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. 2021 Jul 12;21(14):4762.
doi: 10.3390/s21144762.

A Qualitative Approach to Help Adjust the Design of Management Subjects in ICT Engineering Undergraduate Programs through User Experience in a Smart Classroom Context

Josep Petchamé  1 , Ignasi Iriondo  1 , Eva Villegas  1 , David Fonseca  2 , Susana Romero Yesa  3 , Marian Aláez  4
Affiliations

A Qualitative Approach to Help Adjust the Design of Management Subjects in ICT Engineering Undergraduate Programs through User Experience in a Smart Classroom Context

Josep Petchamé et al. Sensors (Basel). .

Abstract

Qualitative research activities, including first-day of class surveys and user experience interviews on completion of a subject were carried out to obtain students' feedback in order to improve the design of the subject 'Information Systems' as a part of a general initiative to enhance ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) engineering programs. Due to the COVID-19 (corona virus disease 2019) pandemic, La Salle URL adopted an Emergency Remote Teaching tactical solution in the second semester of the 2019-2020 academic year, just before implementing a strategic learning approach based on a new Smart Classroom (SC) system deployed in the campus facilities. The latter solution was developed to ensure that both on-campus and off-campus students could effectively follow the course syllabus through the use of new technological devices introduced in classrooms and laboratories, reducing the inherent difficulties of online learning. The results of our findings show: (1) No major concerns about the subject were identified by students; (2) Interaction and class dynamics were the main issues identified by students, while saving time on commuting when learning from home and access to recorded class sessions were the aspects that students considered the most advantageous about the SC.

Keywords: COVID-19; ICT; emergency remote teaching; engineering education; first day of class; higher education; information systems; smart classroom; user experience.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Technological devices deployed in a standard ‘Smart Classroom’: Sound system (SS); Smart-Board (SB); Camera 1 (CAM1); Robotized Camera 2 (CAM2); Television 1 (TV1); Television 2 (TV2); Local Area Network (LAN); Wi-Fi; Personal Computer (PC).
Figure 2
Figure 2
User interaction with the technology deployed in a ‘Smart Classroom’.
Figure 3
Figure 3
‘Smart Classroom’: ‘Smart-Board’, Sound system, Camera1 and TV1.
Figure 4
Figure 4
‘Smart Classroom’: Sound system, Robotized Camera2 and TV2.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Continuous adjustment of the subject once feedback from the students is collected.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Boxplots: Comparison of 2019–2020 and 2020–2021 Emotional Pairs. The means of each group are marked with green dots. The numbering of the pairs of emotions corresponds to that shown in Table 10. The different subfigures show: (a) results from pairs 1 to 6; (b) results from pairs 7 to 11.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Plot of all pairs of feelings: Comparing 2019–2020 and 2020–2021 results.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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