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This rapid systematic review aims to examine emerging evidence on the effects of COVID-19 on educational institutions and assess the prevalence of e-learning changes in the sector. This paper reviews literature on learning, teaching, and assessment approaches adopted since the COVID-19 outbreak, and assesses the impact on the sector, staff, and students, summarizing findings from peer-reviewed articles. It categorizes these into five key themes: (1) digital learning; (2) e-learning challenges; (3) digital transition to emergency virtual assessment (EVA); (4) psychological impact of COVID-19; and (5) creating collaborative cultures. This represents the first systematic review of COVID-19's impact on education, clarifying current themes being investigated. The author suggests that the term 'emergency virtual assessment' (EVA) is now added for future research discussion. Finally, the paper identifies research gaps, including researching the impact on lesser developed countries, the psychological impact of transition, and the important role of leadership and leadership styles during the transition and handling of the pandemic.

Purpose: This study aims to explore the impact of hybrid learning on the satisfaction, effectiveness and academic performance of faculty and students in private universities in Kuwait. The study specifically addresses the challenges and experiences confronted by students and faculty members in utilising hybrid learning, assesses whether hybrid learning leads to improvements in academic performance and proposes measures for providing quality hybrid learning models in post-coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) situations. Design/methodology/approach: This study employed a quantitative method by collecting data via a questionnaire targeting private university students and faculty members in Kuwait. A total of 311 participants completed the survey. Findings: The results show that students were in favour of the hybrid learning method and viewed this as being efficient when coming to satisfaction, academic performance and overall effectiveness; whilst faculty members have voiced the members' disfavour of the hybrid model of teaching as the members believe that the system is unjust, especially when coming to student's academic performance. Originality/value: Although research related to hybrid learning in different parts of the world has existed for many years, the research only recently gained prominence in Kuwait due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper will likely be of interest to academics, policymakers, the government and universities as the pandemic continues to make hybrid learning more popular and, therefore, would increase awareness with regards to students' and faculty members' opinions about the system and proposed ways to resolve any issues.

This paper presents a compilation of personal reflections from 66 contributors on the impact of, and responses to, COVID-19 in accounting education in 45 different countries around the world. It reveals a commonality of issues, and a variability in responses, many positive outcomes, including the creation of opportunities to realign learning and teaching strategies away from the comfort of traditional formats, but many more that are negative, primarily relating to the impact on faculty and student health and well-being, and the accompanying stress. It identifies issues that need to be addressed in the recovery and redesign stages of the management of this crisis, and it sets a new research agenda for studies in accounting education.

This paper explores the student learning experience using technology as an e-learning tool during the COVID-19 pandemic. This article utilized qualitative methods to examine the quality of student learning using deep and surface approaches to understand what influences student engagement with technology. Interviews were conducted with 21 students from various academic majors using deductive content analysis to evaluate their responses. The findings show that technology increased student engagement with class discussion, and students became more informed about lecture material. It is noteworthy that there were some variations in the students' interpretation of the learning experience with technology, indicating a gap in the quality of learning. Notably, there was an improvement in grades compared to the last online session and the face-to-face learning experience prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, and there were fewer missing quizzes and late assignments. These outcomes may be used to enhance teaching strategies and problem solving within teaching and learning to develop a new mode of delivery. In addition, these findings are important for the future of education in a post-pandemic world.

The world has witnessed a major pandemic that has threatened the status of education across the globe. Such a crisis highlights the importance of education technology, which has not been an influential part of Kuwait's education until the onset of COVID-19. Delays and interruptions of the academic year disrupted the lives of many students around the world, including Kuwait. Since e-learning technologies are not traditionally used in Kuwaiti higher education, this study aims to investigate the acceptance of technology and whether that has changed with the pandemic. It seeks to find useful strategies that could assist teachers in effectively using electronic distance-learning digital resources. The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) has been developed to investigate the degrees of usage and acceptance of technology. This paper adopts an improved model that also includes the educational experience of teachers, in an attempt to understand the context of Kuwaiti higher education. Therefore, this quantitative study examines the use and acceptance of educational technologies of English language instructors in higher education. The study uses an online survey among 33 English language instructors at the Public Authority for Applied Education and Training (PAAET) to also account for the perceptions and experiences of the teachers. The results revealed an overall high acceptance level of educational technology, with varying degrees of implementation.

