Computer-based Environment Research Articles

SIGNIFICANCE OF ELECTRONIC EDUCATIONAL ENVIRONMENT WHEN TEACHING FOREIGN LANGUAGE FOR STUDENTS’ RESEARCH ACTIVITIES

Background. The paper focuses on the urgent problem of foreign language vocational training of prospective specialists and its significance in students’ research activities. Nowadays, the current concept of teaching foreign languages at non-linguistic university training emphasizes the teaching system combining vocational training and language acquisition. In other words, it is crucial to consider the competencies for prospective occupation and the ability of students to use their professional language skills in a dynamically changing environment. Based on the modern standards of higher education, with an emphasis on project and research activities, the programs of teaching foreign languages consider the student’s research activities one of the most important motivation tools for mastering a foreign language. These activities allow students to creatively apply the achievements of scientific and technological progress in practice. Purpose. The aim of the research is to present a description of the structure of the electronic educational environment of the university and to identify the specifics of foreign language teaching for research activities of students. Materials and methods. The competence approach, in particular foreign-language professional-oriented competence, is considered as the methodological basis of the study. Achievement of the set research goal was carried out on the basis of theoretical and methodological analysis, systematisation and generalisation of scientific literature on the given problem. Quantitative indicators were used as an element of describing the dynamics of changes in the educational environment of the university. Using the given methods, the students should obtain foreign language competencies, including the extensive application of electronic educational resources and research skills. We described the approaches to organizing the teaching process, focusing on the concept of a computer-based environment, including electronic educational resources. Results. The experience of Sevastopol State University (Sevastopol, Russia) serves as an example of the positive experience of the electronic educational environment, which underlines the scientific novelty of the study. Practice shows that using an electronic educational environment is essential in engaging students in research activities. Such an environment promotes the formation of creative skills among students and increases the level of their vocational training.

Achievement Emotions and Academic Performance: On the Computer-based Learning Environments

The purpose of this study is to investigate the association between academic success and achievement feelings in a computer-based environment. The majority of studies have demonstrated how feelings of success affect academic performance. According to some academics, pleasant emotions result in positive outcomes whereas negative emotions produce negative effects. On the other hand, some academics think the two are unconnected or have the opposite effect. Researchers are beginning to focus more on the emotions that students experience in computer-based learning environments (CBLEs) when they succeed. Additionally, CBLEs have a big impact on a lot of emotions. For ex-ample, they can influence pupils' moods with specific designs. This research attempts to offer an overview of the several articles that have already looked into the subjects of the earlier studies mentioned above. This article also acknowledges a possible loophole that has not been addressed by other studies and suggests that arousal level is also important as the emotional arousal in determining the influence on students' grades.

A Study in Enhancing Battery Management Systems for Diverse Battery Types

The rapid advancement of battery technology has led to an increasing interest in the utilization of various battery types for a wide range of applications. To optimize the performance, efficiency, and safety of these batteries, the implementation of an effective battery management system is imperative. Within the scope of this study, the battery management system responsible for overseeing the management of battery packs in electric vehicles is examined in terms of its utilization for monitoring fundamental conditions such as current, voltage, and temperature of batteries. Furthermore, the applicability of this battery management system in different types of battery packs is evaluated. With the aim of advancing the sustainability and efficiency of management systems capable of overseeing single-type batteries, the focus of attention lies in the capacity to manage diverse battery types. The developed battery management system is subject to testing on a variety of battery types, thereby investigating the methods by which these batteries can be optimally managed. The resultant data is collected within a computer-based environment, and analyses are conducted to derive findings from this information. This study illustrates the adaptability of the battery management system to varying current, voltage, and temperature parameters, enabling its effective deployment across different battery types. In this context, the potential to mitigate environmental pollution is envisioned through the implementation of more sustainable battery management systems.

