Thanks for inviting me to the party: Virtual poster sessions as a way to connect in a time of disconnection

Promoting Scientific Exchange and Student Training Through Scientific Meetings; Insights from a Joint Virtual Undergraduate Neuroscience Conference During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Participation in scientific conferences is a fundamental part of neuroscience and student training. Many conference opportunities have been cancelled, limited, or changed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper is a conference report from a joint virtual 2021 meeting of two regional undergraduate neuroscience conferences, the Midwest/Great Lakes Undergraduate Research Symposium in Neuroscience (mGluRs) and the Midwest Regional Neuroscience Conference (MidBrains). We discuss our conference planning logistics, benefits and challenges of the virtual conference format, student feedback on the virtual meeting, additional benefits of a joint meeting, and "take home" messages and considerations for future conferences. We hope insights from our experience can benefit future conference organizers in planning scientific conferences, both for in-person and virtual settings.

Transforming e-participation: VR-dialogue – building and evaluating an AI-supported framework for next-gen VR-enabled e-participation research

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to explore whether immersive virtual reality (VR) can complement e-participation and help alleviate some major obstacles that hinder effective communication and collaboration. Immersive virtual reality (VR) can complement e-participation and help alleviate some major obstacles hindering effective communication and collaboration. VR technologies boost discussion participants' sense of presence and immersion; however, studying emerging VR technologies for their applicability to e-participation is challenging because of the lack of affordable and accessible infrastructures. In this paper, the authors present a novel framework for analyzing serious social VR engagements in the context of e-participation.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors propose a novel approach for artificial intelligence (AI)-supported, data-driven analysis of group engagements in immersive VR environments as an enabler for next-gen e-participation research. The authors propose a machine-learning-based VR interactions log analytics infrastructure to identify behavioral patterns. This paper includes features engineering to classify VR collaboration scenarios in four simulated e-participation engagements and a quantitative evaluation of the proposed approach performance.

Findings

The authors link theoretical dimensions of e-participation online interactions with specific user-behavioral patterns in VR engagements. The AI-powered immersive VR analytics infrastructure demonstrated good performance in automatically classifying behavioral scenarios in simulated e-participation engagements and the authors showed novel insights into the importance of specific features to perform this classification. The authors argue that our framework can be extended with more features and can cover additional patterns to enable future e-participation immersive VR research.

Research limitations/implications

This research emphasizes technical means of supporting future e-participation research with a focus on immersive VR technologies as an enabler. This is the very first use-case for using this AI and data-driven infrastructure for real-time analytics in e-participation, and the authors plan to conduct more comprehensive studies using the same infrastructure.

Practical implications

The authors’ platform is ready to be used by researchers around the world. The authors have already received interest from researchers in the USA (Harvard University) and Israel and run collaborative online sessions.

Social implications

The authors enable easy cloud access and simultaneous research session hosting 24/7 anywhere in the world at a very limited cost to e-participation researchers.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the very first attempt at building a dedicated AI-driven VR analytics infrastructure to study online e-participation engagements.

Incorporation of a Social Virtual Reality Platform into the Residency Recruitment Season

Rationale and Objectives

The Covid-19 pandemic ushered a sudden need for residency programs to develop innovative socially distant and remote approaches to effectively promote their program. Here we describe our experience using the social virtual reality (VR) platform Mozilla Hubs for the pre-interview social during the 2020-2021 radiology residency virtual recruitment season, provide results of a survey sent to assess applicants’ attitudes towards the VR pre-interview social, and outline additional use-cases for the emerging technology.

Materials and Methods

A VR Meeting Hall dedicated to the pre-interview social was designed in Mozilla Hubs. To assess applicants’ impressions of the Mozilla Hubs pre-interview social, applicants were sent an optional web-based survey. Survey respondents were asked to respond to a series of eleven statements using a five-point Likert scale of perceived agreement: Strongly Agree, Agree, Neutral, Disagree, Strongly Disagree. Statements were designed to gauge applicants’ attitudes towards the Mozilla Hubs pre-interview social and its usefulness in helping them learn about the residency program, particularly in comparison with pre-interview socials held on conventional video conferencing software (CVCS).

