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Article Citation - WoS: 16Citation - Scopus: 15Using Eye-Movement Events To Determine the Mental Workload of Surgical Residents(int Group Eye Movement Research, 2018) Dalveren, Gonca Gokce Menekse; Cagiltay, Nergiz ErcilThese days, eye-tracking is one of the promising technologies used in different fields such as aviation, arts, sports, psychology and driving for several purposes. Even though it is being used for health purposes, studies involving eye-tracking are rare in the field of endo-neurosurgery. This study aims to use this technology to promote our understanding of the effect related to computer-based instructional materials on mental workload of endo-neurosurgery residents. Four computer-based simulation scenarios are developed based on skill development requirements of endo-neurosurgery residents. Two of them were designed as general models and the other two as simulated surgical models. During these surgery procedures, in real settings, surgical residents need to use their both hands simultaneously to control the endoscope and the operational tool in a coordinated fashion. Therefore, to shed light on the participants' behaviors, these scenarios are performed with dominant-hand, non-dominant hand and, finally with both-hands using haptic interfaces. Twenty-three residents volunteered in this study. Their eye-movements were recorded while performing the scenarios. According to the results of this study, when performing the simulated surgical models, an increase in the participants' mental workload was recorded when compared to the other scenarios. Accordingly, it can be concluded that the eye-movements of surgical residents can provide insights about the anticipated level of difficulty about the skill-based tasks. This information might be very critical to properly design and organize instructional materials for endo-neurosurgery, and also to better guide and evaluate the progress of trainees in computer simulation-based skill training environments.Article Citation - WoS: 6Citation - Scopus: 7Are Left- and Right-Eye Pupil Sizes Always Equal?(int Group Eye Movement Research, 2019) Cagiltay, Nergiz Ercil; Dalveren, Gonca Gokce MenekseEye movements provide very critical information about the cognitive load and behaviors of human beings. Earlier studies report that under normal conditions, the left- and right-eye pupil sizes are equal. For this reason, most studies undertaking eye-movement analysis are conducted by only considering the pupil size of a single eye or taking the average size of both eye pupils. This study attempts to offer a better understanding concerning whether there are any differences between the left- and right-eye pupil sizes of the right-handed surgical residents while performing surgical tasks in a computer-based simulation environment under different conditions (left-hand, right-hand and both hands). According to the results, in many cases, the right-eye pupil sizes of the participants were larger than their left-eye pupil sizes while performing the tasks under right-hand and both hands conditions. However, no significant difference was found in relation to the tasks performed under left-hand condition in all scenarios. These results are very critical to shed further light on the cognitive load of the surgical residents by analyzing their left-eye and right-eye pupil sizes. Further research is required to investigate the effect of the difficulty level of each scenario, its appropriateness with the skill level of the participants, and handedness on the differences between the leftand right-eye pupil sizes.Article Citation - WoS: 6Citation - Scopus: 7An Enhanced Course in Digital Communications(Tempus Publications, 2014) Kara, Ali; Cagiltay, Nergiz Ercil; Dalveren, Yaser; Department of Electrical & Electronics Engineering; Software EngineeringToday technological improvements provide several alternatives and opportunities for improving traditional educational systems. However, integrating these technologies in an appropriate and successful way into the curriculum of traditional systems is a challenge. This work presents the enhancements added to an undergraduate course on Digital Communications which is an introductory course offered to senior undergraduates or first year graduate students. The Digital Communications course covers some essential stages in a typical digital communication system, namely, signal formatting such as analog to digital conversion, baseband modulation and bandpass modulation by concentrating on demodulation and detection at the receiver end. The enhancements include computer simulations, web-based simulation tools and remote laboratory experiments along with several out of class activities. The enhancements have improved the course significantly by supporting constructivist and blended learning methods. The improvement to the course was demonstrated over two years, from the student progress assessed from the collated results of the student evaluation forms and a questionnaire on the course learning outcomes, and a comparison of their performance in the written exams. The results show that there is a significant improvement both in the progress and satisfaction of the students on the enhanced course curriculum. This study shows how different technologies have been successfully integrated to the curriculum of Digital Communications course in a higher education organization and concludes its success factors.Article Citation - WoS: 8Eye-Hand Coordination Patterns of Intermediate and Novice Surgeons in a Simulation-Based Endoscopic Surgery Training