City of dred – a tabletop RPG learning experience

Learning experiences are not typically used to describe formal learning activities, such as in classroom, transmissive methods. Centred in the student, this term describe that the learner is experiencing something that, hopefully, contributes to a change in thinking, understanding, or behaviour afterwards. For this to happen, learning experiences should be active, meaningful, with social meaning, integrative, and diversified. We consider active learning experiences when the student has the main learning role. They should provide knowledge and skills that directly contribute to the learner’s ability to perform more effectively in the context of workplace learning. Sharing and cooperation is fundamental, allowing the learner to interact with other active learners. The inherent increase in complexity demands the integration of different dimensions of knowledge, better achieved through diversified strategies. In this context, teaching and learning is more than the mere acquisition of content. It represents a process of learning by thinking-do-thinking.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Cabinet - strategy board game for network and system management learning

Gamification may be a new term, and recently it has been receiv- ing a considerable attention in several areas and fields. This ne- ologism, however, describe an idea that is not exactly new: using game-thinking and game mechanics to solve problems and to en- gage audiences. This paper describes the approach to applying gamification to a higher education subject in the course of computer science. We fo- cus mainly in the design, development and assessment of a strategy board game of the worker placement type. It is used with the pur- pose of providing an environment for reflection and concept learn- ing regarding the overall operation of data centers. The game is called “Cabinet” and contains a game board, two data center boards and four extensions. It also contains 80 pieces, repre- senting the resources and components associated to the operation of computers stored in racks integrated in organizations’ data centers. The gameplay is evaluated through a specific Game Engagement Observation Protocol, assessing the interaction between players, the dynamics of the game and the overall satisfaction of players

An award system for gamification in higher education

Higher Education Institutions (HEI) have the missions of education, at a high level, research and cooperation. Regarding education, HEI must create an appropriate environment for learning, towards high-level academic performance. The conciliation of education and research paves the way for an adequate learning environment, further reinforced by the students' motivation. Motivation depends on several factors, some of them external, such as earning money, gaining social status, have a higher grade, and/or internal (intrinsic), which results from the person's core self (associated to the satisfaction people feel when doing something appealing). This paper describes the approach to applying gamification to a higher education subject in the course of computer science. It uses several game design mechanisms, such as adaptive challenges, rewards, curiosity and chance to increase the time students spend working, experiencing and learning in a HEI. The sections in the subject's curriculum are transformed into levels, awarding stars for increasingly complex achievements. Grades depend on the learning experiences students' choose, as well as on the time spent solving the challenges presented to them. There is also the concept of soft currency, which we call BitPoints, that can be used to increase the student autonomy and reduce the workload. An online platform is constantly available to inform the student about his or her progress within the subject as well as the grade at the moment of the access. Each level is represented by a castle on a map, which is considered conquered as soon as the student solves the required challenges. Depending on the difficulty of the challenges faced, the student can face a lower grade or a higher grade. Only after finishing all the levels, the student is able to successfully finish the subject. Virtual money can be spent in a virtual shop, where the student can invest in tools that can help solving some tasks. The virtual shop provides scripts, instructions and other techniques that can be valuable to students. A chance factor is also considered in the shop, giving further motivation to students. In the preliminary assessment of the process, students demonstrate willingness to compete not only to pursue the highest grade but also on the amount of collected BitPoints and on the speed to complete a level. Moreover, students frequently come back to previous levels and learning experiences, to further test the acquired skills

An integrated approach to short-term mobility for visiting lecturers

Student, teaching and non-teaching staff mobility is a fundamental aspect of internationalization in Higher Education in Europe. There have been several programmes that support mobility, in and outside the European context, such as the Erasmus+ programme. However, mobility is not the single expression of internationalization. Cooperation, joint degrees, intensive programmes for language learning, among others, contribute to a more open, solid and high quality education. This article describes the process followed in the organization of short-term teacher mobility in the scope of the Erasmus programme, with the intention of providing valuable learning experiences to students of the destination HEI. This happened in 2014, and refers to the experience as a visiting lecturer in a master’s degree in computer science. The experience was jointly planned and discussed with the degree coordinator, to provide adequate curricular integration.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Multi-management schemes for MAF platforms

Due to the crescent complexity of networks and systems, network management solutions are being pushed towards more distributed and cooperative models. Several specifications promoted by the IETF DISMAN charter already allow strong distribution of management tasks. Unfortunately, they are not adequate to achieve cooperative models. According to recent research, mobile agents provide a good platform to back cooperative models but several lacks are still identified - interoperability between different platforms and SNMP integration. Based on Mobile Agent Facility specification from the OMG, we propose a MIB to better integrate mobile agent models into SNMP frameworks and a GUI tool to monitor and control mobile agents platforms

Sequences of knots and their limits

Hyperfinite knots, or limits of equivalence classes of knots induced by a knot invariant taking values in a metric space, were introduced in a previous article by the author. In this article, we present new examples of hyperfinite knots stemming from sequences of torus knots

CeDRI at eRisk 2021: a naive approach to early detection of psychological disorders in social media