Multimodal learning analytics for assessing teachers’ self-regulated learning in planning technology-integrated lessons in a computer-based environment

Multimodal learning analytics for assessing teachers’ self-regulated learning in planning technology-integrated lessons in a computer-based environment

Context and Contact: Unifying the Study of Environmental Effects on Politics

A growing literature explores how local environments, or contexts, affect political behavior, especially by shaping interpersonal contact with social out-groups. While many studies still draw directly on long-standing hypotheses from contact theory, this research agenda increasingly focuses on new research questions, beyond the classic social psychology literature, and new empirical cases, including from across the lower- and middle-income world. We develop a typology of forms of context and contact to aid the aggregation of findings across disparate cases and demonstrate that the mechanisms that may account for the political effects of intergroup context and contact are broader than those typically explored in psychologically oriented research. We propose future directions for research in this area, including greater focus on the intersection of ethnic and class-based contact and greater attention to how built or computer-based environments may mediate or mirror the effects of demographic contexts.

CycleDRUMS: automatic drum arrangement for bass lines using CycleGAN

The two main research threads in computer-based music generation are the construction of autonomous music-making systems and the design of computer-based environments to assist musicians. In the symbolic domain, the key problem of automatically arranging a piece of music was extensively studied, while relatively fewer systems tackled this challenge in the audio domain. In this contribution, we propose CycleDRUMS, a novel method for generating drums given a bass line. After converting the waveform of the bass into a mel-spectrogram, we can automatically generate original drums that follow the beat, sound credible, and be directly mixed with the input bass. We formulated this task as an unpaired image-to-image translation problem, and we addressed it with CycleGAN, a well-established unsupervised style transfer framework designed initially for treating images. The choice to deploy raw audio and mel-spectrograms enabled us to represent better how humans perceive music and to draw sounds for new arrangements from the vast collection of music recordings accumulated in the last century. In the absence of an objective way of evaluating the output of both generative adversarial networks and generative music systems, we further defined a possible metric for the proposed task, partially based on human (and expert) judgment. Finally, as a comparison, we replicated our results with Pix2Pix, a paired image-to-image translation network, and we showed that our approach outperforms it.

How the physical appearance of companions affects females with high or low social physique anxiety: a virtual reality exercise study

Technologies such as virtual reality (VR), an immersive computer-based environment that induces a feeling of mental and physical presence, are becoming increasingly popular for promoting participation in exercise. The purpose of this study was to explore changes in motivation and other psychological states when the physique of an exercise companion was altered during a VR-based exercise task, and whether trait social physique anxiety (SPA) altered these effects. Using a mixed experimental design, female participants (N = 43) categorised as high or low in SPA participated in two counterbalanced 10-min running tasks within a VR environment where the exercise companion was either overweight or in-shape. Across both running tasks, individuals with high SPA reported higher negative affect, pressure and tension, and lower perceived competencies, than those with low SPA. Pressure and tension were also higher when exercising with an in-shape companion than with an overweight companion for all participants. In addition, participants with high SPA reported a stronger preference to exercise with an overweight companion than those with low SPA in a real exercise setting, but not in a VR setting. The findings suggest that the physique of an exercise companion and the SPA of an exerciser have important, but independent, psychosocial effects during exercise. That an in-shape physique of a virtual exercise companion was not a deterrent among those with high SPA has provided preliminary evidence that VR-based exercise may be helpful among females who worry about their appearance or feel self-conscious while exercising.

Exploring Automated Classification Approaches to Advance the Assessment of Collaborative Problem Solving Skills.

Competency in skills associated with collaborative problem solving (CPS) is critical for many contexts, including school, the workplace, and the military. Innovative approaches for assessing individuals’ CPS competency are necessary, as traditional assessment types such as multiple -choice items are not well suited for such a process-oriented competency. In a move to computer-based environments to support CPS assessment, innovative computational approaches are also needed to understand individuals’ CPS behaviors. In the current study, we describe the use of a simulation-based task on electronics concepts as an environment for higher education students to display evidence of their CPS competency. We further describe computational linguistic methods for automatically characterizing students’ display of various CPS skills in the task. Comparisons between such an automated approach and an approach based on human annotation to characterize student CPS behaviors revealed above average agreement. These results give credence to the potential for automated approaches to help advance the assessment of CPS and to circumvent the time-intensive human annotation approaches that are typically used in these contexts.

