Special Session 16

SPECIAL SESSION #16

Virtual and Extended Environment: A possible future for STEM Didactical Living Environment

Francesco Lamonaca

University of Calabria, DIMES, Italy

• f.lamonaca@dimes.unical.it

Annalisa Liccardo

Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy

• aliccard@unina.it

Giuseppe Spadafora

University of Calabria, DiCES, Italy

• giuseppe.spadafora@unical.it

Practical exercises are an important and fundamental aspect of STEM discipline training. Accessing laboratories and performing activities that confirm, reinforce and enrich the knowledge acquired during theoretical lectures therefore turns out to be an indispensable moment in teaching at all levels from primary schools to universities. Allowing these activities to be conducted even in conditions of overcrowded classrooms or, as has happened recently, in cases of movement restrictions due to pandemic is a goal that has found interest from all governments and educational oversight bodies. On the basis of the early investigations and findings of the EXTENDABLE project (https://extendable.dieti.unina.it), this special section would collect papers presenting researches which will enable the remote execution of specific laboratory activities through the use of extended reality. To this aim, indeed, several elements need to be defined, designed and implemented for the correct and effective operation of the network.

This special session is aimed to (but not limited to) the collection of new and innovative works regarding:

• Measurement methods for scanning, reconstruction and functionalization of instruments and devices actually present in the laboratory;
• Evaluation of immersivity in virtual reality applications, augmented or extended;
• Measurement methods and techniques to evaluate and ensure a speed and responsiveness of interaction in virtual and extended environment;
• Measurement methods for evaluating and reducing communications delays among the different components of the laboratory network;
• Innovative STEM didactical experiences dealing with metrology and sensing in virtual or extended environment;
• Innovative didactic paradigms for equality and inclusiveness in STEM.

Francesco Lamonaca (Senior Member, IEEE) received the M.S. degree in computer science engineering and the Ph.D. degree in computer and system science from the University of Calabria, Cosenza, Italy, in 2005 and 2010, respectively, and the doctorate degree equivalences in science and engineering science from the Université Libre de Brussels, Brussels, Belgium, in 2010 and 2011, respectively. He is currently an Associate Professor of Electronic Measurements with the University of Calabria. His current research interests include measurements, signal processing for structural health monitoring, non-invasive monitoring and testing, IoT-based monitoring systems, synchronization of networking measurement instruments and sensor measurements for medical use, and measurements and systems for the elaboration of measurement information based on artificial intelligence. Prof. Lamonaca is a member of the TC-10—Waveform Generation, Measurement and Analysis, the TC-25 Medical Measurement, and the TC-37—Measurements and Networking of the IEEE Society on Instrumentation and Measurement (IM), IEEE, IM, GMEE, IAHR, and International Measurement Confederation (IMEKO). He was the Special Session Chair of MeMeA 2016 and organized several special sessions in the field of metrology for living environment and health. He is the Vice-Officer of Commission A—Electromagnetic Metrology of the Union Radio Scientifique Internationale (International Union of Radio Sciences)—Italian National Committee. He won competitions as first classified: the University of Calabria, Young Researchers 2010 and 2012; GMEE, Mobility Research Grants 2011; TE-RE-RD, several Best Paper Awards, the IEEE Vehicular Technology/Communication Society Joint Chapter Italy Section Concerning with Innovative Ideas Against Corona Virus, 2020, and several outstanding reviewer awards. He is the Editor in Chief of Acta IMEKO and Associate Editor of Sensors MDPI. He is the General Chair of the IEEE Workshop on Metrology for Living Environment 2022-2025, and of the IEEE conference on Metrology for Archaeology in 2022.

Annalisa Liccardo (Member, IEEE) received the M.S. (cum laude) and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy, in 2003 and 2006, respectively. She was a Tenure-Track Researcher with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, University of Naples Federico II, from 2013 to 2016, where she has been an Associate Professor since 2016. She is currently the Head of the Laboratory “Measurement for Smart Grid,” Centre for Advance Metrological Services (CESMA), University of Naples Federico II. She is the Founder of the spin-off ARCADIA, Naples, for the realization of AR environments for remote control of measurement instruments. Her main current research interests involve advanced measurements for monitoring and protecting electrical power systems, IoT sensors for electrical measurements, distributed measurement systems, and AR-based remote laboratories.

Giuseppe Spadafora is an esteemed Italian academic in pedagogy. He began his career as a university researcher in General Pedagogy in 1984 at the University of Calabria. In 1989, he became an associate professor at the University of Catania and later returned to Calabria in 1992, teaching General and Social Pedagogy. By 1997, he achieved full professorship and led the Department of Educational Sciences from 1996 to 2004. He also served as President of the Primary Education Sciences program and played a key role in the Faculty of Education at the University of Basilicata.
Spadafora coordinated a Ph.D. program on education models from 1997 to 2011 and led multiple national research projects (PRIN) on pedagogy, including studies on television's impact on adolescents, hermeneutics in education, and John Dewey’s theories. He organized two global conferences on Dewey (2000, 2007) and contributed as an official speaker at international events, including in the U.S. and Japan.
He has taught at several Italian universities and was a visiting professor at Southern Illinois University. His research focuses on epistemology in pedagogy, particularly John Dewey and Giovanni Gentile, emphasizing democratic education. Since 2012, he has coordinated the Calabria branch of the International Ph.D. in Education at the University of Bergamo.