Unlabelled: Low student engagement and motivation in online classes are well-known issues many universities face, especially with distance education during the COVID-19 pandemic. The online environment makes it even harder for teachers to connect with their students through traditional verbal and nonverbal behaviours, further decreasing engagement. Yet, addressing such problems with 24/7 synchronous communication is overly demanding for faculty. This paper details an automated Question-Answering chatbot system trained in synchronous communication and instructor immediacy techniques to determine its suitability and effectiveness in attending to students undergoing an online Chemistry course. The chatbot is part of a new wave of affective focused chatbots that can benefit students' learning process by connecting with them on a relatively more humanlike level. As part of the pilot study in the development of this chatbot, qualitative interviews and self-report data capturing student-chatbot interactions, experiences and opinions have been collected from 12 students in a Singaporean university. Thematic analysis was then employed to consolidate these findings. The results support the chatbot's ability to display several communication immediacy techniques well, on top of responding to students at any time of the day. Having a private conversation with the chatbot also meant that the students could fully focus their attention and ask more questions to aid their learning. Improvements were suggested, in relation to the chatbot's word detection and accuracy, accompanied by a framework to develop communication immediacy mechanics in future chatbots. Our findings support the potential of this chatbot, once modified, to be used in a similar online setting.
Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10639-023-11602-1.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10639-023-11602-1 | DOI Listing |
Sensors (Basel)
December 2024
School of Mathematics and Computer Science, Yunnan Minzu University, Kunming 650504, China.
Due to the openness of communication channels and the sensitivity of the data being collected and transmitted, securing data access and communication in IoT systems requires robust ECC-based authentication and key agreement (AKA) protocols. However, designing an AKA protocol for IoT presents significant challenges, as most IoT sensors are deployed in resource-constrained, unattended environments with limited computational power, connectivity, and storage. To achieve anonymous authentication, existing solutions typically rely on shared temporary public keys to mask device IDs or validate sender certificates, which increases the computational overhead.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEntropy (Basel)
December 2024
Center for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing, Linacre College, University of Oxford, Oxford OX3 9BX, UK.
Entropy management, central to the Free Energy Principle, requires a process that temporarily shifts brain activity toward states of lower or higher entropy. Metastable synchronization is a process by which a system achieves entropy fluctuations by intermittently transitioning between states of collective order and disorder. Previous work has shown that collective oscillations, similar to those recorded from the brain, emerge spontaneously from weakly stable synchronization in critically coupled oscillator systems.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Juxtaglomerular (JG) cells are sensors that control blood pressure and fluid-electrolyte homeostasis. In response to a decrease in perfusion pressure or changes in the composition and/or volume of the extracellular fluid, JG cells release renin, which initiates an enzymatic cascade that culminates in the production of angiotensin II (Ang II), a potent vasoconstrictor that restores blood pressure and fluid homeostasis. In turn, Ang II exerts a negative feedback on renin release, thus preventing excess circulating renin and the development of hypertension.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFront Psychiatry
December 2024
Information Science and Engineering, University of Jinan, Jinan, China.
Background: Individuals with high autistic traits exhibit characteristics like those of individuals with autism, including impairments in sociability and communication skills. Whether individuals with high autistic traits exhibit less cooperation remains debated.
Methods: This study employed the prisoner's dilemma game (PDG) to measure cooperation in 56 dyads, including 27 with high-low (HL) autistic traits and 29 with low-low (LL) autistic traits, using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) hyperscanning technique.
MedEdPORTAL
January 2025
Associate Professor, Department of Pediatrics, Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Introduction: In 2020, the AAMC created telemedicine competencies to guide curriculum and assessment development. Most available curricula are designed for clinical medical students or graduate trainees, and few offer opportunities for individualized, timely feedback and participation in pediatric simulated encounters.
Methods: We designed a hybrid curriculum to provide preclinical medical students with the knowledge and skills necessary to perform telemedicine encounters.
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