Exploring Teaching and Learning Experience during COVID-19 Pandemic in Engineering Education

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

It is a very interesting and necessary work, but there are several aspects that need to be reviewed:
Until you get to point 3 you don't know that you are going to compare two Australian campuses, it is suggested to explain this from the abstract.
The methodological framework is not described, the procedure for obtaining the results is not explained. In the case of the other answers (Malasia, China, USA...) used to compare with Australia, it should be explained where the information is obtained from, what is the source. This is essential to give validity and scientific rigour to the article, if it is not simply an account of an experience.
The conclusions do not contribute anything, nor is there any discussion. They simply narrate what has been said before, they are redundant.

Author Response

Authors would like to acknowledge the reviewer’s contribution for critical review and their constructive feedback to improve the paper. Authors paid full attention to all the questions/suggestion and made necessary amendments to improve the paper.

The complete response to the reviewer comments are included in the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,
The study is very interesting, but considering that so far quite a few studies on university education in COVID times have already been published, I recommend you:
- Expand the theoretical framework to contrast the results with other realities. I recommend:

Ramos-Pla, A.; del Arco, I.; Flores, Ò. (2021). University professor training in times of COVID-19: Analysis of training programs and perception of impact on teaching practices. Education Sciences, 11, 684. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci11110684 

del Arco, I.; Flores, Ò.; Ramos-Pla, A. (2020). Structural model to determine the factors that affect the quality of emergency teaching, according to the perception of the student of the first unievrsity courses. Sustainability, 13(5), 2945. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13052945 

- Increase the size of the figures to be able to read clearly.
- Were the qualitative responses not coded? What method of analysis did you use? It is not clear.
- In the conclusions you should comment on the limitations of the study.
- It is necessary to review the bibliographical references. Some of them are poorly elaborated and do not follow the guidelines of the journal.

 

Author Response

Authors would like to acknowledge the reviewer’s contribution for critical review and their constructive feedback to improve the paper. Authors paid full attention to all the questions/suggestion and made necessary amendments to improve the paper.

The complete response to the reviewer comments are included in the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and suggestions

According to the first page, this paper is an “Article”. It is assumed that it is a research work, not a literature review.

 

General comments

• The structure of the paper is a little bit confusing. Sections 2, 3, 4, 5 mix diverse concepts (materials, methods and findings). Perhaps Section 2 could be Section 1.2? Section 4 includes different elements: a survey (the questions); some answers given to the survey. Section 5 includes a description of different findings provided by other researchers (Table 1) and challenges identified by UNESCO from a survey…
• The number of references cited in this paper could be increased with additional quality references to contextualize in a better way this research work.

 

Minor Format issues

• Lines 21 to 24.- Could be reworded for a better understanding.
• Line 261.- “suggestion”; lacks a final “s”.
• Table 1.- The are sentences without a “full stop” at the end of the sentence, while other include a “full stop”.
• Line 336.- Smaller size of the text.
• Line 341 to 351.- Smaller size of the text.

 

Some items to clarify in the paper

• Abstract: According to the abstract, “The paper evaluates the teaching and learning experiences observed in engineering education during the COVID-19 period compared to the pre-COVID period”. However, in the paper it is not clear how an the “evaluation” is performed.
• Lines 75.- “This paper explores the impacts of COVID-19 in engineering education and analyzed the implemented online approach in two different COVID-19 setting environments in Australia”.
• Objective: The aim of the paper, should be stated in the clear way. In different parts of the paper, it is said what it is going to be done. However, a clear sentence formulating the aim of the paper should be done. Once the aim is clarified, the conclusions and the abstract should be reworded to match with the aim.
• Justify why the proposed research activities (survey; data presented in Table 1) are suitable to answer the research question.
• Line 322 and line 599.- Which one is the criteria to select the research studies listed in Table 1? By country? And if this is the case, again: Which one is the selection criteria?
• Line 83.- It can be read that “Section VI summarizes the observations and proposed recommendations”. However, Section 6 (lines 362 to line 404) is labeled as “Findings and recommendations”. There are different observations that are not supported by research works or by this research (i.e., “Observation 1”, is an opinion not supported; or “Observation 5”). Any case, what is presented as a finding should be supported formally.
• Line 409.- “This paper explained” … Explained or presented?

 

Bibliography

• The number of the cited elements included in this part is short. More quality references should be added to this article to enrich its content.
• Doi could be added to the references.

Author Response

Authors would like to acknowledge the reviewer’s contribution for critical review and their constructive feedback to improve the paper. Authors paid full attention to all the questions/suggestion and made necessary amendments to improve the paper.

The complete response to the reviewer comments are included in the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Abstract:

• My only concern is associated with the use of the term: 'literature survey'. Later on, there is no mention of the methodology used, how many works were analyzed, and so on... Therefore, I suggest using: 'analyzing some existing works' instead

 

Introduction:

• line 49  - it would be relevant to explain some of the features associated with the statement "utilising advanced online teaching tools."
• I imagine the authors refer to videos, drawings, annotations, and others. In this vein, consider citing the following work: 

  • Marques, B., Silva, S. S., Alves, J., Araujo, T., Dias, P. M., & Sousa Santos, B. (2021). A Conceptual Model and Taxonomy for Collaborative Augmented Reality. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 1–21.

• Line 59, 62, 64, 76, 79, 82 - Avoid repeating the work COVID so many times. I understand the authors want to establish the context, but using the term so many times may become tiring for possible readers.

