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In this paper a Virtual Reality (VR) based interactive system for specifying robotic tasks using virtual tools is described. This environment allows an operator to reach into a live video scene and direct robots to use corresponding real tools in complex scenarios that involve integrating a variety of otherwise autonomous technologies. The attribute‐rich virtual tool concept provides a human‐machine interface that is robust to unanticipated developments and tunable to the specific requirements of a particular task. This interactive specification concept is applied to intermediate manufacturing processes such as robotic based grinding and polishing. Further, in this research, when the operator selects a virtual tool by “clicking” on an icon of the desired tool in a virtual toolbox, a representation of the real‐world tool, laden with associated attributes is displayed. A new flavor of tool is created from the parent class when desired. According to operating constraints, new subclasses, which are offspring of the parent tool class, are derived. A specific instance of a tool can be evoked from any of the derived subclasses. Such attribute laden virtual tools enable easy control of otherwise complicated manufacturing task planning. This paper also explores the use of JAVA applet based interface for using these tools over the Internet. Successful implementation of such a Web‐based system will open the door to the use of robots in many other human intensive manufacturing processes.

This paper aims to study the perception of school students towards online classes via virtual meeting applications and to unravel the teachers' preparedness and students' preparedness for running synchronous online classes and its impact on student's engagement and their satisfaction during the period of lockdown due to COVID-19.

On the basis of focused group discussions with teachers and students of top 10 private CBSE affiliated schools (National capital Region, Delhi, India), survey instrument was constructed. Further, 489 valid responses were finally analysed through partial least square (PLS) method and structural model was tested.

All the six independent variables such as teachers' structured approach, teachers' technical readiness, teachers' self-efficacy, students' technical readiness, students' autonomy and students' self-efficacy influenced students' engagement and satisfaction towards synchronous online classes significantly. The result of the structural model also reveals that students' engagement is a significant predictor of students' satisfaction.

The paper outlines the scope for future research in ascertaining more critical success factors other than satisfaction and engagement. Scope of this research suggests inclusion of not only schools but framework is also important for college and university level educational bodies. Data collection was confined to students only whereas viewpoint of teachers and parents may also be included.

This study devised a collaborative form of learning where both the parties learnt while making continuous interactions and also co-created value in terms of new skills. Provision of autonomy given to students can't be overlooked as an important indicator for his/her preparedness. As a result, students feel motivated to get engaged in the whole process which makes them satisfied and will be able to identify the learning outcomes equal to or greater than in physical classroom settings.

Using sentiment analysis (SA), this study aims to examine the impact of COVID-19 on mental health and virtual learning experiences among 1,125 students at a public Argentinean faculty.

A study was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, surveying 1,125 students to gather their opinions. The survey data was analysed using text mining tools and SA. SA was used to extract the students’ emotions, views and feelings computationally and identify co-occurrences and patterns in related words. The study also examines educational policies implemented after the pandemic.

The prevalent emotions expressed in the comments were trust, sadness, anticipation and fear. A combination of trust and fear resulted in submission. Negative comments often included the words “virtual”, “virtual classroom”, “virtual classes” and “professor”. Two significant issues were identified: teachers’ inexperience with virtual classes and inadequate server infrastructure, leading to frequent crashes. The most effective educational policies addressed vital issues related to the “virtual classroom”.

Text mining and SA are valuable tools for decision-making during uncertain times, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. They can also provide insights to recover quality assurance processes at universities impacted by health concerns or external shocks.

The paper makes two main contributions: it conducts a SA to gain insights from comments and analyses the relationship between emotions and sentiments to identify optimal educational policies. The study pioneers exploring the link between emotions, policies and the pandemic at a public university in Argentina. This area of research still needs to be explored.

The purpose of this paper is to identify student clusters based on patterns of behavioural, cognitive, emotional, collaborative and social engagement in virtual classrooms, within the context of higher education. The study also attempts to explore the differences amongst the student clusters with respect to various motivating and demotivating teaching behaviours.

