Towards a Software Product Line Architecture to Build M-learning Applications for the Teaching of Programming

Software Product Line (SPL) is concerned with the sharing of common features within a family of products. It offers benefits, proven in several industry success cases. Regardless of its success, such a reuse-based development methodology has not been well explored in educational fields yet, as mobile platforms. In a different but related perspective, several initiatives have been undertaken as an attempt to improve the teaching of programming; however, no reuse approaches have been considered. In this paper we discuss the most significant approaches and methodologies for the conception of an SPL architecture according to the specificities of mobile devices and the teaching of programming. As main contributions, we highlight the identification of a set of approaches that support the conduction of the initial SPL processes, the design of a conceptual architecture model, and its qualitative evaluation with stakeholder

Modelos de Maturidade em um Cenário Educacional: Um Mapeamento Sistemático

Este paper apresenta um mapeamento sistemático em modelos de maturidade educacionais, almejando identificar e reunir as suas principais características, inspirações e métodos de desenvolvimento. Foram identificados 22 modelos de maturidade educacionais, divididos em 25 estudos. Os resultados apontam que CMM, CMMI e SPICE são as inspirações mais comuns para os modelos educacionais existentes. Também foi constatado que estudos literários, pilot testing, workshops e surveys foram os métodos mais comuns utilizados para desenvolver tais modelos. Finalmente, não foi possível encontrar nenhum estudo especificamente relacionado a modelos de maturidade para recursos educacionais abertos, destacando uma lacuna na área que pode ser apurada em trabalhos futuros

An agile learning design method for open educational resources

Open Educational Resources (OERs) have provided new perspectives for the construction, access and sharing of knowledge. While OERs can bring benefits to, and impact on education, there are still challenges to their widespread production and use. One of the challenges faced by developers (including educators and practitioners) of OERs has been how to produce quality and relevant learning materials, capable of being reused and adapted in different learning situations. In our work we propose and define an agile learning design method to support the design and creation of OERs. It is based on agile practices from software engineering and on practices of learning design from the OULDI project at the UK Open University. We illustrate our ideas with an experiment that validates the proposed method through its application in the design and creation of an OER in the software testing domain. The results obtained so far have shown that the method is feasible and effective for the design and creation of OERs

Recursos Educacionais Abertos: Aspectos de desenvolvimento no cenário brasileiro [Open Educational Resources: aspects of development in the Brazilian context]

Recursos Educacionais Abertos (REAs) têm emergido como um importante elemento da educação na sociedade contemporânea, possibilitando novas perspectivas de construção e partilha de conhecimento que transcendem as restrições impostas pela educação tradicional. Embora REAs possam trazer diversos benefícios e impacto sobre a educação, sua adoção ainda é limitada. No Brasil, em especial, há falta de evidências sobre a produção e o uso efetivo de REAs na educação, seja na modalidade presencial, híbrida ou a distância. Neste trabalho, uma pesquisa baseada em survey é conduzida com o objetivo de determinar “como” é o processo de desenvolvimento de REAs e evidenciar as principais barreiras e lacunas associadas, bem como fatores que possam ampliar a produção e a oferta de REAs no cenário brasileiro. Os resultados obtidos apontam para a necessidade de um esforço coletivo (governo, instituições de ensino, pesquisadores, educadores e aprendizes) para prover a fundamentação e os mecanismos adequados à produção, uso e compartilhamento de REAs, ajudand

Clube de Ciências Digital Interativo

O Clube de Ciências Digital Interativo consistiu em atividades extraclasses que favorecessem a vivência da metodologia científica (nas áreas de Química, Física, Matemática, Computação e Biologia), a fim de repetir os feitos de cientistas em laboratórios. Além disso, consistiu em aproximar os alunos do âmbito universitário, fazendo com que eles conhecessem campos de pesquisa, laboratórios, e realizassem atividades dentro da universidade. O Clube de Ciências Digital Interativo, para suas atividades, contou com o uso de um blog na internet no qual os participantes registravam os resultados dessas atividades. Este projeto teve como público-alvo alunos do primeiro e segundo ano do Ensino Médio de instituições públicas de ensino e foi desenvolvido no escopo das atividades do Instituto de Estudos Avançados (IEA), Polo São Carlos.The Interactive Digital Science Club consisted of extra-class activities that favored the experience of scientific methodology (in the areas of Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, Computation and Biology) in order to repeat the achievements of scientists in laboratories. In addition, it consisted of bringing the students closer to the university, making them aware of the research fields, laboratories and activities within the university. The Interactive Digital Science Club, for its activities, counted on the use of an internet blog in which the participants recorded the results of the activities carried out. This project had as target audience students of first and second year high school of public education institutions and was developed within the scope of the Instituto de Estudos Avançados (IEA), Polo São Carlos activities

