In the Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar Time Series (InSAR TS) analysis, Standard Polynomials (SP) are commonly employed to model ground deformation. However, these functions aim to be of low order, thus limiting the modelling of complex patterns and potentially overlooking actual phenomena due to temporal decorrelation. This paper proposes an alternative approach, leveraging Legendre Polynomials (LP) to model nonlinear deformations within the Small BAseline Subset (SBAS) algorithm, explicitly applied during stack inversion of unwrapped interferograms. We conducted numerical simulations with synthetic data to model distinct nonlinear deformation patterns, along with additional simulations based on real observation in the Yakustk region over Siberia. Our findings indicate that the LP approach not only effectively captures nonlinear trends but also exhibits greater robustness against temporal decorrelation compared to SP. Moreover, the LP achieves up to 20% higher correlation coefficients in low SNR conditions, while requiring only half of the parameters estimated by SP. The LP-based SBAS implementation can enhance InSAR TS analysis by adequately modelling and discriminating various ground deformations, without filtering out essential information.

Artificial intelligence of vehicles (AIVs) is poised to revolutionize transportation by promoting low-carbon alternatives, such as electric vehicles (EVs). However, the deployment of fixed charging stations (FCSs) lags behind the growing demand, particularly in rural areas, causing range anxiety among potential EV owners. This article proposes a smart transportation solution within the Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) framework to establish a sustainable, low-carbon system. AIoT systems enable real-time data acquisition and analysis through extensive embedded IoT EV sensors and communication networks for pattern recognition and decision making on the cloud. The proposed solution integrates sensor information from vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) charging, smart home charging stations (HCSs), and mobile charging services (MCSs), coordinated by the cloud-fog nodes in geographically distributed zones. This article employs the Hungarian matching algorithm for optimal decision making of matching EVs with charging services. Our approach incorporates AIV and AIoT technologies to enhance decision making by using an ensemble-based machine learning (ML) model for precise EV range estimation. The comprehensive details and specifications of these proposed models are elaborated in this article.

The SARS-CoV-2 outbreak in 2019 brought an enormous uncertainty and unexpected consequences to the world and in Mexico, students, staff, and professors of higher education were no exception. The online lifestyle became vital for continuous education through various means of remote learning including alternative credentials offered via Massive open online course (MOOCS). Upon announcement of lockdown across the country, Tecnologico de Monterrey, a leading university in Mexico and Latin America, provided free access to the content of Coursera to its community to facilitate a sustained learning environment for all the members. The prolonged COVID-19 pandemic and related news have negatively immersed the community in an environment of fear and anxiety. To monitor the learning progress of the members, understand their response to unprecedented circumstances and provide the community with timely support, we have monitored the course pursuit, progression and the status of completion in Coursera registered by 36,591 users. The data provided insight to the gender of the users enrolling to 6 distinctly different categories of courses and the degree of commitment they demonstrated to the undertaken learning activities. The results showed Computer Science and Programming as one of the most requested course types, and, together with Engineering MOOCS greatly dominated by male users. A timeline of influential events that took place nationally and/or internationally over the course of the 11 months from January 2020 to February 2021 was comprised and compared to the registration, progression and completion of the courses in an attempt to understand the response of our community to the milestones of this concerning global health event. While the results highlight a general struggle to remain motivated and finalize the registered courses, the national and international positive and negative connotations created considerably different responses in participants across different time periods. The current article takes a close look into dynamic of the users of the online courses across this challenging milestone.

Students’ evaluation of professors is commonly performed at all academic levels whereby a number of skill sets are evaluated and the opinion of the students is recorded as a means for professors’ assessment. How the students view professors for their teaching competencies is an essential indicator for optimizing the teaching and learning setup. However, the reports of the literature suggest that students can be partially biased in their judgement based upon the gender of the professor. In this study, we have analyzed the results of the Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET) from 103,833 responses which were collected as a result of evaluating 5,083 professors of higher education. With a target to take a close look at the influence of professors’ gender on their evaluation results we broke down the study into schools and analyzed the assessment based on 7 teaching competencies. In addition, the responses provided to an open-ended question underwent textual and sentiment analysis to further understand the students’ view of their professors. Against a solid body of the literature that suggest female professor can be assessed in a harsher manner than their male colleagues, we have not detected traces of gender bias across schools. While Engineering students have rated their male professors slightly higher for the intellectual challenge they incorporated in the classroom, in the rest of the competencies and across the schools, female professors were rated slightly but systematically higher than their male counterparts. The sentiment analysis shows the exact same set of keywords associated to both sexes of professors even though the order and the frequency of use for each sex were different.

