Guillermo Vega-Gorgojo

Multiple case studies to enhance project-based learning in a computer architecture course

The IEEE/Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Computing Curricula and the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET) Evaluation Criteria 2000 emphasize the use of recurrent concepts and system design/evaluation through projects and case studies in the curriculum of Computer and Electrical Engineering. In addition, efficient teamwork, autonomy, and initiative are commonly required qualifications for a professional in this field. Project-based learning approaches that require the students to handle realistic case studies are adequate to pursue these objectives. However, these pedagogical approaches tend to be rejected because they promote deep learning but focus on a restricted set of concepts, whereas many engineering curricula require a broad range of concepts to be covered in each course. The introduction of multiple case studies carried out simultaneously in the same course by different teams of students can broaden the set of concepts studied, but collaboration at different levels must be strongly enforced to achieve effective learning. This paper describes a multiple-case-study project design that has been applied to a computer architecture course for four years. After systematically evaluating the experience, the authors conclude that students achieve a deep learning of the concepts required in their own case study, while they are able to generalize their knowledge to case studies of different characteristics from those considered during the course. Furthermore, a number of collaborative skills and attitudes are developed as a consequence of the proposed environment based on multiple levels of collaboration.

Optique: Zooming in on Big Data

Optique overcomes problems in current ontology-based data access systems pertaining to installation overhead, usability, scalability, and scope by integrating a user-oriented query interface, semi-automated managing methods, new query rewriting techniques, and temporal and streaming data processing in one platform.

GLUE!: An architecture for the integration of external tools in Virtual Learning Environments

The integration of external tools in Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) aims at enriching the learning activities that educational practitioners may design and enact. This paper presents GLUE!, an architecture that enables the lightweight integration of multiple existing external tools in multiple existing VLEs. GLUE! fosters this integration by imposing few restrictions on VLE and tool providers, as well as by requiring an attainable effort from developers, unlike other integration works. Besides, GLUE! facilitates the instantiation and enactment of collaborative activities within VLEs, leveraging the VLEs distinctive features for the management of users and groups. GLUE! has been evaluated using three authentic collaborative learning situations, instantiated and enacted by real practitioners at university level. The results of this evaluation show that GLUE! reduces the burden of educators when instantiating collaborative activities that require the integration of external tools, while facilitates students the realization of these activities in collaboration. Interestingly, the development effort required by the integration software is similar to that in other lightweight generic approaches that offer a lower degree of functionality.

Experiencing OptiqueVQS: a multi-paradigm and ontology-based visual query system for end users

Abstract Data access in an enterprise setting is a determining factor for value creation processes, such as sense-making, decision-making, and intelligence analysis. Particularly, in an enterprise setting, intuitive data access tools that directly engage domain experts with data could substantially increase competitiveness and profitability. In this respect, the use of ontologies as a natural communication medium between end users and computers has emerged as a prominent approach. To this end, this article introduces a novel ontology-based visual query system, named OptiqueVQS, for end users. OptiqueVQS is built on a powerful and scalable data access platform and has a user-centric design supported by a widget-based flexible and extensible architecture allowing multiple coordinated representation and interaction paradigms to be employed. The results of a usability experiment performed with non-expert users suggest that OptiqueVQS provides a decent level of expressivity and high usability and hence is quite promising.

A Tailorable Collaborative Learning System That Combines OGSA Grid Services and IMS-LD Scripting

This paper presents Gridcole, a new collaborative learning system that can be easily tailored by educators in order to support their own CSCL scenarios, using computing services provided by third parties in the form of OGSA grid services. Educators employ scripts in order to describe the sequence of learning activities and required tools, with standard IMS-LD notation. Thus, through the integration of coarse-grained tools, that may even offer supercomputing capabilities or use specific hardware resources, educators do not depend on software developers to easily configure a suitable environment in order to support a broad range of collaborative scenarios. An example of a learning scenario for a Computer Architecture course is described to illustrate the capabilities of Gridcole.

GRIDCOLE: a Grid Collaborative Learning Environment

Research in the computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL) field is currently tackling three important problems which are closely related: difficult integration of CSCL tools, scarce software reuse and technification. This work presents a Grid Collaborative Learning Environment (GRIDCOLE) that combines IMS learning design (IMS-LD) and Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA) technologies in order to address these issues. More specifically, GRIDCOLE allows users with no technical skills easy integration and use of applications that effectively support collaborative learning processes. IMS-LD is employed to formally describe the design of these collaborative learning processes while applications are built using tools provided by third-party suppliers as OGSA-compliant Grid services. With this aim, the GRIDCOLE architecture and its main functionalities are introduced. A simple prototype is also presented in order to show the feasibility of the most important concepts introduced in this paper. Furthermore, a real collaborative learning scenario in which we plan to validate GRIDCOLE is introduced.

A Linked Data approach for the discovery of educational ICT tools in the Web of Data

The use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) tools to support learning activities is nowadays generalized. Several educational registries provide information about ICT tools in order to help educators in their discovery and selection. These registries are typically isolated and require much effort to keep tool information up to date. To address this issue, this paper explores whether educational tool registries can be federated to other datasets currently available on the Web of Data. In order to answer this question, and following the Linked Data approach, this paper proposes to collect data from third-party sources, align it to a vocabulary understandable by educators and finally publish it to be consumed by educational applications. This way, an incipient educational dataset can be automatically created and easily maintained, since non-educative information is obtained from updated third-party sources. A case study with practitioners has been carried out to evaluate whether the information about ICT tools provided by this dataset is understandable and useful for educators. Evaluation results show that available information on the Web of Data can be used to obtain suitable tools for real educational settings, thus overcoming the sustainability problems of existing ICT tool registries.

Integration of External Tools in Virtual Learning Environments: Main Design Issues and Alternatives

The integration of existing educational computer-based tools is a current research trend aimed at increasing the range of learning situations that can be supported by most widely adopted Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs). Nevertheless, due to the technological and functional heterogeneity of both tools and VLEs, there is an integration cost that must be assumed and that varies depending on several design issues. This paper identifies the issues to be tackled when designing a VLE or a tool and the effects that the different alternatives may have in the integration cost. Besides, the paper discusses the advantages and drawbacks of previous research proposals when dealing with such issues. The final goal is to understand the impact of design decisions in the chances for acceptance of the adopted integration approaches.

Semantic search of learning services in a grid-based collaborative system

CSCL systems can benefit from using a grid, since it offers a common infrastructure allowing an extended pool of resources that can provide supercomputing capabilities as well as specific hardware resources. Adopting a service oriented architecture such as OGSA can further benefit CSCL systems, enabling increased flexibility to adapt and reuse learning software. However, proliferation of services enormously challenges the search of appropriate ones. Common service discovery mechanisms, such as the Index Service or UDDI, perform poor searches since they rely on keyword matching and do not properly describe service functionality. To address these difficulties, ontologies can be used to formally describe services allowing for semantic searches. This paper proposes an ontology that describes learning services using educators abstractions in order to support the search. This way, service providers can describe their services in terms of the ontology, while educators can search for them using domain concepts. The integration of this enhanced service search mechanism in Gridcole, a real grid-based CSCL system, is described to illustrate its performance.

The opportunity of grid services for CSCL-application development

The choice of the most suitable middleware technology for a specific problem or domain is sometimes erroneously based on current trends instead of on a thorough comparison of the features offered by the different options. This could be the case of grid services technology, which is claimed to be a technological advance, but whose characteristics are not clearly contrasted with other middleware technologies. The aim of this paper is to analyze whether grid services technology truly present some required properties for CSCL (computer supported collaborative learning) application development in comparison with other service-oriented middleware technologies, as well as with other types of middleware paradigms (object-oriented or component-oriented). To this end, we present relevant requirements of CSCL applications and theoretical discussion about how well they are satisfied by the aforementioned paradigms and technologies. Finally, we introduce a case study in order to illustrate our conclusions.