ABSTRACT
Virtual Learning Environments in 3 Dimensions can be considered a valuable tool in Education, especially in this context of Virtual Education due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, which is why after determining some problems related to this type of platform. That is why the present investigation has been guided under the Design Science Research Methodology, where the investigation has to go through the 6 phases iteratively: Identification of the problem, Design, Development, Demonstration, Evaluation, and Communication of the results., that is why the present platform developed in OpenSim has been used for the construction of the present virtual world. The results have been evaluated using the Technologies Acceptance Model methodology. Finally, it can be determined that the results indicate that this type of platform can be considered by students as a useful tool and also that there is no greater resistance to its use due to its ease of use. © 2023, Ismail Saritas. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Extended reality (XR) technologies continue gaining traction in multiple higher education contexts. As XR becomes more commercially accessible to students and universities, its convenience for educational purposes presents a renewed potential for exploration. Due to Covid-19 restrictions, there is also a growing interest in cross-platform, socially orientated software for remote educational practices. However, the precise role of XR technologies and how they contribute to student experiences of remote learning, particularly the unique affordances of social virtual reality (VR) for evoking an embodied sense of presence, is relatively unknown. Based on real-world experiences, we present a case study on a social VR intervention in a remote higher education classroom to inspire Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) researchers to investigate further the issues that arise from our practice-based research. Our motivations were to report, analyze, and summarize everyday virtual learning environment (VLE) challenges, identify design considerations for VLE technologies, and comment on social VR's utility in delivering Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) subjects in a remote setting. We apply a practical approach to investigate and identify potential HCI problems, capture the unique experiences of STEM students during the lockdown, and explore the effects of tutorial activities that give students agency in constructing VLEs. The findings of this student-focused case study draw attention to the design of social VR activities that support conventional, web browser-based VLEs. © 2023 Owner/Author.
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In recent years, the number of online courses in India has skyrocketed especially due to the Covid pandemic. The most significant increments have happened in degree colleges, where 85% concur that internet based courses are important for their drawn-out procedure when contrasted with 60% in 2015. The distribution of online courses has evolved dramatically as technology has advanced. Web-based platform provides new challenges for both teachers and students. Teachers should be clear about the effectiveness of online learning in teaching students. For that, the possibilities of online learning should be compared with traditional learning. Students are evaluated based on their focus on online learning. This study aims to determine the efficacy of online courses by predicting student performance in an e-learning system. These research findings evaluate modern learning methods, highlight students' potential and help teachers understand how to assess and lead students on online platforms. © 2023 IEEE.
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Most nations have used online meeting software platforms for distant education in some capaci ty during the COVID-19 epidemic. These software applications do, however, have substantial drawbacks that hinder engagement and fall short of simulating the classroom environment. Many of these restrictions are resolved by the newly forming Metaverse. In education in Metaverse, learners have the opportunity to engage with digital content and each other in a more interactive and immersive way. For example, learners can participate in virtual simulations, role -playing activities, and collaborative projects with other learners from around the world. They can also access a wide range of digital resources, such as virtual textbooks, lectures, and assessments, all within the same platform. This paper reviews different Metaverse models, frameworks for applying Metaverse in the field of education. © 2023 IEEE.
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In this study, the analysis of the topic 'Adaptive 3D and VFX Films Virtual Learning' has been provided. As virtual learning and 3D technologies use are increasing, the interest in their learning in academic discussion is increasing daily. However, there are various drawbacks to the use of3D for learning environments. To solve this drawback, the use of adaptive learning environments is increasing more, such as an environment that can dynamically adapt to the learner and the activities that can be performed by that specific learner. As the new ways of learning have been increasing over the past years (in the times of the COVID-19 Pandemic) through the use of computers in the educational sector. The learning environment has been widely adopted by the educational sectors in the case of obtaining promising outcomes. In recent years, these environments have evolved into more advanced environments with the implication of3D technology. With the help of 3D, these adaptive environments are helping learners according to their preferences. © 2022 IEEE.
