Business Management Teaching-Learning Processes in Times of Pandemic: Flipped Classroom at A Distance

Migration of an Escape Room-Style Educational Game to an Online Environment: Design Thinking Methodology

Background

The COVID-19 pandemic outbreak has led to a sudden change in education, closing schools and shifting to online teaching, which has become an enormous challenge for teachers and students. Implementing adequate online pedagogical approaches and integrating different digital tools in the teaching process have become a priority in educational systems. Finding a way to keep students' interest and persistence in learning is an important issue that online education is facing. One possible way to establish engaging and interactive learning environments, using the energy and enthusiasm of students for educational purposes, is the use of game-based learning activities and gamification of different parts of the educational process.

Objective

This paper presents a use case of migrating an escape room–style educational game to an online environment by using the design thinking methodology. We wanted to show that the design thinking methodology is useful to create engaging and motivating online games that provide educational value.

Methods

Starting from students’ perspective, we created a simple digital escape room–style game where students got an opportunity to self-assess their knowledge in computer science at their own pace. Students tested this prototype game, and their opinions about the game were collected through an online survey. The test's goal was to evaluate the students' perceptions about the implemented digital escape room–style educational game and gather information about whether it could achieve students' engagement in learning computer science during online teaching.

Results

In total, 117 students from sixth and seventh grades completed the survey regarding the achieved student engagement. Despite the differences in students’ answers about game complexity and puzzle difficulty, most students liked the activity (mean 4.75, SD 0.67, on a scale from 1 to 5). They enjoyed the game, and they would like to participate in this kind of activity again (mean 4.74, SD 0.68). All (n=117, 100%) students found the digital escape room–style educational game interesting for playing and learning.

Conclusions

The results confirmed that digital escape room–style games could be used as an educational tool to engage students in the learning process and achieve learning outcomes. Furthermore, the design thinking methodology proved to be a useful tool in the process of adding novel educational value to the digital escape room–style game.

Hot topics and frontier evolution in college flipped classrooms based on mapping knowledge domains

With the outbreak of COVID-19 and the development of online teaching, the online flipping teaching mode has attracted increasing attention. Systematic analysis of the research status and development trend of the flipped classrooms is significant for guiding the improvement of the quality of online flipped teaching. This study used the metrology software CiteSpace to draw a scientific knowledge map of relevant research in the web of science database from 2013 to 2021. It performed visual analysis of research authors, research institutions and countries, keyword clustering, keywords co-occurrence, and keyword time zone distribution. The results showed that: (1) The flipped classrooms research has attracted increasing attention from the social and educational circles, however, the relationship between relevant research authors, institutions, and countries is not close enough, and there is little cooperation. We need to strengthen cooperation further and realize the sharing of high-quality resources; (2) Based on keyword co-occurrence cluster analysis, this study identified three hot topics, namely, preparation before class, classroom activities and consolidation after class; (3) According to the keyword time zone map, this study divided three frontier evolution trends: exploration period, adaptation period, and growth period; (4) Finally, with the spread of novel coronavirus, it is suggested to promote the online flipped classroom teaching mode, and put forward reasonable suggestions from the perspective of teachers, students and researchers, and look forward to the future digital development direction of the flipped classroom.

Impact of COVID-19 on School Populations and Associated Factors: A Systematic Review

Apart from the severe impact on public health and well-being, the chain effect resulting from the COVID-19 health crisis is a profound disruption for various other sectors, notably in education. COVID-19 has driven massive transformation in many aspects of the educational landscape, particularly as teaching and learning shifted online due to school closure. Despite the many impacts of the health crises on school populations, a systematic review regarding this particular issue has yet to be conducted. This study, therefore, attempts to comprehensively review the impact of health crises on school populations (student, teacher, parent, and school administration). An extensive literature search guided by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) reporting checklist was performed in two selected databases, namely Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus to identify how this particular topic was previously studied. Exclusion and inclusion criteria were set to ensure that only research papers written in English from the year 2000 to the present (April 2021) were included. From a total of 457 studies screened, only 41 of them were deemed eligible to be included for qualitative synthesis. The findings revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic was the only health crisis discussed when it comes to investigating the impact of health crises on school populations. This study found four notable consequences of health crises on school populations, which are impacts on mental health, teaching and learning, quality of life, and physical health. Among factors associated with the impact of the health crises are; demographic factors, concerns about the pandemic, education-related factors, health-related factors, geographic factors, economic concerns, teaching challenges, and parenting in the pandemic. This study is expected to be a reference for future works in formulating crises mitigation strategies to reduce the impact of health crises on schools by exploring the contexts of the crises.

