Publications

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.

Effective teamwork requires shared understanding, goals and responsibility over a task. Kenan Kok Xiao-Feng explains how to guide students in working collectively.

Many fail to see the blood, sweat and tears that often go into both successes and failures. We must learn how to celebrate the process as well as the outcome.

Navigating large-scale virtual spaces is a major challenge in Virtual Reality (VR) applications due to real-world spatial limitations. Walking-in-place (WIP) locomotion solutions may provide a natural approach for VR use cases that require locomotion to share similar qualities with walking in real-life. However, there is limited knowledge on the range of experiences across common WIP methods to inform the design of usable WIP solutions using consumer-accessible components. This paper contributes to this knowledge via a user study with 40 participants that experienced several easy-to-setup WIP methods in a VR commuting simulation. A nuanced understanding of cybersickness and exertion relationships and walking affordances based on different tracker setups were among the findings derived from a corroborated analysis of think-aloud, interview, and observational data, supplemented with self-reports of VR sickness, presence and flow. Practical design insights were then constructed along the dimensions of cybersickness, affordances, space and user interfaces.

The human need or quest for comfort and convenience and lack or denial of awareness can contribute to energy wastage. This paper contains a written and video story of a research learning journey designed to develop the educational experience of Year 2 building services engineering students in developing a solution that can potentially be used to reduce the negative effect of human behaviour on energy consumption at Yishun Community Hospital, Singapore. The role of storytelling in developing the students’ critical and reflective thinking needed to induce learning to form an educational experience, i.e., knowledge, understanding, and practical and communication skills, was examined. Students went through classroom training to give them the background knowledge and understanding required to fulfill the energy efficiency innovation project requirements. The reported educational experience gained from the learning journey is documented in this paper. This paper reports a method of developing human capability for energy-efficiency agenda achievement. It also reports an approach for contributing to the educational experience needed to prepare undergraduate students to solve real-life problems and be job ready upon graduation.

Water wastage caused by human behaviour can be largely due to human need or quest for comfort and convenience and lack or denial of awareness. Year 2 building services engineering students were tasked to conduct research that will inform the development of a solution that can potentially be used to reduce the negative effect of human behaviour on water consumption at Mouth Elizabeth Hospital, Singapore. The students were also required to write a story and made of video story based on the research to document and demonstrate how the research learning journey has developed their educational experience. The role of storytelling in developing the students’ critical and reflective thinking needed to induce learning to form an educational experience, i.e., knowledge, understanding, and practical and communication skills, was examined. The students developed the background knowledge and understanding required to fulfill the water efficiency innovation project requirement. A method of developing human capability for water-efficiency agenda achievement and providing the educational experience undergraduate students need in their journey to being job ready upon graduation is reported in this paper.