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In this phenomenographic study, we contribute with a critical view on teachers' understanding of the use of digital technology in education is at the core. By analysing engineering teachers in Sweden's qualitative different ways of experiencing teaching-learning in virtual learning environments (VLEs) pre-COVID-19 pandemic, we found three different approaches: (A) increased transmission possibilities, (B) outlined trail and (C) forced compromises. Based on our findings, the tensions between the possibilities in the virtual learning environment and teachers' teaching-learning intentions are discussed, and teachers' decreased room for action to design for learning is problematised. Notably, teachers with an increased breadth of awareness of teaching-learning appear to experience the greatest tensions, forcing them to compromise their student-centred intentions. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
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Fonaments matemàtics is a required 1st year subject in engineering career at the university EPSEVG (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya) with approximately 270 students enrolled each semestre that traditionally it had a medium pass rate. Over the last 6 years we have introduced gradual changes in the teaching planning of it with the idea of achieving: 1) that students work throughout the course, 2) leveling knowledge and 3) reduce the number of students not presented to any exam. The changes have been implemented and corrected based on our feedback from students (engagement, grades, acceptance and survey assessments). The introduction of the calculator, laptops and tablets in everyday life and the use of the tools of the UPC virtual platform have been key. In this contribution, we present the strategies used and the good results obtained. © 2022 SEFI 2022 - 50th Annual Conference of the European Society for Engineering Education, Proceedings. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Atenea is the Moodle virtual platform of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) with about 31000 users and 5000 active subjects from 16 school centers. Atenea indicators give information on the teaching activity of the users and centers. This is specially relevant when teaching is online, as was the case in the Covid-19 period. The UPC already has a Atenea's Bussines Intelligent platform (BI), which has recently been launched. In this 1st phase the Institute of Science of Education (ICE) has actively participated in the design of the application. Currently it shows basic indicators over a period of time where one can filter or compare by centers or type of users. The paper presents this design and make a proposal for the extension of the BI, for the future, with respect to: 1) the inclusion of some key indicators for measuring the subjects' activity, 2) a proposal for cross-referencing data with academic performance. © 2022 SEFI 2022 - 50th Annual Conference of the European Society for Engineering Education, Proceedings. All rights reserved.
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During 2020, in the context of the health emergency caused by COVID19, Universidad de la República (Udelar) already had installed capacities (human and technological) that allowed it to continue teaching activities uninterruptedly. This was possible thanks to different factors that gave continuity to the educational processes of that year: the consolidation of the Virtual Learning Environments (VLE), as widely used spaces throughout the educational community, the deployment of highly trained human resources in charge of the VLE in each educational technology service and a basic technological infrastructure. This article tries to give an account of the state of the human resources associated with the educational technology services, its main characteristics. In addition, an approach to what has been the development of their tasks in the context of a health emergency is presented. A mixed methods study was carried out during the second semester of 2020 and first semester of 2021. The results obtained show a consolidation of the educational technologists role in the university. A greater visibility of the tasks they perform due to the increase in demand by the educational community caused by the Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) was highlighted. However, no significant increases have been made in the assigned workloads or in new hires to enable a greater response from the educational technology services around the digital education activities during COVID 19 ERT. Analysis and recommendations on educational, organizational and technological dimensions can be extended to other Latin American universities to face the challenge of post-pandemic digital education. © 2022 IEEE.
