A framework for creating educational virtual escape rooms to teach computational thinking

Dissertation (MCom (Informatics))--University of Pretoria, 2022.Due to the looming Fourth Industrial Revolution, massive changes in occupations are predicted that will require a new set of skills from the next generation. As a result, educational systems are struggling to equip students with the right skills to thrive in the future. The Institute for the Future identified Computational Thinking as one of the essential skills that will be critical for success in the future workplace. Although there is no clear definition for computational thinking, many researchers have come to accept Wing’s definition as an approach to solving problems, designing systems, and understanding human behavior by drawing on concepts fundamental to computer science. However, integrating computational thinking into the curriculum remains an educational challenge. Escape room games could potentially aid in the development of computational thinking skills because they immerse learners in a narrative-based, problem-solving scenario. Nicholson defines an escape room as a live-action adventure game in which players find themselves locked in a room, or series of rooms, from which they must escape within a limited amount of time. This research study aims to illustrate a virtual escape room for teaching of computational thinking, reflect on its usefulness as a teaching tool, offer guidance on where to make improvements, and present a framework that educators can use to create their own virtual escape rooms. This research followed a Design-Based Research methodology that consisted of three iterative cycles. During the cycles, participants were given a pre-test before the virtual escape room and a post-test after the virtual escape room. Although the findings do not show a significant difference between the pre-test and post-test results, participants indicated that the experience with the escape room increased their motivation to learn more about computational thinking. This paper recommends that virtual escape rooms be investigated further since they could provide significant insight for learners in computational thinkingInformaticsMCom (Informatics)Unrestricte

Constraint-based Programming: A Survey

Report on constraint-based computer programming analyzing finite-domain and continuous-domain constraint satisfaction methods and existing systems which apply constraints to problem-solving, modeling, and simulation

Abstracting soft constraints: framework, properties, examples

Soft constraints are very and expressive. However, they also are very complex to handle. For this reason, it may be reasonable in several cases to pass to an abstract version of a given soft constraint problem, and then to bring some useful information from the abstract problem to the concrete one. This will hopefully make the search for a solution, or for an optimal solution, of the concrete problem, faster. In this paper we propose an abstraction scheme for soft constraint problems and we study its main properties. We show that processing the abstracted version of a soft constraint problem can help us in finding good approximations of the optimal solutions, or also in obtaining information that can make the subsequent search for the best solution easier. We also show how the abstraction scheme can be used to devise new hybrid algorithms for solving soft constraint problems, and also to import constraint propagation algorithms from the abstract scenario to the concrete one. This may be useful when we don\u27t have any (or any efficient) propagation algorithm in the concrete setting

Continuous versions of Haack’s puzzles: equilibria, eigen-states and ontologies

This article discusses some continuous limit cases of Susan Haack's crossword puzzle metaphor for the coherent development and foundation of science. The main objective of this discussion is to build a bridge between Haack’s foundherentism and the epistemological framework of objective cognitive constructivism, including its key metaphor of objects as tokens for eigen-solutions. The historical development of chemical affinity tables is used to illustrate our arguments

Propagators and Violation Functions for Geometric and Workload Constraints Arising in Airspace Sectorisation

Airspace sectorisation provides a partition of a given airspace into sectors, subject to geometric constraints and workload constraints, so that some cost metric is minimised. We make a study of the constraints that arise in airspace sectorisation. For each constraint, we give an analysis of what algorithms and properties are required under systematic search and stochastic local search

Entrainment Promoting Robot Based on Physiological Signals towards Human Cooperation

東京都立大学Tokyo Metropolitan University博士（情報科学）doctoral thesi

Audiolingual method to improve speaking skills in 8th level students at Víctor Manuel Guzmán High School in the academic year 2021-2022

Determine how audiolingual method can influence to the development of speaking skills.Actualmente el idioma inglés es un idioma global hablado en todo el mundo. El idioma inglés proporciona nuevas oportunidades en el campo educacional, comercial y tecnológico. La importancia de hablar este lenguaje es vital mediante este lenguaje las personas pueden desarrollar habilidades efectivamente. Adquirir un lenguaje nuevo es un arduo trabajo, pero sabemos que mediante metodologías las personas pueden desarrollar un aprendizaje significativo para dominar el idioma. Un método eficiente para lograr esto es el método Audio lingual. Este método está enfocado en mejorar el desempeño del estudiante mediante la gramática, fluidez y una efectiva pronunciación. Además, este método contribuye para adquirir un amplio vocabulario mediante patrones gramaticales. Esta investigación es desarrollada para el uso del método Audio lingual para mejorar la habilidad del habla en aprendices del idioma inglés. Esta investigación fue aplicada para los estudiantes de 8vo nivel del colegio Víctor Manuel Guzmán para mejorar el nivel de inglés en los estudiantes, usando un método estructurado apto para transformar el proceso de aprender el idioma. El enfoque de esta investigación es cualitativa, basada en un diseño descriptivo para describir el proceso continuo de la enseñanza y aprendizaje del idioma inglés.Licenciatur

An approach to user-directed search in interactive problem solving

This thesis studies some problems which are important in establishing interactive problem solving systems. An interactive problem solving system is characterized by the intensive interaction between the user and the system. In order to converge on a solution which satisfies the user, we present a new problem solving scheme - user-directed search (UDS) - where the solution search is directed in a step-by-step manner by the user. Because of its wide applicability, UDS can be very useful for many practic~l cases. The user-directed problem solving is realized by introducing a particular communication mechanism between the user and the system. This enables a user to guide the solution searching in his most preferred directions. Thus the system can first explore the solutions which are more likely to match the user-desired solution. We have developed UDS using two different approaches. In the first approach, additional deduction rules can be created upon the user's request and/or upon changes in practical environments. For this purpose, we have created, in the user interface, an environment which enables a user to add his new requirements in the form of deduction rules. To improve efficiency, we have used a particular backjump search which can first find, and then backjump to, the point which contradicts the user's new requirements. To establish the dependency for this backjumping, we have used assumption-based truth maintenance systems (ATMS) and KEEworlds in the knowledge engineering environment(KEE). In the second approach, we have introduced particular variable groups. In this approach, the user's new requirements are introduced through a scheme in which the user divides the variable set into several different variable groups. By dividing these variable groups according to his choice, a user can effectively control and instruct the search during the process of problem solving. We have introduced here a scheme which we call proximal minimum (closeness) change. The proximal minimum change ensures that, in the direction specified by the user, a closest solution to the previous one will be found if it actually exists. In another aspect, in order to improve efficiency of solution search on a general basis, we have applied some techniques from Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSP) in establishing non-CSP expert systems, e.g. rule-based and frame-structured expert systems on KEE. We find that these CSP techniques can be used to improve efficiency by performing consistency checking prior to searching for a solution, which we call pre-processing. This pre-processing is introduced to eliminate a number of variable values which are inconsistent with certain unary and binary constraints. In practical applications, this method can be used to avoid a considerable amount of useless backtracking. We have developed an independent module for applying CSP techniques in general purpose programming in KEE. This CSP module provides KEE with ability to establish more versatile expert systems. Through case studies of the truck dispatching problem and the word puzzle problem, we demonstrate how to achieve UDS and how to implement various techniques which we have presented to improve efficiency in UDS. Some of the advantages of UDS are shown in the case studies