid-19 responsible behaviors is explored. The results support the predictions with data collected from participants living in Turkey and the USA. In both cultures, socially unresponsive Covid-19 behaviors of others were judged morally wrong through RMs, plus individuals' general concern for unity predicted their self-reported socially responsive Covid-19 behaviors. Additionally, for the sample from Turkey, results revealed that the general concern for unity was positively associated with self-reported tendencies to perform Covid-19 socially responsive behaviors only among individuals with a low or moderate moral identity, but not when moral identity was high.

Strategies for the Digitalization of Cultural Heritage

The COVID-19 pandemic caused despair, poverty and, above all, pain and death across the planet. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that it has also given a strong global impetus to the digital world, asserting its importance, sustainability and richness of perspectives. With our work we intend to establish a set of best practices aimed at defining methods and technologies that will enable those fascinated by digital technologies to contribute effectively to the digitisation of cultural heritage on a large scale. Various aspects that play a crucial role in the digitisation of artifacts will be discussed, with a focus on the issues involved in the manual realisation of works using Blender and Unity software. For demonstration purposes, two very popular use cases in the Umbria region of Italy are presented: "Piazza IV Novembre" in Perugia with the magnificent "Fontana Maggiore", the "Palazzo dei Priori" and the Duomo on one side and the Republic square in Foligno on the other, with the Duomo, the Bishop's house and the Diocesan Museum, the Town Hall and "Palazzo Trinci". The first realization was carried out using photogrammetry techniques, the software Blender and Unity, while the second was carried out exclusively with Blender and Unity. The theme is highly relevant in Europe, particularly Italy, where the topic is part of the post-COVID-19 National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP).

A New Augmented Reality System for Calculating Social Distancing between Children at School

Social distancing is one of the most important ways to prevent many diseases, especially the respiratory system, where the latest internationally spread is coronavirus disease, and it will not be the last. The spreading of this pandemic has become a major threat to human life, especially to the elderly and people suffering from chronic diseases. During the Corona pandemic, medical authorities were keen to control the spread through social distancing and monitoring it in markets, universities, and schools. This monitoring was mostly used to estimate the distance with the naked eye and interfere with estimating the distance on the observer only. In this study, a computer application was designed to monitor social distancing in closed areas, especially in schools and kindergartens, using a fast, effective and unobtrusive technique for children. In addition to this system, we use augmented reality to help to determine the location of violation of social distancing. This system was tested, and the results were accurate exceeding 98.5%.

Serious Game Development of COVID-19 Social Distancing Simulator using Agent-based Modelling

A social distancing protocol has been acknowledged and encouraged practically everywhere, since the global COVID-19 epidemic in 2020. This research resulted in the Serious game to simulate social distance using agent-based modeling so that it can be used as a medium of entertainment and educate the public during the Pandemic COVID-19 conditions by developing simulation games using UNITY 3D to educate in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic and reduce transmission rates on an individual scale. © 2022,Telfor Journal..All Rights Reserved.

Europe's Fragile Unity

The EU is unlikely to develop the kinds of efficient collective responses to the Russia–Ukraine war that it produced in reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic. The conditions of strategic interdependence generated by the Ukraine crisis are more demanding than those triggered by the pandemic because its consequences are asymmetrically distributed across member states. Germany will find it difficult to play the role of regional stabiliser, anti-Europe parties could become stronger, new intra-European cleavages may arise over collective goals, and the expansion of the crisis's time horizon could weaken prospects for effective collective action.

