Visual Analisys of Educational Data: A Gender Study in Computer Courses in University of Brasilia

The presence of women in technology-related courses is declining every year, reaching in 2016 less than 20% of the total student body in the Department of Computer Science in UnB (Universidade de Bras´ılia). This paper uses visualization techniques to analyze and identify profile patterns in girls on undergraduate courses in the computing field. Dimensionality reduction technique (PCA), HeatMap and Parallel Coordinates were used for the visual data analysis process, considering the students’ situation in relation to UnB (active, drop out or graduated). In this work, the existing correlations between variables were evidenced, with more in-depth analysis of the association between entrance period and the nature of the university departure form and period of the university attendance. Also, the students participating in the quota schema were analysed and the study suggests that there is no correlation between students enrolled under the quota system and the form of departure from the course.&nbsp

Application of Design Thinking for Elicitation Requirements in Mobile Applications

In the context of software development methodologies, activities and requirements elicitation practices adopted by organizations present challenges regarding the definition and understanding of system requirements and in relation to communication between the project team and stakeholders. Requirements elicitation is the process through which analysts determine stakeholders software requirements. Requirements elicitation is seldom well done, and an inaccurate or incomplete understanding of user requirements has led to the downfall of many software projects. The Design Thinking methodology has been used by organizations as a requirement elicitation technique for making use of the immersion procedure that, as a consequence, brings the team stakeholder closer to the software project and allows the creation of projects with a design that is closer to the end user and with higher quality, minimizing the problems in requirements elicitation. This work evaluates the elicitation process of software requirements of the mobile applications developed in a Brazilian Public Agency, from the use of the concepts and procedures recommended by Design Thinking (DT). Furthermore, a practical case study is presented in which the use of DT is used in eliciting requirements of developed applications. The development process phases adopted by the Agency were also compared with the phases of the model adopted by DT. The comparative study demonstrated that the traditional methodology adopted today is bureaucratic and difficult the creation process, as well as the interaction between stakeholders and members of the development team and the knowledge transfer

Meninas.comp: computación para niñas en escuelas primarias de Brasil

The Computing field has a gender diversity gap, with female participation much lower when compared to men. In this context, several activities have been developed to include more women in the field of Computing, and the Meninas.comp project has been working to introduce Computing to girls in elementary schools in Brasilia, the capital of Brazil. This article has two objectives: i) to present the activities of the Meninas.comp project for girls in elementary schools; ii) to present a mapping of the literature on computational activities with a focus on girls in elementary schools in Brazil. The systematic literature mapping found publications reporting a large variety of activities, such as unplugged computing, game development, card games, programming classes, competitions, lectures, and workshops. From the Meninas.comp project, this article highlights a smart garden developed by female elementary school students.El campo de la informática tiene una brecha de diversidad de género, con una participación femenina mucho menor en comparación con los hombres. Al respecto, se han desarrollado varias actividades para incluir a más mujeres en el campo de la Computación. El proyecto Meninas.comp ha trabajado en Informática para niñas de escuelas primarias en Brasilia, capital de Brasil. En este contexto, este artículo tiene dos objetivos: i) presentar las actividades del proyecto Meninas.comp en escuelas primarias de niñas; ii) presentar un mapeo de la literatura sobre actividades computacionales con enfoque en niñas de escuelas primarias en Brasil. El mapeo sistemático de literatura encontró publicaciones que informan una gran variedad de actividades, como computación desconectada, desarrollo de juegos, juegos de cartas, clases de programación, concursos, conferencias y talleres. Del proyecto Meninas. comp, este artículo destaca un jardín inteligente desarrollado por alumnas de primaria

[pt] PARALELIZAÇÃO AUTONÔMICA DE METAHEURÍSTICAS EM AMBIENTES DE GRID

O desenvolvimento de metaheurísticas paralelas autonômicas para serem executadas eficientemente em ambientes de grid é o objetivo desta tese. A aplicação paralela deve ser capaz de se auto-adaptar às mudanças que ocorrem dinamicamente no ambiente, sem que o usuário precise interferir diretamente no código da mesma. Para isso, a metaheurística autonômica deve ser vista como uma aplicação com dois níveis independentes: middleware e estratégia. O middleware é responsável por gerenciar todo o ambiente de execução, de acordo com as características da aplicação. A estratégia hierárquica distribuída permite a cooperação entre todos os processos envolvidos, sem degradar o desempenho da aplicação devido ao aumento da comunicação entre processos. Para validar esta proposta foram desenvolvidas duas implementações paralelas de metaheurísticas, uma para o problema do torneio com viagens espelhado e a outra para o problema da árvore geradora de custo mínimo com restrição de diâmetro. Para ambos os problemas, as implementações desenvolvidas foram testadas no ambiente grid Sinergia, formado por máquinas localizadas em três diferentes cidades do Estado do Rio de Janeiro. As parelizações foram capazes de melhorar, para várias instâncias, os melhores resultados conhecidos na literatura.The development of autonomic parallel metaheuristics to be efficiently executed in computational grid is the challenge of this thesis. The parallel application must be able to self-adjust to the changes that occur dynamically in the environment, without the user needing to interfere directly in the code of the application. For this, the autonomic metaheuristic should be seen as an application on two independent levels: middleware and strategy. The middleware is responsible for managing the entire execution environment, according to the characteristics of the application. The distributed hierarchical strategy enables the cooperation between all processes involved, without degrading the performance of the application due to increased communication between processes. To validate this proposal, two parallel implementations of metaheuristics were developed, one for the mirrored traveling tournament problem and the other for the diameter constrained minimum spanning tree problem. For both problems, the developed implementations were tested in the grid Synergy environment, formed by machines located in three different cities in the state of Rio de Janeiro. The paralelizations improved, for several instances, the best known results in the literature

Visual Analisys of Educational Data: A Gender Study in Computer Courses in University of Brasilia

The presence of women in technology-related courses is declining every year, reaching in 2016 less than 20% of the total student body in the Department of Computer Science in UnB (Universidade de Bras´ılia). This paper uses visualization techniques to analyze and identify profile patterns in girls on undergraduate courses in the computing field. Dimensionality reduction technique (PCA), HeatMap and Parallel Coordinates were used for the visual data analysis process, considering the students’ situation in relation to UnB (active, drop out or graduated). In this work, the existing correlations between variables were evidenced, with more in-depth analysis of the association between entrance period and the nature of the university departure form and period of the university attendance. Also, the students participating in the quota schema were analysed and the study suggests that there is no correlation between students enrolled under the quota system and the form of departure from the course.&nbsp