Towards the development of open educational resources: challenges and issues

he fast evolution of the Internet and the Information and Communication Technologies has leveraged and multiplied the possibilities of learning. Additionally, the advent of free and open software has also motivated research and development in the education area. As a result, there has been a change in the way that educational resources are designed, developed and delivered to learners. The term Open Educational Resources (OERs) has emerged as an attempt to standardize the educational content available in a free and open way through the Internet. The establishment and adoption of innovative processes, methods and tools for creating well-designed and highly flexible OERs are challenging for the scientific community in general and, especially, for software engineers. Indeed, Software Engineering practices and principles should be reviewed, updated and adapted for adequately deal with the developmental aspects and needs in this emerging scenario. Having this goal in mind, in this paper we identify some challenges and issues to be considered by software engineers in order to provide an adequate and efficient infrastructure to the development and adoption of OERs

Practitioners’ Perspective on Software Project Management Education

Despite Software project management (SPM) being one of the most relevant topicsin the area of software engineering that should be addressed in computing programs, SPM skills of recent graduates are not satisfactory yet. In this context, besides being important to know there are skill deficiencies, we also need to gather specific information on how to adjust and improve the education on the corresponding topics. In this paper we attempt to identify what knowledge deficiencies in SPM can persist after a student graduates from a computing degree program. We surveyed practitioners that graduated and worked as software project managers to gather the knowledge deficiencies from the industry perspective. In general, the results indicated that there is a number of professionals who seeks postgraduate programs to fill the deficiencies of the undergrad programs

An integrated content modeling approach for educational modules

Educational modules – concise units of study capable of integrating theoretical/practical contents and supporting tools – can be seen as relevant mechanisms to facilitate the student’s apprenticeship. The establishment of processes and modeling approaches should ease the cooperative work to create, reuse and evolve educational modules, taking also into account the impact on the learning process. There are initiatives to address the problem of modeling educational contents, but none of them provides a complete set of features addressing the conceptual, instructional and didactic perspectives. Moreover, these initiatives do not consider a systematic process for developing educational modules. In this work we summarize the main aspects of a standardized process for developing educational modules we have proposed, focusing on the modeling activity for structuring the learning contents. An integrated modeling approach is presented and its application is illustrated by the development of an educational module for the software testing domain. The material produced has been applied and preliminarily evaluated in terms of the student's attitude toward content, usability and navigational aspects.Education for the 21 st century - impact of ICT and Digital Resources ConferenceRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Recursos Educacionais Abertos: Aspectos de desenvolvimento no cenário brasileiro

Recursos Educacionais Abertos (REAs) têm emergido como um importante elemento da educação na sociedade contemporânea, possibilitando novas perspectivas de construção e partilha de conhecimento que transcendem as restrições impostas pela educação tradicional. Embora REAs possam trazer diversos benefícios e impacto sobre a educação, sua adoção ainda é limitada. No Brasil, em especial, há falta de evidências sobre a produção e o uso efetivo de REAs na educação, seja na modalidade presencial, híbrida ou a distância. Neste trabalho, uma pesquisa baseada em survey é conduzida com o objetivo de determinar “como” é o processo de desenvolvimento de REAs e evidenciar as principais barreiras e lacunas associadas, bem como fatores que possam ampliar a produção e a oferta de REAs no cenário brasileiro. Os resultados obtidos apontam para a necessidade de um esforço coletivo (governo, instituições de ensino, pesquisadores, educadores e aprendizes) para prover a fundamentação e os mecanismos adequados à produção, uso e compartilhamento de REAs, ajudando a promover a ideia de amplo acesso e participação de todos os cidadãos na educação

Towards a Mobile Learning Environment using Reference Architectures

Mobile learning environments have emerged as a way to support the m-learning initiatives, providing benefits to learners, teachers and tutors. However, despite their relevance, the development of mobile learning environments present problems and challenges that must be investigated, especially with respect to the definition and adoption of architectural patterns. Motivated by this scenario, in this paper we discuss the development of a mobile learning environment, called ICMC MLE, following the precepts of a specific reference architecture for mobile learning. ICMC MLE was also evaluated through an experiment; the results showed a high level of satisfaction and convenience in relation to the use of ICMC MLE in real learning scenarios