Francisco Ortín Soler

Adaptation in current e-learning systems

One key element to consider when developing e-learning systems is the adaptation of the system to the cognitive characteristics of the students. However, making this adaptation is not a simple process; it implies the study and conjunction of technical and pedagogical aspects. This article was written from the point of view of a designer who, without being an expert on the cognitive elements, tries to design e-learning systems that include an adaptation for them. This article attempts to provide the answers to some design questions as a starting point to further develop e-learning platforms.

Visual Zero: A persistent and interactive object-oriented programming environment

In this article, an ongoing research project held in the Computer Science department of the University of Vigo is described. Its main objective is to develop an interactive object-oriented environment, serving as a vehicle for learning object-oriented programming. It currently consists of a virtual machine, an assembler, compilers for two high-level programming languages, and an educational visual programming environment. Its main characteristics are (a) the support of prototype-based object orientation, which is a model of object orientation that actually wraps the class-based model; (b) the support for object persistence, which simplifies all input/output issues to the minimum, and (c) the availability of a new visual programming environment is an invaluable help. We the authors think that the combination of all of these possibilities, will lead to an interesting, useful tool that would be recommended for object-oriented teaching. The whole system has been successfully employed in a number of different courses, allowing students to concentrate on objects and their relationships from the very beginning, and thus helping them to achieve a high degree of knowledge about the object-oriented programming paradigm.

Towards an object‐oriented programming system for education

In this article, an ongoing research project conducted in the Computer Science department of the University of Vigo is described. Its main objective is to serve as a vehicle for learning object‐oriented programming. Although it is still in development, it has been successfully employed in a number of different courses. Its main characteristics are (a) support of prototype‐based object orientation, which is a model of object orientation that actually wraps the class‐based model; (b) future support for object persistence, which simplifies to the minimum all input/output issues; and (c) support of multiple platforms, through a portable bytecode. We think that the combination of all of these possibilities, the obtained results in its first use, and the further development of this project will lead to an interesting, useful tool which would be recommended for object‐oriented teaching. The simplicity of the prototype‐based model of object orientation, the dramatic decrease in complexity for programs due to the direct support of persistence, and all facilities naturally provided by the feature of multiplatform support makes it the ideal tool for learning, allowing the educator to stress on the actually important issues of object‐oriented programming.

Applying lightweight flexible virtual machines to extensible embedded systems

Virtual Machines are spreading from the desktop to other domains. Embedded Systems is a domain where the benefits of Virtual Machines such as portability or software-based isolation can be of much help. However, for highly dynamical, extensible systems we believe that the key features needed in a VM to succeed in the domain are flexibility and lightweightness, and that reflection and a VM reduced instruction set are the means to achieve this. In this paper we briefly describe two VMs built in our research group with the before mentioned properties that could be evolved for the embedded systems domain: The Carbayonia and the nitrO Abstract Machines.