Holistic analysis of the effectiveness of a software engineering teaching approach

To provide the best training in software engineering, several approaches and strategies are carried out. Some of them are more theoretical, learned through books and manuals, while others have a practical focus and often done in collaboration with companies. In this paper, we share an approach based on a balanced mix to foster the assimilation of knowledge, the approximation with what is done in software companies and student motivation. Two questionnaires were also carried out, one involving students, who had successfully completed the subject in past academic years (some had already graduated, and others are still students), and other questionnaire involving companies, in the field of software development, which employ students from our school. The analysis of the perspectives of the different stakeholders allows an overall and holistic) view, and a general understanding, of the effectiveness of the software engineering teaching approach. We analyse the results of the questionnaires and share some of the experiences and lessons learned.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Informing and socializing in interactive spaces: delivering the right information to the right users

The dissemination of large displays and personal mobile computing devices has created new opportunities for the joint use of these devices. Together these devices can enrich public spaces, promoting new and more engagement interaction mechanisms, giving users relevant information and providing important resources that can promote conversations and group activities. In this paper we explore the joint use of public displays and personal mobile computing devices, as equipments for the dissemination of personalized information that is delivered to users according to their interests and expectations. Three main aspects characterize our proposal. First, it encloses in the same system two types of devices for delivering information: mobile devices and large public displays. Second, the user only receives information of his interest point of view and the information is delivered through the most proper device. Third, our proposal combines into the same system two different perspectives: informative, providing users with information about their subscriptions and socializing, i.e. presenting, in a public display, information about the place, about users’ interests and about interests of other people that visits the same place. We have developed and evaluate a partial prototype based on those principles. The results show that the system is easy-to-use, that it can support a wide range of activities and that the users recognize an added value of the system comparing to traditional approaches

Web-CAN interface for access control and monitoring

This paper describes a web-based system which allows the user to manage and to do real time monitoring the access to the educational building spaces, using two data nets. The first one is based on the CAN bus for data acquisition and actuation tasks to which are connected control devices like, magnetic cards readers, door locks and sensors. The second one is an Internet/Intranet infrastructure and uses standard web technologies like PHP and Java to provide an effective control and real time monitoring. This system is implemented on the Linux operating system using the Apache HTTP server and make use of standard technologies in use on the Web, to make an effective campus-wide security system. To close the gap between these two nets we used a CAN/Intranet gateway. In this paper the system layout and its main components are described

Water supply remote monitoring system: a case study

In recent years, there has been enormous research interest in natural resources monitoring. So, there is a need to develop easily accessible, cheap and reliable information systems for monitoring and early warning, which could be used in most natural resources. This paper presents an ongoing information system development that aims the monitoring and supervising of some parameters on water supply, such as quality and quantity. To implement our system we use several technologies in order to monitoring about 100 water tanks in an area of ±1000 Km2. In these technologies is included GSM communication, web infrastructure and sensing equipment that allows the access of information from any place of the world. In paper sections the main blocks of the system architecture are described in detail

Effects of the number of classes and pressure map resolution on fine-grained in-bed posture classification

In-bed posture classification has attracted considerable research interest and has significant potential to enhance healthcare applications. Recent works generally use approaches based on pressure maps, machine learning algorithms and focused mainly on finding solutions to obtain high accuracy in posture classification. Typically, these solutions use different datasets with varying numbers of sensors and classify the four main postures (supine, prone, left-facing, and right-facing) or, in some cases, include some variants of those main postures. Following this, this article has three main objectives: fine-grained detection of postures of bedridden people, identifying a large number of postures, including small variations—consideration of 28 different postures will help to better identify the actual position of the bedridden person with a higher accuracy. The number of different postures in this approach is considerably higher than the of those used in any other related work; analyze the impact of pressure map resolution on the posture classification accuracy, which has also not been addressed in other studies; and use the PoPu dataset, a dataset that includes pressure maps from 60 participants and 28 different postures. The dataset was analyzed using five distinct ML algorithms (k-nearest neighbors, linear support vector machines, decision tree, random forest, and multi-layer perceptron). This study’s findings show that the used algorithms achieve high accuracy in 4-posture classification (up to 99% in the case of MLP) using the PoPu dataset, with lower accuracies when attempting the finer-grained 28-posture classification approach (up to 68% in the case of random forest). The results indicate that using ML algorithms for finer-grained applications is possible to specify the patient’s exact position to some degree since the parent posture is still accurately classified. Furthermore, reducing the resolution of the pressure maps seems to affect the classifiers only slightly, which suggests that for applications that do not need finer-granularity, a lower resolution might suffice.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A bluetooth-based Interactive system to improve relationships between actors in educational environments

