Teaching and Learning during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Topic Modeling Study

Corona Virus Disease (COVID-19): Lessons Learned Impact on the Education of Health Professionals

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) had a tremendous impact on the education of health professionals globally because of the lack of continuity in the medical education process. After it was declared a pandemic, stay-at-home orders forced students to learn virtually, to mitigate the spread of infection. While didactic courses transitioned easily to a virtual format, using platforms like Webex, Zoom, Google Classroom, etc. preclinical and clinical teaching suffered immensely. Patient care was halted for the safety of the patients, students and faculty, and staff involved. Uncertainty about clinical care and isolation during quarantine due to infections caused poor mental health among students. Most health professions innovated their teaching with simulations, role-play, educational videos, etc. but dental education suffered due to the need for psychomotor skill development. As the COVID-19 protocols evolved, and vaccinations became available, the teaching slowly transformed to Flipped Classrooms, Blended Learning, and Hybrid formats, and patient care was allowed with screening, triaging, and testing before scheduling for aerosol-causing procedures in dentistry. This new normal was accepted and silver linings in the pedagogies were appreciated by faculty and institutions alike as outcomes were analyzed. This chapter examines lessons learned on pandemic awareness, effective teaching pedagogies, and challenges of health professionals. An analysis of the lessons based on the framework of the Community of Inquiry is provided as guidelines to educate Gen Z for the future.

Gamification and Game Based Learning for Vocational Education and Training: A Systematic Literature Review

Games have been used as a learning tool for centuries. Gamification and game-based learning are becoming more prominent in educational settings for several reasons. When it comes to learning, being focused and immersed can massively improve a student's experience. The purpose of this study is to map the emerging trends of gamification and game-based learning (GBL) in the Vocational and Education Training (VET) sector. For this purpose, a Systematic Literature Review was conducted through the three most relevant scientific databases - Web of Science, Scopus, ScienceDirect, and PubMed with Google Scholar as a supporting database. The obtained sample was further selected following the PRISMA guidelines with screening and eligibility processes conducted based on inclusion criteria that were defined with consideration to the research's aim. This review comprised seventeen studies. The findings revealed a growing interest in the Asian continents in research from 2020 onwards. Furthermore, most of the study is centred on vocational schools and colleges in the engineering and healthcare fields. According to the overview, the digital learning platform and simulation technology are the most promising tools used in the research. The findings support the conclusion that gamification and game-based learning can improve academic performance, engagement, and motivation in vocational education learners. As a result, this study suggests that more research is needed to determine the gamification strategies that are most suited for vocational education and learning.

Teaching Cellular Architecture: The Global Status of Histology Education

Histology or microanatomy is the science of the structure and function of tissues and organs in metazoic organisms at the cellular level. By definition, histology is dependent on a variety of microscope techniques, usually light or more recently virtual, as well as electron microscopy. Since its inception more than two centuries ago, histology has been an integral component of biomedical education, specifically for medical, dental, and veterinary students. Traditionally, histology has been taught in two sequential phases, first a didactic transfer of information to learners and secondly a laboratory segment in which students develop the skill of analyzing micrographic images. In this chapter, the authors provide an overview of how histology is currently taught in different global regions. This overview also outlines which educational strategies and technologies are used, and how the local and cultural environment influences the histology education of medical and other students in different countries and continents. Also discussed are current trends that change the teaching of this basic science subject.

ParsBERT topic modeling of Persian scientific articles about COVID-19

Purpose

The COVID-19 pandemic has indisputably impacted every aspect of human life, and a host of studies have investigated its different aspects. This paper models the contents of Persian literature on COVID-19.

Method

This is a descriptive-exploratory study in which 815 articles were collected from the Magiran database. The articles were published before March 2022. The abstracts and titles were used in the modeling. The modeling was performed by combining the latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) algorithm with ParsBERT.

Findings

Topic modeling indicated ten major topics, including medicine, psychology, humanities, politics, management, biology, economics, culture, engineering, and religion. The articles under the category of medicine had the largest cluster (42.3%), while engineering and religion had the smallest clusters (1.1% each).

Conclusion

The found topics in the created clusters have structural relationships. The COVID-19 effect on physical and mental health (medical and psychological topics) is the most crucial factor. These clusters provide evidence that COVID-19 affects all facets of human society at three levels: the individual, family, and society. Aside from the ten critical clusters in the humanities field, the utmost disorder is related to teaching and learning. For the first time, this research has presented a model of scientific communication in the field of COVID-19 based on the data collected from a Persian database - Magiran.

Latent Dirichlet allocation topic modeling of free-text responses exploring the negative impact of the early COVID-19 pandemic on research in nursing

AIM

To derive latent topics from free-text responses on the negative impact of the pandemic on research activities and determine similarities and differences in the resulting themes between academic-based and clinical-based researchers.