 

Sec 2 and Sec 3:

• Again, avoid repeating the work COVID so many times. You can say the same without mentioning it so often.
• Figure 1 - Improve the description. Plus, it should appear before the previous paragraph. Why not have also the teacher in the right side of the image?
• Figure 2 - Should appear before the last paragraph
• Line 179 - Here is one of my major concerns. The authors mention: "in-depth literature review". However, there is no information regarding the methodology and results obtained. What was the database? What was the timer interval? How many publications were considered? What keywords were selected for the search? Please add additional information on these topics to improve the quality of the manuscript
• Line 183 - Should be figure 3 and not figure 2 (again) - in the same way, all remaining figures must be updated. Also, detail the goal of the approach in the caption

   

Sec 4:

• figure 4 should appear in the beginning of page 6 and not so far away from being cited. Plus, add the information regarding the scale used for the questions considered in the caption. The same for figure 5
• Figure 6 includes 110 - please remove that from the charts used, since it makes no sense having that possibility 

 

Sec 5:

• Once again, avoid repeating the work COVID so many times. You can say the same without mentioning it so often.
• Table 1 should start only on page 10

 

Sec 6:

• Having an empty line between each set of observations/recommendations could facilitate readers' ability to easily find information

Conclusions:

• Again, there are too many mentions of 'COVID'. Please rephrase to avoid using the term so many times

 

References:

• Refs 10 and 11 should be footnotes
• Consider checking these works and if suitable, include them in your work:

  • Steed, A., Ortega, F. R., Williams, A. S., Kruijff, E., Stuerzlinger, W., Batmaz, A. U., ... & Hayes, A. (2020). Evaluating immersive experiences during Covid-19 and beyond. interactions, 27(4), 62-67.

  • Garcia Estrada, J., & Prasolova-Førland, E. (2022). Running an XR lab in the context of COVID-19 pandemic: Lessons learned from a Norwegian university. Education and Information Technologies, 27(1), 773-789.

 

Minor notes:

• line 34 - 'Al' should be 'al'
• line 79 - listed of lits?
• line 82 - suggestive or suggests?
• line 402 - try to avoid having 3 characters in just 1 line

Author Response

Authors would like to acknowledge the reviewer’s contribution for critical review and their constructive feedback to improve the paper. Authors paid full attention to all the questions/suggestion and made necessary amendments to improve the paper.

The complete response to the reviewer comments are included in the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The work clarifies the doubts as it is presented now and above all the methodological process.

Author Response

Authors would like to acknowledge the reviewer’s contribution for critical review the revised version of the paper.

Authors are glad to know that the reviewer has no further query and happy to accept the updated version.

Reviewer 3 Report

 

The paper has been improved, and it is clearer according to my belief. Some comments to the new version:

 

Minor Format issues

·         “;” should be changed to “:” in line 53

·         Use of ‘;’ in line 78

·         Use of ‘;’ in line 137

·         Line 306. In Table 7, consider aligning in the table the attributes associated to ‘Not liked’ and ‘How can be improved’ to make it easier to read.

·         Line 572.- format issues

Comments and Suggestions

·         Line 62 to 65: in the engineering field, there are different experiences that allow simulating some lab tasks online…

ü  Zhang, M., & Li, Y. (2019). Students' Continuance Intention to Experience Virtual and Remote Labs in Engineering and Scientific Education. International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning, 14(17).

ü  Grodotzki, J., Ortelt, T. R., & Tekkaya, A. E. (2018). Remote and virtual labs for engineering education 4.0: achievements of the ELLI project at the TU Dortmund University. Procedia manufacturing, 26, 1349-1360.

ü  Perales, M., Pedraza, L., & Moreno-Ger, P. (2019, April). Work-in-progress: improving online higher education with virtual and remote labs. In 2019 IEEE global engineering education conference (EDUCON) (pp. 1136-1139). IEEE.

 

·         Line 170. There are research studies that show that further adjustments to the initially ERT adopted solutions worked quite well (such as Smart Classroom), specially compared with the ERT solution…

ü  Petchamé, J.; Iriondo, I.; Villegas, E.; Riu, D.; Fonseca, D. Comparing Face-to-Face, Emergency Remote Teaching and Smart Classroom: A Qualitative Exploratory Research Based on Students’ Experience during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Sustainability 2021, 13, 6625. https://doi.org/10.3390/ su13126625

ü  Zalat, M. M., Hamed, M. S., & Bolbol, S. A. (2021). The experiences, challenges, and acceptance of e-learning as a tool for teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic among university medical staff. PLoS One, 16(3), e0248758.

·         Paragraf (lines 203 to 215).- Figure  3 is included in the middle of this paragraph. Figure 3 should be moved to line 216.

·         Paragraf (lines 252 to 265).- In this paragraf there is a reference to Figure 5, that is displayed in line 291. Consider moving Figure 5 after line 278. The same reasoning could apply to Figure 6… Perhaps a solution would be moving Figure 5 after line 261, if you consider finishing a paragraph in line 261…

References

·         Different references have been added to the paper. However, including some additional references when referring different topics (e.g. remote lab experiences…) could enrich the quality of the paper.

·         Line 572.- format issues in reference 17

Author Response

Authors would like to acknowledge the reviewer’s contribution for critical review and suggestion on the revised version of the paper. Authors paid full attention to all the questions/suggestion and made necessary amendments to improve the paper.

Please see the detailed response in the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf