The explosion of data to be analyzed (big data era) and the availability of high-performance computing means have contributed enormously to the development of data science techniques which are widely used in several fields of fundamental science research. The large volume of data, as well as the automation of techniques, has generated fertile ground for the use of artificial intelligence and in particular machine learning techniques.
Besides, wireless technology has been developed and used widely and led to the emergence of a wide range of applications in healthcare, mobile healthcare, social networking, etc.
Among these applications, healthcare, mobile health, and smart health are considered the most promising and most important, this is mainly due to their positive impact on the quality of life of patients.
Furthermore, mobile healthcare technology helps improve the quality of care administered to patients providing clinical and critical care in ways that help them follow up on their disease. Therefore, patients can be treated and cared for from anywhere, at any time. In addition, mobility helps patients track their recovery with remote monitoring tools and follow what doctors prescribed.
Finally, our aim is to gather researchers in this field of research and allow them to share their ideas and conceptual approaches and discuss the recent advances in this field.
In this Special Session, we focus on three amazing technologies: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cross Reality (XR), and Digital Twins (DT). AI is a key to many modern and future innovations in different areas. XR introduces new dimensions into our experience. DT offers promising opportunities for digital representation of real objects (physical twins) for different purposes.
But what can we achieve if we combine these technologies? What new value can we offer to society? What are both existing and potential use cases for such an advancement? In this Special Session, we are going to find answers to these questions. Our aim is to show the benefits of a synergy of AI, XR, and DT. At this stage, it is too early to say about the complete combination of these techniques, however, elements of a future technology of Intelligent XR-based Digital Twins are already being developed. We would like to initiate a discussion on this matter among the interested researchers. We named this Special Session the ART because it is a kind of art so far to create a DT based on elements of AI and XR. But we would like to find a way how to make a transition from heuristic to universal methods of creating such advanced DTs. We invite you to share your experience and ideas on this promising topic.
The changes to health care education to address COVID-19 have been transformative [3], with the rapid shift from in-person learning in the classroom to remote learning (both synchronous and asynchronous) being one of the most immediate changes [2]. Similar to in-class learning, the physical presence of trainees for inpatient and outpatient settings has been an integral part of the early health care education health experiences. COVID-19 has also greatly affected residency/clerkship training, more specifically, clinic and hospital outpatient volume have been drastically reduced as many non-urgent outpatient appointments have been cancelled, and inpatient hospital services have been reduced [1]. Furthermore, the reduction of inpatients has decreased trainees' opportunity to perform many essential inpatient procedures while also limiting the diversity of patient-related health care and surgical conditions they are exposed to [1].
Aside from facilitating in-class via remote synchronous and asynchronous learning, technology has also been used to facilitate experiential (“hands-on”) learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, as health care laboratories shut down and health care placements and clerkships were not available. Virtual reality- (VR-) based learning environments (including virtual simulations and serious games) are a growing and vital health care education component. VR-based learning environments allow trainees to learn from virtual simulated health care experiences as they would in the real world while allowing health care educators to implement simulated health care experiences to a more significant number of health care trainees in a shorter time [4]. It is clear that technology and virtual learning environments in the form of virtual simulations and serious games have and will play a vital role in health education to facilitate remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.
The proposed workshop will focus on immersive technologies (including AR, and VR), serious games, virtual simulations, and the potential impact to health professions education and society as a whole that they present with an emphasis on the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mixed Reality (MR) is broadly defined as the merging of real and virtual worlds to produce new contexts. Augmented Reality (AR) is the superposition of computer-generated elements in the real world. The rapid growth of mobile technologies facilitate the development of MR and AR systems and applications. Both MR and AR are evolving fast and are opening new horizons in education and training. MR and AR have the potential to offer engaging and immersive learning experiences improving learning outcomes in formal and informal education. These relatively new educational technologies necessitate new theoretical and empirical studies to explore how MR and AR can be effectively used in education, what instructional methods and pedagogies are appropriate to use and how teachers and learners can take full advantage of them.
The special session “(Mobile) Mixed and Augmented Reality in Education” (MAR-EDU’2021) within the IMCL 2021 International Conference aims to promote the discussion on the applications and the impact of Mixed and Augmented Reality in Education. It will provide an opportunity for researchers and practitioners to present their latest work and propose Mixed and Augmented Reality systems and solutions, pedagogies and instructional design methodologies as well as case studies and implementations.
Pocket Labs (or Lab in a bag/pocket, Lab at home, etc.) are a very promising opportunity especially for part-time students for managing their study efforts and time. In this context, Pocket Labs are meant to be hardware units (e.g., Digilent’s Analog Discovery 1 and 2, National Instruments’ myDAQ or myRIO, but also open microcontroller platforms such as Arduino or Raspberry Pi), in combination with software management and programming tools. They enable students to do a reasonable part of their time-consuming work at home and – even more important – at a self-defined time.
