Data science and knowledge discovery

Nowadays, Data Science (DS) is gaining a relevant impact on the community. The most recent developments in Computer Science, such as advances in Machine and Deep Learning, Big Data, Knowledge Discovery, and Data Analytics, have triggered the development of several innovative solutions (e.g., approaches, methods, models, or paradigms). It is a trending topic with many application possibilities and motivates the researcher to conduct experiments in these most diverse areas. This issue created an opportunity to expose some of the most relevant achievements in the Knowledge Discovery and Data Science field and contribute to such subjects as Health, Smart Homes, Social Humanities, Government, among others. The relevance of this field can be easily observed by its current achieved numbers: thirteen research articles, one technical note, and forty-six authors from fifteen nationalities.This work has been supported by FCT-Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the R&D Units Project Scope: UIDB/00319/2020

Towards an engaging and gamified online learning environment - a real case study

Currently, remote work is common, and this trend has come to several areas and processes, such as education and teaching. Regarding higher education, universities have several challenges to overcome, the most challenging being transforming teaching to be more digital and engaging. Therefore, TechTeach has arisen as a new teaching paradigm that creates a unique learning environment and satisfies students’ and professors’ expectations. After the success of the b-learning approach, professors created new experiences utilizing an entirely online learning environment following this paradigm. This article shows the work performed through a real case study, explains the strategy used to implement this paradigm, provides students’ opinions, and analyses the results achieved. The results demonstrated that, while the effort was tremendous, the result was beneficial to all. After 208 online hours of classes, 11,173 downloads, 15,224 messages, 200,000 sessions, 3 rescues requests, and 28t cards, 98.15% of the active participants gave it their approval, 96.53% considered this subject equal to or better than the others, and 85% of accepted the gamification system. These results show that a class can be an engaging environment where students can learn and enjoy it regardless of whether it is physical or not.This work has been supported by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the R&D Units Project Scope: UIDB/00319/2020

Online-Teaching Environment with Gamification - A real Case Study

Teaching processes are changing, and Higher Education is not an exception. Professors are adapting their teaching methods to b-learning classes. They are looking for innovative approaches and tools that allow engaging students in the classrooms. This paper presents the results of a teaching and challenging experience. The TeachTeach paradigm was used in a fully online environment. Professors explored several methods/approaches during the semester, and the students were faced-off with a new reality of learning. They attested students skills like programming, resilience, innovation and entrepreneur capabilities during the development of a project with an actual web application. The results show that the efforts were tremendous but beneficial for all the stakeholders. At the end of the case study, a few numbers should be highlighted: 11,173 Downloads, 15,224 Messages, 200,000 Sessions and 208 online hour classes. Comparing this approach with other curricular units (CUnit) online strategies, 96,53% of the students considered it equal or better

TechTeach—An innovative method to increase the students engagement at classrooms

Higher education is changing, and a new normal is coming. Students are even more demanding, and professors need to follow the evolution of technology and try to increase student engagement in the classrooms (presential or virtual). Higher education students recognise that the introduction of new tools and learning methods can improve the teaching quality and increase the motivation to learn. Regarding a question about which type of classes students preferred, ninety-one point ninety-nine per cent (91.99%) of the students wanted interactive classes over traditional. Having this concern in mind over the past years, a professor explored a set of methods, strategies and tools and designed a new and innovative paradigm using gamification. This approach is denominated TechTeach and explores a set of trending concepts and interactive tools to teach computer science subjects. It was designed to run in a B-learning environment. The paradigm uses flipped classrooms, bring your own device (BYOD), gamification, training of soft-skills and quizzes and surveys to increase the student’s engagement and provide the best learning environment to students. Currently, COVID-19 is bringing about new challenges, and TechTeach was improved in order to be more suitable for this new way of teaching (from 0% to 100% online classes). This article details this method and shows how it can be applied in a real environment. A case study was used to prove the functionality and relevance of this approach, and the achieved results are motivating. During the semester, more than a hundred students experienced this new way of teaching and assessment. In the end, more than eighty-one per cent (81%) of the students gave a positive grade to the approach, and more than ninety-five per cent (95.65%) of the students approved the use of the concept of BYOD in the classroom. With TechTeach, the classroom is not a boring place anymore; it is a place to learn and enjoy regardless of being physical or not.This research received no external funding

