Teaching Programming and Design-by-Contract

This paper summarizes the experience of teaching an introductory course to programming by using a correctness by construction approach at Innopolis University, Russian Federation. In this paper we claim that division in beginner and advanced groups improves the learning outcomes, present the discussion and the data that support the claim.Comment: 21th International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Learnin

Vision systems with the human in the loop

The emerging cognitive vision paradigm deals with vision systems that apply machine learning and automatic reasoning in order to learn from what they perceive. Cognitive vision systems can rate the relevance and consistency of newly acquired knowledge, they can adapt to their environment and thus will exhibit high robustness. This contribution presents vision systems that aim at flexibility and robustness. One is tailored for content-based image retrieval, the others are cognitive vision systems that constitute prototypes of visual active memories which evaluate, gather, and integrate contextual knowledge for visual analysis. All three systems are designed to interact with human users. After we will have discussed adaptive content-based image retrieval and object and action recognition in an office environment, the issue of assessing cognitive systems will be raised. Experiences from psychologically evaluated human-machine interactions will be reported and the promising potential of psychologically-based usability experiments will be stressed

Assessment in anatomy

From an educational perspective, a very important problem is that of assessment, for establishing competency and as selection criterion for different professional purposes. Among the issues to be addressed are the methods of assessment and/or the type of tests, the range of scores, or the definition of honour degrees. The methods of assessment comprise such different forms such as the spotter examination, short or long essay questions, short answer questions, true-false questions, single best answer questions, multiple choice questions, extended match questions, or several forms of oral approaches such as viva voce examinations.Knowledge about this is important when assessing different educational objectives; assessing educational objectives from the cognitive domain will need different assessment instruments than assessing educational objectives from the psychomotor domain or even the affective domain.There is no golden rule, which type of assessment instrument or format will be the best in measuring certain educational objectives; but one has to respect that there is no assessment instrument, which is capable to assess educational objectives from all domains of educational objectives.Whereas the first two or three levels of progress can be assessed by well-structured written examinations such as multiple choice questions, or multiple answer questions, other and higher level progresses need other instruments, such as a thesis, or direct observation.This is no issue at all in assessment tools, where the students are required to select the appropriate answer from a given set of choices, as in true false questions, MCQ, EMQ, etc. The standard setting is done in these cases by the selection of the true answer

Exploring over the Presumed Identity of Emerging Technology

While scientists are stepping up their efforts to develop new technologies, the ability of firms to determine the value of their technologies by identifying potential applications has become a major challenge. This article focuses on a particular phase of technology development: the emergence phase. When a promising new technology first sees the light of day in a fundamental research laboratory, its target markets often seem plentiful but are ill-defined. The inability to produce prototypes or to identify potential users makes it difficult to explore potential commercial applications. On the basis of four micro-nanotechnologies case-studies conducted within a multi-partner innovation project, this article aims to theoretically explain why the identification of applications from emerging technologies is not a trivial problem. That research analyses how technologists and non-experts interact during creative investigations on new applications. It shows that the technologists are victims of a form of cognitive fixation effect. Indeed, their beliefs and activities are guided by a stable cognitive representation of their technology: the presumed identity of technology. Based on a recent design framework, C-K Design Theory, the technological exploration process followed in our four case-studies is modeled and mechanisms to dismantle the presumed identity and to design an extended identity of technology are provided.management of emerging technology; technological exploration; identity of technology; C-K Design Theory, presumed identity; technology-push; technological innovation

RFCs, MOOs, LMSs: Assorted Educational Devices\ud

This paper discusses implicit social consequences of four basic internet protocols. The results are then related to the field of computer-assisted teaching. An educational on-line community is described and compared to the emerging standard of web-based learning management.\u

Main directions of innovative transformations in higher education

The article highlights the main directions of innovative transformations in pedagogy. The methodological concept of research based on the following provisions is highlighted: implementation of a complex of approaches of a scientific and methodological direction in the professional training of future specialists; organization of the main directions of innovative transformations in higher education; determination of the principles of functioning of the educational process; determination of essential properties and features of the studied object of innovative transformations in higher education; determination of prospects for the development of the main directions of innovative transformations in higher education. The main directions of innovative transformations in higher education have been clarified. The essence of the content of innovative pedagogical technologies was considered, and the essential features and ways of development of pedagogical innovations were listed, divided into intensive and extensive. For the purpose of effective training of education seekers, the conditions for their innovative activities have been formulated. Distance learning is presented in the article as a set of information technologies that students need to: ensure the volume of material for their competitiveness in the labor market; for use in the learning process of interactive interaction of students and teachers; to enable students to work independently in order to master the material; for assessment during training and monitoring of their knowledge and skills