Técnicas para aumentar o envolvimento dos alunos na aprendizagem da programação

Neste artigo analisam-se em particular duas técnicas concebidas para apoiar o ensino da programação: a Animação de Programas e a Avaliação Automática de Programas. Com base na combinação destas técnicas e respetivas ferramentas, atualmente disponíveis, iremos enunciar duas possíveis abordagens. Serão apresentadas as conclusões retiradas de uma primeira experiência conduzida em sala de aula. Por fim, esboçaremos uma ferramenta que através da Web, implementará uma das abordagens propostas

Encouraging museum visitor engagement using spontaneous talk-in-interaction audio guides

We describe the building and testing of a museum audio tour with content recorded as spontaneous interactive dialogue between two curators as they walked around an art gallery. The aim was to produce a guide which would increase the amount of topically relevant talk shared by people visiting a museum in groups of two or more. Conversation analysis is used to show how a pair of visitors engaged more with the content of the guide than they would have with audio produced as traditional scripted monologue. Examples of a variety of engagement types are detailed and a supporting rationale drawing on Goffman's theory of 'footing' is discussed. The approach potentially offers a low cost way for organisations involved in informal learning to produce flexible in-house audio content for mobile and e-learning, which improves visitor engagement both with the content and with one another, and leads to a more enjoyable visitor/learner experience than traditional forms of audio

D8.6 Dissemination, training and exploitation results

Mauerhofer, C., Rajagopal, K., & Greller, W. (2011). D8.6 Dissemination, training and exploitation results. LTfLL-project.Report on sustainability, dissemination and exploitation of the LtfLL projectThe work on this publication has been sponsored by the LTfLL STREP that is funded by the European Commission's 7th Framework Programme. Contract 212578 [http://www.ltfll-project.org

Digital Options for 1st Year University Student Education Support and Enhance Motivation

21st century higher education paradigm is based on the teacher-student mutual cooperation, which urges for personalized treatment of students, greater cooperation and better links between formal and non-formal education, which can largely be implemented by school learning using digital technologies. Very important are academics skills, including digital literacy, improving the quality and modern teach their subjects. They have to learn new teaching methods, forms, students develop a host of innovative thinking. Universities must become effective partners for global development. Only through the proliferation of networks between like-minded alliances can transformation occur at the scale that is immediately needed in order to advance our present global knowledge economy. Our communities must open their eyes to this imminent future and transform their thinking to see universities, not as self-indulgent “people factories,” but as valuable idea generators with vast influence and the potential to manifest technologies and concepts that can change lives the world over

Computer-supported Techniques to Increase Students Engagement in Programming

One of the main reasons that justify the student’s failure in (introductory) programming courses is the lack of motivation that impacts on the knowledge acquisition process, affecting learning results. As soon as students face the difficulties concerning the development of algorithms or the coding in a programming language, they give up and do not try harder to solve other problems; they think it is a demanding activity and feel frustrated. In this paper we describe in detail an experiment conducted to verify the effectiveness, in terms of the increase in motivation and in knowledge acquisition, of combining program Animation tools with the immediate feedback provided by Automatic Evaluations Systems.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Remote project management: challenges and best practices