Nowadays there are a vast number of devices and technologies available for the common citizen to improve their communication with others. This fosters the design and implementation of systems that explore the available features of these devices. In this paper, we propose a Bluetooth-based interactive system for delivering personalized information in high education institutions. The system allows informing, on a personalized way, the actors of an education institution on a free way using popular communication standards. The scenario we promote in the paper is mainly focused on learning environments, however the framework is also applicable in other shared public and semi-public spaces such as offices, homes, companies and many others. One of the most important contributions of this work is to combine public displays and personal mobile devices for delivering personalized information according to the students’ location. A prototype has been built and discussed with demonstrative user scenarios. Early results show that teachers and students found some advantages in this system comparing to traditional approaches. This system can effectively support a wide range of activities for students. It provides to each student the possibility to have a personal interaction with the technology in an authentic and appropriate use context. Features like the system’s architecture, prototype and system’s evaluation are explained in the paper. Results show that this system can be an important complement to other popular systems in education environment (e.g. e-mail, chats, Wikis, forums, e-learning platforms etc.)

Underage citizens monitoring applications - a review of the state of the art and guidelines for future implementations

Children's safety is a constant concern, both for parents and the institutions in which they are entrusted with care. There are several dangers and situations that can jeopardize children's safety. It is, therefore, important to have constant monitoring and preventive monitoring. This need, together with the technological means available nowadays, opens the way to the development of applications that allow better safety and monitoring of children's daily activities. The aim is to keep parents informed about where their children are and if there is anything they should be worried about. In this context, an analysis of the state of the art was carried out to identify the functionalities currently available to users of applications with this purpose. Through this analysis, essential functionalities were identified, such as real-time location on the map, location history, marking of safe areas and sending alerts. On the other hand, technological advances in various areas mean that there is room and opportunity to add value to what already exists and to contribute to answering existing problems. Therefore, in this article, besides the state of the art previously mentioned, it is also presented implementation lines for new mobile applications that may be developed in the future. The contributions of this article are, on the one hand to present what currently exists in terms of mobile applications to support the monitoring of children and on the other to propose lines of new features that current technology can provide in new applications.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A system to strengthening the relationships between actors in educational environments

Nowadays there are a vast number of devices and technologies available for the common citizen to improve their communication with others. This fosters the design and implementation of systems that explore the available features of these devices. This paper presents a system that allows to inform, on a personalized way, the actors of an education institution on a free way using popular communication standards. Features like the system’s architecture, prototype and system’s evaluation are explained in the paper. Results show that this system can be an important complement to other popular systems in education environments (e.g. e-mail, chats, Wikis, forums, e-learning platforms etc.)

Tiny programming language to improve assembly generation for automation equipment

The development time in industrial informatics systems, within industry environments, is a very important issue for competitiveness. The usage of adequate targetspecific programming languages is very important because they can facilitate and improve developers’ productivity, allowing solutions to be expressed in the idiom and at the level of abstraction of the problem’s domain. In this paper we present a target-specific programming language, which was designed to improve the design cycle of code generation, for an industrial embedded system. The native assembly code, the new language structure and their constructs, are presented in the paper. The proposed targetspecific language is expressed using words and terms that are related to the target’s domain and consequently it is now easier to program, understand and to validate the desired code. It is also demonstrated the language efficiency by comparing some code described using the new language against the previous used code. The design cycle is improved with the usage of the target-specific language because both description and debug time are significantly reduced with this new software tool. This is also a case of university-industry partnership

A target environment programming language to improve developer's productivity: a case study

This paper presents a target-specific programming language (TSL) that was designed to improve the design cycle of code generation for an industrial embedded system. The native assembly code, the new language structure and their constructs, are presented in the paper. The proposed TSL is expressed using words and terms that are related to the target’s domain and consequently it is now easier to program, understand and to validate the desired code. It is also demonstrated the language efficiency by comparing some code described using the new language against the previous used code. The design cycle is improved with the usage of the TSL because description time and debug time are significantly reduced with this new software tool. This is also a case of university-industry partnership