Virtual Learning Environments In Faculties Of Education In Spain: Changes On Student Attitude

This paper presents some results of a R+D project entitled “e-Learning system for Practical Training of University students in Education Faculties (ForELearn)”, developed in Spain by the Universidad de Granada and the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education. In a first phase, through the use of AulaWeb Learning Management System, a set of adaptations and improvements of this software application have been done for the design and development of an experimental course of Practicum supervision. Next, the implementation of this course by means of a group of face to face and online seminars provides experimental data for the analysis and discussion about the point of view of users (preservice teachers) that have tracked their practice supervision with AulaWeb.

The Experience of Helicopters subject-course in the OCW-UPM Project. A Proposal on Technology Dissemination.

An experience developed by the authors in the design of educational tools, funded on multimedia support for using in teaching, will be presented. These tools have been used on the subject of Helicopters, http://ocw.upm.es/ingenieriaaeroespacial/ helicopteros at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (E.U.I.T. Aeronáutica). Throughout more than ten years, these didactical and educational elements have been defined and developed. It has the singularity that most of them have been designed for undergraduate students, as a part of their end of degree projectwork. This peculiarity has led to a wide range of proposals and solutions, as well as an appropriate approach. depending on the level of knowledge. The evolution of tools for developing these materials will be presented, discussing advantages and disadvantages. Finally, we will advance the new materials which are being prepared at present.

c&d-learning implementation architecture: Adapting e-learning to developing countries

From the educational point of view, the most widespread method in developing countries is on-site education. Technical and economic resources cannot support conventional distance learning infrastructures and it is even worse for courses in universities. They usually suffer a lack of qualified faculty staff, especially in technical degrees. The literature suggest that e-learning is a suitable solution for this problem, but its methods are developed attending to educational necessities of the First World and cannot be applied directly to other contexts. The proposed methodology is a variant of traditional e-learning adapted to the needs of developing countries. E-learning for Cooperation and Development (c&d-learning) is oriented to be used for educational institutions without adequate technical or human resources. In this paper we describe the c&d-learning implementation architecture based on three main phases: hardware, communication and software; e.g. computer and technical equipping, internet accessing and e-learning platform adaptation. Proper adaptation of educational contents to c&d-learning is discussed and a real case of application in which the authors are involved is described: the Ngozi University at Burundi.

End-User-Oriented Telco Mashups: The OMELETTE Approach

With the success of Web 2.0 we are witnessing a growing number of services and APIs exposed by Telecom, IT and content providers. Targeting the Web community and, in particular, Web application developers, service providers expose capabilities of their infrastructures and applications in order to open new markets and to reach new customer groups. However, due to the complexity of the underlying technologies, the last step, i.e., the consumption and integration of the offered services, is a non-trivial and time-consuming task that is still a prerogative of expert developers. Although many approaches to lower the entry barriers for end users exist, little success has been achieved so far. In this paper, we introduce the OMELETTE project and show how it addresses end-user-oriented telco mashup development. We present the goals of the project, describe its contributions, summarize current results, and describe current and future work.

The NACIR Project: New Applications for CPV'S: A fast way to improve reliability and Technology progress

The main goal of this proposal is to join together the owners of the most advanced CPV technology, with respect to the state of the art, in order to research from its leading position new applications for CPV systems. In addition to opening up new markets, it will unveil possible sources of failure in new environments outside Europe, in order to assure component reliability. The proposed project will also try to improve the current technology of the industrial partners (ISOFOTON and CONCENTRIX) by accelerating the learning curve that CPV must follow in order to reach the competitive market, and lowering the cost under the current flat panel PV significantly within 3-4 years. The use of CPV systems in remote areas, together with harsher radiation, ambient and infrastructure conditions will help to increase the rate of progress of this technology. In addition, the ISFOC s contribution, which brings together seven power plants from seven CPV technologies up to 3 MWpeak, will allow creating the most complete database of components and systems performance to be generated as well as the effects of radiation and meteorology on systems operations. Finally, regarding the new applications for CPV subject, the project will use a CPV system sized 25 kWp in a stand-alone station in Egypt (NWRC) for the first time for water pumping and irrigation purposes. In a similar way ISOFOTON will connect up to 25 kWp CPV to the Moroccan ONE utility grid. From the research content point of view of this project, which is directly addressed by the scope of the call, the cooperative research between UPM, FhG-ISE and the two companies will be favoured by the fact that all are progressing in similar directions: developing two-stage optics CPV systems. In addition to these technology improvements the UPM is very interested in developing a new concept of module, recently patented, which will fulfil all required characteristics of a good CPV with less components and reducing cost.