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The use of distance education using digital tools in higher education has increased over the last decade, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 has resulted in schools shutting down all across the world. This paper aims to present a brief summary of the Digitools Project and a multicultural analysis of the use of e-learning during Covid-19 in six countries. The methodology used was a survey by questionnaire involving teachers, librarians and students. The analysis of the questionnaire results allowed us to identify which dimensions to assess the sustainability of eLearning namely the organizational, socio-cultural and technological context. It also made it possible to assess the perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, intention to use, actual use and perceived satisfaction. Furthermore, personal, technological and organizational dimensions are also valued for e-learning usage. After reviewing the state of the art, there was a need to define a strategic training plan for the acquisition of basic and advanced skills for eLearning's implementation and usage. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
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The integration between virtual learning environments of recognized individual success, such as the PhET project and the Moodle Platform, presents itself as a path to be explored in the context of Instrumental Orchestration (IO), due to the broad benefits that this type of junction can bring to STEM teaching and learning. In this perspective, we conducted a purely interpretive study to investigate the role of IO, in different resources, on the academic success of students in a Bioengineering course, by comparing two activities, corresponding to the extremes of their scores, in electromagnetism laboratory practices, converted to Hybrid Teaching, by means of the COVID19 pandemic. For this, an evaluative framework was built based on the bibliographic reference, which underwent refinements adapting it to the available data, to finally analyze the IO dimensions referring to PhET, Moodle, proposed activities and interactions among participants. The main contribution of the research refers to the need for a better orchestration between simulated activities and laboratory practices, naturally accompanied by more productive interactions. This kind of research also contributes to the elaboration of new pedagogical practices, anchored in facts concerning the different approaches of IO and the way students learn. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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Mandatory social distancing due to COVID-19 presented the challenge of shifting on-site education to virtual learning environments in order to resume lessons in universities around the world. In this context, Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas (UPC) had to shift its Educational Model to Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT). This study aims to analyze Collaborative Learning in the process of adapting the virtual learning environment (VLE) used in the four Interpreter Training courses belonging to UPC's undergraduate program in Professional Translation and Interpretation (TIP) during the two academic terms of ERT in 2020. Six interpreter trainers were interviewed to explore their perspectives on adapting the VLE to allow and promote Collaborative Learning in their classes during ERT, while eleven interpreting students shared their perceptions on this VLE's effectiveness in a focus group. Results show how Collaborative Learning was developed through bonds of Positive Interdependence and Promotive Interaction between members of the learning community, both teachers and students. © 2022 IEEE.
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With the evolution of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and the progressive growth of Virtual Learning Environments (VLE), new development needs arise in terms of teaching-learning methodologies in the classroom. On the other hand, the remote education for the COVID-19 health emergency worldwide had a positive impact in the virtual education, increasing the number of online courses through virtual platforms, in which researchers and teachers will be able to develop and implement classroom learning spaces, among which Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC's) and Inquiry-Based Learning Spaces (ILS) stand out. This paper presents the application process of an ILS of differential equations through the free resource GRAASP and published in the Golabz platform during Differential Equations of the Universidad Nacional Abierta y a Distancia. Hake's gain is used for learning assessment, an average gain of 0.37 was found, which implies a medium learning gain. © 2022 IEEE.
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In 2019, the Covid-19 pandemic led to emergency changes in the educational sector as a precautionary measure to limit the spread of the Covid-19 virus and protect the health and safety of students. Educational institutes couldn't escape this havoc;by April 2020, 189 countries had suspended school, affecting 89 percent of the world's students. Since the epidemic began, online learning has completely taken over the educational industry, leaving students with no choice but to adapt to the brand-new virtual learning environment. Consequently, people turned to social media, such as Twitter, to express their feelings, opinions, and concerns about online learning as an alternative to traditional physical classes. The new online learning platforms, associated technologies, and procedures have been widely discussed on Twitter. In the proposed study, we have presented a systematic approach to analyze the public opinions and perceptions about online learning using Twitter sentiment analysis (TSA) through Twitter's API and term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) technique. Further, we classified the sentiments into certain clusters, such as positive, negative, and neutral, using a text mining approach (i.e., lexicons). Moreover, we have uncovered these sentiments and visualized the clusters using visualization techniques such as word clouds and bar charts. Additionally, by using TF-IDF, we measured the strength of words that people use to express their opinions about online schooling and explored to what extent it affects the overall results of our analysis. © 2022 IEEE.
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The present article discusses the experience of redesigning the pedagogy and learning tools of a pillar course at the School of Design of Politecnico di Milano, the Metadesign studio course. Metadesign is a design methodology that leads to the concept definition of a new product or service through a research process that synthesizes design goals, technological and productive constraints, market context, and consumption trends for a consumers' group of reference. It represents a unique methodological approach characterizing a design education as it provides a consolidated research practice able to support the design process. The course structure foresees the reconstruction in phases and the development of all the contextual elements-product, space, service, communication artifact, etc.-that come into relation with the to-be-designed object and influence its characteristics. This process enables creating the "abacus" of components to use in a design activity. Considering the ever-increasing need to reshape the whole education system because of the paradigmatic change pushed by digital transformation and the urgency for on-distance courses posed by the COVID-19 emergency, the article presents a renewed "reversed" course structure. It highlights strengths and opportunities for further improvements representing a solid base for innovating a fashion design education.