Results

Of the 120 residency applicants invited to the Mozilla Hubs pre-interview social, 111 (93%) attended. Of these, 68 (61%) participated in the anonymous survey. Most applicants reported a better overall experience with Mozilla Hubs compared to CVCS (47/68, 69%), with 10% (7/68) reporting a worse overall experience, and 21% (14/68) neutral. Most applicants reported the Mozilla Hubs pre-interview social allowed them to better assess residency culture than did pre-interview socials using CVCS (41/68, 60%). Seventy-two percent of applicants reported that the Mozilla Hubs pre-interview social positively impacted their decision to strongly consider the residency program (49/68).

Conclusion

Radiology residency applicants overall preferred a pre-interview social hosted on a social VR platform, Mozilla Hubs, compared to those hosted on CVCS. Applicants reported the use of a social VR platform reflected positively on the residency and positively impacted their decision to strongly consider the program.

Equity, Justice, and Quality during the COVID-19 Pandemic Period: Considerations on Learning and Scholarly Performance in Brazilian Schools

Due to the imperative need for change in habits caused by the COVID-19 pandemic that has plagued the world, this exploratory study plans to analyze the directions taken in teaching activities in public and private schools of the city of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and their consequences for learning and scholarly performance concerning elementary and middle schools. In this way, this study verifies through an email questionnaire if there was equality, justice, and quality in teaching methods during the COVID-19 pandemic. The descriptive analysis was carried out based on statistical calculations of quantitative and qualitative variables with various tests, whenever necessary, such as the chi-square, and when inconclusive, Fischer’s exact test, Kolmogorov–Smirnov and Shapiro–Wilk, non-parametric Mann–Whitney (when the comparison between two independent groups was mandatory), ANOVA, Kruskal–Wallis, and Friedman test. The results show that teachers tried to interact with students to overcome the problems faced during the COVID-19 pandemic period. Additionally, the study showed that there were differences in scholarly and learning performance, equality, and quality in the types of schools analyzed. This paper will help to fill the literature gap on the subject and will boost ongoing discussion on the inclusion of sustainable concepts in education.

The Virtual Citizen Science Expo Hall: A Case Study of a Design-Based Project for Sustainability Education

A design-based project grounded in learning technology theories and systematically implemented can impact environmental education in many positive ways. This paper explores the systematic application of best practices from design-based projects that were used to combine and implement a drought education program. Embracing diffusion of innovation as its framework, augmented and virtual reality applications were used to design a virtual meeting space called the Virtual Citizen Science Expo. The results and findings show that users found Mozilla Hubs engaging as it gave them new ideas on the creative and inspirational use of virtual reality technology as an interactive and collaborative learning space. The discussions demonstrate that our VCSE can be used to promote and engage learners in science related to environmental monitoring.

A Guide to Implementing Inclusive and Accessible Virtual Poster Sessions

Poster sessions are an integral part of conferences because they facilitate networking opportunities and provide a platform for researchers at every career stage to present and get feedback on their work. In Spring 2020, prompted by the rapid transition of the SABER (Society for the Advancement of Biology Education Research) Summer 2020 meeting to an online format, we designed and implemented a no-cost and accessible, asynchronous, and synchronous virtual poster session. Here, we outlined our goals for hosting an inclusive virtual poster session (VPS), demonstrated how a backward design approach can facilitate effective VPS, and described our rationale for adopting an asynchronous/synchronous model using the Padlet and Zoom platforms. We shared our lessons learned to facilitate a second VPS at the SABER 2021 meeting and to assist future poster session organizers in designing engaging, inclusive, and accessible poster sessions. Virtual poster sessions have great potential to improve collaborations and science communication experiences at scientific conferences and in undergraduate classrooms.

