Experiencia educativa para fomentar el aprendizaje autónomo a través de preguntas tipo test generadas por los alumnos

Describimos en este artículo una experiencia docente que trata de incentivar el proceso de aprendizaje autónomo del alumno mediante la realización de tests con preguntas generadas por ellos. La idea es que el alumno perciba que participa de una manera directa en su calificación, ya que sus preguntas pasarán a formar parte del examen. Un conjunto de herramientas permite la interacción alumno-profesor y alumno-alumno a través del campus virtual. En este sentido, profesores y alumnos pueden ver todas las preguntas formuladas por los otros compañeros. De esta manera incentivamos el análisis crítico (comprender la calidad de las preguntas ajenas). Hemos comprobado, comparando los resultados académicos de distintos años, que el 88% de los alumnos que han incorporado a su metodología de estudio estas estrategias más activas y participativas han conseguido aprobar la asignatura.In this paper we describe a teaching experience that tries to motivate students following an autonomous learning process. To this end, we conduct tests with questions created by the students. The idea is that students perceive that they participate in their rating in a direct way, because their questions will become part of the final test. A set of tools allows us interaction student-teacher and student-student through the virtual campus. In this way, students and teachers can see all the generated questions. Thus, we motivate the critical analysis (how to undertand the quality of questions). We found, comparing to academic results of different academic years, that the 88% of the studens that have included to their learning methodology these active and participative strategies, have been able to pass the course.Peer Reviewe

Evolutionary Design of the Memory Subsystem

The memory hierarchy has a high impact on the performance and power consumption in the system. Moreover, current embedded systems, included in mobile devices, are specifically designed to run multimedia applications, which are memory intensive. This increases the pressure on the memory subsystem and affects the performance and energy consumption. In this regard, the thermal problems, performance degradation and high energy consumption, can cause irreversible damage to the devices. We address the optimization of the whole memory subsystem with three approaches integrated as a single methodology. Firstly, the thermal impact of register file is analyzed and optimized. Secondly, the cache memory is addressed by optimizing cache configuration according to running applications and improving both performance and power consumption. Finally, we simplify the design and evaluation process of general-purpose and customized dynamic memory manager, in the main memory. To this aim, we apply different evolutionary algorithms in combination with memory simulators and profiling tools. This way, we are able to evaluate the quality of each candidate solution and take advantage of the exploration of solutions given by the optimization algorithm.We also provide an experimental experience where our proposal is assessed using well-known benchmark applications

Sustainable Edge Computing: Challenges and Future Directions

An increasing amount of data is being injected into the network from IoT (Internet of Things) applications. Many of these applications, developed to improve society's quality of life, are latency-critical and inject large amounts of data into the network. These requirements of IoT applications trigger the emergence of Edge computing paradigm. Currently, data centers are responsible for a global energy use between 2% and 3%. However, this trend is difficult to maintain, as bringing computing infrastructures closer to the edge of the network comes with its own set of challenges for energy efficiency. In this paper, we propose our approach for the sustainability of future computing infrastructures to provide (i) an energy-efficient and economically viable deployment, (ii) a fault-tolerant automated operation, and (iii) a collaborative resource management to improve resource efficiency. We identify the main limitations of applying Cloud-based approaches close to the data sources and present the research challenges to Edge sustainability arising from these constraints. We propose two-phase immersion cooling, formal modeling, machine learning, and energy-centric federated management as Edge-enabling technologies. We present our early results towards the sustainability of an Edge infrastructure to demonstrate the benefits of our approach for future computing environments and deployments.Comment: 26 pages, 16 figure

The DEVStone Metric: Performance Analysis of DEVS Simulation Engines

The DEVStone benchmark allows us to evaluate the performance of discrete-event simulators based on the DEVS formalism. It provides model sets with different characteristics, enabling the analysis of specific issues of simulation engines. However, this heterogeneity hinders the comparison of the results among studies, as the results obtained on each research work depend on the chosen subset of DEVStone models. We define the DEVStone metric based on the DEVStone synthetic benchmark and provide a mechanism for specifying objective ratings for DEVS-based simulators. This metric corresponds to the average number of times that a simulator can execute a selection of 12 DEVStone models in one minute. The variety of the chosen models ensures we measure different particularities provided by DEVStone. The proposed metric allows us to compare various simulators and to assess the impact of new features on their performance. We use the DEVStone metric to compare some popular DEVS-based simulators

Enhancing Regression Models for Complex Systems using Evolutionary Techniques for Feature Engineering