Building the qualification and a skill development program within the ENEN-III European Project

The ENEN III project covers the structuring, organization, coordination and implementation of training schemes in cooperation with local, national and international training organizations, to provide training to professionals active in nuclear organizations or their contractors and sub-contractors. The training schemes provide a portfolio of courses, training sessions, seminars, and workshops for continuous learning for upgrading knowledge and developing skills. The training schemes allow individuals to acquire qualifications and skills, as required by the specific positions in the nuclear sector which will be documented in a training passport. The essence of such passport is to be recognized within the EU by the whole nuclear sector which provides mobility to the individual looking for employment and an EU wide recruitment field for the nuclear employers.

Generación de Casos de Prueba en Programación Orientada a Objetos = Test Case Generation in Object-Oriented Programming

Las pruebas de software (Testing) son en la actualidad la técnica más utilizada para la validación y la evaluación de la calidad de un programa. El testing está integrado en todas las metodologías prácticas de desarrollo de software y juega un papel crucial en el éxito de cualquier proyecto de software. Desde las unidades de código más pequeñas a los componentes más complejos, su integración en un sistema de software y su despliegue a producción, todas las piezas de un producto de software deben ser probadas a fondo antes de que el producto de software pueda ser liberado a un entorno de producción. La mayor limitación del testing de software es que continúa siendo un conjunto de tareas manuales, representando una buena parte del coste total de desarrollo. En este escenario, la automatización resulta fundamental para aliviar estos altos costes. La generación automática de casos de pruebas (TCG, del inglés test case generation) es el proceso de generar automáticamente casos de prueba que logren un alto recubrimiento del programa. Entre la gran variedad de enfoques hacia la TCG, esta tesis se centra en un enfoque estructural de caja blanca, y más concretamente en una de las técnicas más utilizadas actualmente, la ejecución simbólica. En ejecución simbólica, el programa bajo pruebas es ejecutado con expresiones simbólicas como argumentos de entrada en lugar de valores concretos. Esta tesis se basa en un marco general para la generación automática de casos de prueba dirigido a programas imperativos orientados a objetos (Java, por ejemplo) y basado en programación lógica con restricciones (CLP, del inglés constraint logic programming). En este marco general, el programa imperativo bajo pruebas es primeramente traducido a un programa CLP equivalente, y luego dicho programa CLP es ejecutado simbólicamente utilizando los mecanismos de evaluación estándar de CLP, extendidos con operaciones especiales para el tratamiento de estructuras de datos dinámicas. Mejorar la escalabilidad y la eficiencia de la ejecución simbólica constituye un reto muy importante. Es bien sabido que la ejecución simbólica resulta impracticable debido al gran número de caminos de ejecución que deben ser explorados y a tamaño de las restricciones que se deben manipular. Además, la generación de casos de prueba mediante ejecución simbólica tiende a producir un número innecesariamente grande de casos de prueba cuando es aplicada a programas de tamaño medio o grande. Las contribuciones de esta tesis pueden ser resumidas como sigue. (1) Se desarrolla un enfoque composicional basado en CLP para la generación de casos de prueba, el cual busca aliviar el problema de la explosión de caminos interprocedimiento analizando de forma separada cada componente (p.ej. método) del programa bajo pruebas, almacenando los resultados y reutilizándolos incrementalmente hasta obtener resultados para el programa completo. También se ha desarrollado un enfoque composicional basado en especialización de programas (evaluación parcial) para la herramienta de ejecución simbólica Symbolic PathFinder (SPF). (2) Se propone una metodología para usar información del consumo de recursos del programa bajo pruebas para guiar la ejecución simbólica hacia aquellas partes del programa que satisfacen una determinada política de recursos, evitando la exploración de aquellas partes del programa que violan dicha política. (3) Se propone una metodología genérica para guiar la ejecución simbólica hacia las partes más interesantes del programa, la cual utiliza abstracciones como generadores de trazas para guiar la ejecución de acuerdo a criterios de selección estructurales. (4) Se propone un nuevo resolutor de restricciones, el cual maneja eficientemente restricciones sobre el uso de la memoria dinámica global (heap) durante ejecución simbólica, el cual mejora considerablemente el rendimiento de la técnica estándar utilizada para este propósito, la \lazy initialization". (5) Todas las técnicas propuestas han sido implementadas en el sistema PET (el enfoque composicional