Lusternik-Schnirelmann category of simplicial complexes and finite spaces

In this paper we establish a natural definition of Lusternik-Schnirelmann category for simplicial complexes via the well known notion of contiguity. This category has the property of being homotopy invariant under strong equivalences, and only depends on the simplicial structure rather than its geometric realization. In a similar way to the classical case, we also develop a notion of geometric category for simplicial complexes. We prove that the maximum value over the homotopy class of a given complex is attained in the core of the complex. Finally, by means of well known relations between simplicial complexes and posets, specific new results for the topological notion of category are obtained in the setting of finite topological spaces.Comment: 18 pages, 10 figures, this is a new version with some minor changes and a new exampl

Enhancing project-based learning in software engineering lab teaching through an e-portfolio approach

Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. J. A. Macías, "Enhancing project-based learning in software engineering lab teaching through an e-portfolio approach", in IEEE Transactions on Education, 5, 4, 2012, 502 - 507Project-based learning is one of the main successful student-centered pedagogies broadly used in computing science courses. However, this approach can be insufficient when dealing with practical subjects that implicitly require many deliverables and a great deal of feedback and organizational resources. In this paper, a worked e-portfolio is presented as an approach to improve the teaching/learning and evaluation processes in project-based learning environments needing considerable resources. To validate this approach, a practical project-based software engineering course supported by a Moodle-based e-portfolio was designed and taught. The results obtained corroborated the effectiveness of the e-portfolio in practical software engineering teaching; this approach can be extended to similar subjects in other studies and/or curricula

Desarrollo de software EUD centrado en el usuario final

Ponencia presentada en el XIII Congreso Internacional de Interacción Persona-Ordenador, organizado por AIPO en Elche, en octubre de 2012.Ponencia resumida publicada por ACM en inglés. Disponible en: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2379636.2379660Recientemente, el auge de las TIC ha motivado que usuarios no programadores hayan tomado un papel activo en el entorno de la computación construyendo y personalizando artefactos software, lo que ha provocado una tendencia que aboga por transformar al usuario final en programador o diseñador de proyectos software. Este hecho puede desequilibrar las competencias profesionales, introducir un factor de riesgo implícito y producir un impacto socio-económico importante. En este artículo se analiza esta problemática y se proponen directrices que permitan potenciar los principios de diseño y asistir al usuario final en las tareas más complejas de personalización de soluciones software relacionadas con su dominio, en vez de que éste acabe programando y/o gestionando proyectos software. Para ello, se introducirán tres herramientas de soporte, y se evaluarán con respecto a su usabilidad alcanzada para demostrar el alcance y adecuación de dichas herramientas para el usuario final experto en su dominio pero no en computación.The growth of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) has recently motivated end users, with no computer science skills, to take an active role in the computing world by building and customizing software artifacts on their own according to specific needs. This trend has gradually transformed end users into programmers or software designers, thus taking part in technical development activities. However, this fact may introduce a risk factor and produce a significant socioeconomic impact in the way software is produced by such users, unbalancing the roles of both programmers and end users by giving technical roles to unskilled users. This article discusses such issues and proposes guidelines for enhancing design principles and assisting end users in most complex parts of domain-software customization, rather than enabling the user to program or manage software directly. To this end, in this paper three supporting tools are introduced to provide end users with authoring environments to easily customize software. The tools have been created under a user-centered paradigm, also evaluated in order to measure its usability and demonstrate the scope and adequacy for the end-user’s domain.Esta investigación ha sido subvencionada por el Ministerio de Educación, proyectos TIN2011-24139 y TIN2011-15009-E

Intelligent assistance in authoring dynamically generated Web interfaces

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11280-008-0043-3Since its emergence in the early 1990s, the WWW has become not only an information system of unprecedented size, but a universal platform for the development of services and applications. However, most of the advances in web technologies are intended for professional developers, paying poor attention to end-users with no programming abilities but with explicit needs of creating and customizing web-based presentations. This provides a strong motivation for end-users to act as designers at some point, leading to an emerging role of new computing-related professionals to be considered. This paper is an effort to leverage such difficulties by providing intelligent mechanism to assist end-users in web-based authoring tasks. To carry out such a challenge, intelligent user-monitoring techniques are exploited to obtain high-level information that will be used to infer the user’s preferences and assist him throughout the interaction. Furthermore, we report on how iteration patterns can be applied to avoid repetitive tasks that are automatically carried out on behalf of the user. In order to bring off a feasible trade-off between expressivity and ease of use, a user experiment to obtain the user’s perception and evaluate the hit-rate of our system is also presented.The work reported in this paper is being partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology (MCyT), project number TSI2005-08225-C07-0

El sentido de publicar en revistas Scopus: el caso de los autores colombianos de las áreas negocios, administración y contabilidad

Los dos cambios más importantes de la investigación colombiana en administración en la última década son (1) la internacionalización de las publicaciones y (2) la creación de programas de doctorado (Malaver & López, 2016). En el número 52 de la revista Cuadernos de Administración, publicado en 2016, aparecen varios artículos que analizan en profundidad la dinámica reciente de la investigación en esa área del conocimiento y todos llegan a la conclusión de que uno de los cambios más importantes es la dinámica de las publicaciones.  La investigación colombiana en administración ha sido estudiada sistemáticamente hace más de una década y ahora  ha emergido el análisis sistemático de la investigación colombiana en contabilidad (Macías, 2016), mientras que la dinámica nacional de los negocios internacionales ha sido mucho menos estudiada (Anzo, 2012). En este trabajo se analizan críticamente las publicaciones Scopus relacionadas con esas disciplinas