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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Main Authors: Raghu Raman, Ricardo Vinuesa, Prema Nedungadi
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2021-08-01
Series:Multimodal Technologies and Interaction
Subjects:
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.
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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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AT premanedungadi acquisitionanduserbehaviorinonlinesciencelaboratoriesbeforeandduringthecovid19pandemic