The study relies on the self-determination theory to describe the dynamics related to various motivating and demotivating teaching behaviours and five different dimensions of student engagement in virtual classrooms. The data were collected from a convenience sample of 831 students from higher educational institutions in the Delhi – National Capital Region of India. Cluster analysis was performed to classify students into mutually exclusive groups based on five student engagement dimensions.

The findings revealed three student clusters: ‘fully-engaged’, ‘externally-engaged’ and ‘individually-engaged’ students. The findings also provided insights into varied correlations between specific dimensions of motivating/demotivating teaching behaviours and student engagement.

Considering the multi-dimensionality of student engagement as well as teaching behaviours, the study adopts a person-centred approach to understand different clusters of students in virtual classrooms and investigate the relationship between teaching behaviours and student engagement dimensions.

This chapter will explore the impact virtual learning had on students and their social and emotional development as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors’ guiding question(s) for this chapter will be: How has social and emotional growth been considered as part of the missing piece to virtual learning? How are social and emotional learning opportunities addressed to achieve maximum student success and development as future leaders in a global society? What lessons have been learned during the pandemic regarding virtual teaching that can help develop more robust curriculum/learning choices for supporting students’ social and emotional well-being? Using research on digital learning and student and teacher interviews, the authors will gather data to report on the positives and opportunities for growth from the impact of the pandemic and virtual learning. The authors discuss implications of this work.

This mixed-methods research aimed to investigate students’ opinions on the effectiveness of using digital platforms to carry on their learning process.

This is a mixed-methods research. One hundred students, registered in the last English course of their curriculum, took part in the investigation. They filled out a Likert-scale survey using the criteria for CALL evaluation. During the data analysis of the quantitative section of the research, a chi-square of 15.0672 and a p-value of 0.519719 were obtained, making this result not significant at p < 0.05. A Levene test of variance equality was performed on the resulting data to confirm the results. Personal interviews were carried out to triangulate the previous results.

This study determined that Ecuadorian undergraduate students have a negative perception of the usefulness of using a digital class to learn English. These results have important implications for teachers who must work harder during these times of COVID-19 to attain students' attention.

This research is limited by its conception of qualitative methods. This limitation also opens the door for further studies. The quantitative and mixed methods studies are suggested to confirm the results obtained here.

This study has practical implications for teachers and language center managers. They can use the information attained to adapt their teachings in order to improve these results. Managers will benefit from it as they can plan for teacher training considering the comments given by students.

The social implication of this study is that the students, through their comments, have implied the need of having some sort of socialization and ERT does not permit such.

This paper has value as it closes the gap of information regarding the use of this new teaching modality attained from Latin American countries and more specifically from Ecuador.

The purpose of this paper was to identify pertinent studies on the important issue of student engagement strategies in online courses and to establish from empirical studies student engagement strategies that work.

The paper adopted the literature review approach. The authors conducted a thorough and systematic search of the literature to find empirical studies focusing on online engagement strategies within the field of education and distance learning. To generate as many relevant publications as possible, both manual and electronic searches were conducted. The databases used included; Academic Search Complete (Ebsco), Social Sciences Full Text (Wilson), ProQuest Education Journals, ProQuest Dissertation and Thesis, ProQuest Central, Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCIISI), ERIC, (Ebsco), SAGE Full-Text Collection (CSA), Google Scholar and Emerald.

The results of this paper revealed the several factors that can create engaging learning experiences for the online learners. The primary factors are as follows: creating and maintaining positive learning environment; building learning community; giving consistent feedback in timely manner; and using the right technology to deliver the right content.

The paper is limited, as it is based on a review of literature. Empirical studies need to be conducted to support the ideas generated in this paper. For example, it is proposed that individual and institutional characteristics play an important role in promoting learner satisfaction in online courses. Additional studies that can explore this aspect in detail are needed.

The paper has both professional and educational implications. The findings of this paper can help identify areas where the instructors and designers of online classes need to focus. The student engagement strategies for online courses identified should assist both experienced and beginning online instructors in the design and successful delivery of online courses. Students taking online courses should find the results of this study invaluable.

