Roblox in Higher Education: Opportunities, Challenges, and Future Directions for Multimedia Learning

Roblox is widely recognized as one of the most popular metaverse games, boasting millions of users across the globe. The focus of this paper is on the impact of Roblox on higher education, exploring how it can be utilized as a valuable educational tool and the benefits and opportunities that can be created by integrating it into university courses. Additionally, this study investigates the challenges faced by students and educators when attempting to integrate Roblox into curricula. Previous research has primarily focused on Roblox’s impact on elementary schools, leaving unexplored its potential as a metaverse learning platform for higher education. To address this gap, a systematic literature review was conducted to extract themes from the selected literature, identify gaps, and draw conclusions. The study reveals that Roblox can be an effective tool for higher education and has the potential to gamify any university course. However, there is little awareness among educators about metaverse, and creating a customized 3D environment and coding it using Lua to create games can be a challenging task for them. The potential of Roblox as a learning platform for higher education has not been explored much. This study aims to investigate the perspective of students on Roblox’s integration as an educational tool using the TAM model, which states that computer acceptance depends on perceived usefulness and ease of use. The study will examine the potential of Roblox as an educational tool for higher education, as previous research has been limited to elementary schools

The Playful Potential of Digital Commensality: Learning from Spontaneous Playful Remote Dining Practices

With one-person households being increasingly common and Covid-19 lockdown policies forcing people to stay home, remote dining has become common practice for many, who take it as an opportunity to connect with others in times of loneliness. Sharing meals online, also known as digital commensality, is a rich form of interaction, where people leverage technology to achieve a sense of connectedness and belonging while eating. In this paper, we look at digital commensality and we explore its inherent playful potential with the aim to inspire the design of engaging technologies that can support, enhance and augment this form of interaction. For this, we used a situated play design approach to document and analyze the behavior of 36 people (including pairs of friends and strangers) sharing meals online. Our analysis surfaced a set of play potentials of remote dining -- i.e., playful things people already do and enjoy spontaneously while sharing meals online. We present those play potentials as inspirational material: they can motivate and enrich the design of future digital commensality technologies by responding to people's desire for playful and social interaction with, through, and around food

Roblox in Higher Education: Opportunities, Challenges, and Future Directions for Multimedia Learning

Roblox is widely recognized as one of the most popular metaverse games, boasting millions of users across the globe. The focus of this paper is on the impact of Roblox on higher education, exploring how it can be utilized as a valuable educational tool and the benefits and opportunities that can be created by integrating it into university courses. Additionally, this study investigates the challenges faced by students and educators when attempting to integrate Roblox into curricula. Previous research has primarily focused on Roblox’s impact on elementary schools, leaving unexplored its potential as a metaverse learning platform for higher education. To address this gap, a systematic literature review was conducted to extract themes from the selected literature, identify gaps, and draw conclusions. The study reveals that Roblox can be an effective tool for higher education and has the potential to gamify any university course. However, there is little awareness among educators about metaverse, and creating a customized 3D environment and coding it using Lua to create games can be a challenging task for them. The potential of Roblox as a learning platform for higher education has not been explored much. This study aims to investigate the perspective of students on Roblox’s integration as an educational tool using the TAM model, which states that computer acceptance depends on perceived usefulness and ease of use. The study will examine the potential of Roblox as an educational tool for higher education, as previous research has been limited to elementary schools

The impact of governmental efforts in the fight against corruption, and citizen’s satisfaction with the government’s performance on the participation of citizens in the social movement (Alherak) in Jordan