METHODS

We performed a secondary analysis of free-text responses from a cross-sectional online survey conducted by the Japan Academy of Nursing Science of its members in early 2020. The participants were categorized into two groups by workplace (academic-based and clinical-based researchers). Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic modeling was used to extract latent topics statistically and list important keywords/text associated with the topics. After organizing similar topics by principal component analysis (PCA), we finally derived topic-associated themes by reading the keywords/texts and determining the similarity and differences of the themes between the two groups.

RESULTS

A total of 201 respondents (163 academic-based and 38 clinical-based researchers) provided free-text responses. LDA identified eight and three latent topics for the academic-based and clinical-based researchers, respectively. While PCA re-grouped the eight topics derived from the former group into four themes, no merging of the topics from the latter group was performed resulting in three themes. The only theme common to the two groups was "barriers to conducting research," with the remaining themes differing between the groups.

CONCLUSIONS

Using LDA topic modeling with PCA, we identified similarities and differences in the themes described in free-text responses about the negative impact of the pandemic between academic-based and clinical-based researchers. Measures to mitigate the negative impact of pandemics on nursing research may need to be tailored separately.

Comparison of Academic Motivation between Business and Healthcare Students in Online Learning: A Concurrent Nested Mixed-Method Study

While the demand for online education and the diversity of online students have been increasing worldwide, how online students motivate themselves to continuously engage in learning remains to be appraised. Research in the face-to-face contexts reports that academic motivation is central to student success and wellbeing, and the type of motivation can differ by subject. In particular, the motivation of business students and healthcare students can differ considerably. This study aimed to understand the motivation of online students, and compare them between business and healthcare students using a concurrent nested mixed-method design with correlation and thematic analyses. A survey regarding motivation, learning enjoyment, and study willingness was responded to by 120 online students (61 business and 59 healthcare). Business students were associated with extrinsic motivation, whereas healthcare students were associated with intrinsic motivation. While students in both groups enjoyed the pursuit of knowledge, healthcare students valued the process and accomplishment, whereas business students regarded education as steppingstones in their careers. Findings can help educators develop effective motivational support for these student groups.

Motivation and Engagement of Final-Year Students When Using E-learning: A Qualitative Study of Gamification in Pandemic Situation

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed how the education system operates. The shift from face-to-face learning to online learning generated many problems, including decreasing students’ motivation and engagement. Gamification has been used as one of the solutions to overcome the problem of low motivation and engagement in learning. The current study aims to examine students’ behavioral change when using e-learning with gamification, investigate gamification elements that are important to students and how it influences students’ motivation and engagement, and investigate whether population characteristics may influence students’ motivation and engagement. Qualitative methods were employed to gather and analyze the data. The thematic analysis resulted in six main themes. The findings revealed that there were behavioral changes in students during gamification implementation, i.e., from negative to positive and from positive to negative. Four gamification elements were found to be the most important gamification elements to students, i.e., points, leaderboard, badges, and gamified test. The mechanism of how these elements influenced motivation and engagement was discussed. The population characteristics of final-year students also had an impact on gamification effectiveness. Despite gamification’s capabilities to influence motivation and engagement, there are some concerns related to negative impacts that must be addressed in the future.

Emergency Remote Learning in Higher Education in Cyprus during COVID-19 Lockdown: A Zoom-Out View of Challenges and Opportunities for Quality Online Learning

This study provides a zoom-out perspective of higher education students’ experiences related to the emergency remote learning (ERL) following the first lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic as captured by a national, in-depth survey administered to all higher education institutions in Cyprus (different fields of study and educational levels). Quantitative and qualitative analyses of the data collected from 1051 students provide valuable information and insights regarding learners’ prior technology background and level of preparedness for online learning, the challenges and benefits of ERL and how they would like their online learning experience to be improved in case of future ERL. The results underline that students’ knowledge of and self-efficacy in using e-learning tools do not directly equate to being a digital learner equipped with necessary digital skills such as self-regulation to fully benefit from online learning. The educational disparities caused by inequalities in access and accessibility to high-quality education laid bare by the pandemic stressed the need for online environments that would afford quality learning for all learners. Online learning demands are discussed in the article, as well as implications for research, practice and policy making.

Text Mining of Biomedical Articles Using the Konstanz Information Miner (KNIME) Platform: Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome as a Case Study

Objectives

Automated systems for information extraction are becoming very useful due to the enormous scale of the existing literature and the increasing number of scientific articles published worldwide in the field of medicine. We aimed to develop an accessible method using the open-source platform KNIME to perform text mining (TM) on indexed publications. Material from scientific publications in the field of life sciences was obtained and integrated by mining information on hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) as a case study.