A New and Interactive Teaching Approach with Gamification for Motivating Students in Computer Science Classrooms

Higher Education professors and students recognise that the introduction of new tools and learning methods can improve the teaching and motivation to learn. A new interactive and motivating methodology was designed and tested in a real classroom environment. This method, named TechTeach, explored a set of trending concepts applied to teach of Computer Science subjects: BYOD, Gamification, Soft-skills, quiz, and surveys and flipped classrooms to proportionate the best learning environment to the students. The paper presents the teaching plan and the case study used as proof of concept. In the end, it is possible to affirm that the students liked this method and are familiarised with it - most of the answers to the assessment method quiz (87%), was positive

Data mining predictive models for pervasive intelligent decision support in intensive care medicine

The introduction of an Intelligent Decision Support System (IDSS) in a critical area like the Intensive Medicine is a complex and difficult process. In this area, their professionals don’t have much time to document the cases, because the patient direct care is always first. With the objective to reduce significantly the manual records and, enabling, at the same time, the possibility of developing an IDSS which can help in the decision making process, all data acquisition process and knowledge discovery in database phases were automated. From the data acquisition to the knowledge discovering, the entire process is autonomous and executed in real-time. On-line induced data mining models were used to predict organ failure and outcome. Preliminary results obtained with a limited population of patients showed that this approach can be applied successfully.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

Grid data mining for outcome prediction in intensive care medicine

This paper introduces a distributed data mining approach suited to grid computing environments based on a supervised learning classifier system. Specific Classifier and Majority Voting methods for Distributed Data Mining (DDM) are explored and compared with the Centralized Data Mining (CDM) approach. Experimental tests were conducted considering a real world data set from the intensive care medicine in order to predict the outcome of the patients. The results demonstrate that the performance of the DDM methods are better than the CDM method.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

Pervasive business intelligence platform to improve the quality of decision process in primary and secondary education – A Portuguese case study

Business Intelligence (BI) can be seen as a method that gathers information and data from information systems in order to help companies to be more accurate in their decision-making process. Traditionally BI systems were associated with the use of Data Warehouses (DW). The prime purpose of DW is to serve as a repository that stores all the relevant information required for making the correct decision. The necessity to integrate streaming data became crucial with the need to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the decision process. In primary and secondary education, there is a lack of BI solutions. Due to the schools reality the main purpose of this study is to provide a Pervasive BI solution able to monitoring the schools and student data anywhere and anytime in real-time as well as disseminating the information through ubiquitous devices. The first task consisted in gathering data regarding the different choices made by the student since his enrolment in a certain school year until the end of it. Thereafter a dimensional model was developed in order to be possible building a BI platform. This paper presents the dimensional model, a set of pre-defined indicators, the Pervasive Business Intelligence characteristics and the prototype designed. The main contribution of this study was to offer to the schools a tool that could help them to make accurate decisions in real-time. Data dissemination was achieved through a localized application that can be accessed anywhere and anytime.This work has been supported by FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope UID/CEC/00319/2013

Step towards to improve the voluntary interruption of pregnancy by means of business intelligence

With the implementation of Information and Communication Technologies in the health sector, it became possible the existence of an electronic record of information for patients, enabling the storage and the availability of their information in databases. However, without the implementation of a Business Intelligence (BI) system, this information has no value. Thus, the major motivation of this paper is to create a decision support system that allows the transformation of information into knowledge, giving usability to the stored data. The particular case addressed in this chapter is the Centro Materno Infantil do Norte, in particular the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy unit. With the creation of a BI system for this module, it is possible to design an interoperable, pervasive and real-time platform to support the decision-making process of health professionals, based on cases that occurred. Furthermore, this platform enables the automation of the process for obtaining key performance indicators that are presented annually by this health institution. In this chapter, the BI system implemented in the VIP unity in CMIN, some of the KPIs evaluated as well as the benefits of this implementation are presented.FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the P roject Scope UID/CEC/00319/201