Begoña Ferrero

The IRIS Authoring Tool

IRIS is an authoring tool developed to help human instructors to build intelligent teaching-learning systems in a wide variety of domains. The instructor/designer is required to produce a set of pedagogical requisites, which, in turn, are used to automatically configure a generic tutor architecture and produce an intelligent tutoring system. In order to provide IRIS with a sound basis for producing systems, a theory of instruction that integrates cognitive processes, instructional events and instructional actions has been considered. In this chapter we explain, through the analysis of the cognitive theory, the generic architecture. We present several system components, the requirements of the different components, and show how we integrate these components in IRIS. Moreover, we embed requirements, cognitive principles, and design requisites in an authoring tool in order that human instructors can follow them easily. Various design issues, an example of building a tutor for mathematical differentiation by using IRIS, and some experiences of use and evaluation are also presented.

Dealing with common problems in engineering degrees' Final Year Projects

After the implementation of the Bologna Process, the Final Year Project (FYP) is a mandatory course in all bachelor degrees in Spanish higher education system. Although the FYP is new for many degrees, it was already established in the previous education system for engineering degrees. The authors of this paper are lecturers in a bachelor degree in Computer Science at three different colleges of the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU. In the last few years, they have supervised more than 80 FYPs and they have all faced similar problems during the supervision process. This paper presents a study conducted to determine if the observed problems are just a perception of the authors or whether they are general problems in the elaboration of FYPs. In the study, 60 former students and 27 lecturers took part. Four main categories of problems have been identified and a proposal to overcome them is presented.

Integration of a Generic Diagnostic Tool in Virtual Environments for Procedural Training

In this article we discuss the problems related to the process of integrating a generic diagnostic tool in virtual environments for training. Virtual environments are suitable applications for training procedural tasks; however, they usually lack the tools to provide an educational dimension to the training. In this research we propose the use of DETECTive, a generic diagnostic tool, in order to facilitate the development of virtual environments which maximise the educational value of the training. We consider that usability of the integrated system is a priority issue. Therefore, we seek a balance between the cost of knowledge acquisition and reliability in the diagnostic phase. The virtual reality system educationally improved during this research is VIRTOOL, a virtual learning environment for machine-tool processes.

Multiple Paradigms for a Generic Diagnostic Proposal

This work concerns the use of multiple diagnosis approaches to build a generic diagnostic system. The main goal of the project is that the teacher can adapt by herself the generic system to several domains in order to detect the student’s errors during different problem solving processes. Adapting the generic system requires the teacher analyses thoroughly the domain in order to identify and represent its composing objects, procedures and problems together with their resolution mechanisms. The learning tool constructed with this purpose does not support completely the learning process, since its goal is only to monitor and diagnose the learner’s actions. So the other aspects of the teaching activity must be carried out by the teacher or an external (integrated) complementary system (i.e. a tutoring system).

Tramea, a tool to support the development of Final Year Projects. Usability evaluation

Carrying out and monitoring Final Year Projects are challenging processes for all the actors involved: lecturers and students. Those projects exhibit problems regarding their evaluation, supervision and the lack of appropriate communication channels between the actors. The use of information and communication technologies can help to overcome those problems. This paper presents TraMeA, a system developed to support both lecturers and students and lighten the problems mentioned above. The usability evaluation conducted on the tool and its results are also described.

Recommending Dimension Weights and Scale Values in Multi-rubric Evaluations

Rubrics are scoring tools that lay out the specific expectations for an assignment. They are very appropriate tools for formative assessment as they have proved to be adequate to reduce subjectivity in the evaluation process. When the evaluation entails several tasks, a rubric for each task should be defined. However, computing the final score using rubrics is not always a simple task. On the one hand, each task has its own relevance in the final grade. On the other hand, the score of each rubric depends on the performance levels achieved in each dimension and the importance or weight of each dimension. Determining the most appropriate weight for each task, dimension and performance level is complex. This paper presents a recommender for settling those values in a multi-rubric evaluation process.

RubricVis: enriching rubric-based formative assessment with visual learning analytics

The implementation of the Bologna Process has implied, in many Spanish universities, the introduction of continuous evaluation processes, in which formative assessment has a great relevance. In such kinds of scenarios, rubrics provide many benefits that can remarkably be improved using Visual Learning Analytics techniques. This paper presents some of the visualization capabilities provided by RubricVis, a system that uses Visual Learning Analytics techniques to enhance rubric-based formative assessment. The objective of these visualizations is to enrich the feedback for both students and teachers in such evaluation environments. This feedback will help users to understand the learning and evaluation processes in order to improve them.