Reducing Procrastination while Improving Performance: A Wiki-powered Experiment with Students

© 2019 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM.Students in higher education are traditionally requested to produce various pieces of written work during the courses they undertake. When students' work is submitted online as a whole, both the ethically questionable act of procrastinating and late submissions afect performance. The objective of this paper is to assess the performance of students from a control group, with that of students from an experimental group. The control group produced work as a unique deliverable to be submitted at the end of the course. On the other hand, the experimental group worked on each part for a week, and their work was managed by a wiki environment and monitored by a speciically developed software. Positive efects were noticed in the experimental group, as both students' time management skills and performance increased. Replications of this experiment can and should be performed, in order to compare results in coursework submission.Final Accepted Versio

Privacy-Preserving Reengineering of Model-View-Controller Application Architectures Using Linked Data

When a legacy system’s software architecture cannot be redesigned, implementing additional privacy requirements is often complex, unreliable and costly to maintain. This paper presents a privacy-by-design approach to reengineer web applications as linked data-enabled and implement access control and privacy preservation properties. The method is based on the knowledge of the application architecture, which for the Web of data is commonly designed on the basis of a model-view-controller pattern. Whereas wrapping techniques commonly used to link data of web applications duplicate the security source code, the new approach allows for the controlled disclosure of an application’s data, while preserving non-functional properties such as privacy preservation. The solution has been implemented and compared with existing linked data frameworks in terms of reliability, maintainability and complexity

Generación dinámica de invariantes para composiciones de servicios web en WS-BPEL

En los últimos años, las arquitecturas orientadas a servicios están cambiando la filosofía de desarrollo de software en muchos entornos. El uso de servicios web facilita significativamente la interoperabilidad entre sistemas, permitiendo programar sistemas de gran tamaño usando otros más simples de manera sencilla. El principal lenguaje para componer servicios es WS-BPEL 2.0, que ha sido estandarizado por OASIS con la participación de las grandes empresas del sector informático. Sin embargo, las principales técnicas de prueba no han sido adaptadas a WS-BPEL, quedando como uno de los principales retos para su adopción. El objetivo de esta tesis es estudiar la validez de la generación dinámica de invariantes (también conocida como generación de invariantes potenciales) para apoyar la prueba de caja blanca de composiciones de servicios web en WS-BPEL. En primer lugar, la tesis comprueba la viabilidad de la generación dinámica de invariantes para WS-BPEL. Para ello se presenta una arquitectura basada en el generador dinámico de invariantes Daikon, que ha demostrado ser útil para lenguajes imperativos como C/C++, Java y Perl. Daikon es software libre, y se ha integrado con código propio y otros dos sistemas libres: el motor de ejecución compatible WS-BPEL 2.0 ActiveBPEL y la biblioteca de prueba unitaria para WS-BPEL BPELUnit, que incorpora un mecanismo de simulación de servicios web (pues puede haber servicios no disponibles para pruebas). Los tres sistemas han sido adaptados para crear Takuan, el único generador dinámico de invariantes para WS-BPEL hasta la fecha. Tras implementar Takuan se realizaron pruebas para comprobar la utilidad de los invariantes que generaba. En ellas se observaron diversas mejoras específicas de WS-BPEL que permitirían optimizar su rendimiento. Tras implementarlas y evaluarlas, se obtuvo una mejora sustancial tanto en el tiempo de ejecución de Takuan como en la cantidad de invariantes que produce, descartando muchos invariantes no informativos y redundantes. Una vez estuvieron dichas mejoras implementadas se demostró la estabilidad de los invariantes generados por Takuan, permitiendo asegurar su correcto funcionamiento con un conjunto soporte adecuado. Los resultados obtenidos permiten afirmar la validez de la generación dinámica de invariantes para apoyar la prueba de caja blanca de composiciones WS-BPEL

Interactive Data Exploration of Distributed Raw Files: A Systematic Mapping Study

