61 research outputs found
Representing Data Visualization Goals and Tasks through Meta-Modeling to Tailor Information Dashboards
[EN]Information dashboards are everywhere. They support knowledge discovery in a huge
variety of contexts and domains. Although powerful, these tools can be complex, not only for the
end-users but also for developers and designers. Information dashboards encode complex datasets
into different visual marks to ease knowledge discovery. Choosing a wrong design could
compromise the entire dashboard’s effectiveness, selecting the appropriate encoding or
configuration for each potential context, user, or data domain is a crucial task. For these reasons,
there is a necessity to automatize the recommendation of visualizations and dashboard
configurations to deliver tools adapted to their context. Recommendations can be based on different
aspects, such as user characteristics, the data domain, or the goals and tasks that will be achieved or
carried out through the visualizations. This work presents a dashboard meta-model that abstracts
all these factors and the integration of a visualization task taxonomy to account for the different
actions that can be performed with information dashboards. This meta-model has been used to
design a domain specific language to specify dashboards requirements in a structured way. The
ultimate goal is to obtain a dashboard generation pipeline to deliver dashboards adapted to any
context, such as the educational context, in which a lot of data are generated, and there are several
actors involved (students, teachers, managers, etc.) that would want to reach different insights
regarding their learning performance or learning methodologies
Playing, Constructionism, and Music in Early-Stage Software Engineering Education
[EN] Understanding that design involves trade-offs, thinking at multiple levels of abstraction, and considering the cohesion and coupling between sub-components of a larger whole is an important part of software (and other) engineering. It can be challenging to convey such abstract design concepts to novice engineers, especially for materials that are themselves abstract (e.g. software). Such challenges are compounded when teaching at the secondary school stage where students have limited experience of large-scale design problems that motivate the need for abstraction at all. In this paper, we describe a method for introducing these concepts to secondary school students using LEGO® and Raspberry Pi computers, asking them to build musical instruments as an entertaining way of motivating engagement with learning about design through play. The method has been successfully piloted in a series of three classroom sessions and key observations and experiences of using the method are presented.This project received no external funding but was funded by the UCL Department of Computer
Science Strategic Research FundGold, NE.; Purves, R.; Himonides, E. (2022). Playing, Constructionism, and Music in Early-Stage Software Engineering Education. Multidisciplinary Journal for Education, Social and Technological Sciences. 9(1):14-38. https://doi.org/10.4995/muse.2022.1645314389
An evaluation of an adaptive learning system based on multimodal affect recognition for learners with intellectual disabilities
Artificial intelligence tools for education (AIEd) have been used to automate the provision of learning support to mainstream learners. One of the most innovative approaches in this field is the use of data and machine learning for the detection of a student's affective state, to move them out of negative states that inhibit learning, into positive states such as engagement. In spite of their obvious potential to provide the personalisation that would give extra support for learners with intellectual disabilities, little work on AIEd systems that utilise affect recognition currently addresses this group. Our system used multimodal sensor data and machine learning to first identify three affective states linked to learning (engagement, frustration, boredom) and second determine the presentation of learning content so that the learner is maintained in an optimal affective state and rate of learning is maximised. To evaluate this adaptive learning system, 67 participants aged between 6 and 18 years acting as their own control took part in a series of sessions using the system. Sessions alternated between using the system with both affect detection and learning achievement to drive the selection of learning content (intervention) and using learning achievement alone (control) to drive the selection of learning content. Lack of boredom was the state with the strongest link to achievement, with both frustration and engagement positively related to achievement. There was significantly more engagement and less boredom in intervention than control sessions, but no significant difference in achievement. These results suggest that engagement does increase when activities are tailored to the personal needs and emotional state of the learner and that the system was promoting affective states that in turn promote learning. However, longer exposure is necessary to determine the effect on learning
Human-computer interaction in mobile learning: a review
Mobile learning mainly concerns mobility and high-quality education, regardless of location or time. Humancomputer interaction comprises the concepts and methods in which humans interact with computers, including designing, implementing, and evaluating computer systems that are accessible and provide an intuitive user interface. Some studies showed that mobile learning could help overcome multiple limitations and improve learning in educational systems. The study investigates the HCI design challenges, including the guidelines and methods in mobile HCI for education. An existing mobile learning tool was discussed on the current and future design enhancements of Udemy. Next is the further discussion on future mobile learning to provide the possible improvements for learners based on the challenges of mobile HCI in education
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
Mathematics Teachers’ Perceptions of the Introduction of ICT: The Relationship between Motivation and Use in the Teaching Function
Digital self-efficacy and the amount of perceived support from the school can improve
teachers’ motivation to increase the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in the
classroom. Likewise, attitude, perception, gender, and experience of mathematics teachers are factors
that influence their use of ICT. This study aimed to analyze the profiles of mathematics teachers,
determine the existence of differences between them, and identify the sample size necessary to detect
significant differences. A total of 73 high school teachers were included in this cross-sectional study.