With the advance of technology, such as the internet and media communications, the world has become much more connected. People have shortened the physical distance through technology facilitations. This advance not only has affected the social side of humanity, but has also opened up doors so that organizations could take part of these benefits. People were trained and encouraged to work from home. Companies saw an opportunity to reduce costs and get the most qualified professionals regardless of their geographic location. In this way, Project Management (PM) with Remote Teams (RT) has taken a relevant place inside organizations. In face of the pandemic situation the world is undergoing, working remotely stopped being an option and became the way to move on. There is an uncountable study on scientific community about PM talking about issues, challenges, best practices, frameworks and other topics, but only a few of them is direct related with remote project management (RPM) and/or RT. To fill this gap, this research aims to identify the main RPM challenges as well as the practices to mitigate such challenges. To evaluate and demonstrate findings, 30 qualitative interviews were performed and 69 surveys were applied with Project Managers who are developing their activities in a remote mode 100% of the time after the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. In the end, it is possible to see a list of 14 challenges and 13 best practices they had to apply to maintain their projects in the track and support their teams in this such difficult moment. The author concluded that was a disruptive moment for both workers and companies. Increased quality of life and flexible schedules were identified as a great benefit. On the other hand, much more dedicated work-hours were needed to maintain projects productivity.Com o avanço da tecnologia, tal como a internet e os meios de comunicação o mundo ficou muito mais conectado. As pessoas passaram a encurtar a distancia fisica através de facilidades tecnologicas. Esse avanço não afetou apenas o lado social da humanidade, mas abriu portas para que as organizações também pudessem usufruir desses beneficios. As pessoas foram capacitadas e incentivadas a trabalhar de casa. As empresas viram uma oportunidade de reduzir custos e obter os mais qualificados profissionais independente de sua posição geografica. Desta forma, a gestão de projetos com equipas remotas passou a ter um relevante lugar dentro das organizações. Diante da situação pandêmica que o mundo está a ultrapassar, trabalhar remotamente deixou de ser opção e passou a ser a forma de seguirmos em frente. Existem incontaveis estudos na comunidade cientifica a dissertar sobre gestao de projetos, seus riscos, desafios, melhores praticas, ferramentas e outros assuntos pertinentes. Mas somente um grupo pequeno e restrito de estudos estão diretamente relacionados com a gestão de projetos remota e equipas remotas. Para preencher essa lacuna, esse estudo visa identificar os principais desafios da gestão de projetos remota, bem como as práticas para mitiga-los. Para avaliar e demonstrar os resultados, 30 entrevistas qualitativas e 69 questionarios foram aplicados com gestores de projetos que estão desenvolvendo suas atividades de modo remoto 100% do tempo após o inicio da pandemia Covid-19. No final, pode-se ver uma lista de 14 desafios e 13 boas praticas que foram adotadas para manter seus projetos em dia e apoiar suas equipas nesse momento tão dificil. O autor conclui que foi um momento disruptivo tanto para os trabalhadores quanto para as empresas. Aumento da qualidade de vida e horarios mais flexiveis foram vistos como um grande beneficio. Em contra-partida, foram necessarias muito mais horas de dedicacao ao trabalho para que fosse possivel manter a produtividade dos projetos

Bibliographic and Text Analysis of Research on Implementation of the Internet of Things to Support Education

The Internet of Things (IoT) has pervaded practically all aspects of our lives. In this exploratory study, we survey its applications in the field of education. It is evident that technology in general, and, in particular IoT, has been increasingly altering the educational landscape. The goal of this paper is to review the academic literature on IoT applications in education to provide an understanding of the transformation that is underway. Using topic modeling and keyword co-occurrence analysis techniques, we identified five dominant clusters of research. Our findings demonstrate that IoT research in education has mainly focused on the technical aspects; however, the social aspects remain largely unexplored. In addition to providing an overview of IoT research on education, this paper offers suggestions for future research

A Quantitative Analysis of the Use of Microdata for Semantic Annotations on Educational Resources

A current trend in the semantic web is the use of embedded markup formats aimed to semantically enrich web content by making it more understandable to search engines and other applications. The deployment of Microdata as a markup format has increased thanks to the widespread of a controlled vocabulary provided by Schema.org. Recently, a set of properties from the Learning Resource Metadata Initiative (LRMI) specification, which describes educational resources, was adopted by Schema.org. These properties, in addition to those related to accessibility and the license of resources included in Schema.org, would enable search engines to provide more relevant results in searching for educational resources for all users, including users with disabilities. In order to obtain a reliable evaluation of the use of Microdata properties related to the LRMI specification, accessibility, and the license of resources, this research conducted a quantitative analysis of the deployment of these properties in large-scale web corpora covering two consecutive years. The corpora contain hundreds of millions of web pages. The results further our understanding of this deployment in addition to highlighting the pending issues and challenges concerning the use of such properties

Current Trends in Game-Based Learning

A myriad of technological options can be used to support digital game-based learning. One popular technology in this context is the mobile device, considering its high penetration rate in our societies, even among young people. These can be combined with other technologies, such as Augmented Reality (AR) or Virtual Reality (VR), to increase students’ motivation and engagement in learning processes.Due to this, there is an emergent need to know and promote good practices in the development and implementation of game-based learning approaches in educational settings. This was the motto for the proposal of the Education Sciences (ISSN: 2227-7102) Special Issue “Current Trends in Game-Based Learning”. This book is a reprint of this Special Issue, collecting a set of five papers that illustrate the contribution of innovative approaches to education, specifically the ones exploring the motivational factors associated with playing games and the technology that may support them

