The European Project Semester at ISEP: Learning to Learn Engineering

The European Project Semester at ISEP (EPS@ISEP) is a one semester project-based learning programme addressed to engineering students from diverse scientific backgrounds and nationalities. The students, organized in multicultural teams, are challenged to solve real world multidisciplinary problems, accounting for 30 ECTU. The EPS package, although focused on project development (20 ECTU), includes a series of complementary seminars aimed at fostering soft, project-related and engineering transversal skills (10 ECTU). This paper presents the study plan, resources, operation and results of the EPS@ISEP that was created in 2011 to apply the best engineering education practices and promote the internationalization of ISEP. The results show that the EPS@ISEP students acquire during one semester the scientific, technical and soft competences necessary to propose, design and implement a solution for a multidisciplinary problem.

Developing an aquaponics system to learn sustainability and social compromise skills

The goal of this project, one of the proposals of the EPS@ISEP Spring 2014, was to develop an Aquaponics System. Over recent years Aquaponics systems have received increased attention since they contribute to reduce the strain on resources within 1st and 3rd world countries. Aquaponics is the combination of Hydroponics and Aquaculture, mimicking a natural environment in order to successfully apply and enhance the understanding of natural cycles within an indoor process. Using this knowledge of natural cycles, it was possible to create a system with capabilities similar to that of a natural environment with the support of electronics, enhancing the overall efficiency of the system. The multinational team involved in the development of this system was composed of five students from five countries and fields of study. This paper describes their solution, including the overall design, the technology involved and the benefits it can bring to the current market. The team was able to design and render the Computer Aided Design (CAD) drawings of the prototype, assemble all components, successfully test the electronics and comply with the budget. Furthermore, the designed solution was supported by a product sustainability study and included a specific marketing plan. Last but not least, the students enrolled in this project obtained new multidisciplinary knowledge and increased their team work and cross-cultural communication skills.

Accounting education in an action-based learning environment: lessons learned

In the context of the Bologna Declaration a change is taking place in the teaching/learning paradigm. From teaching-centered education, which emphasizes the acquisition and transmission of knowledge, we now speak of learning-centered education, which is more demanding for students. This paradigm promotes a continuum of lifelong learning, where the individual needs to be able to handle knowledge, to select what is appropriate for a particular context, to learn permanently and to understand how to learn in new and rapidly changing situations. One attempt to face these challenges has been the experience of ISCAP regarding the teaching/learning of accounting in the course Managerial Simulation. This paper describes the process of teaching, learning and assessment in an action-based learning environment. After a brief general framework that focuses on education objectives, we report the strengths and limitations of this teaching/learning tool. We conclude with some lessons from the implementation of the project.

Knowledge sharing and learning processes: case study of portuguese technological schools and higher education institutions

Paper to be presented at the ESREA Conference Learning to Change? The Role of Identity and Learning Careers in Adult Education, 7-8 December, 2006, Université Catholique Louvain, Louvain–la-Neuve, Belgium

Moodle and multiple-choice tests

Multiple-Choice items are used in many different kinds of tests in several areas of knowledge. They can be considered an interesting tool to the self-assessing or as an alternative or complementary instrument to the traditional methods for assessing knowledge. The objectivity and accuracy of the multiple-choice tests is an important reason to think about. They are especially useful when the number of students to evaluate is too large. Moodle (Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) is an Open Source course management system centered around learners' needs and designed to support collaborative approaches to teaching and learning. Moodle offers to the users a rich interface, context-specific help buttons, and a wide variety of tools such as discussion forums, wikis, chat, surveys, quizzes, glossaries, journals, grade books and more, that allow them to learn and collaborate in a truly interactive space. Come together the interactivity of the Moodle platform and the objectivity of this kind of tests one can easily build manifold random tests. The proposal of this paper is to relate our journey in the construction of these tests and share our experience in the use of the Moodle platform to create, take advantage and improve the multiple-choices tests in the Mathematic area.

Improving management skills through business simulation

A survey was conducted among students of the Accounting and Administration undergraduate degree at ISCAP – IPP (School of Accounting and Administration of Polytechnic Institute of Porto) in order to understand their perception value of their course Business Simulation (BS). This course is provided in a business environment where students can learn by doing through the management of a company as they were in the real life, but risk-free. The learning tasks are provided in an action-oriented format to maximize the learning process. Students learn by doing a set of tasks every session and have also to produce reports and presentations during the course. BS is part of the undergraduate degree of Accounting and Administration at ISCAP – IPP since the beginning of 2003. The questionnaire we used captured the students’ perception about general and specific skills and competencies considered important for managers and accountants in the real life, about the methodology used in the course, which is totally different from the traditional form, and also about the adequacy of the course included as part of the undergraduate degree. The results showed that students’ perception is highly positive and almost all of them think they improve the skills needed for a job during the course. These results are consistent with [1] Adler and Milne’s research in which the authors found that students agree with the use of action-oriented learning tasks in order to provide them the needed attitudes, skills, and knowledge. The improvement of group skills is the most important issue for students, which can be understandable as BS is the only course from the degree in Accounting and Administration they really have to work in groups.

