Developing Work-Ready Software Engineers using Real-world Team-based Projects as a Catalyst for Learning

The National Software Academy in Wales is a recentlyestablished collaboration between Cardiff University, WelshGovernment, the Alacrity Foundation and the technologyindustry. The aim is to address the gap in the skills market forwork ready software engineers. The Academy runs an industryfocused BSc degree in Applied Software Engineering that seeslocal and national industry partners actively participating in therunning of the program and gives students the opportunity towork on real-world team-based projects throughout their degreecourse. This paper reports on the first year of the program: thesuccess and positive engagement from industry partners, theintegrated style of delivery across program modules, and thechallenges faced going into year 2

SMARTLAB MAGNETIC: A MODERN PARADIGM FOR STUDENT LABORATORIES

[EN] Undergraduate laboratories should provide means to help the student visualize often complex concepts, to achieve a more lasting understanding and, thus, a more significant learning of the ideas presented in the lectures. However, the laboratories often require students to struggle with complex instrumentation operation and tedious data collection and processing that affect negatively their motivation and distract off the learning objectives. This paper introduces through a specific implementation a recent paradigm for student laboratories, designated as SmartLabs, as an effort to help overcome these drawbacks. SmartLabs Magnetic is a combination of existing magnetic circuits test equipment plus a versatile sensors set combined with a standard and affordable data acquisition card and a portable device App. SmartLab Magnetic collects data during magnetic circuits laboratory tests, processes this data to provide results more easily related to the basic concepts being tested and manages the data into reports that can be sent to the student e-mail account within the App. Students' opinions of the relevance, usefulness, and motivational effect of the new SmartLab Magnetic were very positive.Martinez-Roman, J.; Sapena-Bano, A.; Pineda-Sanchez, M.; Puche-Panadero, R. (2016). SMARTLAB MAGNETIC: A MODERN PARADIGM FOR STUDENT LABORATORIES. Sensors & Transducers. 197(2):58-66. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/99063S5866197

Robots, drugs, reality and education: how the future will change how we think

Emerging technologies for learning report - Article exploring various future trends and their potential impact on educatio

Towards Incorporating Schoology Blended Learning Model into ESP and EFL Classes: A Focus on Moroccan Schools of Engineering and Humanities

The integration of recent cloud-based tools and web 2.0 technologies into mainstream ELT curricula has reshaped the way we construct and disseminate knowledge. It has equally provided new circumstances for students’ active learning. Based on this premise, a substantial amount of research has been carried out on educational technology in an effort to corroborate how effective mobile learning platforms are at fostering learners’ autonomy, motivation, and self-paced learning.  Adopting a mixed methods approach, this paper then aims to investigate the impact of two ESP and EFL blended learning courses on students’ engagement, autonomy and collaborative learning. It also seeks to disclose the significant differences and/or similarities in their attitudinal perspectives about the acquisition of content through Schoology’s autonomous virtual learning environment (VLE). The current research made use of both qualitative and quantitative methods. A questionnaire administered to 142 first year engineering students and a cohort of 52 English Studies sophomores from Hassan II University- Casablanca sought to gauge students’ levels of interaction, autonomy and motivation to build online materials collaboratively with their peers and instructor. Data based on a survey instrument and the observation of students’ online interactions and reflection on their learning processes revealed that over 90 % of students in both institutions were satisfied with the Schoology blended learning platform as it facilitated the exercise of learner autonomy and boosted their interaction, communication and collaboration within the groups and with their instructor. The findings of this study equally proved that Schoology media rich learning materials provided Engineering and English studies students with great control over their ESP and EFL learning beyond the classroom, thus transcending spacial and temporal limitations

Detection of Features to Track Objects and Segmentation Using GrabCut for Application in Marker-less Augmented Reality

AbstractAugmented Reality applications have hovered itself over various platforms such as desktop and most recently to handheld devices such as mobile phones and tablets. Augmented Reality (AR) systems have mostly been limited to Head Worn Displays with start-ups such as Magic Leap and Occulus Rift making tremendous advancement in such AR and VR research applications facing a stiff competition with Software giant Microsoft which has recently introduced Holo Lens. AR refers to the augmentation or the conglomeration of virtual objects in the real world scenario which has a distinct but close resemblance to Virtual Reality (VR) systems which are computer simulated environments which render physical presence in imaginary world. Developers and hackers round the globe have directed their research interests in the development of AR and VR based applications especially in the domain of advertisement and gaming. Many open source libraries, SDKs and proprietary software are available worldwide for developers to make such systems. This paper describes an algorithm for an AR prototype which uses a marker less approach to track and segment out real world objects and then overlay the same on another real world scene. The algorithm was tested on Desktop. The results are comparable with other existing algorithms and outperform some of them in terms of robustness, speed, and accuracy, precision and timing analysis