Online Programming Judge System (UOJ)

This research conducts a study to build an Online Programming Judge system with a mechanism to generate test cases automatically using Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm. The system has the function to judge programming code by evaluating the output that the program produced. Based on the problem that it is time consuming for lecturers to manually compile, run and verify every student programs for judging. Moreover, they also need to define test cases for different programming exercises in order to judge student‘s code. The system is built on the purpose to assist lecturers in Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS in judging code submitted from students and generate test cases for every programming exercise automatically. It also helps UTP students practice and enhancing their programming skills. In this research, details of judging process are explored. Moreover, the mechanism of test cases generation using PSO algorithm is deeply analyzed. The study would focus on the primary structure of PSO and the proposed fitness function to calculate fitness value for each generated test case. There are comparisons between manual and automatic PSO test case generation results that would be conducted to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed method. Finally, conclusion of current results and recommendation for future development are also stated

The Effectiveness of Producing a Blended Learning Environment Based on the Programming of an Educational Robot to Develop Problem-solving Skills in Science for Intermediate School Students in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

This study aimed to examine the effect of producing a Blended learning environment based on the programming of an educational robot to develop problem-solving skills in Science for intermediate school students in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The sample of the study consists of   (60) intermediate school students. A total of Four research questions and hypotheses were used in the study. A pre-post-test design was used to achieve the study's objectives in which special treatment was given to the experimental group, whereas no treatment was given to the control group. SPSS was used as a statistical tool to examine the present research results. The study's results proved the effectiveness of a Blended learning environment based on the programming of an educational robot in developing problem-solving skills in Science for intermediate school students in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, as the experimental group showed a better performance in the post-test than the control group. Moreover, the correlation test results indicated a significant positive relationship between the Blended learning environment based on the programming of educational robot performance and students' developing problem-solving skills in Science.   &nbsp

Analysis of the use of automatic judges in computer programming classes in vocational education

The goal of this thesis is to analyse the use of automatic judges in the teaching of Computer Programming in Vocational Training programs, in a sample of secondary schools in Catalonia and Spain. We review the academic literature on automatic judges and describe their history and the different services that are currently available. Through surveys to teachers and students from Vocational Training centres, we have collected information about the tools in use. We classify twelve of them according to features that we found to be relevant to the teachers we surveyed. Using the collected data, we study the reasons in favour and against automatic judges, as well as the level of familiarity of active teachers with those tools. We identify some discrepancies between teacher's expectations and actual experiences of teachers who have adopted them. We use students' responses to derive statistics about their satisfaction, and to detect differences in the attitude of those who use judges in class and those who don't with respect to the subject of programming. In order to detect any effects on learning, we use three Bebras challenges to evaluate the competence of algorithmic and computational thinking. No difference in the ability of students to complete these challenges has been observed, but a difference in how willing they are to work on them has been detected. The effect is contrary to the one originally hypothesised, which leads to some interesting questions for further study

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

An efficient constructive e-alignment for onsite-online learning

This paper aims at proposing an efficient constructive electronic-based alignment (CeA) to promote self-learning amongst the students via e-learning environment where e-lectures/e-tutorials are developed followed by e-assessments. The CeA is developed based on behaviourism, cognitivism, humanism and constructivism to ensure the students’ learning does take place in the e-learning environment. Considering engineering related courses at higher education, it has been shown that the decline in mathematical background of the students causes difficulties in accomplishing the quantitative curricula. A well-designed constructive alignment is thus necessary to support active learning of the students having different background. Onsite tutorials and seminars may be helpful; however, they may not be very effective, especially in a large-sized and/or high-diversity class. Therefore, in this paper, the proposed CeA not only helps the onsite students strengthen their knowledge but also provides the offsite students with various kinds of learning supplement. Particularly, a case study is presented to show the potential impact of the CeA on both onsite and online learning of mathematics for postgraduate students in both telecommunications engineering and computer networks