When exploring big amounts of data without a clear target, providing an interactive experience becomes really dif cult, since this tentative inspection usually defeats any early decision on data structures or indexing strategies. This is also true in the physics domain, speci cally in high-energy physics, where the huge volume of data generated by the detectors are normally explored via C++ code using batch processing, which introduces a considerable latency. An interactive tool, when integrated into the existing data management systems, can add a great value to the usability of these platforms. Here, we intend to review the current state-of-the-art of interactive data exploration, aiming at satisfying three requirements: access to raw data les, stored in a distributed environment, and with a reasonably low latency. This paper follows the guidelines for systematic mapping studies, which is well suited for gathering and classifying available studies.We summarize the results after classifying the 242 papers that passed our inclusion criteria. While there are many proposed solutions that tackle the problem in different manners, there is little evidence available about their implementation in practice. Almost all of the solutions found by this paper cover a subset of our requirements, with only one partially satisfying the three. The solutions for data exploration abound. It is an active research area and, considering the continuous growth of data volume and variety, is only to become harder. There is a niche for research on a solution that covers our requirements, and the required building blocks are there

Assessment of Generic Skills through an Organizational Learning Process Model

This contribution has been published in this repository with the permission of the publisher. This contribution was presented in WEBIST 2018 (http://www.webist.org/?y=2018) and has been published by SCITEPRESS in http://www.scitepress.org/PublicationsDetail.aspx?ID=y9Yt0eHt02o=&.The performance in generic skills is increasingly important for organizations to succeed in the current competitive environment. However, assessing the level of performance in generic skills of the members of an organization is a challenging task, subject to both subjectivity and scalability issues. Organizations usually lay their organizational learning processes on a Knowledge Management System (KMS). This work presents a process model to support managers of KMSs in the assessment of their individuals’ generic skills. The process model was deployed through an extended version of a learning management system. It was connected with different information system tools specifically developed to enrich its features. A case study with Computer Science final-year students working in a software system was conducted following an authentic learning approach, showing promising results.Visaigle Project (grant TIN2017-85797-R)

Assessment in Software Development for Competitive Environments: An AI Strategy Development Case Study

Competitions are being widely used to motivate students in diverse learning processes, including those in computer programming. This paper presents a methodology for designing and assessing competitive learning scenarios that allow students to develop three different coding skills: the ability to compete against unknown competitors, the ability to compete against known competitors and the ability to compete against refined versions of known competitors. The proposal is based on peer code review, implemented as an improvement cycle after the dissemination of the code among participants. A case study evaluating the methodology was conducted with two cohorts of students in an undergraduate course. The analysis of the obtained grades suggests that while performance after our assistance was improved, students could still fail or succeed independently of the assistance. Complementary data from student questionnaires and supervisor observations are aligned with this finding. As a conclusion, the evidence supports the validity of the methodology. Additionally, several guidelines based on the experience are provided to transfer the proposal to other environments.This research was funded by Spanish National Research Agency (AEI), through the project VISAIGLE (TIN2017-85797-R) with ERDF funds

Una app gamificada para incrementar la motivación hacia el aprendizaje de idiomas

The increasing expansion of mobile technologies (smartphones, tablets, etc.) has created, undoubtedly, new opportunities and challenges for the teaching and learning of languages. However, despite the numerous commercial and non-commercial apps, that has been developed in the last decade very few applications (apps), explore the potential current smartphones and tablets offer to create new learning environments. Hence most of the apps still focus on supporting form-focused and individual learning rather than exploiting the potential of current mobile devices to enhance students’ interaction and communication amongst each other. Therefore, the present study aims at developing an app that allows its users to interact amongst each other providing a community-driven learning approach. To this end we have implemented a system that allows its users to add new content based on their learning needs, evaluate and report the learning content that is gradually created by other users.  La creciente expansión de las tecnologías móviles ha creado indudablemente nuevas oportunidades y desafíos para la enseñanza y el aprendizaje de idiomas. No obstante, a pesar de que en la última década se hayan desarrollado numerosas aplicaciones comerciales y no comerciales (apps) para fomentar el aprendizaje de idiomas, pocas explotan el potencial que ofrecen hoy en día los smartphones o tabletas para crear nuevos entornos de aprendizaje. En cambio, la mayoría siguen centrándose en un aprendizaje formal e individual, sin aprovechar las posibilidades que brindan los actuales dispositivos móviles para incrementar la interacción y comunicación entre varios usuarios. De ahí nuestro propósito de desarrollar una app que permita la interacción entre sus usuarios proponiendo un enfoque basado en el aprendizaje comunitario. Para ello se ha implementado un sistema que permite al usuario introducir nuevo contenido, según sus necesidades de aprendizaje, evaluar y reportar el contenido creado por otros usuarios