Environment(int Group Eye Movement Research, 2018) Topalli, Damla; Cagiltay, Nergiz ErcilEndoscopic surgery procedures require specific skills, such as eye-hand coordination to be developed. Current education programs are facing with problems to provide appropriate skill improvement and assessment methods in this field. This study aims to propose objective metrics for hand-movement skills and assess eye-hand coordination. An experimental study is conducted with 15 surgical residents to test the newly proposed measures. Two computer-based both-handed endoscopic surgery practice scenarios are developed in a simulation environment to gather the participants' eye-gaze data with the help of an eye tracker as well as the related hand movement data through haptic interfaces. Additionally, participants' eye-hand coordination skills are analyzed. The results indicate higher correlations in the intermediates' eye-hand movements compared to the novices. An increase in intermediates' visual concentration leads to smoother hand movements. Similarly, the novices' hand movements are shown to remain at a standstill. After the first round of practice, all participants' eye-hand coordination skills are improved on the specific task targeted in this study. According to these results, it can be concluded that the proposed metrics can potentially provide some additional insights about trainees' eye-hand coordination skills and help instructional system designers to better address training requirements.Conference Object Citation - WoS: 1Haptic User Interface Integration for 3d Game Engines(Springer-verlag Berlin, 2014) Sengul, Gokhan; Cagiltay, Nergiz Ercil; Ozcelik, Erol; Tuner, Emre; Erol, BatuhanTouch and feel senses of human beings provide important information about the environment. When those senses are integrated with the eyesight, we may get all the necessary information about the environment. In terms of human-computer-interaction, the eyesight information is provided by visual displays. On the other hand, touch and feel senses are provided by means of special devices called "haptic" devices. Haptic devices are used in many fields such as computer-aided design, distance-surgery operations, medical simulation environments, training simulators for both military and medical applications, etc. Besides the touch and sense feelings haptic devices also provide force-feedbacks, which allows designing a realistic environment in virtual reality applications. Haptic devices can be categorized into three classes: tactile devices, kinesthetic devices and hybrid devices. Tactile devices simulate skin to create contact sensations. Kinesthetic devices apply forces to guide or inhibit body movement, and hybrid devices attempt to combine tactile and kinesthetic feedback. Among these kinesthetic devices exerts controlled forces on the human body, and it is the most suitable type for the applications such as surgical simulations. The education environments that require skill-based improvements, the touch and feel senses are very important. In some cases providing such educational environment is very expensive, risky and may also consist of some ethical issues. For example, surgical education is one of these fields. The traditional education is provided in operating room on real patients. This type of education is very expensive, requires long time periods, and does not allow any error-and-try type of experiences. It is stressfully for both the educators and the learners. Additionally there are several ethical considerations. Simulation environments supported by such haptic user interfaces provide an alternative and safer educational alternative. There are several studies showing some evidences of educational benefits of this type of education (Tsuda et al 2009; Sutherland et al 2006). Similarly, this technology can also be successfully integrated to the physical rehabilitation process of some diseases requiring motor skill improvements (Kampiopiotis & Theodorakou, 2003). Hence, today simulation environments are providing several opportunities for creating low cost and more effective training and educational environment. Today, combining three dimensional (3D) simulation environments with these haptic interfaces is an important feature for advancing current human-computer interaction. On the other hand haptic devices do not provide a full simulation environment for the interaction and it is necessary to enhance the environment by software environments. Game engines provide high flexibility to create 3-D simulation environments. Unity3D is one of the tools that provides a game engine and physics engine for creating better 3D simulation environments. In the literature there are many studies combining these two technologies to create several educational and training environments. However, in the literature, there are not many researches showing how these two technologies can be integrated to create simulation environment by providing haptic interfaces as well. There are several issues that need to be handled for creating such integration. First of all the haptic devices control libraries need to be integrated to the game engine. Second, the game engine simulation representations and real-time interaction features need to be coordinately represented by the haptic device degree of freedom and force-feedback speed and features. In this study, the integration architecture of Unity 3D game engine and the PHANToM Haptic device for creating a surgical education simulation environment is provided. The methods used for building this integration and handling the synchronization problems are also