Teaching programming at a distance: the Internet software visualization laboratory

This paper describes recent developments in our approach to teaching computer programming in the context of a part-time Masters course taught at a distance. Within our course, students are sent a pack which contains integrated text, software and video course material, using a uniform graphical representation to tell a consistent story of how the programming language works. The students communicate with their tutors over the phone and through surface mail. Through our empirical studies and experience teaching the course we have identified four current problems: (i) students' difficulty mapping between the graphical representations used in the course and the programs to which they relate, (ii) the lack of a conversational context for tutor help provided over the telephone, (iii) helping students who due to their other commitments tend to study at 'unsociable' hours, and (iv) providing software for the constantly changing and expanding range of platforms and operating systems used by students. We hope to alleviate these problems through our Internet Software Visualization Laboratory (ISVL), which supports individual exploration, and both synchronous and asynchronous communication. As a single user, students are aided by the extra mappings provided between the graphical representations used in the course and their computer programs, overcoming the problems of the original notation. ISVL can also be used as a synchronous communication medium whereby one of the users (generally the tutor) can provide an annotated demonstration of a program and its execution, a far richer alternative to technical discussions over the telephone. Finally, ISVL can be used to support asynchronous communication, helping students who work at unsociable hours by allowing the tutor to prepare short educational movies for them to view when convenient. The ISVL environment runs on a conventional web browser and is therefore platform independent, has modest hardware and bandwidth requirements, and is easy to distribute and maintain. Our planned experiments with ISVL will allow us to investigate ways in which new technology can be most appropriately applied in the service of distance education

Development of Distributed Research Center for analysis of regional climatic and environmental changes

We present an approach and first results of a collaborative project being carried out by a joint team of researchers from the Institute of Monitoring of Climatic and Ecological Systems, Russia and Earth Systems Research Center UNH, USA. Its main objective is development of a hardware and software platform prototype of a Distributed Research Center (DRC) for monitoring and projecting of regional climatic and environmental changes in the Northern extratropical areas. The DRC should provide the specialists working in climate related sciences and decision-makers with accurate and detailed climatic characteristics for the selected area and reliable and affordable tools for their in-depth statistical analysis and studies of the effects of climate change. Within the framework of the project, new approaches to cloud processing and analysis of large geospatial datasets (big geospatial data) inherent to climate change studies are developed and deployed on technical platforms of both institutions. We discuss here the state of the art in this domain, describe web based information-computational systems developed by the partners, justify the methods chosen to reach the project goal, and briefly list the results obtained so far

Decentralised multimedia development by the content experts

This paper describes the possibility to develop interactive educational material by the content expert (teacher). It is suggested to develop small modules of flexible material that can be easily changed similar to traditional lecture presentations. The features of such material include: • Learning by problem solving and application of knowledge (constructing knowledge). • Easy internet on-line implementation of software pieces via Shockwave technology. At the same time CD-Rom versions of the same programs can be marketed. • Integrated assessment by progress tracking and uploading via the web. • Feel of ownership (avoiding the ìnot invented here syndromeî) of the program by the teacher. • Possible exchangeability of small modules between different courses. • Built in recording of student comments for improving and debugging program for the next year • Facilitated input by students (over a year by year updating). • Teachers develop expertise in using the modern and effective teaching tools. • Teachers can put into practice much more effectively than before the educational principles learned from staff development sessions such as (self paced learning, problem based learning, deep learning, constructive learning). • Student feedback (questionnaire) indicated that > 85% of students found the program modules were more effective and more ìfunî learning than traditional method

A conceptual architecture for interactive educational multimedia

Learning is more than knowledge acquisition; it often involves the active participation of the learner in a variety of knowledge- and skills-based learning and training activities. Interactive multimedia technology can support the variety of interaction channels and languages required to facilitate interactive learning and teaching. A conceptual architecture for interactive educational multimedia can support the development of such multimedia systems. Such an architecture needs to embed multimedia technology into a coherent educational context. A framework based on an integrated interaction model is needed to capture learning and training activities in an online setting from an educational perspective, to describe them in the human-computer context, and to integrate them with mechanisms and principles of multimedia interaction

An open extensible tool environment for Event-B

Abstract. We consider modelling indispensable for the development of complex systems. Modelling must be carried out in a formal notation to reason and make meaningful conjectures about a model. But formal modelling of complex systems is a difficult task. Even when theorem provers improve further and get more powerful, modelling will remain difficult. The reason for this that modelling is an exploratory activity that requires ingenuity in order to arrive at a meaningful model. We are aware that automated theorem provers can discharge most of the onerous trivial proof obligations that appear when modelling systems. In this article we present a modelling tool that seamlessly integrates modelling and proving similar to what is offered today in modern integrated development environments for programming. The tool is extensible and configurable so that it can be adapted more easily to different application domains and development methods.