ha sido también implementado en la herramienta SPF). Mediante evaluación experimental se ha confirmado que todas ellas mejoran considerablemente la escalabilidad y eficiencia de la ejecución simbólica y la generación de casos de prueba. ABSTRACT Testing is nowadays the most used technique to validate software and assess its quality. It is integrated into all practical software development methodologies and plays a crucial role towards the success of any software project. From the smallest units of code to the most complex components and their integration into a software system and later deployment; all pieces of a software product must be tested thoroughly before a software product can be released. The main limitation of software testing is that it remains a mostly manual task, representing a large fraction of the total development cost. In this scenario, test automation is paramount to alleviate such high costs. Test case generation (TCG) is the process of automatically generating test inputs that achieve high coverage of the system under test. Among a wide variety of approaches to TCG, this thesis focuses on structural (white-box) TCG, where one of the most successful enabling techniques is symbolic execution. In symbolic execution, the program under test is executed with its input arguments being symbolic expressions rather than concrete values. This thesis relies on a previously developed constraint-based TCG framework for imperative object-oriented programs (e.g., Java), in which the imperative program under test is first translated into an equivalent constraint logic program, and then such translated program is symbolically executed by relying on standard evaluation mechanisms of Constraint Logic Programming (CLP), extended with special treatment for dynamically allocated data structures. Improving the scalability and efficiency of symbolic execution constitutes a major challenge. It is well known that symbolic execution quickly becomes impractical due to the large number of paths that must be explored and the size of the constraints that must be handled. Moreover, symbolic execution-based TCG tends to produce an unnecessarily large number of test cases when applied to medium or large programs. The contributions of this dissertation can be summarized as follows. (1) A compositional approach to CLP-based TCG is developed which overcomes the inter-procedural path explosion by separately analyzing each component (method) in a program under test, stowing the results as method summaries and incrementally reusing them to obtain whole-program results. A similar compositional strategy that relies on program specialization is also developed for the state-of-the-art symbolic execution tool Symbolic PathFinder (SPF). (2) Resource-driven TCG is proposed as a methodology to use resource consumption information to drive symbolic execution towards those parts of the program under test that comply with a user-provided resource policy, avoiding the exploration of those parts of the program that violate such policy. (3) A generic methodology to guide symbolic execution towards the most interesting parts of a program is proposed, which uses abstractions as oracles to steer symbolic execution through those parts of the program under test that interest the programmer/tester most. (4) A new heap-constraint solver is proposed, which efficiently handles heap-related constraints and aliasing of references during symbolic execution and greatly outperforms the state-of-the-art standard technique known as lazy initialization. (5) All techniques above have been implemented in the PET system (and some of them in the SPF tool). Experimental evaluation has confirmed that they considerably help towards a more scalable and efficient symbolic execution and TCG.

Impact of new technologies and social networks on a secondary education theatre project

This paper describes the potential impact of social media and new technologies in secondary education. The case of study has been designed for the drama and theatre subject. A wide set of tools like social networks, blogs, internet, multimedia content, local press and other promotional tools are promoted to increase students’ motivation. The experiment was developed at the highschool IES Al-Satt located in Algete in the Comunidad de Madrid. The students included in the theatre group present a low academic level, 80% of them had previously repeated at least one grade, half of them come from programs for students with learning difficulties and were at risk of social exclusion. This action is supported by higher and secondary education professors and teachers who look forward to implanting networked media technologies as new tools to improve the academic results and the degree of involvement of students. The results of the experiment have been excellent, based on satisfactory opinions obtained from a survey answered by students at the end of the course, and also revealed by the analytics taken from different social networks. This project is a pioneer in the introduction and usage of new technologies in secondary high-schools in Spain.