This study aimed to identify the impact of government efforts in the fight against corruption, citizen’s satisfaction with the government’s performance and the personal, social and economic characteristics of in the citizens involvement in the social movement in Jordan. The study sample consisted of a convenient sample of (821) members of the participants in the social movement in Jordan in (12) governorates. In order to achieve the objectives of the study and for the purpose of data collection, a queioninaire has been developed by Al badayneh (2010) and was used as a research tool. The questionnaire was designed to measure corruption, and is based on international measures such as the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). Results of the study showed that the government efforts in the fight against corruption, citizen’s Satisfaction with the government’s performance and the personal, social and economic characteristics of participants explain 14% of the variation in the participation in the social movement in Jordan and the impact of these variables was statistically significant (F = 9.708, ∞ = .000). Effect of individual regression coefficients of gender, party affiliation, and the causes for the spread of corruption prevalence, and government efforts to combat corruption were statistically significant. A negative relationship between the participants in the social movement governorate (-0.189) where less participation in the social movement in the south and increasingly in the center and north region, party affiliation (-0.243) where participation increases with party affiliation and youth organization, the weakness of the government’s efforts in the fight against corruption (-0.241) and the dissatisfaction of citizens for government services (-0.216). Moreover, there were a positive relationship between participation in the social movement an age (0.110), and education (0.109), the type of party (0.132), and the causes for the spread of corruption (0.134).

ICA-Based EEG Feature Analysis and Classification of Learning Styles

A thorough investigation of the electroencephalograph (EEG) information may support an enriched awareness of the mechanism of understanding different learning styles patterns. Wavelet analysis is a powerful technique that uniquely permits the decomposition of complex information of trends, discontinuities, a repeated pattern. The purpose of such methods is to be able to assign simple segments at diverse locations and scales, to be remodelled afterward effectively. In this paper, we attempt to classify individual cognitive learning styles using artificial neural networks and unsupervised learning. First, we apply Independent component analysis (ICA) to extract relevant features (artefacts removal) of the EEG records. We analyse the ICA-based EEG channels data using inter-quartiles to show the degree of dispersion and skewness. Next, self-organising maps (SOM) are then created to characterise different cognitive learning styles from selected ICA-based channel data

No Pie in the (Digital) Sky: Co-Imagining the Food Metaverse

Human behaviour and habits co-evolve with technology, and the metaverse is poised to become a key player in reshaping how we live our everyday life. Given the importance of food in our daily lives, we ask: how will our relationships with food be transformed by the metaverse, and what are the promises and pitfalls of this technology? To answer this, we propose a co-design study that reveals the important elements people value in their daily interactions with food. We then present a speculative catalogue of novel metaverse food experiences, and insights from discussing these ideas with food designers, anthropologists and metaverse experts. Our work aims to provide designers with inspirations for building a metaverse that: provides inclusive opportunities for the future of food; helps re-discover the forgotten or lost knowledge about food; facilitates the exploration, excitement and joy of eating; and reinvigorates the ways that food can soothe and heal

A Multicenter Study Evaluating the Discontinuation of Eculizumab Therapy in Children with Atypical Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome

Background: Atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome (aHUS) is a rare, life-threatening thrombotic microangiopathy (TMA), which has been treated successfully with eculizumab. The optimal duration of eculizumab in treating patients with aHUS remains poorly defined. Methods: We conducted a multicenter retrospective study in the Arabian Gulf region for children of less than 18 years of age who were diagnosed with aHUS and who discontinued eculizumab between June 2013 and June 2021 to assess the rate and risk factors of aHUS recurrence. Results: We analyzed 28 patients with a clinical diagnosis of aHUS who had discontinued eculizumab. The most common reason for the discontinuation of eculizumab was renal and hematological remission (71.4%), followed by negative genetic testing (28.6%). During a median follow-up period of 24 months after discontinuation, 8 patients (28.5%) experienced HUS relapse. The risk factors of recurrence were positive genetic mutations (p = 0.020). On the other hand, there was no significant relationship between the relapse and age of presentation, the need for acute dialysis, the duration of eculizumab therapy before discontinuation, or the timing of eculizumab after the presentation. Regarding the renal outcomes after discontinuation, 23 patients were in remission with normal renal function, while 4 patients had chronic kidney disease (CKD) (three of them had pre-existing chronic kidney disease (CKD) before discontinuation, and one case developed a new CKD after discontinuation) and one patient underwent transplantation. Conclusions: The discontinuation of eculizumab in patients with aHUS is not without risk; it can result in HUS recurrence. Eculizumab discontinuation can be performed with close monitoring of the patients. It is essential to assess risk the factors for relapse before eculizumab discontinuation, in particular in children with a positive complement variant and any degree of residual CKD, as HUS relapse may lead to additional loss of kidney function. Resuming eculizumab promptly after relapse is effective in most patients