The Online Education System: COVID-19 Demands, Trends, Implications, Challenges, Lessons, Insights, Opportunities, Outlooks, and Directions in the Work from Home

The aim of this exploratory research is to identify how working from home and the consequent social isolation interfered in teachers’ work and students’ learning and to identify the challenges, difficulties, advantages, opportunities, demands, trends, implications, outlooks, lessons, directions, and feelings of students and teachers in the teaching processes during the COVID-19 pandemic period. To reach its aim, the authors of this paper developed searches and scientific databases and they also sent an email questionnaire to Rio de Janeiro city schools. The descriptive analyses were made by descriptive statistics (proportions, rates, minimum, maximum, mean, median, standard deviation, coefficient of variation—CV). The results show that working from home and the consequent social isolation interfered in the students’ and teachers’ feelings and sensations and highlight the words “frustration”, “hope”, and “strangeness”. From the sample, 96.4% of the teachers affirmed that working from home and the social isolation interfered in their work and 97.4% of the teachers affirmed that working from home and the consequent social isolation interfered in the students’ learning. This research is the starting point to boost discussions on the subjects of COVID-19, working from home, social isolation, and education. This paper will support researchers in the development of future studies related to the subjects.

Learning Remotely during a Pandemic: Are Students in a Developing Country Fully Equipped with Tools for Swift Changes?

Many higher educational institutes are forced to the online mode of lecture delivery without fully understanding students’ perspectives of remote study during COVID-19, and the resource limitations of students to engage successfully in remote learning. The present study aimed to understand this gap and the students’ perspective. We collected and analysed the devices, which used by the students to connect to remote learning in a developing country. It was found that the majority of students are dependent on the laptop-smartphone combination to engage in remote learning, particularly the students in rural areas. The results highlighted the importance of smartphones in the online learning experience, considering their affordability, relatively long battery life, inbuilt internet capabilities, and portability. Although students indicated their willingness for remote learning, they clearly recognised the need for face-to-face teaching return to avoid some of the challenges and disadvantages they face as a part of remote learning.

Connected while distant: Networking CUREs across classrooms to create community and empower students

Connections, collaborations, and community are key to the success of individual scientists as well as transformative scientific advances. Intentionally building these components into STEM education can better prepare future generations of researchers. Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) are a new and fast-growing teaching practice in STEM that can expand opportunities for undergraduate students to gain research skills. Because they engage all students in a course in an authentic research experience focused on a relevant scientific problem, CUREs provide an opportunity to foster community among students while promoting critical thinking skills and positively influencing their identities as scientists. Here, we review CUREs in the biological sciences that were developed as multi-institutional networks, and highlight the benefits gained by both students and instructors through participation in a CURE network. Throughout, we introduce Squirrel-Net, a network of ecology-focused and field-based CUREs that intentionally create connections among students and instructors. Squirrel-Net CUREs can also be scaffolded into the curriculum to form connections between courses, and are easily transitioned to distance-based delivery. Future assessments of networked CUREs like Squirrel-Net will help elucidate how CURE networks create community and how a cultivated research community impacts students' performance, perceptions of science, and sense of belonging. We hypothesize networked CUREs have the potential to create a broader sense of belonging among students and instructors alike, which could result in better science and more confident scientists.

A COVID-19 Pandemic Sustainable Educational Innovation Management Proposal Framework

The COVID-19 pandemic has promoted a big change in the educational sector. Suddenly, teachers, professors, and students had to migrate from presential classes to the online system without prior notice or a training course. This paper aimed to verify how the need of a rapid change to the online system in response to the impossibility of keeping the presential system due to the mandatory social distancing imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic has affected relationships and performance of teachers, professors, and students, as well as review the technologies and procedures adopted by them to innovate and achieve sustainable education. To address the empirical side of this exploratory research, the authors of this paper sent an email questionnaire to kindergarten, elementary and high school teachers in the City of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), as well as to professors of the top 197 Brazilian universities. To address theoretical side of this exploratory research, an investigation was carried out through scientific databases. The data were analyzed with SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences), version 22.0, and with Microsoft Excel 2007. As a result, this paper showed that social isolation and transition to the online system greatly affected the work conditions of teachers and professors, as well as the learning process of students. Anyway, sustainable actions were taken to overcome these challenges. Furthermore, this paper proposed a framework that might support the development of new studies, filling the literature gap on the subject.