Virtualization is the simulation or emulation of computer resources to the user (Grauer, n.d.; Simpson, 2008). This chapter discusses virtualization as a viable classroom methodology for providing students with course relevant hands-on experience (Simpson, 2008) while synchronizing course specific content in traditional on-ground and online courses (Pheils, 2010). More specifically, this chapter provides an overview of virtualization, detailing several open source tools, and offering possible applications for incorporation into other courses including free resources for sample content. Proof-of-concept is established through examples of successful usage at two colleges. The adoption of virtualization within course development may provide a solution that spans disciplines and offers students the ability to practice and further their studies beyond the classroom.

The concept of e-learning is essential in employee education since it provides different ways to develop employees' knowledge, skills and attitudes using modern technologies. E-learning has been overgrowing in employee education because learning can be held anytime and anywhere. In order to succeed in implementing e-learning and benefiting from its capacities, and avoiding potential threats in the country, it is necessary to address the factors affecting its success. This paper aims to test the role of internet of Things (IoT)-based systems, cloud-based services, virtual classes, evaluation tools, attitude, content management and creativity on the success of employees' e-learning programs based on a framework.

E-learning systems receive ever-increasing attention in academia, business and public administration. With the development of e-learning, employee education has also benefited from its capacities in various fields. To succeed in implementing e-learning and benefiting from its capacities, and avoiding potential threats in the country, it is necessary to address its success. The proposing of Information and Communications Technology (ICT)-based technologies such as the IoT, cloud, etc., in e-learning, can help transform education. Therefore, this paper aims to test the role of IoT-based systems, cloud-based services, virtual classes, evaluation tools, attitude, content management and creativity on the success of employees' e-learning programs based on a framework. The research model and the data collected from the questionnaires have been analyzed via Smart PLS 3.2. This study has utilized the SEM to evaluate the causal model's reliability and validity based on measurement. According to the literature in this study, a framework has been proposed that examines the impact of IoT-based systems, cloud-based services, virtual classes, evaluation tools, attitude, content management and creativity on employees' learning programs' success.

The results have shown that IoT-based systems, cloud-based services, virtual classes and evaluation tools are four significant factors affecting attitude, content management and creativity. The results have also shown that attitude, content management and creativity are three significant factors affecting employees' learning programs' success. The factors above are considered critical in explaining the success of employees' e-learning programs, but, as far as we know, there has been no study in which all these factors were demonstrated together.

From a practical viewpoint, the statistical outcomes support the important role of the following factors: IoT-based systems, cloud-based services, virtual classes, evaluation tools, attitude, content management and creativity. Henceforth, aspects relating to these factors got the attention of any organization to develop e-learning processes.

This research will contribute to the literature related to employees' e-learning programs' success by integrating all the mentioned variables. As far as we know, it is the first study to test these variables in Iran.

The absence of physical interactions in online learning environment brings psychological influences on learning participants in interacting and sharing knowledge with others, such as ignorance of other member’s presence and insecurity to share something in online environment. The purpose of this research was to examine the knowledge sharing behavior (KSB) by online learning community members in terms of their psychological safety (PS) and social presence (SP) perceptions. In addition, this research also identified the influence of PS to promote SP and the mediation impact of SP in the relationships between PS and KSB.

The data were gathered through self-administered questionnaire distributed to 133 online class members at a university in Indonesia where online learning has created a new learning experience. To represent key behavioral attributes, 12 items were used to represent PS, SP and KSB. The relationships among the variables were analyzed using the structural equation modelling method.

The result showed that PS positively influenced SP and KSB. SP also brought a positive impact on promoting KSB and fully mediated the relationship between PS and KSB.

The result may not have fully captured the reflection of the influencing factors of KSB, as this research focused only on two psychological factors, namely, PS and SP. The research may be further enriched by including additional factors and expanding the data collection to include more online learning institutions.

The results implied the importance of PS and SP perception to promoting KSB in online learning environments. The results highlighted an important message to universities and schools to be more concerned on students’ feeling safe personally and students’ awareness of others’ presence to maximize knowledge sharing activities in online class environment.

This paper revealed the importance of PS and SP to promote KSB in the higher education online learning community. To the best of the researchers’ knowledge, this is the first study to link PS and SP to KSB and identify the importance of the mediation effect of SP on the relationship between PS and KSB specifically in higher education online learning environment.