How can schools and universities conduct practicals online?

<!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>The idea of online education during a pandemic already changed the Indian education system, but what really can make online education more significant? Can we be confident enough about what we are offering online makes a student capable of managing real-life problems?</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>To answer this question let us first know about the approaches followed in the Indian education system to teach to students digitally.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:list {"type":"1"} --> <ul type="1"><li>Teaching &amp; Lectures</li></ul> <!-- /wp:list --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Indian Government school teachers, private school teachers and college professors, were using WhatsApp, voice calls, Zoom and Google Meet for taking classes during the pandemic for Online classes.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:list --> <ul><li>Assignments &amp; Assessments</li></ul> <!-- /wp:list --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>To give assignments, teachers now give a set of questions in writing to which students have to give answers on paper and then click the photos of all the written answers. The students make a pdf from those photos and then submit their assignments&nbsp;</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>For assessments, Mostly MCQ-based questions were and those MCQ based exams were held using GoogleForms and Teams while brief answer questions-based assessments were conducted in the same way as assignments but with some level of difficulty.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:list --> <ul><li>Study Material and Notes<strong></strong></li></ul> <!-- /wp:list --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>All the study material and notes were provided as pdf shared through WhatsApp or Drive</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:heading --> <h2>Learning Management System<strong></strong></h2> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Companies are coming with a digital environment that enable all the features mentioed above at one place with some extra features like discussion forum and Chat Support, the environment is called as a Learning management system. LMS tracks the progress of all the students registered and give insights in a very comprehensive manner if developed using best practices. This makes it a game changer. Schools, colleges and even corporates are now adapting the LMS and deploying them for their students, teachers, employees and trainers.&nbsp;</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Google Classroom is one of the most common example for the same.&nbsp;</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":3} --> <h3>What about online practicals?</h3> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>With technology, almost everything can be managed like assessment through proctored assessments, notes, and study material through pdf, lectures through live classes but what about practicals?</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p><strong>Solution</strong></p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>We can conduct practicals through Gamification of Practical laboratories in a simulation environment</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p><strong>Why Gamification</strong></p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Gamification enables user participation, engagement and learning with interest. These types of activities where the student is trying to overcome challenges in learning.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p><strong>Why through Unity?</strong></p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Since unity supports all types of the application environment and can export the application in any format. It enables the application to be platform-independent.&nbsp;</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p><strong>How can we do so?</strong></p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Requirements:</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:list {"ordered":true,"type":"1"} --> <ol type="1"><li>Unity Developers</li><li>Graphic designers</li><li>Story conceptualization</li><li>Integration on LMS</li></ol> <!-- /wp:list --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Gamification can be implemented through unity.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:list {"ordered":true,"type":"1"} --> <ol type="1"><li>The academic content team of the organization needs to prepare a storyline for each virtual lab let’s say for science (Physics, chemistry, biology). The storyline must have all the concepts covered in a journey of checkpoints</li><li>That story will have all the practicals as challenges to win the game</li><li>The content team must mention each and every detail about the storyline, objects, situations, and environment.</li><li>The development team need to hire an Unity assets designer and that can work on the storyline and make assets based graphics out of it</li><li>The developers then can code it to make it moving, working as a game.</li><li>Each and every click and collision can be reported in unity using codes, so the developers need to record all these and make scoring and progress metrics out of it.&nbsp;</li><li>In labs (application) it can come in as progress scores and reports/</li><li>It will then have to be integrated with LMS using APIs that take these data reports and add it to the progress and engagement trackers</li></ol> <!-- /wp:list --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Examples</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:list {"ordered":true,"type":"1"} --> <ol type="1"><li>Engineering Lab simulation &nbsp; <a href="https://youtu.be/JMxNoGKW2O0">https://youtu.be/JMxNoGKW2O0</a></li><li>Physics Lab Simulation: <a href="https://youtu.be/jQCk_Sj1jZI">https://youtu.be/jQCk_Sj1jZI</a></li><li>Chemistry Lab: <a href="https://youtu.be/V2ss5Zn8Qn0">https://youtu.be/V2ss5Zn8Qn0</a></li></ol> <!-- /wp:list --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p></p> <!-- /wp:paragraph -->