Developing serious games for CBRN-e training in mixed reality, virtual reality, and computer-based environments

In the last decade, chemical, biological, radioactive, nuclear, and explosive (CBRN-e) attacks have become severe risks to countries, prompting connected parties to prioritize CBRN-e training. CBRN-e training is typically performed as physical exercises, and although such training is necessary and beneficial, repeating the same training program can be time-consuming and costly. In this study, newly developed versions of two previous serious games—Hospital and Biogarden— and a new mining serious game were developed for training purposes in Virtual Reality (VR), Mixed Reality (MR), and personal computer (PC) environments. The Hospital and Biogarden games’ scenarios were based on the joint activities held in 2018 in France and Belgium as part of the EU H2020 European Network Of CBRN Training CEnters (eNOTICE) project, while the mining game was created over a replica of a training mine at a university in Turkey. Sixteen CBRN-e experts from the eNOTICE project, who took part in the physical training programs in France and Belgium, evaluated the games. For evaluation and extensive feedback, presence, system usability scale, technology acceptance model questionnaires, and open-ended questions were conducted. The findings revealed that serious games have a vast potential in CBRN-e training, and the comparisons of different environments provided invaluable testbeds giving hindsight to develop a future training program.

Comprehension processes on question-answering activities: A think-aloud study

Introduction. Students often answer questions from available expository texts for assessment and learning purposes. These activities require readers to activate not only meaning-making processes (e.g., paraphrases or elaborations), but also metacognitive operations (e.g., monitoring readers’ own comprehension or self-regulating reading behaviors) in order to successfully use textual information to meet the task demands. The aim of the study was to explore the meaning-making processes readers activate while answering questions and using textual information at hand, and how they monitor and control the processing of these tasks. Method. Forty eighth graders read two expository texts and answered ten multiple-choice comprehension questions per text. For each question, participants were forced to select the relevant pieces of textual information to provide the correct answer. Further, participants thought aloud in one of the texts, whereas they performed the task in silence in the other. This reading scenario served to collect valuable data on the reader’s question-answering process. The task was administered individually on a computer-based environment, which allowed recording the students’ reading behavior online. Results. Results showed processing differences between the two recursive steps of question-answering. While reading the question readers mainly restated information and focused on monitoring the comprehension of the questions and their correspondence with the alternatives. However, they tended to paraphrase and assess textual relevance when searching the text. The study also reveals that think-aloud methodology affected these processes and outcomes differently. Discussion and Conclusion. This study advances on our knowledge of cognitive and metacognitive processes involved in answering questions from an available text, a task extensively used to measure reading literacy skills as well as for learning purposes in academic settings. It shows how readers activate meaning-making processes while reading questions and searching the text for task-relevant information, and how they monitor the question-answering process. The study also reveals that think-aloud methodology may affect these processes differently. Apart from advancing our theoretical knowledge, our study also has important practical applications for the assessment of reading literacy skills.

The evolution of metacognitive strategy use in an open-ended learning environment: Do prior domain knowledge and motivation play a role?

There is a growing interest in viewing self-regulated learning as events unfolding over time, especially when students perform learning tasks in computer-based environments. Metacognitive activities are critical events in self-regulated learning. This study investigated the evolution of metacognitive strategy use in an open-ended computer-based learning environment, Betty's Brain. The data were from 93 sixth graders who used Betty's Brain to learn about climate change for four days. We extracted indicators of metacognitive strategy use from action logs. A knowledge test and self-report questionnaire were administrated before students started using Betty's Brain to assess prior domain knowledge and motivation, respectively. Results showed that metacognitive strategy use increased from the first to the second day and remained stable from the second to the fourth day of the study. The evolution of these behaviors varied across students. Task value and prior domain knowledge partially explained the individual differences in this evolution. Task value and prior domain knowledge also predicted the use of metacognitive strategies. Self-efficacy did not influence metacognitive strategy use. These results suggest the need for further investigation into the role of motivation and prior domain knowledge in the temporal evolution of metacognitive events.

What happens to your body during learning with computer-based environments? Exploring negative academic emotions using psychophysiological measurements

This explorative study aims to examine if electrodermal activity (EDA) and heart rate (HR) are appropriate measures for identifying and monitoring academic emotions during learning in computer-based learning environments (CBLEs). Understanding learners' emotions while using CBLEs, allows improving the design of CBLEs. Therefore, we collected EDA, HR, and self-report data from 32 participants to measure academic emotions during learning with CBLEs in a laboratory setting. We induced negative academic emotions during learning using harmful connotated learning content about animal welfare. In a pre-post design, participants reported their emotional state before and after learning. We collated the self-reports with the EDA and HR curves to identify the emotional change in real-time. We prepared the data for repeated measurement analyses and group differences (high-, middle-, low learning performance; bored vs. not bored participants). Negative academic emotions were detected in increased EDA and HR. EDA turned out to be an indicator of learning performance. Boredom manifested in HR decrease. Findings show that EDA and HR are appropriate tools to measure academic emotions. We want to show the importance of real-time measures for learning and the efficiency of EDA and HR measures. It is worth considering EDA as a predictor for learning success and implementing EDA and HR measurements in CBLEs. However, more research is needed to clarify the role of HR in the context of learning performance.

A call to action: a systematic review of ethical and regulatory issues in using process data in educational assessment

Analysis of user-generated data (for example process data from logfiles, learning analytics, and data mining) in computer-based environments has gained much attention in the last decade and is considered a promising evolving field in learning sciences. In the area of educational assessment, the benefits of such data and how to exploit them are increasingly emphasised. Even though the use of process data in assessment holds significant promise, the ethical and regulatory implications associated with it have not been sufficiently considered. To address this issue and to provide an overview of how ethical and regulatory requirements interface with process data from assessments in primary and secondary education (K-12), we conducted a systematic literature review. Initial results showed that few studies considered ethical, privacy and regulatory issues in K-12 assessment, prompting a widening of the search criteria to include research in higher education also, which identified 22 studies. The literature that was relevant to our research questions represented an approximate balance in the number of theoretical and empirical studies. The studies identified as relevant interpret issues of privacy largely in terms of informed consent and the research pays little attention to ethical and privacy issues in the use of process data in assessment. The implications for the field of educational assessment and the use of process data are discussed. This includes the need to develop a specific code of ethics to govern the use of process- and logfile data in educational assessment.

Co-design of avatars to embody auditory hallucinations of patients with schizophrenia

Auditory hallucinations are common and distressing symptoms of the schizophrenia disease. It is commonly treated with pharmacological approaches but, unfortunately, such an approach is not effective in all patients. In the cases in which the use of antipsychotic drugs is not possible or not recommended, psychotherapeutic interventions are used to help patients gain power and control against hearing voices. Recently, virtual reality technologies have been incorporated to this type of therapies. A virtual representation of their voice (avatar) is created in a controlled computer-based environment, and the patient is encouraged to confront it. Unfortunately, the software tools used in these therapies are not described in depth and, even more important, to the best of our knowledge, their usability, utility and intention to use by therapists, and patients have not been evaluated enough. The involvement of end users in the software development is beneficial in obtaining useful and usable tools. Hence, the two contributions of this paper are (1) the description of an avatar creation system and the main technical details of the configuration of auditory hallucination avatars, and (2) its evaluation from both the therapists’ and the patients’ viewpoints. The evaluation does not only focus on usability, but also assesses the acceptance of the technology as an important indicator of the future use of a new technological tool. Moreover, the most important results, the lessons learned and the main limitations of our study are discussed.

Virtual Reality in Stroke Patients

Nowadays video games are very useful in rehabilitation for stroke patients as they keep engaged in exercise and enhance motivation. Virtual reality is a technology that involves changing the original globe by artificial or manufactured one that makes the participant admit that he/she is in another world. It consists of computer-based virtual environments in which people interact and experienced as they are doing in real life. It integrates input devices, software platforms, stereoscopic displays, and motion tracking hardware. In recent studies, therapy that is based on video games is going to be useful in both clinical and research settings. Video games training requires different levels of action from participants that are provided to the subject with multisensory feedback. This training consists of several times repeated goal-oriented tasks with providing an enriched environment that delivers a chance of learning new skills and solving both cognitive and motor tasks. The tool used for video gaming is Xbox Kinect. It is a device that uses infrared camera sensors to perceive subjects’ movements. Video game devices subject can see VR images without the need for a special controller, immediate feedback is provided, and real-time movement is captured. The application of Xbox is clinically investigated in stroke rehabilitation. Different games are used in video gaming activity including Wii Fit, Wii Sports, and Kinect Sports. The main consoles used for these games are Microsoft Xbox with Kinect sensor and Nintendo- Wii. This gaming system engages patients in different sports which include physical activity. Games of different categories are arranged that are performed in different positions like sitting or standing, some may involve the upper limb and some involve the lower limb. Interactive video gaming exercises are considered an innovative technology that appears quite promising for the maintenance of strength and balance training in elderly people instead of stroke patients also. Video gaming exercises have a major role in the rehabilitation of patients suffering from various neurological conditions. These exercises play their role in providing an enjoyable and motivating environment that engages patients for a long time. Nowadays it is considered to be more popular than conventional therapy. Apart from balance and gait training, it is useful in the betterment of functional outcomes. Patients usually get fed up with daily routine activity including conventional physical therapy. There is no adherence of patients which is the main barrier to the schedule of rehabilitation. So, video gaming exercises play their role in engaging patients for a long period.

From Argumentation to Proof in Geometry Within a Collaborative Computer-Based Environment

This article is part of a wider research project that has the educational goal of supporting students in the production of conjectures, arguments and proofs, as well as promoting a move from the production of arguments expressed in colloquial registers to arguments expressed in literate registers. In this regard, we Giovannina Albano, Umberto Dello Iacono and Maria Alessandra Mariotti designed and implemented a digital educational environment that allows students to formulate and prove conjectures; three different working areas are available where students can work on a geometrical open problem sometimes individually, sometimes in collaboration. In this article, I report on an empirical study aimed at investigating the functioning of one of these areas, the ‘Working with others’ area, where small groups of students are expected to discuss and formulate a shared solution to a problem. The research question concerns if and to what extent the communication tools, specifically designed to foster students’ collaboration, can promote the production of mathematically acceptable arguments. The qualitative data analysis shows that the ‘Working with others’ area seems to foster discussion within the group and can make students aware of their mistakes. Moreover, it can bring out some students’ misconceptions and can provide useful information upon which the teacher can trigger fruitful discussions. However, this working area does not appear to foster a significant improvement of the production of mathematically acceptable arguments, produced by students in a collaborative and sharing mode. The integration of specific components within this working area seems to be necessary to support the student in moving from argumentation to proof.

Impact of Information Communication Technology Competency Among Auditing Professionals

The objective of this study is to find out the influence of Impact of Information Communication Technology competencies and Information Communication Technology Training among auditing professionals. This paper proposes a defined set of survey questionnaires to measure Information Communication Technology (ICT) competency and ICT Training variables. The sample size focuses on junior qualified professional auditors who were selected based on their experience in the field of accounting or auditing. The sample of population consists of individual practicing auditors from small audit firms in Kerala. Data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling approach (PLS-SEM). Expectedly, ICT competencies among auditing professionals and their ICT training are imperative among junior auditing professionals for auditing in a computer-based environment. The impact of audit efficiencies, ensuring client's fair financial statements, and timeliness of audit tasks were achieved by auditing professionals with ICT competencies and ICT training. This is important not only for junior staff, but also for lead auditors who have the authority to sign audit reports. The value of the research studies lies with a comprehensible examination of findings of various previous studies and enlightened commentaries on ICT enabled audit practice by sole proprietorship practicing audit firms, mainly in rural locations. In addition, such scientific method of understanding the implications of ICT enables auditing which involved in auditing professional policy makers intervention.

