An Investigation of the Educational Challenges During COVID-19: A Case Study of Saudi Students' Experience

<p style="text-align: justify;">The outbreak of Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has shaken the world, forcing countries to implement a state of emergency, including the education system. Students have been forced to remain in hostels or houses since they cannot get to university campuses. As a result of this predicament, university authorities have no option but to implement an online learning environment. Specifically, Saudi universities have faced numerous difficulties in bringing the online learning systems to continue the educational process. On the other hand, students faced difficulties to cope with such circumstances (complete online learning) without any preparation or backup plan. According to the findings of the literature research, students experienced difficulties that were difficult to overcome. The aim of this study was to determine the challenges that first-year students of the University faced. The present research got a total of 234 valid responses from the participants. The findings indicate that respondents were not fully prepared in this situation in terms of physical, environmental, and psychological readiness, with some variances in viewpoints depending on their gender and age. Respondents expressed concern about the effect of lockdown on their ability to perform well academically. In this study, the researchers found that switching suddenly to an all-online alternative cause significant obstacles for students. It was determined that the present blended learning model, which utilizes online learning to support face-to-face instruction, has encountered a critical challenge when it comes towards replacing it, particularly with underprepared learners.</p>

PREFACE

This year the event of the Joint Geospatial Asia-Europe 2021 and GeoAdvances 2021 was held virtually from Casablanca, Morocco from 5 to 6th October. Sixty-two papers were received and 46 papers were accepted for the ISPRS International Archives. These papers could be categorized into three sub-disciplines – GIS, Geomatics, and Geo-computation (machine learning and applications). All accepted papers as revealed in this proceedings and presented at the conference. Several renowned researchers presented their works as keynotes, they are Prof Dr Peter van Oosterom (from TU Delft, the Netherlands), Prof Dr Volker Coors (from HfT Stuttgart, Germany), Dr Filip Biljecli (from National University of Singapore), Prof Dr Hassan Rhinane (from Hassan II University Casablanca, Morocco), Prof Dr Umit Isikdag (from Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Turkey), Assoc Prof Dr Gurcan Buyuksalih (Istanbul, Turkey), Prof Dr Sisi Zlatanova (from University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia), Assoc Prof Dr Lars Bodum (Aalborg University, Denmark), Prof Dr Andreas Buerkert (from University of Kassel, Germany). Presentations from Invited Speakers from various universities and research institutes from Philippines, Malaysia, Poland, Switzerland, Qatar, Indonesia, and Germany enhanced the conference academic standing.We would like to thank all reviewers for their diligent works on the feedbacks and comments on the assigned papers.Last, but not least, gratitude to all the volunteers mainly our research students for making sure all the online system runs smoothly.Enjoy!

ENGLISH FOR MARKET RESEARCH REPORT WRITING: COURSE DESIGN

At undergraduate and postgraduate levels in business schools, lecturers often provide students with a suggested structure for a market research report assignment. Thereafter, the students are left to independently master the appropriate register and the technique of writing for this genre. While many students may learn to be good at business studies, they might fall short in writing despite having to produce several reports at university level. One of the reasons for this shortfall may be that some of the students may lack the confidence to produce reports which meet academic or professional standards in the English language. A short English for Specific Purposes (ESP) course that addresses the technical writing needs of business students as an option or add-on course to undergraduate and postgraduate business curricula could provide the simple solution. It could even be formalised as a credit bearing course to motivate students to undertake it.With a view to the above, as a pilot ESP module, a 15-hour English for Market Research Report Writing Skills course was designed to try and meet the specific needs of undergraduate market research students at the Warwick Business School (WBS). It was intended to be taught under the auspices of the Warwick Skills Certificate Programme at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom (UK).

Fostering Active Learning via Critical Pedagogies

This chapter aims to provide a guideline for pre-service and in-service teachers to apply reflective research in language classrooms to gain a multidimensional overview of language teaching strategies in increasing active learning via critical pedagogies. A previously conducted reflective research will be used throughout the chapter to reach the stated aim. Analyzing language teaching techniques and strategies in an English for Academic Purposes classroom where all the students are originally from East Asia, the sample reflective research illustrates the needs and expectations of East Asian students in language learning through the research students, and also it aims to provide clues for TESOL educators to implement a similar study in classrooms employing critical pedagogies to develop language instruction.

Digital Citizenship and Its Dimensions

Digital citizenship is a concept that has gained importance, especially after the 2000s, with the increasing prevalence of digitalization. This study aimed to examine the thoughts of the students who took the Digital Citizenship and Society course at Gaziantep University, Faculty of Communication, Department of Journalism in the 2020-2021 academic year. The statements taken from the students reveal what the digital citizenship sub-dimensions mean in students' lives, which sub-dimension is more important to them, how they perceive the problems they encounter most in digital life, and the relationship between digitalization and participatory democracy. According to the results of the research, students have a positive attitude towards the concept of a digital citizen. Digital commerce and digital communication are the dimensions they are most associated with in their daily life. The most problematic dimensions are digital security, digital ethics, digital commerce, and digital law. Increasing digital citizenship qualities will facilitate participatory democracy.