Teaching practice, ICT resources, ICT in the classroom, skills, and uses of ICT were assessed through
a validated 19-item questionnaire. Statistical analysis revealed that the required sample to detect
significant differences was 53 subjects. Further, 67.21% of the mathematics teachers surveyed in
Melilla were younger than 40 years of age, and 62.30% had less than 6 years of teaching experience.
In addition, 81.97 and 47.54% of mathematics teachers stated that they consider themselves to have
sufficient ICT resources at home for their work and in the classroom, respectively. Through different
clusters, mathematics teachers can be identified and classified according to their motivational and
competence profiles in pedagogical and digital areas. In addition, young teachers with some teaching
experience had positive perceptions of technology, as reflected by high scores in the motivation
indicator for ICT
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
Políticas de Copyright de Publicações Científicas em Repositórios Institucionais: O Caso do INESC TEC
A progressiva transformação das práticas científicas, impulsionada pelo desenvolvimento das novas Tecnologias de Informação e Comunicação (TIC), têm possibilitado aumentar o acesso à informação, caminhando gradualmente para uma abertura do ciclo de pesquisa. Isto permitirá resolver a longo prazo uma adversidade que se tem colocado aos investigadores, que passa pela existência de barreiras que limitam as condições de acesso, sejam estas geográficas ou financeiras. Apesar da produção científica ser dominada, maioritariamente, por grandes editoras comerciais, estando sujeita às regras por estas impostas, o Movimento do Acesso Aberto cuja primeira declaração pública, a Declaração de Budapeste (BOAI), é de 2002, vem propor alterações significativas que beneficiam os autores e os leitores. Este Movimento vem a ganhar importância em Portugal desde 2003, com a constituição do primeiro repositório institucional a nível nacional. Os repositórios institucionais surgiram como uma ferramenta de divulgação da produção científica de uma instituição, com o intuito de permitir abrir aos resultados da investigação, quer antes da publicação e do próprio processo de arbitragem (preprint), quer depois (postprint), e, consequentemente, aumentar a visibilidade do trabalho desenvolvido por um investigador e a respetiva instituição. O estudo apresentado, que passou por uma análise das políticas de copyright das publicações científicas mais relevantes do INESC TEC, permitiu não só perceber que as editoras adotam cada vez mais políticas que possibilitam o auto-arquivo das publicações em repositórios institucionais, como também que existe todo um trabalho de sensibilização a percorrer, não só para os investigadores, como para a instituição e toda a sociedade. A produção de um conjunto de recomendações, que passam pela implementação de uma política institucional que incentive o auto-arquivo das publicações desenvolvidas no âmbito institucional no repositório, serve como mote para uma maior valorização da produção científica do INESC TEC.The progressive transformation of scientific practices, driven by the development of new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), which made it possible to increase access to information, gradually moving towards an opening of the research cycle. This opening makes it possible to resolve, in the long term, the adversity that has been placed on researchers, which involves the existence of barriers that limit access conditions, whether geographical or financial. Although large commercial publishers predominantly dominate scientific production and subject it to the rules imposed by them, the Open Access movement whose first public declaration, the Budapest Declaration (BOAI), was in 2002, proposes significant changes that benefit the authors and the readers. This Movement has gained importance in Portugal since 2003, with the constitution of the first institutional repository at the national level. Institutional repositories have emerged as a tool for disseminating the scientific production of an institution to open the results of the research, both before publication and the preprint process and postprint, increase the visibility of work done by an investigator and his or her institution. The present study, which underwent an analysis of the copyright policies of INESC TEC most relevant scientific publications, allowed not only to realize that publishers are increasingly adopting policies that make it possible to self-archive publications in institutional repositories, all the work of raising awareness, not only for researchers but also for the institution and the whole society. The production of a set of recommendations, which go through the implementation of an institutional policy that encourages the self-archiving of the publications developed in the institutional scope in the repository, serves as a motto for a greater appreciation of the scientific production of INESC TEC