This paper describes the participation of the CeDRI team in eRisk 2021 tasks, particularly, the Task 1: Early Detection of Signs of Pathological Gambling and Task 2: Early Detection of Signs of Self-Harm. The main difference between these two is that the first is a “test only” challenge, where no training data is supplied. The second task has labeled data available, which can be used for training. Both tasks were addressed using the same algorithms, using a custom training set for Task 1 and the provided data in the second. The algorithms were TfIdf vectorizer with a Logistic Regression layer, Word2Vec vectorizer with LSTM and Word2Vec vectorizer with CNN. All vectorizers and Neural Networks were trained solely with the training data. As expected, the algorithms did not state-of-the-art, but the experience allowed to reflect in several aspects related to the importance of proper dataset preparation and processing. © 2021 Copyright for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Gamification as a learning tool

Las Instituciones de Educación Superior tienen las misiones de la educación, a un alto nivel, de la investigación y la cooperación. En cuanto a la educación, IES debe crear un ambiente apropiado para el aprendizaje, de alto nivel de rendimiento académico. Los alumnos deben estar motivados para usar las estrategias de aprendizaje en y fuera de las clases, para conseguir el mejor resultado del proceso de aprendizaje. Las personas se motivan por varios factores, externos como ganar más dinero, obtener condición social, tener un grado superior… o internas (intrínseco), que son resultados de la autoevaluación. Este último está asociado a la satisfacción que siente la gente cuando hace algo atractivo. Este documento describe el enfoque para aplicar la gamificación en la educación superior dentro del curso de ciencias de la computación. Se utiliza varios mecanismos diseño de juegos, tales como los desafíos adaptativos, premios, curiosidad y posibilidad de aumentar el tiempo que dedican los estudiantes trabajando, experimentando y aprendiendo en un IES. Las secciones en el plan de estudios se transforman en varios niveles, en los que se adjudican estrellas para logros cada vez más complejo. También existe el concepto de una moneda débil, que se utiliza para aumentar la autonomía de los estudiantes e incentivar la carga de trabajo. Algunos juegos son también utilizados como experiencias de aprendizaje, lo que permite construir conocimiento colectivo en la preparación y desarrollo de los juegos.Higher Education Institutions have the missions of education, at a high level, research and cooperation. Regarding education, HEI must create an appropriate environment for learning, towards high-level academic performance. Students must be motivated to use the learning strategies in and out of the classes, to be able to make the best result of the learning effort. People is motivated according to several factors, such as external in nature (earn more money, gain social status, have a higher grade, …) or internal (intrinsic), which results from the core self. The latter is associated to the satisfaction people feel when doing something appealing. This paper describes the approach to applying gamification to a higher education subject in the course of computer science. It uses several game design mechanisms, such as adaptive challenges, rewards, curiosity and chance to increase the time students spend working, experiencing and learning in a HEI. The sections in the curriculum are transformed into levels, awarding stars for increasingly complex achievements. There is also the concept of soft currency, which is used to increase the student autonomy and incentive the work load. Some games are also used as learning experiences, allowing collective knowledge building in the preparation and also playing the games.peerReviewe

D3S - a distributed storage service

The Internet growth allowed an explosion of service provision in the cloud. The cloud paradigm dictates the users` information migration from the desktop into the network allowng access averyhere, anytime. This paradigm provided a adequate environment to the emergency of online storage services, such as Amazon S3. This kind of services allows storing digital data in a transparent way, in a pay-as-you-go model. This paper describes an implementation of an S3 compatible cloud storage service based on peer-to-peer networks, in particular, through the BitTorrent protocol. This approach allows taking advantage of the intrisic features of this kind of networks, in particular possibility for simultaneous downlouading of pieces from different locations and the fault tolerance

Head posture detection for measuring preschoolers concentration

Several decades of research clearly demonstrate that high-quality, developmentally appropriate, early childhood programs, produce short and long-term positive effects on children’s cognitive and social development. Research with the Leuven Involvement Scale has shown that the levels of children’s involvement are a predictor of quality of learning. An involved child gets extremely fascinated and absorbed by the activity he is performing. There are several indicators that can be used to assess children involvement, such as concentration, energy, com- plexity and creativity, facial expression and posture, persistence, precision, reaction time, language and satisfaction. Some of these indicators require that the teacher pay attention to posture, measure and record the time that the child is facing a specific activity. Head posture usually indicates the focus of attention, since it coincides with the gaze direction, the direction and focus of a person’s eyes. This task is complex and requires several observations, on many children, distributed through the day. Usually, this is performed with a video recorder to help the teacher to evaluate the observation. The work described in this paper focus on how modern image processing technology can provide a valu- able aid to kindergarten teachers, helping them in the task of registering observations. In this context, head posture is automatically detected and measured, and time is recorded. Although easy for a human to interpret the orientation and movement of the human head, it is a challenge to computers. Of course there is always subjectivity in this kind of observation, but we hope that this tool can contribute to help teachers to make informed and critical judgments about the quality of teaching and learning they offer