Papers by Prema Nedungadi
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
Communications in computer and information science, 2020
In a farming community, different types of commodities may need to be transported to different de... more In a farming community, different types of commodities may need to be transported to different destinations, like the market, storage unit or a processing unit, during the harvest season. To organize efficient transportation in such a setting, the problem is formulated as a Vehicle Routing Problem with Pickups and Deliveries, by considering a virtual field and a virtual destination for delivery of each commodity. To solve this particular problem instance, four common metaheuristics - iterative hill-climbing, guided local search, tabu search, and simulated annealing - were tried and their performances based on total tour lengths for different run times were compared. Basic implementations of these metaheuristics were done using Google OR tools. Guided local search was found to produce good solutions quicker than others. In the long run, tabu search was able to find a slightly better solution. Simulated annealing was prone to get trapped in a local optimum for hours.
Research Square (Research Square), Mar 27, 2023
OpenAI's ChatGPT, an advanced AI-driven language model, is experiencing rapid adoption, with 100 ... more OpenAI's ChatGPT, an advanced AI-driven language model, is experiencing rapid adoption, with 100 million users in just three months. This study, involving 288 university students, aims to identify factors determining students' intentions to use ChatGPT in higher education, using Rogers' perceived theory of attributes as a framework. The study examines ve factors in uencing ChatGPT adoption: Relative Advantage, Compatibility, Ease of Use, Observability, and Trialability. Results indicate that ve factors signi cantly in uenced ChatGPT adoption. Students view it as innovative, compatible, and userfriendly. Students view ChatGPT as an innovative resource, enabling the independent pursuit of educational goals. Consequently, the bene ts provided by ChatGPT in education motivate students to utilize the tool. The study's gender-based analysis reveals that male students prioritize compatibility, ease of use, and observability, while female students prefer the ease of use, compatibility, relative advantage, and trialability in ChatGPT adoption. Our study presents a sentiment analysis approach utilizing transfer learning and K-means, considering the impact of personal bias on expressed opinions. While the K-means algorithm can create distinct clusters (Neutral, Negative, and Positive), the accuracy demonstrates a bias towards the male gender. Understanding adopter categories, such as innovators and early adopters, can help strategize the successful diffusion of innovations like ChatGPT to different segments of society. However, its use in academia raises ethical concerns, such as diminished creativity and academic integrity violations. Similar to social media platforms' rapid diffusion, ChatGPT has the potential to transform communication and information-sharing. Factors like ease of use, accessibility, and connection capabilities contribute to both innovations' appeal. Analyzing social media platforms' diffusion can offer insights into ChatGPT's potential adoption trajectory. monthly active users in February 2013, about two and a half years after its launch in 2010. As of June 2021, Instagram had over 1 billion monthly active users. ChatGPT, or Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer, is an AI-powered chatbot capable of processing and generating natural language text, providing human-like responses to a wide range of questions and prompts (Doshi, Bajaj, Krumholz, 2023). Recently, large language models have gained popularity and have been employed across various elds, including content creation, language translation, and text summarization (Tate et al., 2023). ChatGPT is built on the GPT-3 family of large language models, deemed signi cant due to their extensive training on vast amounts of text data, from millions to billions of words (Tate et al., 2023). In AI's early years, the algorithmic focus was primarily on supervised and unsupervised learning (Dwivedi et al., 2023). Traditional AI algorithms require structured data for modeling and information processing. However, modern algorithms have advanced and can now process data in its most natural form and language (Dwivedi et al., 2023). Concurrently, there has been a surge in chatbot-related research (Lokman & Ameedeen, 2018). Chatbots typically utilize Natural Language Processing (NLP) to respond to user-generated queries (Dwivedi et al., 2023). Chatbots have evolved by integrating deep learning with language models, addressing various NLP-related challenges (Kushwaha, Kumar, and Kar, 2021). ChatGPT has expanded chatbot capabilities in this context by incorporating deep learning and Generative Pre-Trained Transformer-based language models (Radford et al., 2018). Combining unsupervised pre-training with supervised ne-tuning, ChatGPT can effectively respond to user-generated