Industrial instrumentation practices in engineering programs using virtual environments. Case Study: Transmitter-Controller Current Loop

Learning in times of pandemic represented a challenge for teachers and students, due to the difficulties generated by social distancing. During the Covid-19 pandemic, learning processes in educational institutions used multiple computer and electronic media. As for engineering programs, laboratory practices were discarded in many cases. This work develops a computer application with non-immersive virtual reality, applying a physical/actual laboratory guide in a virtual environment, in which a current loop for an Endress+Hausser PMD75 differential pressure transmitter had to be configured. This application was developed by students and the tutor of the AR/VR research incubator in conjunction with the teacher of the Industrial Instrumentation course, who acted as a client. The Unity3D game engine was used to simulate a tank, a cabinet and industrial instrumentation to measure the pressure at the bottom of the tank. Student were allowed to carry out the wiring of the different instruments inside the cabinet, and the configuration of the transmitter via a hand-terminal;In addition, the application includes a record of student events and interactions for future analysis. The perception of the application was evaluated through a survey applied to 43 students. The results showed that this tool, although it is a valuable support during virtual courses, and provides a first approach to real practice, the student requires interaction with real instruments. Therefore, the tool becomes a valuable complement prior to practices in a real laboratory. © 2022 IEEE.

THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC AND THE LESSON TO PROMOTE THE POWER OF UNITY IN VIETNAM

The COVID-19 claimed by WHO is a pandemic appearing on 11/3/2020, whose negative impacts to all aspects of social life cause consequences that are heavy, unpredicted, pushing humans into a globally serious crisis. In Vietnam, due to the quick spread of the Delta variant the fourth exploding causes large impacts to all aspects of economic- socio life, producing activities, and business of enterprises, and people when spreading to most of provinces, cities, where high population density, industrial parks, export processing zones and large enterprises are concentrated. Despite the difficulties and challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic causing, the social consensus of people, as well as the involvement of the political system in effectively implementing policies and measures of the State is a significant key to succeed in the COVID-19 pandemic prevention. Approaching from the philosophy aspect, the philosophy of society through researching and analyzing the real conditions in the COVID-19 pandemic prevention of Vietnam and other related documents, the article analyzes to clarify the basic content relating to the lesson to promote the power of unity in Vietnam in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Throughout the research, many impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in the world also affected Vietnam. However, due to the specific conditions of Vietnam, those impacts have different features, shades, and levels, strongly affected in all fields, such as: medical, economy, culture, and society,... For Vietnam, the COVID-19 pandemic also supplies many lessons and experiences to promote the power of unity shown by promoting the meaningful lifestyle, based on people in the process of preventing and controlling the COVID-19 pandemic.

All We Need Is One Mic: A Call for Anti-Racist Solidarity to Deconstruct Anti-Black Racism in Educational Leadership

In this article, we outline some of the vital measurements of racism and anti-blackness as a macro system in education. We contend that principal preparation programs have not explicitly prioritized anti-racist school leadership, while often resisting the possibilities of solidarity or "one mic" of knowledge to increase anti-racist dispositions. Considering the lexicon of whiteness as an assemblage, a racial discourse should be "supported by material practices and institutions," that prepare educational leaders to examine anti-blackness curriculum that have been embedded as a standard method. We also posit that theoretical understanding of racism as global whiteness from a post-oppositional lens and decoloniality that will challenge the way racism is currently referenced in educational leadership scholarship. Moreover, current global and decolonial research gives way for a new vision of solidarity by humanizing scholarly resistance that cultivates a vision of community that regards differences of knowledge across groups and investigates racist policies and practices in educational leadership programs.

Imagining Decolonial Desires of the Public Good

Considering the legacies of exclusion, white supremacy, and genocide found within the walls of U.S. higher education, the public good construct is also embedded in exclusion, white supremacy, and genocide. The fact that existing notions of the public good remain intact and unquestioned of its origins means that the public good is not for all individuals of our society, particularly Black, Indigenous, Asian, Latinx, gender diverse, and ability diverse folks. Through a relational praxis, we engage in freewriting and Blackout poetry to share three solidarity narratives. This process and action detailed in this article come from a space that imagines the impossible -- a decolonial desire for the public good.

