The paper aims to present application of Educational Data Mining and particularly Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) for students profiling and further to design a personalised intelligent learning system. The main aim here is to develop a recommender system which should help the learners to create learning units (scenarios) that are the most suitable for them. First of all, systematic literature review on application of CBR and its possible implementation to personalise learning was performed in the paper. After that, methodology on CBR application to personalise learning is presented where learning styles play a dominate role as key factor in proposed personalised intelligent learning system model based on students profiling and personalised learning process model. The algorithm (the sequence of steps) to implement this model is also presented in the paper.
We present some results of an ongoing research project where university engineering students were asked to construct videogames involving the use of physical systems models. The objective is to help them identify and understand the elements and concepts involved in the modelling process. That is, we use game design as a constructionist approach for promoting a modelling activity and the learning of the elements involved. In this paper, we focus on the case studies of two students, in their last year of studies, who built a videogame where they had to model liquid water behaviour while working within the restrictions of the game engine. By analysing students' written work and group discussions, we observed that students, through this videogame-building task, were able to deepen and refine how they conceive the process of mathematical modelling, in a fun and engaging way in which they were receptive and open to experimentation, and learned from other students, as well as from making mistakes.
The paper elaborates on experiences and lessons learned from the course on object-oriented analyses and design at the Faculty of Sciences, Novi Sad. The course on OOAD is taught to students of computer science and to the students of mathematical programme. Conclusions made in this paper are based on results of students' assignments as well as results of conducted survey. In the paper we identify a set of issues concerning teaching modelling and UML. It is noticed that difficulties in mastering OOAD arise primarily from the absence of appropriate real case studies from the field of designing information systems. In order to overcome this problem, students worked on their own homework projects which include all phases of software development. Concerning the results of survey it is noticed that OOAD course should be taught in different manners regarding previous knowledge of students. Suggestions how to teach OOAD to students of computer science and to students of other programmes are given in this paper.
One of the biggest challenges that higher learning institutions face today is to improve the quality of managerial decisions. The managerial decision making process becomes more complex as the complexity of educational entities increase. Educational institute seeks more efficient technology to better manage and support decision making procedures or assist them to set new strategies and plan for a better management of the current processes. One way to effectively address the challenges for improving the quality is to provide new knowledge related to the educational processes and entities to the managerial system. This knowledge can be extracted from historical and operational data that reside in the educational organization's databases using the techniques of data mining technology. Data mining techniques are analytical tools that can be used to extract meaningful knowledge from large data sets. This paper presents the capabilities of data mining in the context of higher educational system by i) proposing an analytical guideline for higher education institutions to enhance their current decision processes, and ii) applying data mining techniques to discover new explicit knowledge which could be useful for the decision making processes.
Computer simulations seem to be one of the most effective ways to use computers in physics education. They encourage students to carry out the processes used in physics research: to question, predict, hypothesise, observe, interpret results etc. Their effective use requires an availability of appropriate teaching resources fitting secondary schools curricula.
This paper presents a set of computer simulations that cover the curriculum area of Mechanics and are designed to fit directly to curricula and textbooks used at Slovak grammar schools. All simulations are accompanied by brief instructions for teachers, including suggestions for learning activities and problem tasks for students. Some of them are designed as virtual laboratories.
The developed simulations were tested with a group of secondary school students and evaluated also by groups of future and practising physics teachers. The paper presents and discusses findings and conclusions from the both runs of the testing.