Remote or Online Labs have been developed by several universities and offer flexibility in terms of place, time and learning pace. Additionally, they allow students to have access to more complex real experimental setups and offer the possibility for a more efficient sharing of resources across institutions. A well-known example for a Remote Lab is the already widespread VISIR platform, developed by Blekinge Tekniska Högskola (BTH) and used by various Universities in Portugal, Spain, Brazil, Sweden, and Austria.
Online/Remote and Pocket Labs are predestined to be a promising platform for enforcing technology enhanced as well as mobile learning; especially at Universities of Applied Sciences, where practical work is a big issue. They contribute to keeping the entire study program more practice-oriented and potentially increasing student’s motivation and satisfaction.
In this special session, we expect to receive proposals of best-practice examples and experiences concerning the use of Pocket and Remote Labs covering a broad variety of hardware and software solutions.
Today, electronic games are more than just pastimes – they are platforms through which we experience virtual situations, try out strategies, and develop & simulate new ideas. Game-Based Learning is set to grow rapidly in the near future. Its wide range of engineering applications includes automotive, aerospace, electrical and systems engineering, medicine, banking, and management. In this context, games are successful educational approaches, mainly when they are built on one of today's well-established didactic frameworks aiming at strengthening self-regulated personalized learning.
This Special Sessions (GinEE) within the IMCL 2021 Conference, November 2021, Thessaloniki, Greece, aims to cover all aspects of gamification including game-based learning, applications of didactic frameworks, games engineering, serious games, storytelling, user studies, development of non-technical skills / meta-cognitive skills, simulation, learning scenarios based on virtual worlds, project-based learning – capstone projects, game-based learning arrangements, tools and applications for developing games in engineering education, experience reports, teaching cases, methodologies, personalization approaches as well as any work in progress. Our main goal is to bring together stakeholders for exchanging ideas and experiences and encouraging networking between academia and industry.
Mobile Computing has amply offered in Remote Learning, Sensing and Fitting the high-level sensors that thus far only specialized laboratories and exorbitant teaching premises could provide. Indeed, massive production in hundreds of millions or even billions of lucrative client units has provided distributed 4G/5G multi-way multimedia streams with the required Quality of Service (QoS) needed for remote operations.
Thanks to these technologies e-Learning during the Covid-19 pandemic has sustained its pedagogical standards and no considerable losses have been recorded in the tertiary education operational field.
However, shortcomings have been readily diagnosed in certain functional aspects of medical training, music tutoring systems and special education interactive environments.
This session is bound to emphasize on the technological features and training methodologies that enhance Support for Cognitive Training in these interdisciplinary fields under the prism of Mobile Learning & Communications.
“Creative Collaboration” between University/Industry must be reflected in scientific conferences as well. Consequently, like in the last normal sessions within IMCL and ICL Conferences, industry partners might be invited to have 1-2 technical talks. These talks will open new opportunities and push the research and development at all University levels. The primary objectives for companies to collaborate with universities include research synergies, keeping up with major technological developments and R&D cost sharing.
Fast development of new IoT technologies (Industrial IoT “IIoT”, Medical IoT “MIoT”) require new engineering skills, pushing universities towards developing and improving their systems and tools used in assisting courses and university laboratories goals. At these points the organizers believe that Virtual Instrumentation “VI” and Reconfigurable Systems “RS” can find a suitable place.
The idea of flexible hardware development was permanently in the attention of industry and university Creativity Laboratories and now, with the decrease in prices of MCU’s, processors and development kits , flexible hardware remain the main strategy used in adding new technologies and/or new software in the knowledge and expertise development of all students and young engineer’s.
The graphical programming LabVIEW (Laboratory Virtual Instrumentation Engineering Workbench) offer a fast development solution and allows students to understand the functionality of the hardware and thus to be able to come with different creative ideas about how the final user interface will look like and what kind of hardware to be used. The main goal of the software is to be as intuitive as possible, allowing the user to choose and develop fast required new devices.