Music Learning with Massive Open Online Courses

Steels, Luc et al.-- Editors: Luc SteelsMassive Open Online Courses, known as MOOCs, have arisen as the logical consequence of marrying long-distance education with the web and social media. MOOCs were confidently predicted by advanced thinkers decades ago. They are undoubtedly here to stay, and provide a valuable resource for learners and teachers alike. This book focuses on music as a domain of knowledge, and has three objectives: to introduce the phenomenon of MOOCs; to present ongoing research into making MOOCs more effective and better adapted to the needs of teachers and learners; and finally to present the first steps towards 'social MOOCs’, which support the creation of learning communities in which interactions between learners go beyond correcting each other's assignments. Social MOOCs try to mimic settings for humanistic learning, such as workshops, small choirs, or groups participating in a Hackathon, in which students aided by somebody acting as a tutor learn by solving problems and helping each other. The papers in this book all discuss steps towards social MOOCs; their foundational pedagogy, platforms to create learning communities, methods for assessment and social feedback and concrete experiments. These papers are organized into five sections: background; the role of feedback; platforms for learning communities; experiences with social MOOCs; and looking backwards and looking forward. Technology is not a panacea for the enormous challenges facing today's educators and learners, but this book will be of interest to all those striving to find more effective and humane learning opportunities for a larger group of students.Funded by the European Commission's OpenAIRE2020 project.Peer reviewe

Exploring the landscape of reflection

open4noopenFrison, Daniela; Fedeli, Monica; Tino, Concetta; Minnoni, ErikaFrison, Daniela; Fedeli, Monica; Tino, Concetta; Minnoni, Erik

Bloom-epistemic and sentiment analysis hierarchical classification in course discussion forums

Online discussion forums are widely used for active textual interaction between lecturers and students, and to see how the students have progressed in a learning process. The objective of this study is to compare appropriate machine-learning models to assess sentiments and Bloom’s epistemic taxonomy based on textual comments in educational discussion forums. The proposed method is called the hierarchical approach of Bloom-Epistemic and Sentiment Analysis (BE-Sent). The research methodology consists of three main steps. The first step is the data collection from the internal discussion forum and YouTube comments of a Web Programming channel. The next step is text preprocessing to annotate the text and clear unimportant words. Furthermore, with the text dataset that has been successfully cleaned, sentiment analysis and epistemic categorization will be done in each sentence of the text. Sentiment analysis is divided into three categories: positive, negative, and neutral. Bloom’s epistemic is divided into six categories: remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. This research has succeeded in producing a course learning subsystem that assesses opinions based on text reviews of discussion forums according to the category of sentiment and epistemic analysis

An efficient constructive e-alignment for onsite-online learning

This paper aims at proposing an efficient constructive electronic-based alignment (CeA) to promote self-learning amongst the students via e-learning environment where e-lectures/e-tutorials are developed followed by e-assessments. The CeA is developed based on behaviourism, cognitivism, humanism and constructivism to ensure the students’ learning does take place in the e-learning environment. Considering engineering related courses at higher education, it has been shown that the decline in mathematical background of the students causes difficulties in accomplishing the quantitative curricula. A well-designed constructive alignment is thus necessary to support active learning of the students having different background. Onsite tutorials and seminars may be helpful; however, they may not be very effective, especially in a large-sized and/or high-diversity class. Therefore, in this paper, the proposed CeA not only helps the onsite students strengthen their knowledge but also provides the offsite students with various kinds of learning supplement. Particularly, a case study is presented to show the potential impact of the CeA on both onsite and online learning of mathematics for postgraduate students in both telecommunications engineering and computer networks

The life and times of a learning technology system: the impact of change and evolution

With the inception of the web now being more than 20 years ago, many web-based learning technology systems (LTS) have had a long life and have undergone many changes, both affecting content and infrastructure technologies. A change factor model can capture the various factors causing LTS to change. Methods for change-aware design of LTS have been suggested. The purpose of this investigation is, firstly, to add empirical results to aspects of these models and methods in order to show the relevance of such a change factor model by specifically looking at an LTS that has been developed, maintained and extended over a period of 20 years. Secondly, these results shall be used to develop a conceptual model capturing and assessing the impact of change. A key observation is an unexpectedly high impact of environmental constraints on the LTS, but also new opportunities emerging over time have had dramatic changes as their consequence