Satisfaction Levels of Sport Sciences University Students in Online Workshops for Substituting Practice-Oriented Activities during the COVID-19 Lockdown

Laboratory teaching in sport and exercise sciences universities is of fundamental importance as it provides students with the necessary hands-on skills that are indispensable to future kinesiologists. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, students in lockdown missed the opportunity to acquire laboratory skills. Here we report the solutions adopted by a blended exercise science Master’s degree program of an online Italian university to ensure didactic continuity in the practice-oriented activities during the period of the COVID-19 lockdown. In order to mitigate this issue, laboratory sessions were replaced with online workshops and students’ satisfaction levels in this regard were investigated in the present study using an online survey conducted on 101 students during lockdown. The survey consisted of 7-point Likert scale items focusing on computer usage (CU), learning satisfaction (LS), social interaction (SI), and perceived value (PV). The analysis of the results revealed a good level of learning satisfaction of the students. Conversely, students perceived a moderate level of social interaction and had a moderate perception that online workshops can enhance their learning abilities. In conclusion, the results of the present study seem to indicate that online workshops can be considered a good and acceptable compromise during an emergency, although face-to-face activities remain the preferable learning delivery modality when dealing with the acquisition of hands-on skills.

COVID-19 Emergency Remote Teaching Opinions and Academic Performance of Undergraduate Students: Analysis of 4 Students’ Profiles. A Case Study

Distance learning due to the COVID-19 lockdown, commonly called emergency remote teaching (ERT), substantially changed the methodology of teaching and possibly students’ perceptions of the quality of lectures. Students’ opinions should be collected and analyzed jointly with other data such as academic performance to assess the effect of this pandemic on learning. A 20-question, 4-point Likert scale specific questionnaire was designed and validated twice by a panel of experts. The survey was sent to the 365 industrial engineering undergraduate students enrolled in a chemistry course. Responses (n = 233) and academic data were collected, and four student profiles were identified by using the k-means cluster analysis technique: ‘The Lucky’, ‘The Passive’, ‘The Autonomous Learner’ and ‘The Harmed’. Students experienced the ERT differently according to their profile. Undergraduates who were better autonomous learners excelled in academic performance and were more participative in the survey. In general, students preferred face-to-face classes over distance learning. Undergraduates’ learning has been impaired due to the circumstances. However, contrary to their beliefs, the situation has benefited them with respect to grades when comparing their performance with students from previous years. Discovering what challenges students faced to adapt to the situation is key to giving students tools to grow as autonomous learners and to enable educators to apply tailored teaching techniques to improve the quality of lectures and enhance student satisfaction.

Digitainability—Digital Competences Post-COVID-19 for a Sustainable Society

The digitalization of societies, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, is an unstoppable process. This paper seeks to answer the question: what post-COVID-19 digital competences are needed for a sustainable society? It also aims to analyze the digitalization processes in education for shaping a sustainable digital society. A bibliographic search was performed on some of the most relevant international databases of scientific literature and the selected documents were analyzed through a content analysis. It is concluded that digital education has experienced a strong increase, reinforced by COVID-19, shaping the digital presence in all dimensions of life. However, it is not sufficient to assume that the new generations are naturally engaged in and can master digital social sustainability. The results demonstrate the importance of literacy and the unavoidable promotion of sustainability in a digital society. However, this digitalization of the educational process poses several challenges: it requires both software and hardware conditions, as well as digital literacy as a result of a complex of literacies. It also implies that teachers and students change their standpoints and practices with the attainment of new teaching and learning competences in order to fight the digital divide and to foster the widest possible social inclusion for the promotion of sustainable society—digitainability.

Some Web-Based Experiences from Flipped Classroom Techniques in AEC Modules during the COVID-19 Lockdown

The classroom closure during the first semester of 2020 entailed decisive changes in higher education. Universities have become more digital in both the availability of e-resources and pervasive devices and how students communicate with lecturers and classmates. Learners adapted their study habits with a growing role of self-paced, internet-based strategies. Some flipped learning approaches have proven their efficacy under the remote-teaching physical constraints. This study aimed to appraise the outcomes from the implementation of various web-based, learning-aid tools on flipped teaching approaches in engineering modules. The open educational resources (OER) performed satisfactorily during the lockdown period in three universities from two countries with similar higher education models. Such resources encompassed classroom response systems and web-based exercise repositories, designed for diverse purposes such as autonomous learning, self-correction, flipped classroom, peer assessment, and guided study. The acquired experiences reveal that OER helped students to enhance their engagement, reach the deeper levels of the cone of learning, and widen their range of learning abilities. This procedure is easily attainable for architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) courses and lifelong learning settings. Feedback from students, instructors’ perceptions, and learning outcomes show the suitability and effectiveness of the web-based learning assistant procedure presented here.

Efficacy of Social Networking Sites for Sustainable Education in the Era of COVID-19: A Systematic Review

The sudden advent of the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated containment measures require educational institutions of all sizes to adopt eLearning as the only option for sustainable education. Despite the numerous Learning Management Systems, the rapid migration to eLearning posed numerous challenges that negatively affect the effectiveness and sustainability of the educational activities. The current study systematically reviewed recent articles that recognized the value and feasibility of using Social Networking Sites (SNSs) in education. The study highlighted the current eLearning challenges and illustrated effective strategies for the sustainable educational use of SNSs by both institutions, teachers, and students. Thus, solutions to the problems experienced in education during the COVID-19 period were highlighted based on SNS-supported strategies.