Progressor: Personalized visual access to programming problems

This paper presents Progressor, a visualization of open student models intended to increase the student's motivation to progress on educational content. The system visualizes not only the user's own model, but also the peers' models. It allows sorting the peers' models using a number of criteria, including the overall progress and the progress on a specific topic. Also, in this paper we present results of a classroom study confirming our hypothesis that by showing a student the peers' models and ranking them by progress it is possible to increase the student's motivation to compete and progress in e-learning systems. © 2011 IEEE

QuizMap: Open social student modeling and adaptive navigation support with TreeMaps

In this paper, we present a novel approach to integrate social adaptive navigation support for self-assessment questions with an open student model using QuizMap, a TreeMap-based interface. By exposing student model in contrast to student peers and the whole class, QuizMap attempts to provide social guidance and increase student performance. The paper explains the nature of the QuizMap approach and its implementation in the context of self-assessment questions for Java programming. It also presents the design of a semester-long classroom study that we ran to evaluate QuizMap and reports the evaluation results. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

Open social student modeling: Visualizing student models with parallel introspectiveviews

This paper explores a social extension of open student modeling that we call open social student modeling. We present a specific implementation of this approach that uses parallel IntrospectiveViews to visualize models representing student progress with QuizJET parameterized self-assessment questions for Java programming. The interface allows visualizing not only the student's own model, but also displaying parallel views on the models of their peers and the cumulative model of the entire class or group. The system was evaluated in a semester-long classroom study. While the use of the system was non-mandatory, the parallel IntrospectiveViews interface caused an increase in all of the usage parameters in comparison to a regular portal-based access, which allowed the student to achieve a higher success rate in answering the questions. The collected data offer some evidence that a combination of traditional personalized guidance with social guidance was more effective than personalized guidance alone. © 2011 Springer-Verlag

Social design network: the integration of social software in industrial design education

Like the mobile phone before it, it could be said that social networking via social software has transformed how people, or at least the under 35‟s communicate. As far back as 2005 in the US around 85% of University students used Facebook, a figure closely matched here in the UK (Kirschner, 2010). Although this figure has fluctuated of late, the overall trend is still on an upward curve. The media famously called this revolution Web 2.0 (O‟Reilly 2005), where due to technical advances in hardware and software, larger amounts of data, particularly images and video can be freely exchanged quickly and effectively over the internet. Social software as a whole has already been well-documented, and depending on how you see it, is either all the rage or so 2008 (Underwood, 2009) and applications such as wikis, blogs and social networking sites are increasingly being used in the education domain and have received widespread attention (Schroeder, 2010). Less well documented is the application of social software specifically in relation to industrial design and product design educatio

The impact of social software in product design higher education

It is difficult to ignore the impact that Web 2.0 and the subsequent social software revolution has had on society in general, and young people in particular. Information is exchanged and interpreted extremely quickly and in ways that were not imagined 10 years ago. Universities are struggling to keep up with this new technology, with outdated intranet systems and limited research into its application within the higher education sector. The aim of this paper is to firstly develop a greater understanding of the use of social software by students in product design education and the impact of blogs, wiki’s, Facebook groups, Flickr images, Myspace pages, RSS feeds, Tweets and YouTube video posts on their learning processes. The research for the project involved a number of discrete methods over a four year period, initially involving a review of the technological platforms and the e-learning software available to product design academic staff and students and the effect this has had thus far on teaching practices. Product design academic staff were then asked to rank existing platforms against a number of criteria. This was followed by the examination of case studies of successful applications of social software within the writer’s institution with a view to establishing if these technologies could be better integrated into higher education and current pedagogic practices in order to provide an enhanced learning experience for the student product designer. The first phase of the research culminated in a literature review to establish the state of play in the wider academic community and beyond. This preliminary research fed into action research which consisted of the formulation and design of a blog and information website for the institutions product design programmes. Semi-structured interviews were then conducted to establish the views and opinions of the blog from key stakeholders including university marketing directors, academics and the student cohort. Questionnaires followed so that qualitative and quantitative data could be analysed. The paper concludes with a description of the perceived validity and possible future developments for the blog and social software as a whole in the product design higher education sector

Les serious games, dispositifs de communication persuasive : quels processus socio-cognitifs et socio-affectifs dans les usages ? Quels effets sur les joueurs ? Etat des recherches et nouvelles perspectives

International audienceL'article s'intéresse aux serious games persuasifs qui invitent les joueurs à résoudre des « problèmes ludiques » dans le but de provoquer chez eux des changements psychosociaux et comportementaux. Pour combler un manque dans la littérature, il propose une synthèse des recherches empiriques et expérimentales sur les processus socio-cognitifs et socio-affectifs qui se développent lors des usages des SG et qui sous-tendent la modification des comportements, des attitudes, affects et cognitions. Cette synthèse théorique est articulée autour de trois grands modèles en interaction : l'apprentissage opérant, l'apprentissage social par modelage et la médiation affective par le flow. Nous ouvrons également de nouvelles pistes de recherches parmi lesquelles un quatrième modèle basé sur la communication engageant