Changes in everyday activities, such as adapting to the new online format due to lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic and being far away from family and friends, greatly influenced the emotions and feelings of students and their parents. Assessing the emotions of students’ parents at the higher education level is necessary since their emotional well-being has a direct impact on the emotional well-being of students throughout their distant learning experience. In this article, we held a quantitative study over 8 subsequent weeks from the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in students and parents from the Mexican institution Tecnologico de Monterrey. Using a questionnaire from Inteligencia Audiencias (Intelligence Hearings), students and their parents could register their feelings and their valence from April 13thto July 20th, 2020. The results indicate that the most predominant emotions in both groups were very unpleasant and unpleasant in nature, being "worried" and "tired" the most common ones. The current study also provides some approaches for addressing the negative repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic

During the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, students and their parents have unsurprisingly experienced uncertainties as well as concerns regarding the students' sustained education and learning outcomes. Analyzing the emotions of students' parents at higher education level holds significant importance as emotional wellbeing of parents will have a direct impact on that of students throughout their remote learning process. In this study, we held a quantitative study and assessed data collected from students' parents who are currently enrolled in undergraduate and postgraduate programs. We applied an independent sample (Chi-square test of association) statistical technique by utilizing Jamovi software for the data analysis. Our findings suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the emotion of parents in a considerable manner. The change in the emotions was observed on a weekly basis. A wide majority of the parents were concerned and uncertain about the pandemic situation which resulted in being worried about their children's studies and educational outcomes. The institutional surveys that take a detailed look into the emotional wellbeing of parents lead to possible reforms in educational policies which, in turn, is a key playing factor is creating a positive and effective educational environment for the students.

Endorsed by the Fourth Industrial Revolution and pushed abruptly by the irruption of the Corona crisis, a large number of technological resources, digital platforms, and virtual and augmented reality applications were massively incorporated in all educational areas, including the field of higher education. This phenomenon has been not only ideal but essential in STEM programs (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics), with the aim of developing the aspect of digital transformation, although technological enablers have ended up being used also as Teaching Tools. But what about the Learning Tools? The present work shows that it is possible that, without the adequate design of a framework for the Teaching and Learning Process, these innovative technological resources are not capable of guaranteeing per se the effective intellectual engagement of students in their own learning. The cognitive and metacognitive tools used in this work were designed for the development of four skills declared as fundamental in the Education 4.0 Framework: Innovation and creativity, global citizenship, digital transformation and interpersonal skills. This paper offers findings, results and discussions of a study conducted over 3 years, with more than 200 engineering students, by implementing an approach designed especially for Generation Z students.

International groups of stakeholders are currently involved in the redefinition of the objectives of engineering education. They are releasing different reports where clearly raise the need that the acquisition of cognitive skills and metacognitive awareness must be carried out complying with the knowledge, attitudes and values of the complex demands of the Fourth Industrial Revolution framework. Inherited from the past, the stiffness of the academic structures in some higher education institutions, may prove today an insurmountable barrier to the new adaptable learning approaches required by Generation Z students. During this study, engineering students received creative thinking instruction to comply with the enhancement of: (i) their ability of shifting between different modes of thought; (ii) their capacity to cope with uncertainty, ambiguity and volatility; and (iii) their handling of non-routine interpersonal and analytical skills. The obtained results indicate that the supervised practice of associative and analytical thinking modes are highly effective for the development of the mode shifting competence, not only as a domain-specific but also as a domain-general thinking skill.

E-learning provides an individualized course path which provides a user the convenience of pacing one’s way through a course. One of the key privileges it offers is the flexibility of the course and consistent delivery of the material. In this study, over 5,000 participants of online master’s studies in the areas of business, engineering and sciences, social sciences and government, and humanities and education were analyzed to find the gender gap between participation of the candidate with a specific emphasis on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). The results of this analysis shows lower participation of women in majority of the fields with a major shift in their interest over the course of 6 years from education, social sciences and humanities to the field of engineering. While this trend is quite promising, the gap between the female and male participants of online courses seems to remain intact.

This Research-to-Practice Full Paper discusses the use of the Serious-Storytelling approach for enhancing soft skills that are decisive for the development of new job opportunities for young engineers. Multifarious international organizations, in their recent reports, emphasize the need to include new cognitive tools for developing the soft skills that Gen Z engineers need due, on the one hand, to the strong consolidation of social media, which shows an unexpected difference in the way recent graduates view the world and define themselves; and on the other hand, to the exponential development of the technology that was made accessible to them. Serious-Storytelling cognitive tools were adapted for the design of critical reading and critical writing co-curricular activities and were included as active learning experiences in different engineering programs. The research was conducted based upon a 4-group Solomon methodology with a quantitative design. To assess creative thinking competencies, different evaluation instruments were used for PreTests and PostTest, including several fluency and originality tests, as well as storytelling articulateness ability tests and modified VALUE rubrics of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U).The obtained results showed that the designed Serious-Storytelling approach promoted a better understanding of scientific concepts in engineering subjects, a higher capability to develop rising demand skill sets and a stronger creative thinking competence awareness.

Recent international reports highlight the need for developing engineering students' soft skills to a greater degree for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In particular, critical thinking and creativity are the main focus as their enhancement were found to be difficult when using traditional logical-scientific approaches in engineering. In this study, we investigate different methods of fostering specific dispositions of critical thinking in engineering students that could enhance student intellectual engagement. These attributes are namely: (i) self-awareness; (ii) open-mindedness; (iii) attentiveness towards different situations, and (iv) broad perspective view. To achieve these objectives, two different activities -dialogue seminars and online discussion boards- were incorporated into the classroom. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the approach, rubrics designed with critical thinking frameworks were used. The results obtained show the chosen cognitive tools can be highly effective for the development of higher ordered thinking skills.