From a crisis to an opportunity: Eight insights for doing science in the COVID-19 era and beyond

The COVID-19 crisis has forced researchers in Ecology to change the way we work almost overnight. Nonetheless, the pandemic has provided us with several novel components for a new way of conducting science. In this perspective piece, we summarize eight central insights that are helping us, as early career researchers, navigate the uncertainties, fears, and challenges of advancing science during the COVID-19 pandemic. We highlight how innovative, collaborative, and often Open Science-driven developments that have arisen from this crisis can form a blueprint for a community reinvention in academia. Our insights include personal approaches to managing our new reality, maintaining capacity to focus and resilience in our projects, and a variety of tools that facilitate remote collaboration. We also highlight how, at a community level, we can take advantage of online communication platforms for gaining accessibility to conferences and meetings, and for maintaining research networks and community engagement while promoting a more diverse and inclusive community. Overall, we are confident that these practices can support a more inclusive and kinder scientific culture for the longer term.

Instructional Communities of Practice during COVID-19: Social Networks and Their Implications for Resilience

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, most spring 2020 university courses were abruptly transitioned mid-semester to remote learning. The current study was an exploratory investigation into the interactions among individuals within a single biology department during this transition. Our goal was to describe the patterns of interactions among members of this community, including with whom they gave advice on instruction, shared materials, co-constructed materials, and shared emotions, during the rapid online transition. We explored how instructional teams (i.e., the instructor of record and graduate teaching assistants, or GTAs, assigned to a single course) organized themselves, and what interactions exist outside of these instructional teams. Using social network analysis, we found that the flow of resources and support among instructional staff within this department suggest a collaborative and resilient community of practice. Most interactions took place between instructional staff teaching in the same course. While faculty members tended to have more connections than GTAs, GTAs remained highly interactive in this community. We consider how the observed networks might reflect a mobilization of social resources that are important for individual and departmental resilience in a time of crisis. Actively promoting supportive networks and network structures may be important as higher education continues to cope and adapt to the changing landscape brought on by COVID-19.

How the ecology and evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic changed learning

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic introduced an abrupt change in human behavior globally. Here, we discuss unique insights the pandemic has provided into the eco-evolutionary role of pathogens in ecosystems and present data that indicates the pandemic may have fundamentally changed our learning choices. COVID-19 has indirectly affected many organisms and processes by changing the behavior of humans to avoid being infected. The pandemic also changed our learning behavior by affecting the relative importance of information and forcing teaching and learning into a framework that accommodates human behavioral measures to avoid disease transmission. Not only are these indirect effects on the environment occurring through a unique mechanistic pathway in ecology, the pandemic along with its effects on us provides a profound example of the role risk can play in the transmission of information between the at risk. Ultimately, these changes in our learning behavior led to this special issue "Taking learning online in Ecology and Evolution." The special issue was a call to the community to take learning in new directions, including online and distributed experiences. The topics examined include a significant component of DIY ecology and evolution that is experiential but done individually, opportunities to use online tools and apps to be more inclusive, student-focused strategies for teaching online, how to reinvent conferences, strategies to retain experiential learning safely, emerging forms of teaching such as citizen science, apps and podcasting, and ideas on how to accommodate ever changing constraints in the college classroom, to name a few. The collective consensus in our fields is that these times are challenging but we can continue to improve and innovate on existing developments, and more broadly and importantly, this situation may provide an opportunity to reset some of the existing practices that fail to promote an effective and inclusive learning environment.