Informatics in Education

This work investigates the effect of computer use in the memory process in young and adults under the Perceptual and Memory experimental conditions. The memory condition involved the phases acquisition of information and recovery, on time intervals (2 min, 24 hours and 1 week) on situations of pre and post-test (before and after the participants took part on a Basic Computing course), in which the participants studied the map of Brazil during 7 minutes and the estimates of different areas of Brazilian states were performed according to the magnitude estimation method, without the presence of the map. On the Perceptual condition, the estimates were made in the presence of the Brazilian map. The study made possible to verify that the use of a computer, as a new activity enables a differentiation on the memory process in relation to the different experimental conditions proposed and to the time intervals used between acquisition, processing and information recovery, showing that the use of a computer as a pedagogical tool may promote the improvement of the memory process in academic activities.

The introduction of the intelligence in teaching software is the object of this paper. In software elaboration process, one uses some learning techniques in order to adapt the teaching software to characteristics of student. Generally, one uses the artificial intelligence techniques like reinforcement learning, Bayesian network in order to adapt the system to the environment internal and external conditions, and allow this system to interact efficiently with its potentials user. The intention is to automate and manage the pedagogical process of tutoring system, in particular the selection of the content and manner of pedagogic situations. Researchers create a pedagogic learning agent that simplifies the manual logic and supports progress and the management of the teaching process (tutor-learner) through natural interactions.

The technological resources used for pedagogical innovation in the form of distance education have increasingly been incorporated into face-to-face education. This article describes the experience of the Federal University of Lavras - Brazil - with new ways to apply technology in face-to-face undergraduate courses. This paper presents (i) the strategy for the selection of course content, which was premised on the diversification of areas of knowledge and on promoting the permanent incorporation of the resources developed in the teaching-learning process, (ii) the organization of the production process of Learning Objects based on the Scrum method, (iii) the set of best practices, inspired by the management of agile software development, as well as the contextual motivation of its use.

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.

C++ is the most commonly used language in introductory and intermediate programming courses in Bulgarian universities. In recent years this language has developed greatly. Its abstractions are more flexible and affordable than ever before. Such great number of changes are related to the launch of the new standard (known as C++11) that we have grounds to consider it even a new language. It is inevitable to reflect all these changes in training courses and this prompted us to consider not only some updating of academic curricula but also a comprehensive reorganization of our programming courses. So, in this article we share our successes and difficulties in this direction.

While researchers working within the Student Learning Research framework have developed or adapted questionnaires to gather information on students' experiences of blended learning, no questionnaire has been developed to enquire about teachers' experiences in such learning environments. The present article reports the development and testing of a novel questionnaire on `approaches to e-teaching', which may be employed to investigate the experience of teaching when e-learning is involved. Results showed suitable reliability and validity. Also, when exploring associations between the novel questionnaire scales and those of the well-known `approaches to teaching' inventory (Prosser and Trigwell, 2006), results from correlation and cluster analyses suggest that student-focused approaches to teaching are needed for significant use of digital technology to emerge. For practice, this relevant outcome implies that teaching needs to be considered holistically when supporting teachers to incorporate e-learning in their practice: because it seems they approach online teaching coherently with the face-to-face side of the blended experience.

In this paper, we propose the development of a web-based, intelligent instruction system to help elementary school students for mathematical computation. We concentrate on the intelligence facilities which support diagnosis and advice. The existing web-based instruction systems merely give information on whether the learners' replies are `correct' or `incorrect', and only offer evaluations of the learners' results in terms of points. What is needed is a web-based instruction system that diagnoses the learner's comprehension status, and provides cause: why did the learner make the error? Our system has a facility that analyses the learner's weak points and has the ability to diagnose the cause of the error, giving advice to the learners and more detailed error information than extant systems. By accumulating user behavior and analyzing the learner's responses, our system provides relevant, individualized information, along with advice for the learners.

With a significant increase in the number of e-learning resources the issue of quality is of current importance. An analysis of existing scientific and methodological literature shows the variety of approaches, methods and tools to evaluate e-learning materials. This paper proposes an approach based on the procedure for estimating parameters of local factors and receiving the integral index of usability quality of e-learning modules. We present a mathematical model which serves as a basis for the automated procedures for expertise. The use of fuzzy logic allows to reduce greatly the complexity of evaluating the formation of a repository of e-learning modules. The proposed approach is focused on the situation, when the university has amassed a large number of e-learning modules that have to be assessed in terms of ergonomics; is able to use experts in ergonomics and organization of e-learning (the experts can provide, as a rule, qualitative assessment); is limited in resources on the development of special software for evaluation of e-learning modules; is forced by the need to reduce the cost of expertise to be limited to considering only the main quality indicators that have the greatest impact on the ergonomics of e-learning modules. For automation of the ergonomic examination procedures a MatLab system is used, in particular Fuzzy Logic Toolbox.

The paper's contribution is a methodology that integrates two basic technologies (GLO and LEGO robot) to teach Computer Science (CS) topics at the school level. We present the methodology as a framework of 5 components (pedagogical activities, technology driven processes, tools, knowledge transfer actors, and pedagogical outcomes) and interactions among the components. GLOs are meta-programmed entities to generate LO instances on demand depending on the context of use and learning objectives. A GLO is a black-box entity, which is integrated in the framework through the generating process to source the teaching and learning process via robot-based visualization to demonstrate how programs and algorithms are transformed into real-world tasks and processes. The methodology is tested in the real e-learning setting. The pedagogical outcomes are evaluated by empirical data showing the increase of student engagement level, higher flexibility and reuse enhancement in learning.

The Semantic Web is an extension of the current Web where information is represented in a machine processable way. It is not separate from the current Web and one of the confusions that novice users might have is where the Semantic Web is. In fact, users can easily encounter RDF documents that are components of the Semantic Web while they navigate among Web pages. In addition, the number of RDF documents on the Web is ever-increasing and a lot of educational materials in RDF format become available on the Web. In this paper, we propose a simple Semantic Web browser by which non-expert users such as secondary school students who do not know technical details about the Semantic Web can browse through HTML documents and RDF documents.