Addressing retention and completion in MOOCs - a student-centric design approach

The recent development of massively open online courses (MOOCs) has led to a plethora of courses being offered to the general public, as students, but these have had extreme issues of retention and completion with MOOCs typically returning less than 10% of students completing the course. As part of the dCCDFLITE EU project, the authors developed a MOOC on entrepreneurship and innovation, highlighting distributed concurrent design (dCCD) and the Osterwalder Canvas as tools for student use. The course was designed to be student-centric, expecting that students would work through the learning materials independently and then form in groups, using CCD, to develop their business plans. However, the experience of this MOOC, presented statistically in this paper, was no different from the norm, which leads the authors to consider whether we require new pedagogical models for this type of online learning, and how we should measure success in such environments

Between coloring and list-coloring: μ-coloring

A new variation of the coloring problem, mu-coloring, is defined in this paper. A coloring of a graph G = (V,E) is a function f: V -> N such that f(v) is different from f(w) if v is adjacent to w. Given a graph G = (V,E) and a function mu: V -> N, G is mu-colorable if it admits a coloring f with f(v)<= mu(v) for each v in V. It is proved that mu-coloring lies between coloring and list-coloring, in the sense of generalization of problems and computational complexity. Besides, the notion of perfection is extended to mu-coloring, giving rise to a new characterization of cographs. Finally, a polynomial time algorithm to solve mu-coloring for cographs is shown.Fil: Bonomo, Flavia. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Matemática; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Investigaciones Matemáticas "Luis A. Santaló"; ArgentinaFil: Cecowski Palacio, Mariano. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Computación; Argentin

Between coloring and list-coloring: µ-coloring, Electron

A new variation of the coloring problem, µ-coloring, is defined in this paper. A coloring of a graph G = (V, E) is a function f: V → N such that f(v) � = f(w) if v is adjacent to w. Given a graph G = (V, E) and a function µ: V → N, G is µ-colorable if it admits a coloring f with f(v) ≤ µ(v) for each v ∈ V. It is proved that µ-coloring lies between coloring and list-coloring, in the sense of generalization of problems and computational complexity. Furthermore, the notion of perfection is extended to µ-coloring, giving rise to a new characterization of cographs. Finally, a polynomial time algorithm to solve µ-coloring for cographs is shown

Thin films of cubic mesoporous aluminophosphates modified by silicon and manganese

Mesoporous aluminophosphate thin films and xerogels with ordered three-dimensional pore arrangement, modified by silicon or silicon and manganese, were synthesized. Aluminophosphate reaction mixtures were templated with non ionic polymer surfactant Pluronic F127 and deposited as thin layers of precursor solution on Petri dishes for xerogels and on glass substrates for thin films. Surfactant removal was investigated by thermal analysis. Small Angle X-ray Scattering measurements showed that calcined silicoaluminophosphate (SAPO) and manganese silicoaluminophosphate (MnSAPO) thin films have highly ordered mesostructures, which remain stable up to at least 400°C. The mesostructures exhibit cubic symmetry described by an Im3̄m space group. Cubic mesostructure was confirmed also by TEM, SEM and AFM microscopy. Incorporation of silicon and manganese into the aluminophosphate framework was studied by solid-state NMR and X-ray absorption spectroscopy. Silicon-rich domains were detected in calcined SAPO and MnSAPO xerogels and in MnSAPO thin films. The observation of Si(OSi)3(OAl) framework units at the border of such domains suggests that acid sites might be included within silicoaluminophosphate walls. Mn3+ and Mn2+ cations are present in the MnSAPO frameworks of calcined xerogels and thin films in the molar ratio of 40%/60%. Manganese cations are coordinated to four oxygen atoms, suggesting that they are incorporated within the framework and that they can act as framework redox sites.Fil: Cecowski, Sasa. National Institute Of Chemistry; EsloveniaFil: Tusar, Natasa Novak. National Institute Of Chemistry; EsloveniaFil: Rangus, Mojca. National Institute Of Chemistry; EsloveniaFil: Mali, Gregor. National Institute Of Chemistry; EsloveniaFil: Soler Illia, Galo Juan de Avila Arturo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica; ArgentinaFil: Kaucic, Venceslav. National Institute Of Chemistry; Esloveni

Data centres for IoT applications: The M2DC approach (Invited paper)

Oleksiak A, Porrmann M, Hagemeyer J, et al. Data centres for IoT applications: The M2DC approach (Invited paper). In: 2016 International Conference on Embedded Computer Systems: Architectures, Modeling and Simulation (SAMOS). IEEE; 2016: 293-299.The Modular Microserver DataCentre (M2DC) project investigates, develops and demonstrates a modular, highly-efficient, cost-optimized server architecture composed of heterogeneous micro server computing resources, being able to be tailored to meet requirements from various application domains, including the Internet of Things. M2DC is built on three main pillars: a flexible server architecture that can be easily customised, maintained and updated; advanced management strategies and system efficiency enhancements (SEE); well-defined interfaces to surrounding software data centre ecosystem