Integrated learning of production engineering software applications in a shipbuilding context

Acourse focused on the acquisition of integration competencies in ship production engineering, organized in collaboration with selected industry partners, is presented in this paper. The first part of the course is dedicated to Project Management: the students acquire skills in defining, using MS-PROJECT, the work breakdown structure (WBS), and the organization breakdown structure (OBS) in Engineering projects, through a series of examples of increasing complexity with the final one being the construction planning of a vessel. The second part of the course is dedicated to the use of a database manager, MS-ACCESS, in managing production related information.Aseries of increasing complexity examples is treated, the final one being the management of the piping database of a real vessel. This database consists of several thousand pipes, for which a production timing frame is defined connecting this part of the course with the first one. Finally, the third part of the course is devoted to working withFORAN,an Engineering Production application developed bySENERand widely used in the shipbuilding industry. With this application, the structural elements where all the outfittings will be located are defined through cooperative work by the students, working simultaneously in the same 3D model. In this paper, specific details about the learning process are given. Surveys have been posed to the students in order to get feedback from their experience as well as to assess their satisfaction with the learning process, compared to more traditional ones. Results from these surveys are discussed in the paper.

The city as a learning gamified platform

The area of mobile city guides has grown really fast in the last years based on new mobile capabilities. This growth has been fostered by the evolution of ubiquitous systems and the great penetration of smartphones in the society. In this paper we propose a generic model to support a new way of visiting the city: instead of as a place for tourism, we see it as a place for learning in which located educational resources are available for end users. The model has been conceived as a way to encourage them to create their own educational tours, in which Learning Points Of Interest are set up to be discovered. Two main use cases are supported by the model: formal (conducted by a teacher) and informal (no educator is related to the learning experience) outdoor mobile learning. Details about the impact of the conjunction of tourism, learning and gamification dimensions in the model design, as well as about the model itself are provided. Finally, a mobile application prototype developed in the context of the FI-CONTENT European project is presented as a proof of concept of the model.

Incorporating proactivity to context-aware recommender systems for e-learning

Recommender systems in e-learning have proved to be powerful tools to find suitable educational material during the learning experience. But traditional user request-response patterns are still being used to generate these recommendations. By including contextual information derived from the use of ubiquitous learning environments, the possibility of incorporating proactivity to the recommendation process has arisen. In this paper we describe methods to push proactive recommendations to e-learning systems users when the situation is appropriate without being needed their explicit request. As a result, interesting learning objects can be recommended attending to the user?s needs in every situation. The impact of this proactive recommendations generated have been evaluated among teachers and scientists in a real e-learning social network called Virtual Science Hub related to the GLOBAL excursion European project. Outcomes indicate that the methods proposed are valid to generate such kind of recommendations in e-learning scenarios. The results also show that the users' perceived appropriateness of having proactive recommendations is high.

A Web-based Support System for Providing Effective Monitoring, Feedback and Evaluation in Project Management Education

This work introduces a web-based learning environment to facilitate learning in Project Management. The proposed web-based support system integrates methodological procedures and information systems, allowing to promote learning among geographically-dispersed students. Thus, students who are enrolled in different universities at different locations and attend their own project management courses, share a virtual experience in executing and managing projects. Specific support systems were used or developed to automatically collect information about student activities, making it possible to monitor the progress made on learning and assess learning performance as established in the defined rubric.

ASYTRAIN: a new methodology for teaching and learning antennas

This paper presents ASYTRAIN, a new tool to teach and learn antennas, based on the use of a modular building kit and a low cost portable antenna measurement system that lets the students design and build different types of antennas and observe their characteristics while learning the insights of the subjects. This tool has a methodology guide for try-and-test project development and, makes the students be active antenna engineers instead of passive learners. This experimental learning method arises their motivation during the antenna courses.

