Jane Sinclair

A Practice-Oriented Review of Learning Objects

Reusable learning objects support packaging of educational materials allowing their discovery and reuse. Open educational resources emphasize the need for open licensing and promote sharing and community involvement. For both teachers and learners, finding appropriate tried and tested resources on a topic of interest and being able to incorporate them within or alongside other learning materials can enrich provision and share best practice. Resources are made available by a number of general and subject-specific repositories, but there are also many educational resources residing outside these repositories which may provide useful additional materials. Potential users of materials need to be able to locate relevant material and to assess it with respect to a number of factors (such as suitability for purpose and license requirements). However, even such basic requirements can be less than straightforward to determine. This paper presents a view of the field from the users perspective, bringing together themes from existing research relating to practice-oriented concerns including discoverability, reusability, and quality. It provides a background in this area, exploring current trends, controversies, and research findings. The discussion is also aligned with current provision and practice, indicating areas where further research, provision, and support would be useful.

What (Use) is a MOOC

The phenomenon of the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) has spread with amazing speed. Many universities in the USA and Europe are now joining up with MOOC providers to allow free access to courses. Participant numbers for an individual course may reach hundreds of thousands. Expectations are high for what these courses can achieve in terms of opening access, widening participation and cost saving. In this paper we conduct a literature review to examine what is known about MOOCs (both those following the original connectivist model and the more traditionally didactic variety) and what indications there are that they can live up to such expectations. We discuss concerns arising from the review and identify issues including lack of evidence, absence of pedagogy, lack of support and unrealistic expectations particularly on beginner learners.

Responsiveness of interoperating components

Abstract.This paper investigates the issue of responsiveness of interoperating components: one not causing the other to deadlock. This is obviously related to the question of whether the two deadlock when put in parallel. However, it is different in that we require that a specific process P is not itself blocked by a plugin Q when it could otherwise have progressed, instead of asking that either process can always proceed (deadlock freedom). The issue becomes yet more subtle when dealing with processes which can nondeterministically block, either through graceful termination or unfortunate deadlock. The relational predicate, that is, binary relation on processes, which we provide is refinement-closed. This is significant as it allows components to be developed independently. In addition, it can be mechanically verified. The contribution of this paper is to identify the issue of responsiveness; to define appropriate properties; to demonstrate the suitability of these properties and consider how they can be mechanically verified. The notation used is CSP with automatic model-checking provided by the FDR tool.

Categorising computer science education research

The interdisciplinary nature of Computer Science Education as a field of study is a complicating factor when authors are choosing appropriate journals and conferences for publishing research results. This paper reports a survey of 42 such publications in order to identify the types of paper frequently accepted for publication in each. We review existing taxonomies developed for the general fields of Computer Science and Education, and from this starting point, we develop a novel faceted taxonomy, specifically aimed to help new researchers in the field understand what types of papers are published and where they appear. Our results confirm previous studies indicating the predominance of practice-based, technology-driven reports. We also observe certain differences in educational themes between those found in publications grounded in the Computer Science Education corpus and those emerging from more general Higher Education literature.

Massive open online courses: a review of usage and evaluation

The massive open online course MOOC has seen a dramatic rise in prominence over the last five years and is heralded by some as disrupting existing pedagogy and practices within the education sector, while others are far more sceptical about the impact of MOOCs. Numerous courses are now being offered on a number of different platforms, with participant numbers for some individual courses reaching hundreds of thousands. Expectations are high for what these courses can achieve in terms of opening access, widening participation and cost saving. In this paper we conduct a literature review to examine what is known about MOOCs both those following the original connectivist model and the more traditionally didactic variety and what indications there are that they can live up to such expectations. We discuss concerns arising from the review and identify issues including lack of evidence, absence of pedagogy, lack of support and unrealistic expectations particularly on beginner learners.

Responsiveness and stable revivals

Individual components in an inter-operating system require assurance from other components both of appropriate functionality and of suitable responsiveness. We have developed properties which capture the notion of non-blocking responsive behaviour, together with machine-based checks implemented in the CSP model-checker, FDR. In this paper we illustrate the use of our responsiveness properties with a small example, and provide a detailed comparison to related work in CCS. This work has led to the discovery of a new semantic model for CSP with respect to which such properties are fully abstract. We present the new stable revivals model and discuss implications for responsiveness checking.

Motivating Study of Formal Methods in the Classroom

One challenge to Formal Methods educators is the need to motivate students both to choose our courses and to continue studying them. In this paper we consider the question of motivation from two angles. Firstly, we provide small examples designed to overcome the “mental resistance” often found in typical students studying introductory formal methods courses. The examples illustrate advantages of a formal approach, and can be appreciated by both novice and experienced programmers. The second part of the paper considers the questions of motivation more generally and raises for debate a number of relevant issues.

Understanding initial undergraduate expectations and identity in computing studies

ABSTRACT There is growing appreciation of the importance of understanding the student perspective in Higher Education (HE) at both institutional and international levels. This is particularly important in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics subjects such as Computer Science (CS) and Engineering in which industry needs are high but so are student dropout rates. An important factor to consider is the management of students’ initial expectations of university study and career. This paper reports on a study of CS first-year students’ expectations across three European countries using qualitative data from student surveys and essays. Expectation is examined from both short-term (topics to be studied) and long-term (career goals) perspectives. Tackling these issues will help paint a picture of computing education through students’ eyes and explore their vision of its and their role in society. It will also help educators prepare students more effectively for university study and to improve the student experience.

Source-code plagiarism in universities: a comparative study of student perspectives in China and the UK

There has been much research and discussion relating to variations in plagiaristic activity observed in students from different demographic backgrounds. Differences in behaviour have been noted in many studies, although the underlying reasons are still a matter of debate. Existing work focuses mainly on textual plagiarism, and most often derives results by studying (small) groups of overseas students studying in a Western context. This study investigates understanding of source-code plagiarism (i.e. plagiarism of computer programmes) amongst university students in China. The survey instrument was a Chinese translation of a survey previously administered in English in the UK. This paper reports the results of the exploratory survey conducted in China, and compares these results to those from a parallel survey conducted in the UK. The results show that there is a significant difference in understanding between the respondents from the two surveys, and suggest topics which a future and more comprehensive study may focus on.

Race conditions in message sequence charts

Message Sequence Charts (MSCs) are a graphical language for the description of scenarios in terms of message exchanges between communicating components in a distributed environment. The language has been standardised by the ITU and given a formal semantics by means of a process algebra. In this paper, we review a design anomaly, called race condition, in an MSC specification and argue that the current solution correcting race conditions is too weak when implementation is considered. In this paper, we provide an algorithm on partial orders as our solution. The result is a strengthened partial order, which is race-free and remains race-free in the implementation.