BEAT: An Open-Source Web-Based Open-Science Platform

With the increased interest in computational sciences, machine learning (ML), pattern recognition (PR) and big data, governmental agencies, academia and manufacturers are overwhelmed by the constant influx of new algorithms and techniques promising improved performance, generalization and robustness. Sadly, result reproducibility is often an overlooked feature accompanying original research publications, competitions and benchmark evaluations. The main reasons behind such a gap arise from natural complications in research and development in this area: the distribution of data may be a sensitive issue; software frameworks are difficult to install and maintain; Test protocols may involve a potentially large set of intricate steps which are difficult to handle. Given the raising complexity of research challenges and the constant increase in data volume, the conditions for achieving reproducible research in the domain are also increasingly difficult to meet. To bridge this gap, we built an open platform for research in computational sciences related to pattern recognition and machine learning, to help on the development, reproducibility and certification of results obtained in the field. By making use of such a system, academic, governmental or industrial organizations enable users to easily and socially develop processing toolchains, re-use data, algorithms, workflows and compare results from distinct algorithms and/or parameterizations with minimal effort. This article presents such a platform and discusses some of its key features, uses and limitations. We overview a currently operational prototype and provide design insights.Comment: References to papers published on the platform incorporate

CS Circles: An In-Browser Python Course for Beginners

Computer Science Circles is a free programming website for beginners that is designed to be fun, easy to use, and accessible to the broadest possible audience. We teach Python since it is simple yet powerful, and the course content is well-structured but written in plain language. The website has over one hundred exercises in thirty lesson pages, plus special features to help teachers support their students. It is available in both English and French. We discuss the philosophy behind the course and its design, we describe how it was implemented, and we give statistics on its use.Comment: To appear in SIGCSE 201

A Framework to Evaluate Software Developer’s Productivity The VALORTIA Project

Currently, there is a lack in companies developing software in relation to assessing their staff’s productivity before executing software projects, with the aim of improving effectiveness and efficiency. QuEF (Quality Evaluation Framework) is a framework that allows defining quality management tasks based on a model. The main purpose of this framework is twofold: improve an entity’s continuous quality, and given a context, decide between a set of entity’s instances on the most appropriate one. Thus, the aim of this paper is to make this framework available to evaluate productivity of professionals along software development and select the most appropriate experts to implement the suggested project. For this goal, Valortia platform, capable of carrying out this task by following the QuEF framework guidelines, is designed. Valortia is a platform to certify users' knowledge on a specific area and centralize all certification management in its model by means of providing protocols and methods for a suitable management, improving efficiency and effectiveness, reducing cost and ensuring continuous quality.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2013-46928-C3-3-

Educational Complexity and Professional Development: Teachers\u27 Need for Metacognitive Awareness

The study was designed to investigate technology and engineering teachers’ metacognitive awareness during specific established teacher practices. The study had a sample size of 18. There were six participants in three groups. Group 1 consisted of teachers that actively participated in Transforming Teaching through Implementing Inquiry (T2I2) professional development program. Group 2 consisted of teachers that were selected for but did not actively participate in T2I2 professional development system. Group 3 consisted of teachers that completed the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards professional development program. To measure the metacognitive awareness of each group, a semi-structured open-ended interview was used. The interviews were analyzed by two independent coders using a coding rubric. The coded interviews established the phenomenological metacognitive awareness of each group

General Education Requirements: Fontbonne Catalog, 2018-2019

This catalog reflects an institution that is devoted to upholding its new, self-identified value of the common good. The addition of the Mission Core classes and restructuring of the GERs that took place in 2015 fundamentally changed how the program worked. A system that relies on Mission core being the “heart” of the GER program with “Pillars” of knowledge supporting the “structure” of Fontbonne is an important change. The institution is now focused on bringing its own version of a liberal arts education to its students rather than a more standardized one, coming close to finalizing the vision started in the 1970s.https://griffinshare.fontbonne.edu/gen-ed/1004/thumbnail.jp

Innovating Pedagogy 2015: Open University Innovation Report 4

This series of reports explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment for an interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation. This fourth report proposes ten innovations that are already in currency but have not yet had a profound influence on education. To produce it, a group of academics at the Institute of Educational Technology in The Open University collaborated with researchers from the Center for Technology in Learning at SRI International. We proposed a long list of new educational terms, theories, and practices. We then pared these down to ten that have the potential to provoke major shifts in educational practice, particularly in post-school education. Lastly, we drew on published and unpublished writings to compile the ten sketches of new pedagogies that might transform education. These are summarised below in an approximate order of immediacy and timescale to widespread implementation

Pushing the horizons of student teacher supervision: Can a Bug-in-Ear system be an effective plug-and-play tool for a novice electronic-coach to use in student teacher supervision?

The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education has called for strengthening teacher preparation by incorporating more fieldwork. Supervision with effective instructional feedback is an essential component of meaningful fieldwork, and immediate feedback has proven more efficacious than delayed feedback. Rock and her colleagues have developed the wireless Bug-in-Ear (BIE) system to provide immediate, online feedback from a remote location (electronic coaching or e-coaching), and they have pioneered the use of BIE e-coaching (BIE2 coaching) in coaching teachers in graduate education. Other research has also documented successful use of the BIE system with teachers. This case study explored the use of the BIE tool for undergraduate student teacher supervision in the hands of a novice BIE2 coach, including the ease with which BIE equipment can be set up and operated by a novice coach and naïve users in the classroom. The findings provide support for the use of BIE2 coaching as tool for undergraduate student teacher supervision, based on the changed behaviors during reading instruction exhibited by two out of three student teacher participants. Consistently increased use of targeted instructional behaviors was seen after just five coached lessons, and also seen in follow-up observations during which no coaching was provided. Student teachers reported that benefits far outweighed drawbacks in BIE2 coaching, but they found it challenging to simultaneously monitor elementary pupils and BIE feedback. The experience of the researcher showed that BIE2 coaching could be accomplished by a novice electronic-coach with significant previous coaching experience, but that additional training on the use of concise feedback language and affirming vs. corrective prompting may be needed for less experienced coaches. While this case study documents the experience of only one coach, and only three student teachers all working in homogenous, suburban classroom sites, BIE2 coaching showed great promise as a student teacher supervision tool. Future research on training for e-coaches, determining which undergraduates will respond to BIE2 coaching, and discerning patterns of responsiveness to coaching are called for

Research and practice on training mode of applied talents for electrical engineering majors in universities

The training of applied talents focuses on students’ innovation ability and engineering practice ability, which requires electrical engineering teachers to fully embody the integration of theoretical knowledge and engineering practice in their teaching. In the teaching reform work, teachers should pay attention to optimize the teaching Settings, starting from two aspects of theory and practice, to promote students to obtain more knowledge of electricity, eff ectively develop students’ application level of electric electronic technology, and help students develop comprehensively. Colleges and universities should pay more attention to the training of application-oriented talents and train more qualifi ed talents for the development of social production. Based on this, this paper analyzes the practical strategies for the training mode of applied talents for electrical engineering majors in colleges and universities, in order to provide references for educators

USB Learning Module

In Universiti Teknologi Petronas (UTP), it is essential for Electrical and Electronic engineering students to grasp the basis of C programming. Quite often, programming is taught through lectures and the lab exercises are more computer science related rather than Electrical and Electronic. Thus the main objective of this project is to produce course materials to aid in the teaching of programming in UTP. The main feature of these course materials will be a PIC microcontroller board and several interface modules. The PIC microcontroller board communicates with the PC via the USB port. Example worksheets are also produced to facilitate the teaching and learning process