Automatic generation of software interfaces for supporting decisionmaking processes. An application of domain engineering & machine learning
[EN] Data analysis is a key process to foster knowledge generation in particular domains
or fields of study. With a strong informative foundation derived from the analysis of
collected data, decision-makers can make strategic choices with the aim of obtaining
valuable benefits in their specific areas of action. However, given the steady growth
of data volumes, data analysis needs to rely on powerful tools to enable knowledge
extraction.
Information dashboards offer a software solution to analyze large volumes of
data visually to identify patterns and relations and make decisions according to the
presented information. But decision-makers may have different goals and,
consequently, different necessities regarding their dashboards. Moreover, the variety
of data sources, structures, and domains can hamper the design and implementation
of these tools.
This Ph.D. Thesis tackles the challenge of improving the development process of
information dashboards and data visualizations while enhancing their quality and
features in terms of personalization, usability, and flexibility, among others.
Several research activities have been carried out to support this thesis. First, a
systematic literature mapping and review was performed to analyze different
methodologies and solutions related to the automatic generation of tailored
information dashboards. The outcomes of the review led to the selection of a modeldriven
approach in combination with the software product line paradigm to deal with
the automatic generation of information dashboards.
In this context, a meta-model was developed following a domain engineering
approach. This meta-model represents the skeleton of information dashboards and
data visualizations through the abstraction of their components and features and has
been the backbone of the subsequent generative pipeline of these tools.
The meta-model and generative pipeline have been tested through their
integration in different scenarios, both theoretical and practical. Regarding the theoretical dimension of the research, the meta-model has been successfully
integrated with other meta-model to support knowledge generation in learning
ecosystems, and as a framework to conceptualize and instantiate information
dashboards in different domains.
In terms of the practical applications, the focus has been put on how to transform
the meta-model into an instance adapted to a specific context, and how to finally
transform this later model into code, i.e., the final, functional product. These practical
scenarios involved the automatic generation of dashboards in the context of a Ph.D.
Programme, the application of Artificial Intelligence algorithms in the process, and
the development of a graphical instantiation platform that combines the meta-model
and the generative pipeline into a visual generation system.
Finally, different case studies have been conducted in the employment and
employability, health, and education domains. The number of applications of the
meta-model in theoretical and practical dimensions and domains is also a result itself.
Every outcome associated to this thesis is driven by the dashboard meta-model, which
also proves its versatility and flexibility when it comes to conceptualize, generate, and
capture knowledge related to dashboards and data visualizations
Integration of Virtual Programming Lab in a process of teaching programming EduScrum based
Programming teaching is a key factor for technological evolution. The efficient way to learn to program is by programming and hard training and thus feedback is a crucial factor in the success and flow of the process.
This work aims to analyse the potential use of VPL in the teaching process of programming in higher education. It also intends to verify whether, with VPL, it is possible to make students learning more effective and autonomous, with a reduction in the volume of assessment work by teachers. Experiments were carried out with the VPL, in the practical-laboratory classes of a curricular unit of initiation to programming in a higher education institution.
The results supported by the responses to surveys, point to the validity of the model
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