Seeing the Invisible: A Retrospective Examination of Education during COVID-19

In this article, we examined the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on education. We combined collaborative inquiry and photo-eliciting methods to examine education with a reflective lens and understand changes that occurred during the pandemic. A principal and a vice principal working in different public schools adopted the dual roles of being researchers and participants. The main data source was the conversation that emerged as we reviewed classroom and school photos taken by the participant researchers. The central theme that emerged from the analysis was that the COVID-19 pandemic made the invisible visible, along with two sub-themes: a) The teacher's source of motivation is the student, while the student's source of motivation is the teacher and b) Students care and grow when they can be a part of the history, culture, and story of their school. The pandemic made the importance of human connection in education evident. The findings of the study offer solutions and recommendations informing future education. [This study was presented at the International Conference on Studies in Education and Social Sciences (ICSES) on November 14, 2021.]

Enhancing Education Experience using Augmented Reality

This study examines the application of augmented reality across numerous academic fields. The COVID-19 pandemic shows how distance learning must change to endure a wave of tragedy and maybe adapt to the new normal. The ongoing increase in student interest in school remains a significant issue for children's education. While augmented reality (AR) has many benefits for students, it also makes it simpler for teachers to clarify ideas and make sure that pupils understand them, especially when the subject is more challenging. Two significant technologies for creating augmented reality (AR) apps are unity and Vuforia. We built the Android app ARLearn using the above tools as a base. Students will be more interested and engaged in lessons that use augmented reality software. The use of AR in education has the potential to be a very interesting and practical strategy that changes how education is provided in the next years. As part of our ARLearn initiative, we are looking into several industries for the AR learning approach. © 2022 IEEE.

VR Training for Laboratory Environments

VR apps in the categories of gaming, leisure, social, fitness, work and education are becoming increasingly popular. The aim of this paper is to determine the potential for increasing efficiency and conserving resources in laboratory processes. For this purpose, literature research was conducted on the one hand, and on the other hand, a virtual simulation environment in the field of cell culture was created within a Laminar Flow Hood (Flow) using the Unity development environment and the Oculus Quest 2 VR goggles. Outstanding features of the app are that, in addition to the possibility of being used via cable using a PC (PCVR), it can also be operated wireless as an Android standalone package, and that it can be used with controllers as well as with hand tracking, i.e., freehand. The Laminar Flow application was extensively tested on a group of 10 employees and students of the Department of Biomedical Engineering. The data obtained from the app, as well as questionnaires completed by the test persons, show that a usability-friendly application can be used to train workflows efficiently and, in a resource saving manner. Furthermore, the more often the workflow has been worked through by a person, a greater improvement in the workflow was achieved. In addition, a strong acceptance and high commitment of the users in the technical environment can be seen. Regarding comparable studies and although the test group is subject to some limitations the enormous potential that IVR offers to support location-based training sessions in companies and especially in laboratories and university facilities can be seen. In view of the decreasing prices, the technical advancement of VR devices and the paradigm shift of work and education towards increased home office driven by COVID-19, intensified future research in the field of IVR can be justified in combination with these positive results. © 2022 University of Split, FESB.

Simulating Common Indoor Crowd Behaviours in 3D Environments Using ABMU

Being able to model common crowd behaviours is vital in architecture and similar built environment fields. This is becoming even more pressing, especially in recent years with COVID-19 having a significant impact in how we interact in indoor spaces. As such, common crowd simulation approaches such as Agent-Based Modelling (ABM) need to evolve rapidly to be able to accommodate new requirements in crowd interaction;for indoor crowds, this usually requires a model to accommodate three-dimensional spaces, as the existing 2D modelling approaches are often inadequate in capturing the nuances of crowd interaction in indoor spaces, which are inherently three-dimensional. In this paper we present an application of such a 3D ABM modelling framework through a model of queuing behaviour, a common behaviour in indoor crowds. The model is developed in three-dimensional space on the Unity3D development platform, using the Agent-Based Modelling Framework for Unity3D (ABMU). © 2022 IEEE.