A Coordinated Plan for Teaching Software Engineering in the University Rey Juan Carlos.

Un plan para organizar las enseñanzas de la ingeniería del software en las titulaciones de informática de la URJC. Nowadays both industry and academic environments are showing a lot of interest in the Software Engineering discipline. Therefore, it is a challenge for universities to provide students with appropriate training in this area, preparing them for their future professional practice. There are many difficulties to provide that training. The outstanding ones are: the Software Engineering area is too broad and class hours are scarce; the discipline requires a high level of abstraction; it is difficult to reproduce real world situations in the classroom to provide a practical learning environment; the number of students per professor is very high (at least in Spain); companies develop software with a maturity level rarely over level 2 of the CMM for Software (again, at least in Spain) as opposed to what is taught at the University. Besides, there are different levels and study plans, making more difficult to structure the contents to teach in each term and degree. In this paper we present a plan for teaching Software Engineering trying to overcome some of the difficulties above

Continuous vocational training in response to the challenge of industry 4.0: Required skills and business results

Purpose: To identify the technical skills which, linked to digitalization processes, are required to achieve different types of business results. Design/methodology/approach: The Delphi method was applied, through the opinions of a group of Spanish experts, to identify the importance of certain skills for the advancement of digitalization and the implementation of Industry 4.0. Findings: The results show that: 1) skills in Robotics, the Internet of Things, Networks and Artificial Intelligence are necessary to achieve results in the management of company technical areas; 2) commercial management needs skills in Intelligent Systems, Big Data, Cybersecurity, Distributed Technology and Contents; and 3) for the business challenges of sustainable development, the environment and energy efficiency, the most needed skills are in Big Data, Intelligent Systems and Artificial Intelligence. Originality/value: The results are useful, firstly, in providing firms with a training and selection tool for the development of I4.0 and, secondly, in offering training centers criteria for drawing up their training programsPeer Reviewe

Model-Driven Skills Assessment in Knowledge Management Systems

Organizations need employees who perform satisfactorily in generic skills, such as teamwork, leadership, problem solving or interpersonal abilities, among others. In organizational environments, employees perform work that is not always visible for supervisors and, thus, they can hardly assess their performance in generic skills. By using a knowledge management system, the users are able to leave a trace of their activity in the system’s records. This research aims to address a computer supported assessment of the user’s generic skills from the perspective of Model-Driven engineering. First, a systematic mapping study is carried out to understand the state of the art. Second, a proposal based on Model-Driven engineering is presented and is then validated through an organizational learning process model. Our results are promising and we are able to conduct a scalable assessment based on objective indicators of the employee’s planning, time management and problem solving skills

Introduction to the Spanish national team for intercultural studies of academic discourse (ENEIDA) project and research group

In recent decades, there has been a growing move towards publication in English-medium journals among multilingual researchers and a growing demand for materials (Swales and Feak, 2004) and courses in skills relevant to publishing in English for Research Publication Purposes (ERPP) (Moreno 2011). Research into academic writing has also flourished world-wide (Swales 2004), with crosscultural and intercultural studies of academic discourse across various languages and English being an area of increasing interest (Moreno 2010). Despite this, little is known about the training needs vis-à-vis ERPP of writers for whom English is an Additional Language (EAL) and how teaching resources might best address them (Swales 2002). The present project focusses on a neglected population of EAL writers, Spanish researchers, and advocates for a critical pragmatic approach that addresses access and difference simultaneously. Thus the project highlights the importance of giving priority to those aspects of ERPP writing with which specific groups of Spanish researchers tend to have difficulties when communicating with an international audience (the intercultural perspective). Additionally, based on revealing results from Spanish-English crosscultural studies of academic discourse, the project seeks to explain some of Spanish researchers’ writing problems by virtue of the contrastive rhetoric hypothesis, according to which writers from different cultural and language backgrounds have distinct preferences for articulating messages with share a similar purpose (the crosscultural perspective). It is believed that raising Spanish researchers’ awareness of crosscultural differences in ERPP writing related to audience types (national/local versus international) will help them to produce more successful texts in the eyes of English-medium journal gatekeepers. Convinced that this type of research would benefit from interdisciplinary collaborations, the ENEIDA (Spanish team for Intercultural Studies of Academic Discourse) research group was officially set up in 2010. It consists of researchers with background and expertise in supplementary research fields from one Spanish research-only institution (the CSIC), four Spanish universities (Universidad de León, Universidad de La Laguna, Universitat Jaume I and Universidad de Zaragoza) and three foreign universities (The University of London, The University of Michigan and the Open University). The first phase of the ENEIDA project on “Rhetorical Strategies to Get Published in International Journals from a Spanish-English Intercultural Perspective (I)” (Ref.: FFI2009-08336) sets out to collect relevant data to investigate Spanish researchers’ writing difficulties publishing in English-medium international journals and to carry out various needs analyses vis-à-vis ERPP by means of a large-scale confidential online survey. The present paper justifies the need for carrying out the ENEIDA project and for bringing the ENEIDA research group together

JuxtaLearn D3.2 Performance Framework

This deliverable, D3.2, for Work Package 3 incorporating the pedagogy from WP2 and orchestration factors mapped in D3.1 reviews aspects of performance in the context of participative video making. It reviews literature on curiosity and engagement characteristics of interaction mechanisms for public displays and anticipates requirements for social network analysis of relevant public videos from WP6 task 6.3. Thus, to support JuxtaLearn performance it proposes a reflective performance framework that encompasses the material environment and objects required, the participants, and the knowledge needed

Continuous vocational training in response to the challenge of industry 4.0: Required skills and business results

Purpose: To identify the technical skills which, linked to digitalization processes, are required to achieve different types of business results.  Design/methodology/approach: The Delphi method was applied, through the opinions of a group of Spanish experts, to identify the importance of certain skills for the advancement of digitalization and the implementation of Industry 4.0.  Findings: The results show that: 1) skills in Robotics, the Internet of Things, Networks and Artificial Intelligence are necessary to achieve results in the management of company technical areas; 2) commercial management needs skills in Intelligent Systems, Big Data, Cybersecurity, Distributed Technology and Contents; and 3) for the business challenges of sustainable development, the environment and energy efficiency, the most needed skills are in Big Data, Intelligent Systems and Artificial Intelligence. Originality/value: The results are useful, firstly, in providing firms with a training and selection tool for the development of I4.0 and, secondly, in offering training centers criteria for drawing up their training programs