Daniel Rodriguez-Cerezo

Serious games in tertiary education: A case study concerning the comprehension of basic concepts in computer language implementation courses

This paper describes Evaluators, a system for the development of educational serious games oriented to introductory computer language implementation courses similar to those included in Computer Science tertiary curricula. Evaluators lets instructors generate games from collections of exercises addressing basic concepts about the design and implementation of computer languages (in particular, the processing of artificial languages according to the model of attribute grammars). By playing the generated games, students interactively learn the fundamentals of the semantic evaluation process behind attribute grammars. Indeed, they implicitly find solutions to the exercises presented, and they receive immediate feedback about successful and incorrect actions. In addition, the games log students actions, which can subsequently be analyzed by the instructors using a specialized analytic tool that is included in Evaluators. Assessment of the system, which was performed according to three different dimensions (the instructors perspective, the students perspective and educational effectiveness perspective), (a) indicates that the exercise-driven approach of Evaluators is a cost-effective approach amenable to extrapolation to other areas of Computer Science tertiary education, (b) shows a positive attitude of students toward the serious games built with Evaluators, and (c) evidences a positive effect of the system and its pedagogical strategy on long-term student performance.

From Collections of Exercises to Educational Games: A Process Model and a Case Study

In this paper we present a process model for the construction of educational games, which is driven by the exercises proposed by the instructors. This model promotes a tight collaboration between instructors and game developers during game construction. It also incorporates formative evaluation accomplished by instructors and students. In order to illustrate the process, we use an experience concerning game-based learning in a Compiler Construction Course.

Browsing Digital Collections with Reconfigurable Faceted Thesauri

Faceted thesauri group classification terms into hierarchically arranged facets. They enable faceted browsing, a well-known browsing technique that makes it possible to narrowing down digital collections by recursively adding filtering terms from the facet hierarchy. In this paper we develop an approach to achieve faceted browsing in live collections, in which not only the contents but also the thesauri can be constantly reorganized. For this purpose we start by introducing a faceted thesauri-based digital collection model in which users can freely rearrange the hierarchical organizations of facets. Then we analyze how to efficiently react to thesauri reconfigurations by representing all the possible ways of browsing a collection with a finite state machine called navigation automaton. Since, in the worst-case, the number of states in navigation automata can grow exponentially with respect to the collections’ sizes, we propose two indexing strategies to avoid this exponential worst-case complexity: one based on inverted indexes, and another inspired by hierarchical clustering, which makes use of the so-called navigation dendrograms. Some experimental results concerning Clavy, a system for managing digital collections with reconfigurable structures in digital humanities and educational settings, provide evidence that navigation dendrogram organization outperforms the inverted index-based one.

Interactive educational simulations for promoting the comprehension of basic compiler construction concepts

Evaluators 2.0 is an educational software system that lets instructors in introductory compiler construction courses generate interactive simulators from batteries of exercises concerning basic concepts in attribute grammars. The system also makes it possible to analyze the activities of the students who use these simulators. Students interact with the simulators generated to decide the evaluation order of semantic attributes in the attributed syntax trees, and they receive immediate feedback about the actions performed. Thus, these simulations help students to understand the fundamental concepts of the formalism of attribute grammars and of its underlying computational model. This paper describes the different software tools that constitute Evaluators 2.0 as well as the nature of the simulators generated, and also reports on different assessments of the system involving both instructors and students.

Supporting Self-Regulated Learning in Technical Domains with Repositories of Learning Objects and Recommender Systems

In this position paper we analyze how the combination of repositories of learning objects and recommender systems can support self-regulated learning in technical domains. Additionally, we support our position with a case-study concerning the domain of Compiler Construction in Computer Science Advanced Education.

Multilevel Browsing of Folksonomy-Based Digital Collections

This paper describes how to extend the usual one-level tag selection navigation paradigm in folksonomy-based digital collections to a multilevel browsing one, according to which it is possible to incrementally narrow down the set of selected objects in a collection by sequentially adding more and more filtering tags. For this purpose, we present a browsing strategy based on finite automata. As well, we provide some experimental results concerning the application of the approach in Clavy, a system for managing digital collections with reconfigurable structures in digital humanities and educational settings.

Attribute grammars made easier: EvDebugger a visual debugger for attribute grammars

Compiler construction courses are usually considered by the students as a difficult subject of the Computer Science degree. The main problem found by the students is to fully understand the theoretical concepts taught during the course and its practical application to build a compiler. In this paper, we present a platform for the development and debugging of language processors based on attribute grammar-oriented specifications. The main aim of this tool is to help students to design their own language processors, supported by the visual debugger included. The animations provided by EvDebugger show, in an attractive way, how the attribute evaluation process is performed. In this way, students are able to solve design problems, improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their language processors and understand their operation through experimentation and debugging provided with the software tool. Besides, we performed an assessment study with students of a Compiler Construction course whose results are presented and discussed in this paper.

Learning object repositories with dynamically reconfigurable metadata schemata

In this paper we describe a model for learning object repositories in which users have full control over metadata schemata. Thus, they can define new schemata and reconfigure existing ones in a collaborative fashion. In consequence, the repository must react to changes in schemata in a dynamic and responsive way. Since schemata enable operations like navigation and search, dynamic reconfigurability requires clever indexing strategies, resistant to changes in these schemata. For this purpose, we have used conventional inverted indexing approaches and have also devised a hierarchical clustering-based indexing model. By using Clavy, a system for managing learning object repositories in the field of the Humanities, we provide some experimental results that show how the hierarchical clustering-based model can outperform the more conventional inverted index-based solutions.

Browsing the Parse Space

Ambiguous context-free grammars can generate many (even infinite) parse trees for each input sentence. We will refer to all these parse trees as the parse space of the sentence. Thus, in many settings (computational linguistics, education in compiler construction, etc.) the need for browsing this parse space (i.e., for examining different trees in a systematic and ordered way) arises. In this paper we describe a browsing approach that works for arbitrary (even infinitely ambiguous) grammars. The approach, which is based on the well-known Earley’s algorithm, sorts the parse space according to structural complexity of the parse trees, lets users inspect a particular tree, and then to jump to the previous and/or the next tree. This approach has been implemented in EvDebugger, an educational system for the learning of the attribute grammar formalism.

A process model for the generative production of interactive simulations in engineering education

This paper introduces a process model for the production of interactive simulations that promotes the automatic generation of this kind of artifacts from representative collections of exercises. This approach is especially well suited for the early stages of Engineering Education, due to the importance played by interactive simulations and the resolution of carefully-designed batteries of exercises in the acquisition of basic skills in engineering disciplines. According to this process model, instructors are equipped with: (i) an authoring tool, which helps them to provide and maintain the collections of exercises, (ii) a generator, able to automatically turn collections of exercises into executable interactive simulators, and (iii) an analytic tool that can be applied to the logs produced by such simulators in order to assess student performance. In addition, the model promotes the improvement of the resulting educational systems through an exhaustive and continuous evaluation process. Besides to detail the process model, this paper illustrates it with the development of Evaluators, an educational system for the generation of different kinds of interactive simulations in introductory Compiler Construction courses typically taught in Computer Science and Computer Engineering degrees.