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is regarded as one of the most imminent disease outbreaks which threaten public health on various levels worldwide. Because of the unpredictable outbreak nature and the virus's pandemic intensity, people are experiencing depression, anxiety, and other strain reactions. The response to prevent and control the new coronavirus pneumonia has reached a crucial point. Therefore, it is essential—for safety and prevention purposes—to promptly predict and forecast the virus outbreak in the course of this troublesome time to have control over its mortality. Recently, deep learning models are playing essential roles in handling time-series data in different applications. This paper presents a comparative study of two deep learning methods to forecast the confirmed cases and death cases of COVID-19. Long short-term memory (LSTM) and gated recurrent unit (GRU) have been applied on time-series data in three countries: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, from 1/5/2020 to 6/12/2020. The results show that LSTM has achieved the best performance in confirmed cases in the three countries, and GRU has achieved the best performance in death cases in Egypt and Kuwait. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper reports the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the electricity peak load and power generation in the State of Kuwait during the partial and full curfews imposed in March, April and May 2020 using historic data measured data and the predictions provided by a statistical genetic algorithm model. A quantitative assessment is made of the economic and environmental impacts caused by partial and full lockdowns. Comparison of measured peak demand for 2019 and 2020 with predicted peak demand for 2020 has: (i) enabled an accurate evaluation of residential energy consumption in the state of Kuwait at nearly 18 MWh yearly the highest energy consumption per capita in the world, (ii) shown that the imposition of the curfews to reduce the spread of COVID-19 caused a fall in the demand for electrical power of 17.6% compared with the expected demand and (iii) quantified the reduction in CO2, NOx and CO pollutant emissions produced by power plants due to less fuel being consumed. A mathematical model has been developed to predict the peak electric load in the national grid according to climatic data supplied by the Meteorological Department of Civil Aviation of Kuwait and National Control Center (NCC). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) has been fatal to human health, affecting almost the entire world. Here we reported, for the first time, characterization of the genetic variants of SARS-CoV-2 circulating in Kuwait to understand their genetic diversity and monitor the accumulation of mutations over time. This study randomly enrolled 209 COVID-19 patients whose nasopharyngeal swabs were positive for SARS-CoV-2 between February 2020 and June 2021 using RT-PCR. The whole genomes of SARS-CoV-2 from the nasopharyngeal swabs were sequenced using the Oxford Nanopore sequencing technology following the ARTIC network protocol. Wholegenome sequencing has identified different clades/sub-clades circulating in Kuwait, mimicking the virus's global spread. Clade 20A was dominant from February 2020 until January 2021, and then clade 20I (Alpha, V1) emerged and dominated. In June 2021, the number of cases infected with clades 21I, 21A, and 21 J (Delta) increased and dominated. We detected several known clade-defining missense and synonymous mutations and other missense mutations in the genes encoding important viral proteins, including ORF1a, S, ORF3a, ORF8 regions and a novel mutation in the N region. ORF1ab region harbored more mutations and deletions (n = 62, 49.2%) compared to the other 12 gene regions, and the most prevalent missense mutations were P314L (97%) in ORF1b and D614G (97%) in the S glycoprotein regions. Detecting and analyzing mutations and monitoring the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 over time is essential to help better understand the spread of various clades/strains of SARS-CoV-2 and their implications for pathogenesis. In addition, knowledge of the circulating variants and genome sequence variability of SARS-CoV-2 may potentially influence the development of vaccines and antiviral drugs to control the COVID-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: With COVD-19 cases on the rise globally and two approved vaccines, determining vaccine acceptance is imperative to avoid low inoculation rates. The aim of this study was to evaluate the changes and determinants of vaccine acceptance among citizens and non-citizens, over time during the pandemic in Kuwait. Methods: Data were obtained from the COVID-19 Snapshot Monitoring (COSMO Kuwait) study that was implemented according to the WHO tool for behavioral insights on COVID-19. Data was collected online, every two weeks throughout the pandemic. Individuals living in Kuwait during the pandemic were surveyed, representing an independent sample of the population during each data collection wave. Results: A total of 7241 adults living in Kuwait participated. Sixty-seven percent of those participating agreed to take a vaccine if it was available and recommended. However, the proportion of vaccine acceptance drastically dropped overtime as COVID-19 related restrictions were eased, among citizens (73 to 47%) and noncitizens (80 to 60%). Some factors associated with increased odds of agreeing to take the COVID-19 vaccine, among citizens and non-citizens, included increased frequency of informing oneself about the virus (OR, 1.34– 1.83; 95% confidence interval 1.16– 2.55), having high versus low confidence in doctors (OR, 1.79– 2.11; CI 1.17– 3.80), increased agreement with containment policies (OR, 1.11– 1.27; CI 1.05– 1.41), expressing more fears and worries (OR, 1.05– 1.12; 1.01– 1.24), and the increased perceived likelihood of getting infected with influenza (OR, 1.3– 1.4; CI 1.03– 1.84). Decreased odds of agreement were associated with increased age (OR, 0.37– 0.61; CI 0.26– 0.95), being female (OR, 0.56– 0.62; CI 0.43– 0.73), and not taking the influenza vaccine in 2019 (OR, 0.61; CI 0.43– 0.87). Conclusion: Vaccine acceptance was multifactorial, heterogenous among citizens and non-citizens, and changed over time. While acceptance was relatively high, it decreased throughout the pandemic and as restrictions in the country loosened. This increase in vaccine hesitancy reveals a challenge in achieving high inoculation levels, and the need for effective vaccine-promotion campaigns and increased health education in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]