An XML format for benchmarks in High School Timetabling

The High School Timetabling Problem is amongst the most widely used timetabling problems. This problem has varying structures in different high schools even within the same country or educational system. Due to lack of standard benchmarks and data formats this problem has been studied less than other timetabling problems in the literature. In this paper we describe the High School Timetabling Problem in several countries in order to find a common set of constraints and objectives. Our main goal is to provide exchangeable benchmarks for this problem. To achieve this we propose a standard data format suitable for different countries and educational systems, defined by an XML schema. The schema and datasets are available online

17th Panhellenic and International Conference, ICT in Education (HCICTE 2018), Thessaloniki, Greece

Discussion forums are considered important tools for promoting learning in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). They involve learner to learner and learner to instructor discussions. An interesting research question is related to the effect of the subject matter on the characteristics of social networks of MOOCs’ discussion forums. Being motivated by Social Centrality Theory, this study aims at further enhancing our understanding of how social centrality is associated with the learners’ course achievement within courses in different subjects (e.g. technology vs. humanities). To achieve this, we performed analysis of the discussion forums of two MOOCs of similar size and educational context, one on Programming and the other on History. The study revealed that centrality of learners played more important role in the technology course than the humanities course in relation to course achievement.Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (Projects TIN2014-53199-C3-2-R and TIN2017-85179-C3-2-R)Junta de Castilla y León (programa de apoyo a proyectos de investigación – Ref. VA082U16)Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (PRX17/0041