Abstract This work proposes an automatic methodology for modeling complex systems. Our methodology is based on the combination of Grammatical Evolution and classical regression to obtain an optimal set of features that take part of a linear and convex model. This technique provides both Feature Engineering and Symbolic Regression in order to infer accurate models with no effort or designer's expertise requirements. As advanced Cloud services are becoming mainstream, the contribution of data centers in the overall power consumption of modern cities is growing dramatically. These facilities consume from 10 to 100 times more power per square foot than typical office buildings. Modeling the power consumption for these infrastructures is crucial to anticipate the effects of aggressive optimization policies, but accurate and fast power modeling is a complex challenge for high-end servers not yet satisfied by analytical approaches. For this case study, our methodology minimizes error in power prediction. This work has been tested using real Cloud applications resulting on an average error in power estimation of 3.98%. Our work improves the possibilities of deriving Cloud energy efficient policies in Cloud data center

Simulation-driven engineering for the management of harmful algal and cyanobacterial blooms

Harmful Algal and Cyanobacterial Blooms (HABs), occurring in inland and maritime waters, pose threats to natural environments by producing toxins that affect human and animal health. In the past, HABs have been assessed mainly by the manual collection and subsequent analysis of water samples and occasionally by automatic instruments that acquire information from fixed locations. These procedures do not provide data with the desirable spatial and temporal resolution to anticipate the formation of HABs. Hence, new tools and technologies are needed to efficiently detect, characterize and respond to HABs that threaten water quality. It is essential nowadays when the world's water supply is under tremendous pressure because of climate change, overexploitation, and pollution. This paper introduces DEVS-BLOOM, a novel framework for real-time monitoring and management of HABs. Its purpose is to support high-performance hazard detection with Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) infrastructure for dynamic environments

Experiencia en el desarrollo y utilización de una herramienta de corrección automática de exámenes

En este trabajo se presentan dos partes bien diferenciadas. Por un lado, la experiencia vivida en el proceso de desarrollo y mejora de una herramienta de corrección automática de exámenes realizada por alumnos a cambio de créditos de libre elección. Por otro lado, se analizan los resultados obtenidos de la utilización vía Web de dicha herramienta en las asignaturas de Cálculo y Estadística de la Ingeniería Técnica en Informática de Sistemas. Esta última experiencia ha sido altamente valorada por los alumnos aunque se han detectado una serie de problemas éticos en su utilización

Parallel and Distributed Optimization of Dynamic Data Structures for Multimedia Embedded Systems

Energy-efficient design of multimedia embedded systems demands optimizations in both hardware and software. Software optimization has no received much attention, although modern multimedia applications exhibit high resource utilization. In order to efficiently run this kind of applications in embedded systems, the dynamic memory subsystem needs to be optimized. A key role in this optimization is played by the Dynamic Data Types (DDTs) that reside in every reallife application. It would be desirable to organize this set of DDTs to achieve the best performance in the target embedded system. This problem is NP-complete, and cannot be fully explored. In these cases the use of parallel processing can be very useful because it allows not only to explore more solutions spending the same time, but also to implement new algorithms. In this work, we propose a method that uses parallel processing and evolutionary computation to explore DDTs in the design of embedded applications. We propose a parallel Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithm (MOEA) which combines NSGA-II and SPEA2. We use Discrete Event Systems Specification (DEVS) to implement this parallel evolutionary algorithm over Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Parallelism improves the solutions found by the corresponding sequential algorithms, and it allows system designers to reach better solutions than previous approximation

Experiencia educativa entre varias asignaturas

Se presenta la experiencia educativa desarrollada entre varias asignaturas para la construcción de una herramienta de edición, realización y corrección de exámenes. Esta experiencia ha permitido a los alumnos desarrollar una práctica de tamaño medio en la que han tenido que aplicar técnicas y conocimientos de distintas asignaturas. Estas asignaturas han sido inicialmente Ficheros y Bases de Datos y Laboratorio de Programación de Sistemas, aunque posteriormente se trasladó la experiencia a Programación de Aplicaciones Web, Aplicaciones Avanzadas de Lenguajes de Marcado e Ingeniería del Software. La realimentación obtenida de los alumnos ha sido muy positiva e incluso se ha llegado a una versión final que va a ser utilizada como herramienta de autoevaluación para las asignaturas de matemáticas de primer curso en las que los alumnos tienen más dificultades

Experiencia educativa para fomentar el aprendizaje autónomo a través de preguntas tipo test generadas por los alumnos

Describimos en este artículo una experiencia docente que trata de incentivar el proceso de aprendizaje autónomo del alumno mediante la realización de tests con preguntas generadas por ellos. La idea es que el alumno perciba que participa de una manera directa en su calificación, ya que sus preguntas pasarán a formar parte del examen. Un conjunto de herramientas permite la interacción alumno-profesor y alumno-alumno a través del campus virtual. En este sentido, profesores y alumnos pueden ver todas las preguntas formuladas por los otros compañeros. De esta manera incentivamos el análisis crítico (comprender la calidad de las preguntas ajenas). Hemos comprobado, comparando los resultados académicos de distintos años, que el 88% de los alumnos que han incorporado a su metodología de estudio estas estrategias más activas y participativas han conseguido aprobar la asignatura