Gestão estratégica: balanced scorecard para uma entidade hospitalar

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Contabilidade e Finanças Orientador: Doutora Cláudia Maria Ferreira Pereira Lopes

Peer Instruction method in introductory math courses

Learning is not a spectator’s sport. Students do not learn much by just sitting in class listening their teachers, memorizing pre-packaged assignments and spitting out answers. The teaching-learning process has been a constant target of studies, particularly in Higher Education, in consequence of the annual increase of new students. The concern with maintaining a desired quality level in the training of these students, conjugated with the will to widen the access to all of those who finish Secondary School Education, has triggered a greater intervention from the education specialists, in partnership with the teachers of all Higher Education areas, in the analysis of this problem. Considering the particular case of Engineering, it has been witnessed a rising concern with the active learning strategies and forms of assessment. Research has demonstrated that students learn more if they are actively engaged with the material they are studying. In this presentation we describe, present and discuss the techniques and the results of Peer Instruction method in an introductory Calculus courses of an Engineering Bach

Intelligent decision making in electricity markets: simulated annealing Q-Learning

Electricity markets are complex environments, involving a large number of different entities, playing in a dynamic scene to obtain the best advantages and profits. MASCEM is a multi-agent electricity market simulator to model market players and simulate their operation in the market. Market players are entities with specific characteristics and objectives, making their decisions and interacting with other players. MASCEM is integrated with ALBidS, a system that provides several dynamic strategies for agents’ behavior. This paper presents a method that aims at enhancing ALBidS competence in endowing market players with adequate strategic bidding capabilities, allowing them to obtain the higher possible gains out of the market. This method uses a reinforcement learning algorithm to learn from experience how to choose the best from a set of possible actions. These actions are defined accordingly to the most probable points of bidding success. With the purpose of accelerating the convergence process, a simulated annealing based algorithm is included.

Cost dependent strategy for electricity markets bidding based on adaptive reinforcement learning

Electricity markets are complex environments, involving a large number of different entities, playing in a dynamic scene to obtain the best advantages and profits. MASCEM is a multi-agent electricity market simulator to model market players and simulate their operation in the market. Market players are entities with specific characteristics and objectives, making their decisions and interacting with other players. MASCEM provides several dynamic strategies for agents’ behavior. This paper presents a method that aims to provide market players with strategic bidding capabilities, allowing them to obtain the higher possible gains out of the market. This method uses a reinforcement learning algorithm to learn from experience how to choose the best from a set of possible bids. These bids are defined accordingly to the cost function that each producer presents.

A new approach for multi-agent coalition formation and management in the scope of electricity markets

This paper presents a new methodology for the creation and management of coalitions in Electricity Markets. This approach is tested using the multi-agent market simulator MASCEM, taking advantage of its ability to provide the means to model and simulate VPP (Virtual Power Producers). VPPs are represented as coalitions of agents, with the capability of negotiating both in the market, and internally, with their members, in order to combine and manage their individual specific characteristics and goals, with the strategy and objectives of the VPP itself. The new features include the development of particular individual facilitators to manage the communications amongst the members of each coalition independently from the rest of the simulation, and also the mechanisms for the classification of the agents that are candidates to join the coalition. In addition, a global study on the results of the Iberian Electricity Market is performed, to compare and analyze different approaches for defining consistent and adequate strategies to integrate into the agents of MASCEM. This, combined with the application of learning and prediction techniques provide the agents with the ability to learn and adapt themselves, by adjusting their actions to the continued evolving states of the world they are playing in.

Meta-heuristics tunning using CBR for dynamic scheduling

This paper addresses the problem of Biological Inspired Optimization Techniques (BIT) parameterization, considering the importance of this issue in the design of BIT especially when considering real world situations, subject to external perturbations. A learning module with the objective to permit a Multi-Agent Scheduling System to automatically select a Meta-heuristic and its parameterization to use in the optimization process is proposed. For the learning process, Casebased Reasoning was used, allowing the system to learn from experience, in the resolution of similar problems. Analyzing the obtained results we conclude about the advantages of its use.