Students’ Environmental Literacy: Environment Education Assisted E-Booklet on Biodiversity Gegas Dam Indonesia Context

Indonesia is one of the world's mega biodiversity needs to be preserved, due to estimated the extinction rate of one species is estimated at 10,000 times per year caused by human activity. Various efforts have been made by various sectors to preserve the environment, including in education through Environmental Education (EE). This research aim to implement Environmental Literacy (EL) domain in Biodiversity learning assisted validated e-booklet (CVR0,67) to enhance student knowledge, cognitive skills (identification of issues, analysis of issues, and action plans), attitude (verbal commitment, environmental sensitivity, and feelings towards the environment), and responsible behavior towards the environment. The EL domains related to real context of biodiversity in Gegas Dam is implemented in order to avoid the availability of disconnecting youth generation with their native biodiversity. Data analysis and identification of diversity- diversity index, homogeneity, dominance and correlation among chemical-physical environmental factors- are presented in an e-booklet to strengthen students' knowledge and cognitive skills, while attitude and responsibility behavior are strengthened by presenting local, national and global environmental issues. Through one group pre-posttest design, 30 high school students in South Sumatra as youth generation were involved in this research. Students’ EL is measured by 66 questions EL domain. The results showed that students' verbal commitment got the highest n-gain score (0.62 medium), while environmental sensitivity was the smallest (0.2 low). These results indicate that verbally students or youth generation already know how to conserve the environment. Cultivation of environmental conservation habits could be continuously improved by realizing their verbal ideas.

Investigation of the Effect of Inclusive Play and Special Movement Education to Social Communication in Disadvantaged and Peer Children in Preschool (Erzurum Sample)

The aim of this research is to investigate the effect of inclusive play and special movement education applied to disadvantaged and peer preschool children in Erzurum city center on their basic skills.22 students (10 disadvantaged children + 12 peer group children) consisting of disadvantaged children and peer children who were educated in special education and rehabilitation centers in the city center of Erzurum and participated voluntarily. Before the study, two seminars were given to the parents of the students, which determined the purpose and objective of the research. Students participated in a specially prepared game and movement training program for 45-60 minutes, 2 days a week during the summer period. Before starting the research, an interview and observation form consisting of 10 questions was prepared for the parents of the children and the results were recorded. At the end of the 2-month (8-week) period, interviews and observations were made with the parents of the children, and the last situation was recorded and compared with the previous situation.In the first parent interviews, the results of the research; it was observed that the children hesitated to participate in the study, they do not want to get close to other children, refrain from sharing game materials and avoid playing together and do not help. While they stated that they did not comply with the game discipline, they stated that at the end of the study program, their initial negative behavior developed completely in a positive way. In expert observations; it was observed that at the beginning, the children did not want to participate in the studies, did not listen to the volunteers, acted randomly, fought over the play materials used, and avoided playing together. While they observed that they behaved randomly, it was stated that the observations developed completely positively at the end of the research process.As a result, it was concluded that inclusive play and special movement training applied to disadvantaged preschool children and peers contributed positively to the social development of children.

Design and Build Chatroom Application as Student Consultation Media Based on Android

To support the government’s program in preventing the spread of COVID-19 virus, it is expected to reduce direct communication between fellow students and lecturers. The purpose of this research to create interactive media that can provide consulting service for students with academic advisor (PA) without direct contact. It is expected for this research, students can be more proactive in interacting with their academic advisor in discussing academic and non-academic problems. The method used in this research is using Android Studio and Visual Studio Code as an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and using a no-relational (NoSQL) realtime database on firebase. The advantage of this research is that the system to be developed does not use physical servers anymore but all databases are stored in the cloud system. The result of this research is chatroom application consisting of 7 modules namely application login with username and password, searching user, chatting user, list consultation, student input consultation, edit data consultation, and account setting.

Sponsoring Academic Integrity: The Role of Human and Informational Sources of Scholarship in Adoption of Plagiarism-Avoiding Techniques among Research Students of Social Sciences

Plagiarism is a serious offense that defies the ethics of scholarship and research. Research students need to pay substantive attention to the dynamics and contours of plagiarism in their creative, ethical, and academic endeavors. Scholarship avenues such as online tutorials and work assignments are important sources of instructions for plagiarism-avoidance among students. The current study explores the frequency of consultation of scholarship avenues and the usage of plagiarism-avoidance techniques among research students in social sciences. The study also recommends a scale to investigate plagiarism-avoidance techniques. Furthermore, it also examines the level of the study in predicting the usage of plagiarism-avoidance. Using the online survey technique, 108 research students from Pakistan were sampled. The questionnaire was uploaded on several student-based research groups of social media, including; Facebook, and Yahoo groups. Bivariate linear regression analysis was used for hypothesis testing. Findings revealed that scholarship avenues lead to greater usage of plagiarism-avoidance techniques among research students (R2=0.065). Supervisors, class-fellows, colleagues, and faculty of the department are prominent human scholarship avenues. Similarly, articles and books from the web, books from the library, the anti-plagiarism policy of the Higher Education Commission (HEC), and lectures delivered in the classroom were leading informational scholarship avenues. Stage of the study and consultation of the scholarship avenues were predictors of usage of plagiarism-avoidance techniques. It is recommended that (i) plagiarism-avoidance is promoted through prevention rather than detection, and that (ii) scholarship avenues (e.g. delivering lectures, institutional policy, and interaction with relevant websites) are used for enhancing awareness about intellectual dishonesty.