Embodied cognition as an inclusive approach for special educational needs

“There was a time when mental meant nonphysical, but we are past that belief. Mental processes and states are physical products of the brain. "(Le Doux, 2015, p.170). The time has come to rethink education in the light of new scientific discoveries. The proposal for an approach to an inclusive ECS-based didactics doesn’t want to be final or prescriptive, and probably it cannot even be defined as a real approach. Our attempt is to systematize some interdisciplinary contributions in order to provide insights for the planning of more effective training courses, able to facilitate learning and participation processes in all students. The ECS approach is in line with the existing models and theories of development and learning, based on a complex psychodynamic and neuroscientific anthropology, which identifies the construct of neurodiversity and casts an eyes over the Special Educational Needs

The Impact of Social Software in Product Design Higher Education

It is difficult to ignore the impact that Web 2.0 and the subsequent social software revolution has had on society in general, and young people in particular. Information is exchanged and interpreted extremely quickly and in ways that were not imagined 10 years ago. Universities are struggling to keep up with this new technology, with outdated intranet systems and limited research into its application within the higher education sector. The aim of this paper is to firstly develop a greater understanding of the use of social software by students in product design education and the impact of blogs, wiki’s, Facebook groups, Flickr images, Myspace pages, RSS feeds, Tweets and YouTube video posts on their learning processes. The research for the project involved a number of discrete methods over a four year period, initially involving a review of the technological platforms and the e-learning software available to product design academic staff and students and the effect this has had thus far on teaching practices. Product design academic staff were then asked to rank existing platforms against a number of criteria. This was followed by the examination of case studies of successful applications of social software within the writer’s institution with a view to establishing if these technologies could be better integrated into higher education and current pedagogic practices in order to provide an enhanced learning experience for the student product designer. The first phase of the research culminated in a literature review to establish the state of play in the wider academic community and beyond. This preliminary research fed into action research which consisted of the formulation and design of a blog and information website for the institutions product design programmes. Semi-structured interviews were then conducted to establish the views and opinions of the blog from key stakeholders including university marketing directors, academics and the student cohort. Questionnaires followed so that qualitative and quantitative data could be analysed. The paper concludes with a description of the perceived validity and possible future developments for the blog and social software as a whole in the product design higher education sector

An Information Technology Instrument to Enhance the Development of Abstract Thinking for Object-Oriented Programming

Published ThesisObject-oriented Programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm that offers a more natural and intuitive way to describe, for example, instances of variables by relating them to real world objects with attributes through the creation of classes and their associated instances, called objects. The creation of classes, instantiation of objects, inheritance of other classes and composition are significant abstract topics in OOP that distinguish it drastically from its counterpart, i.e. structured programming. OOP is very abstract in nature and requires abstract cognitive skills, similar to the skills needed to perform well in mathematics, for the proper comprehension of the theoretical constituents associated with OOP as well as the practical application thereof. Several programming languages that implement the OOP paradigm, for example Java, facilitate class creation via abstract data types (ADT), which further points to the abstract nature of this paradigm. The main objectives of this research were to: determine the theoretical concepts related to abstract thinking ability in the human brain and how it is stimulated; determine what evaluation instruments related to assessing abstract thinking ability exist currently and of what an IT software-tool aiming to develop abstract thinking ability should comprise; determine the development of a software tool that will stimulate and assist the development of abstract thinking abilities within the users thereof; provide evidence regarding the effects of such an intervention on the abstract thinking abilities of the users thereof and on that of the academic performance of the users thereof in OOP. To develop such an intervention, the researcher investigated available literature, employed a registered psychologist and incorporated available games, exercises, and questions to bring out the full potential of the working intervention. An experimental case-study research design was used for this project. The GSAT assessment tool formed part of the evaluation tools with the aim to evaluate both the non-verbal (abstract reasoning) as well as the verbal skills of a control and an experimental group. The mixed method methodology, consisting of both quantitative and qualitative research approaches, was used to conduct this research study. Furthermore, the resulting intervention that was developed and deployed as part of this study includes the functionality to data collection, which was analysed, deliberated upon and presented. The objective was to prove the hypothesis that: A custom software tool, designed, developed, introduced and deployed, specifically to stimulate certain cognitive processes in the human brain, has the ability to improve students’ abstract thinking ability and a direct effect on students’ performance in OOP when used for a determined period. The data of the pre and post-psychometric assessments indicated measurable improvement in the abstract thinking abilities of the experimental group when compared to that of the control group. Subsequently, the institutional assessment results regarding OOP supported this data and indicated improvement in the academic performance of the members of the experimental group in OOP as a subject, when compared to that of the members of the control group. The study concluded with the presentation of a set of guidelines for developers who aim to develop interactive Information Technology tools to stimulate abstract thinking abilities within the users thereof