queries (Doshi et al., 2023). The GPT-3 model consists of 175 billion parameters, focused on a diverse array of naturally occurring text sourced from the internet, such as webpages, books, research articles, and social conversations (Dwivedi et al., 2023). ChatGPT has proven to be a valuable resource in various elds, such as poetry, essay writing, business correspondence, research, software development, and testing (Tung, 2023). However, it has also been perceived as threatening content creation roles like teachers and content creators (Roose, 2023). The application of ChatGPT in academics has raised ethical concerns, leading to a divide among educators. While some see it as a helpful technological tool, others, like the New York City Department of Education, have blocked it, fearing it could disrupt education as we know it (World Economic Forum, 2023a). Using ChatGPT by students raises concerns about diminishing creativity, impacting learning culture, eroding originality, and fostering dependency on technology (DailyStar, 2023, Greengard, 2022). It has also sparked fears of plagiarism and academic integrity violations in higher education (Crawford, Cowling & Allen, 2023). Islam & Islam (2023) outline potential challenges of implementing ChatGPT in education, including inaccurate research, data privacy, and security issues, the spread of misinformation, misinterpretation of student understanding, and reduced personalization. As ChatGPT becomes more widespread in education, its ethical and practical implications remain debated, and research on its adoption is still emerging. This study aims to identify factors that determine students' intentions to use ChatGPT. Leveraging Rogers' perceived theory of attributes (2003), the study examines the factors in uencing the adoption of
Simulation-Based Medical Education that uses Virtual Patients has become increasingly important d... more Simulation-Based Medical Education that uses Virtual Patients has become increasingly important during the COVID-19 pandemic. With the need for social distancing and minimizing contact, medical simulation technology has provided a valuable tool for healthcare professionals to practice and improve their skills without the need for face-to-face interactions. MedSIM is a medically accurate simulation platform with Virtual Patients designed for undergraduate medical education. Our study involved two groups of students. The PreCOVID group, before the pandemic, underwent conventional teaching methods. The COVID group, during the pandemic, had students exposed to conventions skills taught earlier and were taught again with MedSIM. Students indicated high satisfaction with the clinical skills demonstrated by the Virtual Patients. More than half agreed that MedSIM had enabled them to perform all kinds of procedures on patients (PreCOVID group 68.8%, COVID group 71.3%), showed cues and consequences much like those in natural clinical environments (PreCOVID 68.4%, COVID 71.3%). Also, MedSIM allowed them to have a repetitive practice that helps in critical skills transfer to actual patients (PreCOVID 72.7%, COVID 74.7%). MedSIM met the expectations of most of the students. Students from both groups rated the online performance of the MedSIM simulator as "Very good." Analysis from a customized word cloud indicated that most students found MedSIM to be good and of educational value. MedSIM platform enhances healthcare professionals' skills and knowledge, leading to better patient outcomes and increased access to healthcare, supporting SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-being). It also provides a safe and controlled environment for healthcare professionals to learn and practice essential skills, supporting SDG 4 (Quality Education).
Advanced Pharmaceutical Bulletin, Jan 23, 2023
Flattering emails are crucial in tempting authors to submit papers to predatory journals. Althoug... more Flattering emails are crucial in tempting authors to submit papers to predatory journals. Although there is ample literature regarding the questionable practices of predatory journals, the nature and detection of spam emails need more attention. Current research provides insight into fallacious calls for papers from potential predatory journals and develops a toolkit in this regard. Methods: In this study, we analyzed three datasets of calls for papers from potential predatory journals and legitimate journals using a text mining approach and R programming language. Results: Overall, most potential predatory journals use similar language and templates in their calls for papers. Importantly, these journals praise themselves in glorious terms involving positive words that may be rarely seen in emails from legitimate journals. Based on these findings, we developed a lexicon for detecting unsolicited calls for papers from potential predatory journals. Conclusion: We conclude that calls for papers from potential predatory journals and legitimate journals are different, and it can help to distinguish them. By providing an educational plan and easily usable tools, we can deal with predatory journals better than previously.
