A Multiple Intelligences Approach to Teaching Number Systems

The Theory of Multiple Intelligences has become quite widely accepted and it has been shown that learning can be improved by addressing the various intelligences

Teaching Abstraction

[EN] Many technical disciplines require abstraction skills, such as the ability to deduce general rules and principles from sets of examples. These skills are the basis for creating solutions that address a whole class of similar problems, rather than merely focusing a single specific instance. Experience shows that many freshmen students are ill equipped with these skills. Therefore, we developed an intervention that systematically teaches abstraction skills to students, and applied our approach to a cohort of freshmen students in computer science.Böttcher, A.; Schlierkamp, K.; Thurner, V.; Zehetmeier, D. (2016). Teaching Abstraction. En 2nd. International conference on higher education advances (HEAD'16). Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 357-364. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAD16.2015.2770OCS35736

A Web-Integrated Environment for Component-Based Software Reasoning

This thesis presents the Web IDE, a web-integrated environment for component-based software reasoning. The Web IDE is specifically tailored to emphasize the relationships among various components in component-based software engineering (CBSE) and to facilitate reasoning. It allows students to use RESOLVE, a component-based, integrated specification and programming language, to build components and systems, providing real-time feedback that can be used to reason about the correctness of their component implementations. Real-time interaction and relationship focused component presentation reinforces CBSE and reasoning principles in a way not possible with traditional programming exercises and file management systems. The Web IDE has gone through several stages of development, getting feedback from users and adding new functionality at each step. It has kept pace with web browser development by incorporating bowser features, such as the file API and local storage, to provide enhanced functionality to users. Several undergraduate software engineering courses at Clemson and elsewhere have successfully used the Web IDE for both reasoning and team-based component development exercises, demonstrating the robust and useful nature of the Web IDE

La asignatura Sistemas Operativos I en el 2mil2

El artículo expone algunas ideas sobre cuales deben ser los contenidos y enfoque adecuados para la teoría de una asignatura de introducción a los sistemas operativos. Esta concepción de la asignatura pretende satisfacer las necesidades de formación en la materia que, en mi opinión, tienen nuestros alumnos, se basa principalmente en la experiencia acumulada impartiendo diferentes asignaturas sobre la disciplina, y toma en consideración los avances producidos en Sistemas Operativos en los últimos años

A Human-Centric System for Symbolic Reasoning About Code

While testing and tracing on specific input values are useful starting points for students to understand program behavior, ultimately students need to be able to reason rigorously and logically about the correctness of their code on all inputs without having to run the code. Symbolic reasoning is reasoning abstractly about code using arbitrary symbolic input values, as opposed to specific concrete inputs. The overarching goal of this research is to help students learn symbolic reasoning, beginning with code containing simple assertions as a foundation and proceeding to code involving data abstractions and loop invariants. Toward achieving this goal, this research has employed multiple experiments across five years at three institutions: a large, public university, an HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities), and an HSI (Hispanic Serving Institution). A total of 862 students participated across all variations of the study. Interactive, online tools can enhance student learning because they can provide targeted help that would be prohibitively expensive without automation. The research experiments employ two such symbolic reasoning tools that had been developed earlier and a newly designed human-centric reasoning system (HCRS). The HCRS is a first step in building a generalized tutor that achieves a level of resolution necessary to identify difficulties and suggest appropriate interventions. The experiments show the value of tools in pinpointing and classifying difficulties in learning symbolic reasoning, as well as in learning design-by-contract assertions and applying them to develop loop invariants for code involving objects. Statistically significant results include the following. Students are able to learn symbolic reasoning with the aid of instruction and an online tool. Motivation improves student perception and attitude towards symbolic reasoning. Tool usage improves student performance on symbolic reasoning, their explanations of the larger purpose of code segments, and self-efficacy for all subpopulations

A review and assessment of novice learning tools for problem solving and program development

There is a great demand for the development of novice learning tools to supplement classroom instruction in the areas of problem solving and program development. Research in the area of pedagogy, the psychology of programming, human-computer interaction, and cognition have provided valuable input to the development of new methodologies, paradigms, programming languages, and novice learning tools to answer this demand. Based on the cognitive needs of novices, it is possible to postulate a set of characteristics that should comprise the components an effective novice-learning tool. This thesis will discover these characteristics and provide recommendations for the development of new learning tools. This will be accomplished with a review of the challenges that novices face, an in-depth discussion on modem learning tools and the challenges that they address, and the identification and discussion of the vital characteristics that constitute an effective learning tool based on these tools and personal ideas

Uni-Prover: A Universal Automated Prover for Specificationally Rich Languages

Formal software verification systems must be designed to adapt to growth in the scope and complexity of software, driven by expanding capabilities of computer hardware and domain of potential usage. They must provide specification languages that are flexible and rich enough to allow software developers to write precise and comprehensible specifications for a full spectrum of object-based software components. Rich specification languages allow for arbitrary extensions to the library of mathematical theories, and critically, verification of programs with such specifications require a universal automated prover. Most existing verification systems either incorporate specification languages limited to first-order logic, which lacks the richness necessary to write adequate specifications, or provide automated provers covering only a fixed collection of mathematical theories, which lack the compass to specify and verify sophisticated object-based software. This dissertation presents an overall design of Uni-Prover, a universal automated prover for atomic sequents to verify software specified with rich languages. Such a prover is a necessary element of any adequate automated verification system of the future. The design contains components to accommodate changes or upgrades that may happen. The congruence class registry at the center of Uni-Prover handles all core manipulations necessary to verify programs, and it includes a multi-level organization for effective searching of the registry. The full functional behavior of the registry component is described mathematically, and a prototype implementation is given. Additionally, the contiguous instantiation strategy, a strategy that requires neither user-supplied heuristics nor triggers when instantiating universally quantified theorems in any theory, is detailed to minimize verification steps by avoiding the proliferation of sequents in the instantiation process

Uma ferramenta para auxiliar no ensino de estruturas de dados como tipo de dado abstrato

Orientador : Beatriz Mascia DaltriniTese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Eletrica e de ComputaçãoDoutorad

Proceedings of the RESOLVE Workshop 2002

Proceedings of the RESOLVE Workshop 200