Individual Video Training iVT and Annotating Academic Videos AAV: two complementing technologies

Individual Video Training iVT and Annotating Academic Videos AAV: two complementing technologies 1. Recording communication skills training sessions and reviewing them by oneself, with peers, and with tutors has become standard in medical education. Increasing numbers of students paired with restrictions of financial and human resources create a big obstacle to this important teaching method. 2. Everybody who wants to increase efficiency and effectiveness of communication training can get new ideas from our technical solution. 3. Our goal was to increase the effectiveness of communication skills training by supporting self, peer and tutor assessment over the Internet. Two technologies of SWITCH, the national foundation to support IT solutions for Swiss universities, came handy for our project. The first is the authentication and authorization infrastructure providing all Swiss students with a nationwide single login. The second is SWITCHcast which allows automated recording, upload and publication of videos in the Internet. Students start the recording system by entering their single login. This automatically links the video with their password. Within a few hours, they find their video password protected on the Internet. They now can give access to peers and tutors. Additionally, an annotation interface was developed. This software has free text as well as checklist annotations capabilities. Tutors as well as students can create checklists. Tutor’s checklists are not editable by students. Annotations are linked to tracks. Tracks can be private or public. Public means visible to all who have access to the video. Annotation data can be exported for statistical evaluation. 4. The system was well received by students and tutors. Big numbers of videos were processed simultaneously without any problems. 5. iVT http://www.switch.ch/aaa/projects/detail/UNIBE.7 AAV http://www.switch.ch/aaa/projects/detail/ETHZ.9

Capacity building in the use of geospatial tools for natural resource management in Tajikistan: Final Report

The Swiss Swiss Consultant Trust Fund (CTF) support covered the period from July to December 2007 and comprised four main tasks: (1) Analysis of historic land degradation trends in the four watersheds of Zerafshan, Surkhob, Toirsu, and Vanj; (2) Translation of standard CDE GIS training materials into Russian and Tajik to enable local government staff and other specialists to use geospatial data and tools; (3) Demonstration of geospatial tools that show land degradation trends associated with land use and vegetative cover data in the project areas, (4) Preliminary training of government staff in using appropriate data, including existing information, global datasets, inexpensive satellite imagery and other datasets and webbased visualization tools like spatial data viewers, etc. The project allowed building of local awareness of, and skills in, up-to-date, inexpensive, easy-to-use GIS technologies, data sources, and applications relevant to natural resource management and especially to sustainable land management. In addition to supporting the implementation of the World Bank technical assistance activity to build capacity in the use of geospatial tools for natural resource management, the Swiss CTF support also aimed at complementing the Bank supervision work on the ongoing Community Agriculture and Watershed Management Project (CAWMP).

Using Virtual Reality in the teaching of manufacturing processes with material removal in CNC Machine-Tools

This paper presents a methodology for the incorporation of a Virtual Reality development applied to the teaching of manufacturing processes, namely the group of machining processes in numerical control of machine tools. The paper shows how it is possible to supplement the teaching practice through virtual machine-tools whose operation is similar to the 'real' machines while eliminating the risks of use for both users and the machines.

Online games for the teaching of mathematics

In this article we present a didactic experience developed by the GIE (Group of Educational Innovation) “Pensamiento Matemático” of the Polytechnics University of Madrid (UPM), in order to bring secondary students and university students closer to Mathematics. It deals with the development of a virtual board game called Mate-trivial. The mechanics of the game is to win points by going around the board which consists of four types of squares identified by colours: “Statistics and Probability”, “Calculus and Analysis”, “Algebra and Geometry” and “Arithmetic and Number Theory ”. When landing on a square, a question of its category is set out: a correct answer wins 200 points, if wrong it loses 100 points, and not answering causes no effect on the points, but all the same, two minutes out of the 20 minutes that each game lasts are lost. For the game to be over it is necessary, before those 20 minutes run out, to reach the central square and succeed in the final task: four chained questions, one of each type, which must be all answered correctly. It is possible to choose between two levels to play: Level 1, for pre-university students and Level 2 for university students. A prototype of the game is available at the website “Aula de Pensamiento Matemático” developed by the GIE: http://innovacioneducativa.upm.es/pensamientomatematico/. This activity lies within a set of didactic actions which the GIE is developing in the framework of the project “Collaborative Strategies between University and Secondary School Education for the teaching and learning of Mathematics: An Application to solve problems while playing”, a transversal project financed by the UPM.

The online case study development for the teaching of building structures reinforcement

The Reinforcement of Building Structures is one of the topics of the Master in Building Innovation Technology (MBIT) of Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM). Since the beginning of the delivery of this master, case studies have been chosen as the teaching methodology. For the 2011-2012 course the online education of this subject was implemented, instead of the classical learning based on attendance. Through ICT’s (Information and Communication Technologies) students are provided with much more and more selective information than through the classical learning. ICT’s can be used for search, enquiries and reporting. Using the online tools has been proved, through the results obtained and based on the surveys made amongst students, to be a successful experience.