described. The algorithms developed for creating a better synchronization and user feedback such as providing a smooth feeling and force feedback for the haptic interaction are also provided. We believe that, this study will be helpful for the people who are creating simulation environment by using Unity3D technology and PHANToM haptic interfaces.Conference Object The Effect of Split Attention in Surgical Education(Springer-verlag Berlin, 2014) Ozcelik, Erol; Cagiltay, Nergiz Ercil; Sengul, Gokhan; Tuner, Emre; Unal, BulentSurgical education through simulation is an important area to improve the level of education and to decrease the risks, ethical considerations and cost of the educational environments. In the literature there are several studies conducted to better understand the effect of these simulation environments on learning. However among those studies the human-computer interaction point of view is very limited. Surgeons need to look at radiological images such as magnetic resonance images (MRI) to be sure about the location of the patient's tumor during a surgical operation. Thus, they go back and forth between physically separated places (e.g. the operating table and light screen display for MRI volume sets). This study is conducted to investigate the effect of presenting different information sources in close proximity on human performance in surgical education. For this purpose, we have developed a surgical education simulation scenario which is controlled by a haptic interface. To better understand the effect of split attention in surgical education, an experimental study is conducted with 27 subjects. The descriptive results of study show that even the integrated group performed the tasks with a higher accuracy level (by traveling less distance, entering less wrong directions and hitting less walls), the results are not statistically significant. Accordingly, even there are some evidences about the effect of split attention on surgical simulation environments, the results of this study need to be validated by controlling students' skill levels on controlling the haptic devices and 2D/3D space perception skills. The results of this study may guide the system developers to better design the HCI interface of their designs especially for the area of surgical simulation.Article Citation - WoS: 2Citation - Scopus: 3Investigating the Relationship Between Sloc and Logical Database Measures To Improve the Early Estimation of Software Cost(World Scientific Publ Co Pte Ltd, 2019) Tokdemir, Gul; Cagiltay, Nergiz ErcilProject planning is a critical activity in the software development life cycle. At the early stages of a project, the managers need to estimate required time, effort and cost to plan, track and then to deliver the project successfully. Many studies have attempted to provide methods for precise software cost estimation. The current software cost estimation methods are mainly based on software size estimation and functional system requirements. The main assumption of this study is that, as the primary source of complexity in today's software is the interaction between the database and the user, database measures may provide inputs allowing current software estimation methods to achieve more accurate results. Accordingly, this study attempts to gain insights from objective measures, collected through the logical database model of software systems, for better prediction of the software's effort and hence cost through software lines of code (SLOC) measure. For this purpose, more than 2.5 million lines of code developed by four different companies, for 79 different software packages with their related database design measures, are analyzed. The results of this study show that there is a close correlation between the software size and database design measure, namely, the number of tables which can be collected at the logical database design stage. By adapting this result, the current estimation models could be improved significantly.Article Post-Pandemic Hybrid Curriculum Recommendations for an Undergraduate Ict Senior Project Course(Tempus Publications, 2023) Tirkes, Guzin; Kalem, Guler; Kilic, Hurevren; Cagiltay, Nergiz ErcilAmong the numerous aspects of everyday life affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, education stands out as one of those deeply impacted. In this context within university settings, the ICT senior project courses were no exception either. This study presents the recommendations for a hybrid curriculum based on the online implementation of a senior project course in the ICT departments of an engineering faculty. The data were collected to better understand the impact of this re-structured course on 99 undergraduate IT students and their projects during three semesters, and later analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively to obtain some insights. The results indicate that, during the pandemic, the students adapted their senior project studies to the related restrictions by changing certain aspects related to the project, improving their teamwork, and increasing the level of communication. However, they also reported certain problems related to their overall psychology as well as social interactions. In light of the pandemic effect on the software industry towards remote working environments, further suggestions are provided to eliminate the drawbacks of remote working reported by the students and to equip them with the necessary skills. The resulting recommendations could be used by other higher -education institutions and be further adjusted for application in other disciplines.