ACM International Conference Proceeding Series, 2015
Experimental learning combined with theoretical learning enhances the conceptual understanding of... more Experimental learning combined with theoretical learning enhances the conceptual understanding of a subject. Therefore, the Online Labs (OLabs) that hosts science experiments was developed. OLabs uses interactive simulations with theory, procedure, animations, videos, assessments and reference material. Our study blended OLabs with concept maps to examine if it enhances students' learning in Biology. Concept mapping is a framework that provides a deeper knowledge of a subject by understanding the relationships among concepts. The study was quasi-experimental; pre-test, post-test and a satisfaction survey was used as measurement instruments. The study sample was 54 students from a school in Haripad, Kerala, India. The students were randomly grouped into a control and an experimental group. The experimental group that used concept maps as a learning aid scored slightly higher, suggesting blending concept maps can lead to a deeper understanding of the subject. Gender difference did not significantly affect the scores.
Sustainability, Feb 25, 2023
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
Journal of Biomedical Informatics
In the three months following its launch in November 2022, ChatGPT, the LLM bot employing deep le... more In the three months following its launch in November 2022, ChatGPT, the LLM bot employing deep learning algorithms to generate human-like responses, has been the subject of numerous research articles (n=385). Identifying early attention to this research is highly intriguing. As citations for these publications may take time to accumulate, our study focused on examining the early attention of ChatGPT research using the Altmetric Attention Score (AAS), a composite attention score developed by Digital Science. Our findings from the total set of publications and the top publications according to the highest AAS scores reveal the following trends: (i) The United States, Japan, and the United Kingdom are the top countries that published most of the top research articles related to ChatGPT. (ii) The most frequently mentioned source titles include journals like Nature, Science, and preprint sources like medRxiv and arXiv. (iii) Among the fields of research (FoR) to which ChatGPT publication...
Springer Nature, 2024
Millet, the highly sustainable crop for farming and combating hunger, has recently regained a res... more Millet, the highly sustainable crop for farming and combating hunger, has recently regained a resurgence in popularity as
people seek more sustainable and nutrient-dense alternatives. International organizations and research institutions have
advocated for increased millet production and consumption by introducing novel technologies and machinery in response
to global food security and climate change challenges. This review aims to identify the impact of modern and conventional
processing technologies on the quality of diferent millets. A comprehensive analysis of research reviews reveals that doublestage and tabletop centrifugal dehullers, infrared roasting, pulsed light, ultrasound, high-pressure processing methods, fortifcation, and encapsulation are optimal for nutrient retention in various millets. Extrusion technology application in millet
processing has created a diverse range of value-added products with extended shelf stability. Emphasis is needed to develop
robust promotion and distribution channels and establish an export promotion forum involving all stakeholders to promote
and diversify millet-based products and technologies.
Lecture notes in networks and systems, Oct 23, 2020
The crucial role of hands on experiments in the school science curriculum is universally accepted... more The crucial role of hands on experiments in the school science curriculum is universally accepted. However, a formal assessment of practical skills is lacking, with most schools employing the traditional theory based or multiple choice questions (MCQs) to evaluate students. In this paper we discuss a framework for 'learning-enabled assessment' of practical skills, which gives due consideration to both the structure of the practical assignments and the feedback that promotes learning. This approach opens up many new possibilities that require constructivist learning and higher order thinking skills. Judgment of skills based on performance reports may decrease the student's confidence. Whereas scaffolds used during the assessment process can improve a student's proficiency. The design for various online scaffolds used during assessment, that help students' focus and redirect their efforts to the appropriate task needed for mastery of a skill is discussed here. Early studies have shown that students prefer this assessment to the traditional one; as intervention includes the appropriate hands-on simulation or an interactive animation for the concept.
2020 IEEE Bangalore Humanitarian Technology Conference (B-HTC), Oct 8, 2020
Live-in-Labs is an innovative approach to experiential learning for rapid translational research ... more Live-in-Labs is an innovative approach to experiential learning for rapid translational research for the development of rural villages of India. It is designed as an ecosystem for multidisciplinary university student teams, field practitioners and researchers to jointly explore global sustainable development challenges and collaboratively design technology-based solutions. Within the context of Rogers' innovation diffusion theory, we expand the innovation-related attributes to understand students' rate of adoption and perceived value of the Live-in-Labs experience. In our research study, 99 students from an MBA program participated, supported by 9 faculty members. A 5-point Likert scale survey was administered to evaluate seven independent variables hypothesized to be factors that positively affect innovation adoption. Diffusion of innovation theory as operationalized in this study to predict adoption of Live-in-Labs, indicated that attributes such as Relative Advantage, Compatibility, Ease of Use and Department Support were positively related to adoption, with Ease of Use being the strongest contributor. Gender did not have any significant influence on adoption. Holistic experiential programs with translational research for social impact has thus far been relatively infrequent in the context of business education but has a great potential for simultaneously benefiting students and the rural community.
