In recent years, virtual reality system (VRS) has become more prominent among many researchers due to its capacity of providing as close as possible to real-life experience for users from diverse fields of life, such as tourism, academics, manufacturing and medicine. In this study, we present an VRS for the titration experiment in a chemistry laboratory to enable students to learn the titration experiment in a virtual laboratory environment before proceeding to the chemistry wet lab. The virtual chemistry laboratory environment was developed using the Unity Real-Time Development Platform, and the Microsoft SQL Server was used for the database to enable easy assessment of the student performance after the experiment. To evaluate our VRS, we tested it among 50 students (25 high school and 25 first-year undergraduate chemistry students). We collate their user’s experience through a structured questionnaire, and the responses from the students show that 60% agreed that it was helpful, 66% easy to interact with and 54% strongly agreed that it improved learning. Therefore, it is evidence that the proposed VR-enabled chemistry laboratory platform could be used to improve the understanding of chemistry titration practical process among students.
Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) spreads rapidly and is easily contracted by individuals who come near infected persons. With this nature and rapid spread of the contagion, different types of research have been conducted to investigate how non-pharmaceutical interventions can be employed to contain and prevent COVID-19. In this review, we analyzed the key elements of digital contact tracing strategies developed for the prevention and containment of the dreaded epidemic since its outbreak. We carried out a scoping review through relevant studies indexed in three databases, namely Google Scholar, PubMed, and ACM Digital Library. Using some carefully defined search terms, a total of 768 articles were identified. The review shows that 86.32% (n = 101) of the works focusing on contact tracing were published in 2020, suggesting there was an increased awareness that year, increased research efforts, and the fact that the pandemic was given a very high priority by most journals. We observed that many (47.86%, n = 56) of the studies were focused on design and implementation issues in the development of COVID-19 contact tracing systems. In addition, has been established that most of the studies were conducted in 41 countries and that contract tracing app development are characterized by some sensitive issues, including privacy-preserving and case-based referral characteristics.
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