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The COVID-19 pandemic forced many educational institutions to transition to online learning activities. This significantly impacted various aspects of students' lives. Many of the studies aimed at assessing the impact of the online instruction on students' wellbeing and performance have mainly focused on issues such as mental health. However, the impact on student grades-a key measure of student success-has been given little attention. The handful existing studies are either focused on primary schools-where the dynamics are different from higher education-or based on statistical correlations, which are usually not causally rigorous, therefore, prone to biased estimates due to various confounding variables. There are many variables associated with students' grades, thus, to assess the causal impact of the online instruction on students' grades, there is a need for a causally-grounded approach that can control for confounding variables. To that end, we use a causal tree to investigate the impact of online instruction on the grades of the general population as well as different demographic subgroups. Our analysis is based on the demographic and engagement data for the 2019 (offline/control) and 2020 (online/treatment) cohorts of 3 mandatory courses in an Australian university. For all 3 courses, our results show that for any given student in the population, the average grade they would have gotten, had they studied offline, reduced by 3.6%, 4.7%, and 14% respectively. Further analyses show that among students with similar level of (low) engagement with the virtual learning environment, the average grade international students would have gotten, had they studied face-to-face, reduced by 19.9%, 36.6%, and 46.9% more than their domestic counterparts despite having similar engagement for the 3 courses respectively. These subgroup disparities have the potential to exacerbate existing inequalities. Given the current concerns about algorithmic bias in learning analytics (LA), we trained grade prediction models with the data and investigated for algorithmic bias. Interestingly, we find that by simply changing citizenship status, a student gets a new predicted grade, entirely different from what was initially predicted given their actual citizenship status. This implies that researchers must be careful when building LA models on COVID-19 era data. © 2022 ACM.
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Open distance learning (ODL) education has been developing rapidly in South Africa. The main reason behind the growth is the demand for online studies created due to the corona pandemic. The ODL system involves study that is not limited by geographical boundaries and extends to many knowledge areas electronically. In practice the study tends to extend to knowledge areas beyond those offered by the standard contact or traditional universities. At the University of South Africa (UNISA), the adoption of the ODL framework to theoretical subjects has been successful by making use of the Sakai virtual learning environment (VLE). The practical subjects or practical knowledge areas on the other hand have previously been taught face-to-face. Therefore, the practical modules have not been effectively taught online particularly in the electrical engineering curriculum. This issue can contribute to graduates who are unskilled in the practical component of a knowledge area, which can lead to unemployment. Virtual learning environments (VLE's) play a vital role when it comes to teaching and learning online. In this paper, the impact of VLE's on the practical skills of students and practical knowledge is investigated. This is done by analyzing the change in pass rates of students in a practical subject such as Electrical Engineering when taught face-to-face as compared to when taught through a VLE such as Sakai online. Two groups termed as emerging centered learner (ECL) and a developed centered learner (DCL) are investigated. The method evaluates students who study electrical engineering practical module part-time. In this paper the Sakai platform was used as a VLE to teach and then evaluate students in the electrical engineering practical module. The practical guide with the full set of experiments was uploaded on Sakai under additional resources. The students were given the necessary guidelines and tasks via Sakai online, examined and then the pass rates achieved were analyzed at the end of the program and compared to the pass rates achieved using previous face-to-face teaching method used for the same practical's. It was determined that a VLE can be used to improve the pass rates of a practical module such as electrical engineering taught online in ODL. © 2022 IEEE.
