Acquisition and User Behavior in Online Science Laboratories before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the closure of schools at every level, globally, forcing education to move online. Meeting the needs of students online for Science Lab classes, in particular, is a challenge since the physical labs are not available to the teachers or students. OLabs is a virtu...
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Format: | Article |
Language: | English |
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MDPI AG
2021-08-01
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Series: | Multimodal Technologies and Interaction |
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Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/2414-4088/5/8/46 |
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author | Raghu Raman Ricardo Vinuesa Prema Nedungadi |
author_facet | Raghu Raman Ricardo Vinuesa Prema Nedungadi |
author_sort | Raghu Raman |
collection | DOAJ |
description | The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the closure of schools at every level, globally, forcing education to move online. Meeting the needs of students online for Science Lab classes, in particular, is a challenge since the physical labs are not available to the teachers or students. OLabs is a virtual Science Lab providing a complete learning environment of theory, experimental procedures, videos, animations, simulations, and assessments that capture real lab experiences with the relevant pedagogy. This study looks at the acquisition and behaviors of users, on the OLabs platform, during pre and COVID-19 times. Using Google Analytics, we observe that, during the pandemic time, users increasingly adopted OLabs as a new learning pedagogy for performing experiments as indicated by parameters like the number of users; the number of unique pages viewed per session; time spent on viewing content; bounce rate; and preference for content types such as theory, simulations, videos, and animations. |
first_indexed | 2024-03-10T08:32:10Z |
format | Article |
id | doaj.art-5472df67dfa3471ea9f02abdf11faff5 |
institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
issn | 2414-4088 |
language | English |
last_indexed | 2024-03-10T08:32:10Z |
publishDate | 2021-08-01 |
publisher | MDPI AG |
record_format | Article |
series | Multimodal Technologies and Interaction |
spelling | doaj.art-5472df67dfa3471ea9f02abdf11faff52023-11-22T08:56:56ZengMDPI AGMultimodal Technologies and Interaction2414-40882021-08-01584610.3390/mti5080046Acquisition and User Behavior in Online Science Laboratories before and during the COVID-19 PandemicRaghu Raman0Ricardo Vinuesa1Prema Nedungadi2Amrita School of Engineering, Amritapuri, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Kerala 690525, IndiaEngineering Mechanics, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, SE-10044 Stockholm, SwedenAmrita School of Engineering, Amritapuri, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Kerala 690525, IndiaThe COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the closure of schools at every level, globally, forcing education to move online. Meeting the needs of students online for Science Lab classes, in particular, is a challenge since the physical labs are not available to the teachers or students. OLabs is a virtual Science Lab providing a complete learning environment of theory, experimental procedures, videos, animations, simulations, and assessments that capture real lab experiences with the relevant pedagogy. This study looks at the acquisition and behaviors of users, on the OLabs platform, during pre and COVID-19 times. Using Google Analytics, we observe that, during the pandemic time, users increasingly adopted OLabs as a new learning pedagogy for performing experiments as indicated by parameters like the number of users; the number of unique pages viewed per session; time spent on viewing content; bounce rate; and preference for content types such as theory, simulations, videos, and animations.https://www.mdpi.com/2414-4088/5/8/46online laboratoriesvirtual laboratoriesCOVID-19simulationsscienceschool |
spellingShingle | Raghu Raman Ricardo Vinuesa Prema Nedungadi Acquisition and User Behavior in Online Science Laboratories before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic Multimodal Technologies and Interaction online laboratories virtual laboratories COVID-19 simulations science school |
title | Acquisition and User Behavior in Online Science Laboratories before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic |
title_full | Acquisition and User Behavior in Online Science Laboratories before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic |
title_fullStr | Acquisition and User Behavior in Online Science Laboratories before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic |
title_full_unstemmed | Acquisition and User Behavior in Online Science Laboratories before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic |
title_short | Acquisition and User Behavior in Online Science Laboratories before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic |
title_sort | acquisition and user behavior in online science laboratories before and during the covid 19 pandemic |
topic | online laboratories virtual laboratories COVID-19 simulations science school |
url | https://www.mdpi.com/2414-4088/5/8/46 |
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