A gamified App to enhance motivation towards language learning

La creciente expansión de las tecnologías móviles ha creado nuevas oportunidades y desafíos para la enseñanza y el aprendizaje de idiomas. No obstante, a pesar de que en la última década se hayan desarrollado numerosas aplicaciones comerciales y no comerciales (Apps) para fomentar el aprendizaje de idiomas, pocas explotan el potencial que ofrecen hoy en día los smartphones o tabletas para crear nuevos entornos de aprendizaje. En cambio, la mayoría siguen centrándose en un aprendizaje formal e individual, sin aprovechar las posibilidades que brindan los actuales dispositivos móviles para incrementar la interacción y comunicación entre varios usuarios. De ahí nuestro propósito de desarrollar una app que no solo permita la interacción entre sus usuarios proponiendo un enfoque basado en el aprendizaje comunitario sino que además explote el potencial de la gamificación para incrementar la motivación del alumnado. Para ello se ha implementado una app gamificada que permite al usuario introducir nuevo contenido (acorde a sus necesidades de aprendizaje) además de evaluar y reportar el contenido creado por otros usuarios y de recibir feedback regular sobre su propio proceso de aprendizaje.The increasing expansion of mobile technologies (smartphones, tablets, etc.) has created new opportunities and challenges for the teaching and learning of languages. However, despite the numerous commercial and non-commercial apps that have been developed in the last decade, very few applications (apps), explore the potential that current smartphones and tablets offer to create new learning environments. In fact, most of the apps still focus its interest on supporting form-focused and individual learning rather than exploiting the potential of current mobile devices to enhance students’ interaction and communication amongst each other. Therefore, the present study aims at developing a gamified app that not only might let its users to interact amongst each other providing a community-driven learning approach but also exploits the potential of gamification to enhance students’ motivation. To this end we have implemented a system that allows its users to add new content based on their learning needs, evaluate and report the learning content that is gradually created by other users

Supporting Skill Assessment in Learning Experiences Based on Serious Games Through Process Mining Techniques

Learning experiences based on serious games are employed in multiple contexts. Players carry out multiple interactions during the gameplay to solve the different challenges faced. Those interactions can be registered in logs as large data sets providing the assessment process with objective information about the skills employed. Most assessment methods in learning experiences based on serious games rely on manual approaches, which do not scalewell when the amount of data increases. We propose an automated method to analyse students’ interactions and assess their skills in learning experiences based on serious games. The method takes into account not only the final model obtained by the student, but also the process followed to obtain it, extracted from game logs. The assessment method groups students according to their in-game errors and ingame outcomes. Then, the models for the most and the least successful students are discovered using process mining techniques. Similarities in their behaviour are analysed through conformance checking techniques to compare all the students with the most successful ones. Finally, the similarities found are quantified to build a classification of the students’ assessments. We have employed this method with Computer Science students playing a serious game to solve design problems in a course on databases. The findings show that process mining techniques can palliate the limitations of skill assessment methods in game-based learning experiences

Redesigning a Foreign Language Learning Task Using Mobile Devices: A Comparative Analysis between the Digital and Paper-Based Outcomes

The introduction of mobile devices such as smartphones provides new opportunities to enhance the teaching-learning process of a foreign language. However, its use can affect not only the students' type and form of writing but also their ability to achieve the academic competencies targeted. Thus, aspects such as the development of linguistic and communicative competencies could be affected. In this paper, a comparative analysis of two different versions (a paper and a digital version) of the same learning task is carried out in order to analyze the impact of each on the development of students' linguistic and communicative competencies. The study is conducted with undergraduate students enrolled in a course called German II. Modern Language I (level A1.2, Common European Framework of Reference for Languages). The results obtained illustrate, on the one hand, the advantages of the paper version for developing students' linguistic competence and, on the other hand, that the digital version, despite facilitating students' interaction amongst each other, does not seem to be more suitable for developing students' communicative competence. Future studies will, therefore, focus on identifying those features that might increase the potential of the digital version for fostering the targeted competencies