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During times of local and national quarantine due to the COVID-19 pandemic, universities had to close campuses and expediently convert operations and services from face-to-face to virtual learning environments, including virtual classrooms, learning communities, offices, and meeting/advising rooms. Many engineering faculty and students experienced personal, technical, and psychosocial challenges associated with this dramatically altered reality, which may have significant and unprecedented effects on their personal and academic lives. The current study presents results from a needs assessment survey examining the perceptions of 157 engineering students majoring in mechanical and aerospace engineering about the strengths and challenges exhibited by their professors/instructors as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, we describe the instructional efforts and approaches taken by faculty to resolve the practical challenges because of the pandemic. Student perceptions of faculty effectiveness and support were examined by analyzing means and frequencies of survey items. Results revealed that on average, engineering students were positive in their perceptions of the effectiveness and resources/support provided by their professors/instructors during the COVID-19 pandemic. Qualitative data from an open-ended question where coded and quantified. The theme that emerged most frequently reflected engineering students' need for professors/instructors to demonstrate flexibility/leniency with assignments, quizzes, exams, and deadlines. This short paper provides critical assessment of the gaps in institutional services and resources and provide the required feedback, while informing the institution and the research community about the ways to develop a resilient support network for engineering students in the times of crisis. Future work will consider how student responses change under the altering societal and work/academic conditions with or without COVID-19 pandemic being present at that time. Results from the current study also provide recommendations for effective online instruction in the future. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2022
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In this paper, we describe the successful implementation of a virtual learning environment for an immersive blockchain workshop that was designed to increase awareness, cultivate collaboration, and build technical knowledge in Blockchain technologies for participants in minority-serving academic engineering and computer science communities. In the pre-covid world, the authors meticulously designed an immersive two-day technical workshop on Blockchain technologies for engineering and computer science communities in efforts to increase awareness and cultivate interdisciplinary collaborations among researchers at an historically black university. When the covid-19 pandemic disrupted our lives on a global scale, the authors contemplated canceling the event completely. However, understanding the significance of Blockchain as an emerging technology and knowing how important this knowledge is to the advancement of education in minority communities, the authors made the executive decision to host a completely virtual workshop event. The primary goals of the virtual Blockchain workshop did not change. They were: (1) to provide an immersive environment for participants to learn about Blockchain technologies;(2) to cultivate networking and collaborations among faculty and students in Blockchain;and (3) to stimulate interest and awareness of Blockchain and Fintech research in engineering and computer science departments at the minority-serving institution (MSI). However, the authors had to rethink and redesign a completely virtual, online event. How can we make the learning environment engaging? How can we make the learning environment collaborative? How can we ensure that instruction is effective and meaningful for participants? How can we recruit students to participate in this informal online educational enrichment activity? These were some of the questions that the authors considered when redesigning the Blockchain workshop. The workshop redesign included three main design elements: a leadership team;an immersive blockchain curriculum design, and fun and engaging enrichment activities including online games and a networking café. The program success was determined using seven key indicators such as (1) the total number of registrants;(2) the number of attendees who completed the 1st session and earned badge;(3) the number of attendees who received two badges at the end of the workshop;(4) number of attendees who were able to network with one another either in-person or in virtual breakout rooms;(5) percentage of faculty participants who have intentions to incorporate Blockchain into their instructional design;(6) percentage of faculty participants who have intentions to incorporate Blockchain into their research efforts;(7) percentage of participants whose interest in Blockchain increased as a result of this workshop. Based on the results, target achievements were met or exceeded in all performance metrics except two, key indicators 3 and 5. Evidence suggests that these targets were not met due to hardware installation issues and faculty engagement. The main contribution of this work is the discovery of how to pivot from in-person learning to effective online learning through the design, adaptation and implementation of educational enrichment workshops in a virtual academic setting post the covid-19 pandemic. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2022.
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COVID-19 pandemic was and continues to be a shock and a challenge to the entire world. This health and safety challenge found its way into the world of higher education, even in programs that were already delivered in online environments. In this study, we examined the perceptions of 79 developing principals enrolled in a Master of Education Degree program in Educational Administration at Texas A&M University in the United States as they processed the efficacy of a virtual professional development (VPD) leadership for a state certificate in Advancing Educational Leadership (AEL). The state agency has required AEL as a 3-day state-mandated face-to-face training which is a basic requirement for school leaders who evaluate teachers. In fact, per state policy, AEL was delivered in a face-to-face format since it began in 2015, but was transformed to a VPD format in 2020, for the first time, as a response to safety concerns resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. The Texas Education Agency indicated that the training would go back to a face-to-face format after Fall 2021;however, recently the Agency determined that virtual training could continue, along with face-to-face. Initially, this study was conducted to add information to the policy consideration as to whether to leave the option open for university principal preparation programs to offer the AEL virtually or face-to-face;however, with the alteration of the policy and with the findings of the study, we now provide empirical support, based on a a concurrent triangulation mixed methods design, for the Agency's policy action. This study might be the first published in support of this AEL training policy.