Teaching automatic control in non-specialist engineering schools

Automatic Control Teaching in the new degree syllabus has reduced both, its contents and its implementation course, with regard to traditional engineering careers. On the other hand, where the qualification is not considered as automatic control specialist, it is required an adapted methodology to provide the minimum contents that the student needs to assimilate, even in the case that students do not perceive these contents as the most important in their future career. In this paper we present the contents of a small automatic course taught Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering Degrees at the School of Naval Engineering of the Polytechnic University of Madrid. We have included the contents covered using the proposed methodology which is based on practical work after lectures. Firstly, the students performed exercises by hand. Secondly, they solve the exercises using informatics support tools, and finally, they validate their previous results and their knowledge in the laboratory platforms.

Soft Skills: A Comparative Analysis Between Online and Classroom Teaching

Currently the Spanish universities are making a great effort to effectively incorporate the development and assessment of generic skills in their training programs. Information and communications technologies (ICT) offer a wide range of possibilities but create uncertainty among teachers about the process and results. It is considered of interest to conduct a study to analyze the extent to which social skills like commitment, communication and teamwork are acquired by students and teachers. It seeks to ascertain the influence of the learning context, online or classroom training, in the development of these personal skills among the participants in the sample. For this study two universities have been chosen, Universidad a Distancia de Madrid (UDIMA) offering online training environment, and Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) with classroom training modality. A total of 257 individuals, 230 students and 27 teachers have answered the survey called Evalsoft. This instrument was designed in the project with the same name by a research team from Universidad Complutense of Madrid (UCM). Some interesting conclusions can be highlighted: it is in the online context where there are higher levels of commitment and teamwork than in the classroom modality; teachers have higher social skills that students and these improve with age. Sex and the training program appear to influence these social skills.

Using cloud technologies for engaging people with cultural heritage

Cultural heritage is an important asset of Europe which is largely underexplored. One of the main reasons is that the general public do not really incorporate cultural activities in their life style. Currently, curators and professionals in the heritage sector face the toughest challenges on how to attract, engage and retain visitors of heritage institutions (libraries, museums, archives and historical societies). TAG CLOUD FP7 European project seeks to overcome this situation and promote lifelong engagement with culture by personalising the visitors? cultural experiences through cloud technologies.

Educación Ambiental y Huella de Carbono en la asignatura de "Technologies" 3º E.S.O.

Este documento presenta el diseño de un proyecto para la asignatura de tecnología de tercero de educación secundaria obligatoria en un instituto de enseñanza bilingüe. Se perfilan una serie de tareas cíclicas que permitirán desarrollar a los alumnos una mayor comprensión sobre el uso de la energía y la importancia del medio ambiente a través de la lengua inglesa. Este ciclo de actividades organizadas en cuatro sesiones se fundamenta en la metodología del Aprendizaje Integrado de Contenidos y Lengua Extranjera, AICLE. A través de esta se persigue el doble objetivo del aprendizaje de la lengua a la par que el del contenido. Para ello, las estrategias que se proponen se centran en el alumno y se apoyan en el trabajo colaborativo, la interacción entre iguales y las metodologías activas y participativas en las que son los propios estudiantes los que diseñan los contenidos y los adaptan a su estilo de aprendizaje. Aunque sin resultados concluyentes, el trabajo supone una aportación más a las propuestas de actividades cooperativas que centran el aprendizaje en las aulas AICLE. This project presents the design of a teaching sequence for the subject of technology in the third grade in a bilingual high school. A task cycle is created with the double objective of providing students with a deeper understanding about the use of energy and the importance of the environment through the English language. The series of activities were organized in four sessions, attending to Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) methodology. Throughout this double focussed objective of learning the language and the subject matter content at the same time, the strategies proposed are focused on the student and support collaborative work, peer interaction and active participatory methodologies, focussed in the students who are the real designers of the content materials based on their own learning style. Although no conclusive results are presented, this work aims to be a contribution to other cooperative task proposals as one of the main basis of CLIL methodology.

Reverse engineering as a teaching tool: the corneal topographer

Póster presentado en EDULEARN12, International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies, Barcelona, 2nd-4th July 2012.

Reverse engineering as a teaching tool: the corneal topographer

Reverse engineering is the process of discovering the technological principles of a device, object or system through analysis of its structure, function, and operation. From a device used in clinical practice, as the corneal topographer, reverse engineering will be used to infer physical principles and laws. In our case, reverse engineering involves taking this mechanical device apart and analyzing its working detail. The initial knowledge of the application and usefulness of the device provides a motivation that, together with the combination of theory and practice, will help the students to understand and learn concepts studied in different subjects in the Optics and Optometry degree. These subjects belong to both the core and compulsory subjects of the syllabus of first and second year of the degree. Furthermore, the experimental practice is used as transverse axis that relates theoretical concepts, technology transfer and research.