O impacto da animação e da avaliação automática na motivação para o ensino da programação

Tese de Doutoramento em InformáticaA aprendizagem da programação é uma tarefa complexa que coloca desafios importantes. Nesta dissertação, propõem-se duas abordagens ao processo de ensino nas disciplinas de Programação que visam aumentar a motivação dos alunos e a sua auto-estima. As propostas apresentadas resultam de um estudo cuidado das dificuldades que os alunos sentem ao contactar com a programação de computadores, quer a nível do raciocínio lógico que é necessário para esquematizar a resolução de um qualquer problema, quer a nível da compreensão da linguagem de programação que terá de ser usada para exprimir essa resolução. Percebendo-se que a principal razão assenta na falta de motivação que resulta em parte da falta de confiança e quebra da autoestima necessárias para ultrapassar os impasses, procedeu-se também ao estudo dessa área da psicologia, conforme aqui se relata. Identificados os problemas inerentes à motivação humana e às caraterísticas do processo de resolução de problemas por computador, procuraram-se técnicas que tenham vindo a ser propostas para ajudar os alunos na aquisição de conhecimentos de Programação. Conforme se verifica ao longo do documento focou-se a atenção em duas estratégias: a capacidade do sistema visual humano para rapidamente apreender conceitos e sobretudo processos; a necessidade de os alunos receberem rápido feedback quando se aventuram a resolver sozinhos um problema. No primeiro caso investigaram-se os sistemas de Animação de Programas e no segundo caso os sistemas de Auto-avaliação de Programas. As duas abordagens propostas baseiam-se precisamente numa combinação destas duas estratégias. Dessas abordagens, uma foi alvo de experimentação em sala de aula para se poder aferir o seu real impacto. A outra serviu de base para a proposta de uma plataforma Web para suporte ao processo de ensino/aprendizagem da Programação; o sistema designado por PEP chegou a ser prototipado, conforme é descrito. Para se poder avaliar a qualidade do PEP e até guiar a implementação de uma versão final foram estudados sistemas de aferição de qualidade de software para o ensino, com especial destaque para a framework QEF. Por fim ainda se estudou a importância de incluir no sistema de apoio ao ensino elementos dos jogos que estimulam a motivação e ainda se propôs um enriquecimento do sistema PEP através da inclusão de técnicas de ludificação ou gamificação.Learning programming is a complex task that raises important challenges. In this dissertation, two approaches for teaching Programming courses are proposed aimed at increasing students' motivation and their self-confidence/self-regulation . The proposals presented came out after a deep study of the difficulties that students feel when they are beginning a computer programming course, either at the level of the logical reasoning that is necessary to sketch the resolution of a problem, or at the level of understanding the programming language that has to be used to code this resolution. Realizing that the main reason is based on the lack of motivation derived from the lack of confidence and self-regulation necessary to overcome the troubles, the area of psychology that studies motivation was also researched, as will be discussed in this dissertation. After identifying the problems inherent to human motivation and the characteristics of the computer problem solving process, techniques that have been proposed to help students on learning programming were surveyed. This study was focussed on two strategies: the power of human’s to quickly and easily grasp concepts from static or dynamic visualizations; the positive impact of feedback returned to the students when they write a program on their own. In the first case, Program Animation systems were investigated; and in the second case, Automatic Program Evaluators were studied. The two approaches that outcame from this Ph.D. work are precisely based on a combination of these two strategies. Experiments in the classroom were drawn and conducted to validate the first approach. The second approach inspired the design of a Web-based platform (PEP) to support the teaching / learning process of Programming. A prototype of PEP, based on those guidelines and requirements, was developed by a team of M.Sc. Students as will be described. In order to evaluate PEP’s quality, and to guide its final implementation, software quality assessment systems were studied, with special emphasis on QEF framework. The importance of including, in the educational support systems, elements traditionally used in the context of games to stimulate the motivation was studied and an enrichment of PEP tool through the inclusion of techniques of gamification was still proposed