Sistema de e-learning en el entorno AFRICA BUILD Portal

Diversos estudios consideran que las claves para el desarrollo técnico, social y económico de los países en desarrollo, y en especial en África, son la educación, la investigación y la innovación. No obstante, en el ámbito sanitario en particular, la formación e investigación en África sigue siendo escasa por diversos motivos. Por un lado, los investigadores africanos encuentran dificultades añadidas para obtener financiación frente a investigadores en países de desarrollo. Y, por otro lado, los investigadores no disponen de las herramientas y tecnologías adecuadas para acceder a información relevante para su trabajo. En este contexto, el proyecto AFRICA BUILD tiene como principal objetivo mejorar y fomentar la investigación y educación sanitaria en África a través de las nuevas tecnologías. Uno de los resultados principales de este proyecto es el AFRICA BUILD Portal (ABP), que pretende ser un punto de encuentro para los investigadores africanos, donde podrán encontrar un amplio abanico de herramientas que les permita no sólo mejorar su educación, sino compartir conocimientos con otros investigadores. Este portal, que está actualmente en desarrollo, pretende fomentar la comunicación entre instituciones africanas y les proveerá herramientas biomédicas avanzadas. En este Trabajo de Fin de Grado se han marcado como principal objetivo la mejora del sistema de e-learning que existía en el ABP. El nuevo sistema será: (i) más potente, óptimo y rico en funcionalidades, (ii) tendrá una importante base social permitiendo a los usuarios aportar información y compartir conocimiento, y (iii) será distribuido y escalable, capaz de integrar distintos gestores de contenidos didácticos como fuentes de información. Los resultados obtenidos son positivos y el nuevo sistema de aprendizaje ha mejorado la usabilidad, funcionalidad y apariencia del anterior. Para concluir, la herramienta posee aún un gran margen de mejora, pero gracias al trabajo realizado el sistema de e-learning es ahora más social, distribuido, escalable e innovador. ---ABSTRACT---Several studies find that the keys to the technical, social and economic development of developing countries, especially in Africa, are education, research and innovation. However, in the health sector in particular, training and research in Africa remains low for various reasons. On the one hand, African researchers experience additional difficulties for funding against researchers in developing countries. And on the other hand, researchers do not have the right tools and technologies to access information relevant to their work. In this context, the AFRICA BUILD project's main objective is to improve and enhance research and health education in Africa through new technologies. One of the main results of this project is the AFRICA BUILD Portal (ABP), which aims to be a meeting point for African researchers, where they can find a wide range of tools that allows them to not only improve their education but to share knowledge with other researchers. This portal, which is currently under development, aims to promote communication between African institutions and will provide advanced biomedical tools. The main objective of this Final Year Project is the improvement of the former elearning system that already existed in the ABP. The new system will be: (i) more powerful, richer in features, (ii) will have an important social base allowing users to contribute information and knowledge sharing; and (iii) will be distributed and scalable, capable of integrating different learning management systems as sources of information. The final results obtained are fairly positive and the new e-learning system has improved its usability, functionality and appearance of the former. To conclude, the tool still has much room for improvement, but thanks to the new features of the improved elearning system has become more social, distributed, scalable and innovative.

University Networking in Developing Countries based on C4D-Learning

In recent years, the establishment of cooperation networks between universities is one of the most important trends in higher education all over the world. Well recognized local and international university networks have been implemented in most educational institutions. It is common to find associations of various prestigious universities collaborating in a high-­‐technology research project including a very specialized teaching as well. This is the most common cooperation networks among higher education institutions in developed countries. An increasingly common type of networking between developed and developing universities is related to cooperation for development. This is the case of many universities in Africa that are needed for external help in order to improve its capabilities. Numerous memorandums of understanding regarding first world institutions that collaborate with universities in developing countries describe contributions of eventual visiting professors, teaching material and courses. But probably there exist another type of more important, but less explored association, such as networking among developing universities. The new goal, in this case, is not only the excellence but also the mutual development.