A Practical Model of the Application of Information Technology in Various Fields of Online Education during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Mechanical Engineering, Traffic, Informatics and Statistics, Accounting and Auditing

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors, 

I appreciated your work, because it deals with an up-to-date topic and it is an example of how, from emergency like COVID-19, can rise opportunities and new developments. 

However, I would highlight some flaws of your work.

Introduction is really under-sized and without appropriate bibliographic content (one citation only). The COVID-19 impact on life, health and education should be thoroughly explained, in terms of changes of study routines, impact on cognition, challenges for learning processes and strategies to avoid risky behaviors and to promote health. Here some suggestions for articles to cite:

- Pirrone, C.; Varrasi, S.; Platania, G.A.; Castellano, S. Face-to-face and online learning: The role of technology in students’ metacognition. In Proceedings of the First Workshop on Technology Enhanced Learning Environments for Blended Education, Foggia, Italy, 21–22 January 2021

- D. Lee, S. L. Watson, W. R. Watson, The Relationships Between Self-Efficacy, Task Value, and Self-Regulated Learning Strategies in Massive Open Online Courses, International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning (2020), 23-39. doi: 10.19173/irrodl.v20i5.4389

- S. Sutarto, D. P. Sari, I. Fathurrochman, Teacher strategies in online learning to increase students’ interest in learning during COVID-19 pandemic, Jurnal Konseling dan Pendidikan (2020). doi:10.29210/147800

- Pirrone, C., Di Corrado, D., Privitera, A., Castellano, S., & Varrasi, S. (2022). Students' mathematics anxiety at distance and in-person learning conditions during COVID-19 pandemic: are there any differences? An exploratory study. Education Sciences (MDPI), 12(6), 379. ISSNe: 2227-7102. https://doi.org/10.3390/ educsci12060379 

- Harvey AG, Armstrong CC, Callaway CA, Gumport NB, Gasperetti CE. COVID-19 Prevention via the Science of Habit Formation. Curr Dir Psychol Sci. 2021;30(2):174-180. doi:10.1177/0963721421992028

And related works.

Section 2 seems to be a list of publications dealing with a certain topic. I recommend the Authors to argument more, in order to develop explicitly the logic flow based on the literature that led them to their proposal. 

Moreover:

Line 20: please transform "covid19" into "COVID-19". 

Line 27: please transform "Covid" into "COVID-19". 

Line 32: please do the same in the keywords ("covid-19" --> COVID-19). I would also add some more representative keywords. 

Line 47: please change "wasn't" --> "was not". 

Line 65: I find the expression "This paper is organized in a certain manner" not elegant. Please rephrase. 

Line 69: "Sector" --> "Section".

Line 72: same as above. 

Line 79: the bibliography should not start from [1] again, but it should continue with [2]. 

Line 90: please replace the doi link with the appropriate bibliographic reference. 

Line 140: please check the sentence. 

I appreciated work methodological part and the study behind your proposal. To conclude, I would write the Discussions not as bullet points, but as a whole discursive text. 

Given those considerations, I support the publication of your work after major revision.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Although the paper has research interest, it is in its infancy and the framework of methodology and discussion needs to be rewritten.

At the same time, there are significant technical problems that do not allow a positive review.

Please take care for the Rivas et al. [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neucom.2020.02.125] which is wrong (90)

Please correct the word analisys (118)

the site https://fimek-dst.000webhostapp.com/ does not work (133)

Figure 6 is not in English (192)

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This article addresses the issue of education during the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on the educational development gained in the process.

Here are my comments and suggestions about the article:

(a)    This is a very interesting and relevant study, with an original topic.

(b)   The abstract should be rewritten so that it sounds more scientific.

(c)    the " Method" section should be reviewed. How was the data analyzed? Please explain the analysis phases.

(d)   The hypotheses are unclear. What do the authors expect? The authors have to align their research questions with what were analyzed.

(e)   The scientific relevance of the study is not stated (What is the gap in the literature that is addressed by this study?)

(f)     Limitations of the study, future lines of research should be emphasized.

(g)    A discussion of the limits of study is missing. There is no discussion on the novelty that the study would like to add in the literature. It should be further developed by adding regarding studies on COVID-19 effects to the discussion section.

(h)   The "Limitations and Future Research Directions" section of the research is missing. It should be added before "Conclusions".

(i)      There is no adequate discussion on the novelty that the study would like to add in the literature. It should be further developed by adding new studies to the discussion section. References should be updated and newer references should be added to the article.

(j)     Also, I believed the paper would benefit from an English language review by a native English speaker.

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors, 

I do not have other concerns or suggestions. I support the publication of the manuscript.

Reviewer 3 Report

Thanks for the comprehensive revision. The papper in its current form has become more scientific and reader-friendly.

It is appropriate for the revised version of the manuscript to be published in Sustainability.