Methods

Text retrieved from Europe PubMed Central (PMC) was processed using specific KNIME nodes. The results were presented in the form of tables or graphical representations. Data could also be compared with those from other sources.

Results

By applying TM to the scientific literature on HUS as a case study, and by selecting various fields from scientific articles, it was possible to obtain a list of individual authors of publications, build bags of words and study their frequency and temporal use, discriminate topics (HUS vs. atypical HUS) in an unsupervised manner, and cross-reference information with a list of FDA-approved drugs.

Conclusions

Following the instructions in the tutorial, researchers without programming skills can successfully perform TM on the indexed scientific literature. This methodology, using KNIME, could become a useful tool for performing statistics, analyzing behaviors, following trends, and making forecast related to medical issues. The advantages of TM using KNIME include enabling the integration of scientific information, helping to carry out reviews, and optimizing the management of resources dedicated to basic and clinical research.

Computer Animation Education Online: A Tool to Teach Control Systems Engineering throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic

The world is changing, and university education must be able to adapt to it. New technologies such as artificial intelligence and robotics are requiring tools such as simulation and process control to develop products and services. Thus, control systems engineering schools are adapting to new educational frameworks tailored to deploy promising and feasible new technologies. Herein, we have relied on computer animation-based education and its implementation as an online project-based strategy to attain the objectives and goals of the control systems engineering courses at University of Los Andes, Venezuela. The ControlAnimation library developed in Mathematica program in 2002 has been used as a tool to teach control systems engineering courses since 2008 and with greater prominence since 2020, when the stay-at-home orders due to the COVID-19 pandemic were enacted. Consequently, computer animation-based education has proven its feasibility as an online tool combined with project-based learning techniques, thus allowing students to interact with an animated control system by changing the mathematical model and the design parameters of control laws in a comfortable and somewhat playful way. This enabled new capabilities to study the dynamic behaviors of primordial control systems online. In addition, it allowed students to co-identify and relate in a more intuitive way to the mathematical models and control equations with the physical behavior of the real control systems.

Perceptions of Pharmacy Students on the E-Learning Strategies Adopted during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Review

BACKGROUND

E-learning strategies were globally adopted by academies because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The characterization of students' perception of online learning is fundamental to design appropriate models for pharmacy curricula. The study aim was to carry out a systematic review about the perception of pharmacy students on the e-learning strategies adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic.

METHODS

The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) checklist was followed. PICOS criteria were applied. Five databases were screened: PubMed, Cochrane Library, DOAJ-Directory of Open Access Journals, SciELO-Scientific Electronic Library Online and b-on-Online Library of knowledge (Biblioteca do conhecimento online).

KEYWORDS

"pharmacy and (distant or remote or e-learning or online or zoom or education or training or digital) and (COVID or SARS and (student or undergraduate) and (opinion or satisfaction or perception or attitude)".

RESULTS

23 out of 176 papers were selected (28 duplicated and 125 excluded). Selected papers were classified, as follows: studies exclusively involving pharmacy students (n = 8); studies simultaneously involving pharmacy students and other healthcare students (n = 6); and studies related to the involvement of pharmacy students in specific courses (n = 9).

CONCLUSIONS

In general, the perception of pharmacy students on e-learning strategies adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic was positive. However, an expressive proportion of undergraduates reported negative issues about online education, which seems to support the necessity of optimizing e-learning strategies in the future.

Higher Education during the Pandemic: The Predictive Factors of Learning Effectiveness in COVID-19 Online Learning

The global coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak forced a shift from face-to-face education to online learning in higher education settings around the world. From the outset, COVID-19 online learning (CoOL) has differed from conventional online learning due to the limited time that students, instructors, and institutions had to adapt to the online learning platform. Such a rapid transition of learning modes may have affected learning effectiveness, which is yet to be investigated. Thus, identifying the predictive factors of learning effectiveness is crucial for the improvement of CoOL. In this study, we assess the significance of university support, student–student dialogue, instructor–student dialogue, and course design for learning effectiveness, measured by perceived learning outcomes, student initiative, and satisfaction. A total of 409 university students completed our survey. Our findings indicated that student–student dialogue and course design were predictive factors of perceived learning outcomes whereas instructor–student dialogue was a determinant of student initiative. University support had no significant relationship with either perceived learning outcomes or student initiative. In terms of learning effectiveness, both perceived learning outcomes and student initiative determined student satisfaction. The results identified that student–student dialogue, course design, and instructor–student dialogue were the key predictive factors of CoOL learning effectiveness, which may determine the ultimate success of CoOL.