ICDE2021: Upskilling and upscaling for quality Open, Flexible and Distance Learning

The “ICDE Virtual Global Conference Week 2021: Upskilling and upscaling for quality Open, Flexible and Distance Learning (OFDL)” took place from the 25th to the 29th of October 2021 which brought together the global educational community to develop skills and knowledge in delivering quality OFDL.

The sudden shift of schools to distance learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic has also impacted those hospitalized children with severe medical, physical, or neurological conditions. Von Ralph Dane Marquez Herbuela's presentations entitled "Kinect camera sensor-based pointing motion recognition and magnification function to stimulate and maintain the concentration among children during remote classes," focused on the robot-and-camera-based system that they developed with professors and students of the Graduate School of Science and Engineering at Ehime University. The system enables children to attend classes virtually. However, due to inability of the existing cameras to automatically magnify pivotal information that teachers present to stimulate and maintain children’s concentration has become a challenge. Thus, they developed a camera-sensor-based system that automatically recognizes pointing motions and magnifies the view around it. We extracted and identified which common pointing action of teachers in class (speaking, calling a student, and pointing near the blackboard) was recognized by the system using controlled conditions. Different combinations of parameters (magnification, change-of-position-tracking, and reset-position rates) were also evaluated to achieve system stability. Two-stage cross-sectional experiments among randomly selected subjects were conducted to extract the pointing motions based on controlled conditions (n = 16) and identify the recommended combinations of parameters to achieve system stability (n = 22) using a video-based three-factor 5-point semantic differential (SD) scale analysis. The study demonstrated the feasibility of an innovative and novel approach in stimulating and maintaining the concentration of children during remote classes using a camera-based pointing recognition and magnification system.

The talk was presented during the Concise Impact Talks: Upskilling and upscaling for innovation in education through new technologies and practices session chaired by Torunn Gjelsvik, International Council for Open and Distance Education, ICDE Norway. Other presenters were from Swinburne University of Technology, Australia, The University of Virginia, University of Miami and Johns Hopkins University who talked about educational technologies, using MOOCs and apps to promote gender equity, digital credentials and promoting motivation and engagement via discussion leaderboard.

For more information about the conference, please visit https://www.icde.org/virtual-global-conference-week.