Packaging design: learning through fictional cases or real cases? Comparative study of student performance over 8 academic years

Comunicació presentada a EDULEARN2019, 11th International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies (July 1-3, 2019, Palma, Mallorca, Spain).In the practical subjects of the Degrees in Industrial Design students usually apply theoretical knowledge to solve complex cases, but in many occasions these cases are only fictional. However, it is also possible to provide students with cases that respond to real needs, and on many occasions it is the companies that propose them through contests. Numerous experiences endorse the Competition-Based Learning (CBL) as a working methodology that improves the motivation of the students. But it is worth asking to what extent this motivation achieves a significant improvement in student performance. This paper hypothesizes that the performance of industrial design students is higher when they work to solve real cases than when they have to solve fictional cases. To demonstrate it, the average grades obtained during 8 academic years in a subject related to packaging are compared. Between 2011 and 2014, students were presented with a fictional case in which it was necessary to solve a specific need for a new type of packaging. Between 2015 and 2018 a similar exercise was planned, but based on real cases proposed by companies in the sector. In both cases, the exercise was planned during the central weeks of the semester, the students were given a similar period of time to develop them (around 4 weeks), and they were evaluated according to similar criteria. The results of this study show that the orientation of the exercises towards real cases through participation in contests seems to have a slight positive influence on student performance (+3.25%), so it is possible to demonstrate that the incorporation of CBL as a teaching methodology is generally positive for design students, given that it improves both their motivation and the quality of their proposals and has a positive impact on their performance

Construction of scale models in industrial design: the irruption of additive manufacturing. Rubrics proposal for an objective evaluation

Comunicació presentada a EDULEARN2019, 11th International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies (July 1-3, 2019, Palma, Mallorca, Spain).Recent studies corroborate the progressive implementation of Additive Manufacturing technologies (commonly known as 3D printing) in education, demonstrating several advantages. In the field of industrial design, the development of models during the design phase of product design helps designers in training to visualize their proposals. Today, 3D printing and traditional model-making techniques coexist in classrooms. With both techniques it is possible to achieve good results, but when it comes to evaluating them it is not so simple, since both ways of working are different and apparently the same evaluation criteria cannot be used in both cases, which could lead to comparative grievances. This work presents a series of rubrics that can help to evaluate the student's models in an objective way and under equal conditions, independently of the technique used: traditional o 3D printing. In order to do this, we started from a rubric made to evaluate traditional models, which was tested during a couple of academic years in other subject. This rubric was adapted to create a new rubric, which allowed to evaluate models made by 3D printing, looking for equivalent criteria with the previous rubric to guarantee a fair evaluation of both ways of working. The rubrics were tested experimentally in the subject ‘Prototypes: experimental workshop’, taught during the 4th year of the Bachelor's Degree in Industrial Design and Product Development Engineering at the Universitat Jaume I (Spain). Two groups of users assessed each work using these rubrics. The results showed, on the one hand, that both groups found it easy to evaluate the works using these rubrics, and on the other hand, that these rubrics allow for a fairly objective evaluation of the works, since the score obtained by both groups of users was very similar

k-RNN: Extending NN-heuristics for the TSP

In this paper we present an extension of existing Nearest-Neighbor heuristics to an algorithm called k-Repetitive-Nearest-Neighbor. The idea is to start with a tour of k nodes and then perform a Nearest-Neighbor search from there on. After doing this for all permutations of k nodes the result gets selected as the shortest tour found. Experimental results show that for 2-RNN the solutions quality remains relatively stable between about 10% to 40% above the optimum

Petrogenesis of the Northwest Africa 4898 high-Al mare basalt

Northwest Africa (NWA) 4898 is the only low-Ti, high-Al basaltic lunar meteorite yet recognized. It predominantly consists of pyroxene (53.8 vol%) and plagioclase (38.6 vol%). Pyroxene has a wide range of compositions (En_(12–62)Fs_(25–62)Wo_(11–36)), which display a continuous trend from Mg-rich cores toward Ca-rich mantles and then to Fe-rich rims. Plagioclase has relatively restricted compositions (An_(87–96)Or_(0–1)Ab_(4–13)), and was transformed to maskelynite. The REE zoning of all silicate minerals was not significantly modified by shock metamorphism and weathering. Relatively large (up to 1 mm) olivine phenocrysts have homogenous inner parts with Fo ~74 and sharply decrease to 64 within the thin out rims (~30 μm in width). Four types of inclusions with a variety of textures and modal mineralogy were identified in olivine phenocrysts. The contrasting morphologies of these inclusions and the chemical zoning of olivine phenocrysts suggest NWA 4898 underwent at least two stages of crystallization. The aluminous chromite in NWA 4898 reveals that its high alumina character was inherited from the parental magma, rather than by fractional crystallization. The mineral chemistry and major element compositions of NWA 4898 are different from those of 12038 and Luna 16 basalts, but resemble those of Apollo 14 high-Al basalts. However, the trace element compositions demonstrate that NWA 4898 and Apollo 14 high-Al basalts could not have been derived from the same mantle source. REE compositions of its parental magma indicate that NWA 4898 probably originated from a unique depleted mantle source that has not been sampled yet. Unlike Apollo 14 high-Al basalts, which assimilated KREEPy materials during their formation, NWA 4898 could have formed by closed-system fractional crystallization

Final proposal for encoding the Phoenician script in the UCS

This is a proposal to encode the Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform script in the international character encoding standard Unicode. This script was published in Unicode Standard version 5.0 in July 2006. Cuneiform was used to write Sumerian, Akkadian, Elamite, Hittite, and Hurrian. This proposal covers set of signs used from the Ur III period onwards. Signs specific to Early Dynastic period are separately encoded in a different block of Unicode. Since some changes have been made in Unicode since this proposal was approved, users should check the latest code charts, accessible at: