Open Data Explorer: An End-to-end Tool for Data Storytelling using Open Data

Enabling users to better understand government actions is one reason why governments have sought to open their data to the public. Data storytelling tools help to achieve this goal by facilitating users to turn data into stories. However, existing tools are not able to provide the necessary features to overcome the barriers users face at different data storytelling stages. This paper provides findings regarding the features in the design of these data storytelling tools in the open data context and also presents a generic and end-to-end tool called ODE, which helps users through the different data storytelling stages. To achieve the paper’s objectives, a literature review was first conducted to collect the features needed for the different data storytelling stages. Then, the identified features were integrated into ODE and its effectiveness in helping users to easily turn data into stories was demonstrated through an evaluation involving 11 users

Label-Noise-Tolerant Classification for Streaming Data

Frenay B, Hammer B. Label-Noise-Tolerant Classification for Streaming Data. In: IEEE International Joint Conference on Neural Neworks. 2017

The impact of a PBL curriculum on students’ motivation and self-regulation

Problem-Based Learning (PBL) is more and more widespread in Higher Education. Among other advantages, PBL is assumed to foster students’ motivation and self-regulation. But empirical evidence supporting this claim is scarce, especially at a curriculum level. The aim of this study is to evaluate the impact of a PBL curriculum on the motivation and the cognitive engagement of undergraduate students. The study was conducted in an engineering faculty where a new two-year PBL curriculum has been implemented. The last cohort of students who attended the old curriculum was compared with the first cohort of students who attended the new PBL curriculum. Those students completed a questionnaire on perception ofinstructional practices, goal orientations, self-efficacy, self-regulation strategies, and learning strategies at the end of their curriculum (data collected in 2001 and 2002). Multivariate analyses show some positive effects in favour of students from the PBL curriculum, but they also point to some problems linked to the implementation of this new curriculum (work-overload, incoherent assessment). Perceptions of instructional practices partially mediate the PBL curriculum effects. Implications for attempts to improve students’ engagement in Higher Education are discussed

Clustering patterns of urban built-up areas with curves of fractal scaling behaviour

Fractal dimension is an index which can be used to characterize urban areas. The use of the curve of scaling behaviour is less common. However, its shape gives local information about the morphology of the built-up area. This paper suggests a method based on a k-medoid for clustering these curves. It is applied to forty-nine wards of European cities, and shows that the curves add interesting intraward information to our knowledge of the spatial variation of the urban texture. Moreover, morphological similarities are observed between cities: living, architectural, and planning trends are not specific to individual cities.