Restoration Ecology, Feb 17, 2022
Earth faces an unprecedented ecological crisis: the destruction of its ecosystems. Despite increa... more Earth faces an unprecedented ecological crisis: the destruction of its ecosystems. Despite increasing interest in restoration, including through the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (Decade), lack of financing and resources mean efforts to reverse degradation have advanced slowly. Restoration efforts require new approaches to ensure the needs of different stakeholders are met. However, analyses of policies and opportunities that help to finance restoration while improving socio-ecological outcomes, are lacking.
Education and Information Technologies, May 31, 2021
COVID-19 global pandemic pushed a large number of higher educational institutions to use Online P... more COVID-19 global pandemic pushed a large number of higher educational institutions to use Online Proctored Exams (OPE) because of government-imposed lockdowns. Treating OPE as an educational technology innovation, we apply the diffusion of innovation theory in predicting factors affecting its adoption by university students which we believe is the first of its kind research study. The study presented here reviews OPE, its types, architecture, challenges, and prospects and then focuses on the student adoption experience at a large, multi-campus higher educational institution. We have used the fine-grained Aspect Level Sentiment Analysis to check the university students' attitudes towards the Online Proctored Exams. We then used linguistic features to extract the aspect terms present in the feedback comments which showed that 55% of university students having a positive attitude towards OPE. Results of our study show that innovation characteristics such as relative advantage, compatibility, ease of use, trialability, and observability were found to be positively related to acceptance of OPE.
IEEE Transactions on Education, 2014
Virtual Labs (VLAB) is a multi-institutional Open Educational Resources (OER) initiative, exclusi... more Virtual Labs (VLAB) is a multi-institutional Open Educational Resources (OER) initiative, exclusively focused on lab experiments for engineering education. This project envisages building a large OER repository, containing over 1650 virtual experiments mapped to the engineering curriculum. The introduction of VLAB is a paradigm shift in an educational system that is slow to change. Treating VLAB OER as an educational technology innovation, its adoption by potential-adopter engineering students (N=131) is modeled based on Roger's theory of perceived attributes. Regression and factor analysis were used to analyze the data. Results indicate that the attributes of Compatibility, Ease of Use, Relative Advantage, and Trialability significantly influence potential-adopter students' intention to adopt an innovation like VLAB. The study also observed that using OER (such as VLAB) on desktops and low-cost tablets had similar effects in student performance to using physical labs. This has interesting implications for education policy-makers who are looking to reduce the digital divide.
Studies from India and Connection to Sustainable Development Goals.
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Papers by Prema Nedungadi
people seek more sustainable and nutrient-dense alternatives. International organizations and research institutions have
advocated for increased millet production and consumption by introducing novel technologies and machinery in response
to global food security and climate change challenges. This review aims to identify the impact of modern and conventional
processing technologies on the quality of diferent millets. A comprehensive analysis of research reviews reveals that doublestage and tabletop centrifugal dehullers, infrared roasting, pulsed light, ultrasound, high-pressure processing methods, fortifcation, and encapsulation are optimal for nutrient retention in various millets. Extrusion technology application in millet
processing has created a diverse range of value-added products with extended shelf stability. Emphasis is needed to develop
robust promotion and distribution channels and establish an export promotion forum involving all stakeholders to promote
and diversify millet-based products and technologies.
people seek more sustainable and nutrient-dense alternatives. International organizations and research institutions have
advocated for increased millet production and consumption by introducing novel technologies and machinery in response
to global food security and climate change challenges. This review aims to identify the impact of modern and conventional
processing technologies on the quality of diferent millets. A comprehensive analysis of research reviews reveals that doublestage and tabletop centrifugal dehullers, infrared roasting, pulsed light, ultrasound, high-pressure processing methods, fortifcation, and encapsulation are optimal for nutrient retention in various millets. Extrusion technology application in millet
processing has created a diverse range of value-added products with extended shelf stability. Emphasis is needed to develop
robust promotion and distribution channels and establish an export promotion forum involving all stakeholders to promote
and diversify millet-based products and technologies.