University students’ negative emotions in a computer-based examination: the roles of trait test-emotion, prior test-taking methods and gender

Although the effectiveness and experiences of computer-based examinations is a widely investigated area of research, the question of whether and how computer-based assessment limits or heightens the experience of negative test emotions remains largely unexamined. Drawing from the control-value theory of achievement emotions, we investigated undergraduate students’ emotions during an authentic, course-based assessment in a computer-based testing environment, as well as predictors and outcomes associated with their emotions. We found that students (N = 74) in a computer-based testing environment reported lower levels of negative emotions than their typical negative test emotions. Females and males performed equally in the examination, yet females reported higher retrospective negative emotions. Consistently, females reported higher levels of typical test-taking anxiety in prior examinations, but they reported lower anxiety in a computer-based environment. Finally, although typical and retrospective emotions were correlated, only retrospective emotions were associated with examination performance. We discuss the importance of testing environments and time-frames in understanding how to support students’ emotions in testing with particular emphasis on implications for online assessment.

Modeling and Analyzing Inquiry Strategies in Open-Ended Learning Environments

Modeling and predicting student learning in computer-based environments often relies solely on sequences of accuracy data. Previous research suggests that it does not only matter what we learn, but also how we learn. The detection and analysis of learning behavior becomes especially important, when dealing with open-ended exploration environments, which do not dictate prescribed learning sequences and skills. In this paper, we work with data collected from an inquiry-based environment. We demonstrate that 1) students’ inquiry strategies indeed influence the learning outcome, and 2) students’ inquiry strategies also seem to be predictive for their academic achievement. Furthermore, we identified a new positive inquiry strategy, which has not yet been described in the literature. We propose the use of a probabilistic model jointly representing student knowledge and strategies and show that the inclusion of learning behavior into the model significantly improves prediction of external posttest results compared to only using accuracy data, a result that we validated on a second data set. Furthermore, we cluster the children into different groups with similar learning strategies to get a complete picture of students’ inquiry behavior. The obtained clusters can be semantically interpreted and are not only correlated to learning success in the game, but also to students’ science grades and standardized math assessments. We also validated the cluster solution on a second data set. The inquiry-based environment together with the clustering solution has the potential to serve as an assessment tool for teachers and tutors.

Potential Review on Energy Analysis Attributes for in 6 Dimension Application in Building Information Modelling (BIM)

Rapid advancement on digitalisation is changing the way buildings are planned, designed, built and managed nowadays. A collaborative computer-based environment known as Building Information Modelling (BIM) is one of the advancements introduced as a platform to boost up the efficiency of the construction industry. However, poorly designed, constructed and managed building or infrastructure contribute to environmental issues such as CO2 emissions and energy consumption. Thus, attachment of sustainability element in BIM not only increase the efficiency of the project but also can help to plan, design and construct in a more environmentally friendly way. A study on the overall energy use throughout the construction life cycle is needed to identify the most critical stages and to develop energy-reduction strategies via BIM. Thus, this paper provides an intensive review of BIM understanding, its energy analysis practices in the construction phase and existing building environmental assessment tools in BIM. To achieve this, an in-depth review was carried out focusing on the content analysis of a few journal articles related to BIM, energy analysis and sustainability assessment tool. Hence, this paper contributes by discussing the wide variety of building environmental assessment instruments and categorising existing tools to be used in the BIM.