The current digital and mobile educational landscape in the Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) disciplines is experiencing a rapid shift due to the dramatic vicissitudes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Teaching and learning modes such as distance, online or blended are not new offerings in the digital age but rather they seem to gain a reinvigorated momentum in terms of how digital teaching and learning could be designed and orchestrated. The impetus is to offer a playful, personalised and creative learning experience that amalgamates science with more design-based and artistic digital and mobile learning endeavors. There is indeed a plethora of digital learning tools, digital teaching and affective strategies and frameworks, that may help STEAM teachers to shift the focus of teaching from student teaching (e.g. focus on instruction) to student supportive (e.g. focus on knowledge construction) for enabling students to unleash their creative and resourceful learning potential. However, teachers may feel overwhelmed from the wide array of digital tools, digital pedagogies, the rigid structure of scientific inquiry and the ill-defined nature of the artistic epistemology. This could result STEM teachers’ lack of self-confidence in using digital technology and subsequently aversion towards the development of digital skills that would foster engagement, creativity, and a playful attitude in learning. Indeed, there is evidence that teachers’ confidence in using technology positively influences students’ frequency of using technology for learning. This special session aims to present and elucidate on a series of emerging phenomena on how the development of digital teaching and learning skills may be optimised to offer creative and engaging online learning experiences to students. To achieve this, we invite authors to submit research contributions on modeling STEM teachers’ digital competencies, artificial intelligence systems for facilitating teaching and learning, game like digital applications for measuring digital skills, digital competencies frameworks and models for teachers to develop and self-assess digital skills related to designing STEAM activities that encourage creative, artistic, and scientific digital learning manifestations.
Sports play a vital role in our lives. Mobile technology, Smartphone or wearables are examples of Digital Technology products that improve the way that we made sports as well as enhance sports education.
This special session offers the opportunity to present recent results concerning the design, development, implementation and deployment of digital technology in different areas relating to sport and physical activity. The special session will act as a forum for education and knowledge transfer, between various organizations and actors in and outside sport.All accepted papers will be included in the conference proceedings, provided at least one author pays the registration fee.
The landscape of education is reshaped by the development of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and Smart Learning Environments (SLEs). MOOCs are free courses that are delivered online to thousands of learners. Therefore, MOOCs have considerable potential to widen participation and collaboration in education. However, there are many issues with MOOCs like (a) low student engagement and eventually low completion rates; (b) lack of teacher feedback, one-on-one teaching and interaction; (c) very low social (student-student) interaction. Smart learning environments, on the other hand, provide opportunities for rich learning interactions by making use of digital, context-aware, and adaptive technologies. This special session puts forward the challenge of developing the “next generation” MOOCs by integrating smart and intelligent learning technologies in MOOCs environments that facilitate rich, challenging and productive learning experiences for all. Contributions are welcome that explore the technical, educational and social challenges relevant to providing more productive and engaging online learning environments by combining the MOOCs approach and smart learning design and tools.
ICT tools are used from all students either for communication or learning. Additionally, during the COVID-19 lockdown, online teaching, learning, and health activities were widely used to keep in contact with their peers and their activities. This proved to be a real opportunity for them to use free online ICT tools for accessing digital content.
However, the evolution of technology, that is mostly related to the rise of automation, entails the development of other skills such as creative thinking, social awareness, health promotion and problem solving. Those skills are very important for learning and adapting to their new roles. The introduction of Skill Labs in the Greek school curriculum has this objective, to engage Greek students into skills that fall into the following main subject fields:
In this session, we will focus on the use of ICT tools and mobile apps for educational purposes and health sustainability. Firstly, we will introduce ICT tools used to create digital content that can be adjusted and accessed online. Secondly, we will present content related to the above main subject fields of the Skill Labs and we will discuss how to upgrade the current learning opportunities.
Immersive technologies have gained great attention of instructors from both primary and secondary education. They offer new forms of interaction and immersive experiences that motivate students in their learning. One of the potentials of these technologies is that they can allow experimentation and interaction innovatively. Technologies such as Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Mixed Reality, and 360/interactive video could promote both in-class and distant learning in many meaningful ways. Additionally, This session focuses on promoting immersive technologies in primary and secondary education. Additionally, this session also presents available platforms and tools that allow instructors to design and develop such experiences. Overall, this session provides a board for discussion and intellectual exchange for all of those interested in these fields of research of practice. this session also focuses on the platforms and tools that allow instructors to designs and develop such experiences. Overall, this session provides a board for discussion and intellectual exchange for all of those interested in these fields of research of practice.
| 24 May 2021 | Submission of Special Session proposals |
| 31 May 2021 | Extended: Submission of: (i) structured abstracts (for full papers, short papers) for the main conference |
| 31 May 2021 | Notification of acceptance for special Sessions notification and announcement |
| 07 Jun 2021 | Notification of acceptance for abstracts for the main conference. |
| 12 Jul 2021 | Extended: Submission of: (i) complete papers for all submission types (ii) proposals for round tables, workshops, tutorials |
| 29 Jul 2021 | Notification of acceptance |
| 25 Aug 2021 | Late Paper submission |
| 13 Sep 2021 | Extended: Camera-ready due & author registration deadline |
| 04 Nov 2021 | IMCL2021 Conference Opening |
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