Insuficiência cardíaca: a utilidade da Ecocardiografia

Objetivos Os principais objetivos deste trabalho foram: 1) Rever as características da IC: epidemiologia, conceito, classificação, etiologia, fisiopatologia, diagnóstico e tratamento; 2) Demonstrar a importância da Ecocardiografia na IC: (a) no diagnóstico, (b) no acompanhamento e (c) na seleção da opção terapêutica. Como objetivo secundário: Reunir toda a informação com vista à produção de um manual de apoio às aulas. Metodologia Os estudos que serviram de base a este trabalho foram pesquisados a partir das palavras-chave “echocardiography”, “heart failure”, “diagnosis”, “treatment” utilizando as bases de dados PubMed, Scopus e ISI Web of Science. A pesquisa foi limitada a artigos publicados em português, inglês e espanhol, sem restrição por tipo de artigo ou ano de publicação. Ao longo da realização deste trabalho, foram sendo recolhidas referências de outros artigos citados nos estudos inicialmente selecionados, expandindo assim a bibliografia. Para conhecer a situação particular de Portugal, foram pesquisados estudos realizados com a população portuguesa. Foi dada particular atenção às várias recomendações existentes quer para a “Insuficiência Cardíaca” quer para a “Utilidade da Ecocardiografia”, disponíveis gratuitamente online, pois estas desempenham um papel fundamental quer na prática clínica, quer na investigação (estudos epidemiológicos, estudos obrigacionais e ensaios clínicos).

Machine Learning Algorithms at Myocardial Perfusion Imaging - a Preliminary Study

Introduction: A major focus of data mining process - especially machine learning researches - is to automatically learn to recognize complex patterns and help to take the adequate decisions strictly based on the acquired data. Since imaging techniques like MPI – Myocardial Perfusion Imaging on Nuclear Cardiology, can implicate a huge part of the daily workflow and generate gigabytes of data, there could be advantages on Computerized Analysis of data over Human Analysis: shorter time, homogeneity and consistency, automatic recording of analysis results, relatively inexpensive, etc.Objectives: The aim of this study relates with the evaluation of the efficacy of this methodology on the evaluation of MPI Stress studies and the process of decision taking concerning the continuation – or not – of the evaluation of each patient. It has been pursued has an objective to automatically classify a patient test in one of three groups: “Positive”, “Negative” and “Indeterminate”. “Positive” would directly follow to the Rest test part of the exam, the “Negative” would be directly exempted from continuation and only the “Indeterminate” group would deserve the clinician analysis, so allowing economy of clinician’s effort, increasing workflow fluidity at the technologist’s level and probably sparing time to patients. Methods: WEKA v3.6.2 open source software was used to make a comparative analysis of three WEKA algorithms (“OneR”, “J48” and “Naïve Bayes”) - on a retrospective study using the comparison with correspondent clinical results as reference, signed by nuclear cardiologist experts - on “SPECT Heart Dataset”, available on University of California – Irvine, at the Machine Learning Repository. For evaluation purposes, criteria as “Precision”, “Incorrectly Classified Instances” and “Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) Areas” were considered. Results: The interpretation of the data suggests that the Naïve Bayes algorithm has the best performance among the three previously selected algorithms. Conclusions: It is believed - and apparently supported by the findings - that machine learning algorithms could significantly assist, at an intermediary level, on the analysis of scintigraphic data obtained on MPI, namely after Stress acquisition, so eventually increasing efficiency of the entire system and potentially easing both roles of Technologists and Nuclear Cardiologists. In the actual continuation of this study, it is planned to use more patient information and significantly increase the population under study, in order to allow improving system accuracy.

A relação terapeuta-cliente: na perspectiva do cliente

O presente estudo resulta de uma crescente preocupação e percepção da importância da relação terapeuta-cliente e procura compreender a perspectiva do cliente e a forma como este sente e vive essa relação ao longo de todo o seu processo terapêutico. O estudo realizado, de natureza qualitativa e de carácter exploratório, visa sobretudo analisar a influência da relação terapeuta-cliente na perspectiva do cliente, identificar e descrever os fatores que a influenciam e perceber a mais-valia desta relação ao longo do processo terapêutico. Para tal, foram entrevistadas dezanove pessoas que estão a receber tratamento de terapia ocupacional. Para a recolha dos dados foi aplicada a entrevista semi-estruturada por se pretender um contributo mais envolvente, particularizado e subjetivo dos clientes. Através da realização do estudo e de acordo com a perspetiva dos clientes entrevistados, concluiu-se que a capacidade do terapeuta em construir e estabelecer um vínculo com o cliente ditará grande parte do sucesso ou insucesso do processo terapêutico. Porém, tão importante como formar e estabelecer um vínculo terapeuta-cliente é preciso ter a preocupação contínua de o manter sempre vivo e fortalecido. Para que tal aconteça, o terapeuta não pode menosprezar a experiência de vida e expectativas do cliente e deve assumir um papel de permanente preocupação e atenção a todas as transformações quotidianas pois estas influenciam o envolvimento do cliente nas suas atividades/ocupações e afetam a sua saúde e desempenho. O novo milénio requer dos profissionais de saúde em geral e dos terapeutas ocupacionais em particular, novas habilidades e competências. É fundamental adquirir a consciência de que os clientes são o centro de todo o processo terapêutico. É necessário ter uma visão holística e não fragmentada do cliente. É importante interagir com os clientes e permitir uma troca de conhecimento, entre o saber do cliente e o saber do terapeuta. Essa troca gera convergências, fortalece laços e o processo terapêutico avança. Nesse relacionamento, ambos aprendem, progridem e crescem.