Josep Soler

A teaching/learning support tool for introductory programming courses

In This work we present a Web-based tool developed with the aim of reinforcing teaching and learning of introductory programming courses. This tool provides support for teaching and learning. From the teachers perspective the system introduces important gains with respect to the classical teaching methodology. It reinforces lecture and laboratory sessions, makes it possible to give personalized attention to the student, assesses the degree of participation of the students and most importantly, performs a continuous assessment of the students progress. From the students perspective it provides a learning framework, consisting in a help environment and a correction environment, which facilitates their personal work. With this tool students are more motivated to do programming.

A web-based e-learning tool for UML class diagrams

The paper presents a web-based tool designed to give support to teaching and learning of UML class diagrams. The proposed UML environment is capable to correct automatically UML class diagrams exercises providing feedback to the student immediately. The tool is part of a more general framework, denoted ACME, which provides the main functionalities of an e-learning platform. The tool has been used in a first experimental group of an introductory database course.

An automatic correction tool for relational database schemas

A Web-based tool developed to automatically correct relational database schemas is presented. This tool has been integrated into a more general e-learning platform and is used to reinforce teaching and learning on database courses. This platform assigns to each student a set of database problems selected from a common repository. The student has to design a relational database schema and enter it into the system through a user friendly interface specifically designed for it. The correction tool corrects the design and shows detected errors. The student has the chance to correct them and send a new solution. These steps can be repeated as many times as required until a correct solution is obtained. Currently, this system is being used in different introductory database courses at the University of Girona with very promising results.

A web-based tool for entity-relationship modeling

A web-based tool developed to automatically correct conceptual database schema is presented. This tool has been integrated into a more general e-learning platform and is used to reinforce teaching and learning on introductory database courses. This platform assigns to each student a set of database problems selected from a common repository. The student has to design a entity-relationship schema and enter it into the system through a user friendly interface specifically designed for it. The correction tool corrects the design and shows detected errors giving advice of how to solve them. The student has the chance to send a new solution. These steps can be repeated as many times as required until a correct solution is obtained.

An automatic correction tool for relational algebra queries

Relational algebra is one of the main topics covered in undergraduate computer science database courses. In this paper, we present a web-based tool designed to automatically correct relational algebra queries. The tool is integrated in a more general e-learning environment and is used to reinforce teaching and learning on introductory database courses. A teacher enters relational algebra problems into the system and it generates personalized workbooks with different relational algebra exercises for each student. Students solve these exercises using a specifically designed interface. They enter relational algebra expressions to solve the assigned queries and the system provides immediate feedback and, when there are errors, advise about how to correct them. Only a web browser is required to use the tool, which has been used in our university with very promising results.

An automatic correction tool that can learn

The majority of Computer Based Assessment (CBA) environments have been designed for fixed-response questions. This feature is not enough for the university context since not all the skills can be reduced to this typology of questions and free response exercises are required. In this paper, we present a web-based tool designed to automatically correct exercises that require a diagram or a graph to be solved. The main novelty of this tool is the strategy used for the correction. The tool starts without the knowledge about correct and incorrect solutions and then learns about the solutions provided by teachers and students. It automatically records the information of all entered solutions, the teacher correction and the corresponding feedback in a system database. When a new student solution is entered the information of the database is used for correction. The main components of the tool are the graph editor module, designed to support diagram drawing, and the correction module, which corrects the solutions entered by the students. These modules are integrated in a more general e-learning platform denoted ACME. ACME provides teachers all functionalities required for student work tracking, assessment, personalized attention, etc. The proposed tool has been evaluated on experimental group.

ACME: An e-learning platform including desirable features for engineering courses

In this article we present a set of functionalities that we consider to be of fundamental importance for an e-learning platform that has to be applied in the context of engineering studies. As a practical case we describe the ACME platform, highlighting the automatic generation and assignation of problems with open solutions, the on-line correction and feed-back to the students, the automatic assessment of problems and the final assessment of students work. ACME has been used in the University of Girona in Spain, during the last years. The results, both qualitatively as well as quantitatively, confirm us that the application of the platform improves academic outcomes and also the learning process of the students. As a conclusion it can be said that elearning platforms that provide the described functionalities are suitable for engineering studies and overcome the main limitations of standard platforms.In this article we present a set of functionalities that we consider to be of fundamental importance for an e-learning platform that has to be applied in the context of engineering studies. As a practical case we describe the ACME platform, highlighting the automatic generation and assignation of problems with open solutions, the on-line correction and feed-back to the students, the automatic assessment of problems and the final assessment of students work. ACME has been used in the University of Girona in Spain, during the last years. The results, both qualitatively as well as quantitatively, confirm us that the application of the platform improves academic outcomes and also the learning process of the students. As a conclusion it can be said that elearning platforms that provide the described functionalities are suitable for engineering studies and overcome the main limitations of standard platforms.

How the gender of a victim character in a virtual scenario created to learn CPR protocol affects student nurses’ performance

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Virtual simulations recreate scenarios where student nurses can practice procedures in a safe and supervised manner and with no risk to the patient. Virtual scenarios include digital characters that reproduce human actions. Generally, these characters are modeled as males and restricted roles are assigned to females. Our objective is to evaluate how the character gender of a victim in a scenario created to practice the cardiopulmonary resuscitation protocol (CPR) affects performance of student nurses. METHODS Three virtual scenarios with cardiac arrest victims modeled as males or females were assigned to 41 students of the Nursing Faculty to practice the CPR protocol. We evaluated student performance with respect to the time to remove clothes, the time to perform the CPR maneuver, and the hands position for CPR. Chi-square, Fisher exact, and Mann-Whitney U were used to test primary outcome measures in the experimental design of victim character sex (male vs. female) and student sex (men vs. women). RESULTS The analysis performed did not find statistically differences in time to remove clothes or in time to start CPR. With respect to hands placement we also did not find significant difference in any of the cases. CONCLUSION Nurse student actions are not influenced by the character gender of the victim. Excellent results with respect to hands placement to start CPR are obtained. Virtual scenarios can be a suitable strategy to reduce gender differences in gender sensitive situations such as CPR performance.

Un Nuevo Enfoque para la Puntuación Automática de Problemas cuya Resolución se basa en Diagramas

espanolLa correccion automatica de diagramas a traves de plataformas educativas es de gran importancia, especialmente en el ambito de los estudios de Ingenieria. El objetivo de este articulo es presentar un nuevo enfoque para la puntuacion automatica de estos diagramas. Se presenta un nuevo metodo de forma generica y su aplicacion a la puntuacion de diagramas entidad/relacion utilizados en el diseno conceptual de bases de datos. Los resultados obtenidos nos indican que las diferencias entre la puntuacion obtenida de forma automatica y la obtenida a partir de la correccion manual por parte del profesor no exceden en ningun caso de 0.75 puntos sobre un total de diez. Como conclusion, se corrobora la validez del metodo propuesto para los diagramas entidad/relacion facilitando un ahorro considerable de tiempo a los profesores al no tener que corregirlos, ni puntuarlos. EnglishAutomatic correction of problems that are solved using diagrams through educational platforms is of great importance, especially in the field of engineering studies. In this paper, we present a new strategy to automatically assess diagrams. The proposed approach is described in detail as well as its application to assess entity/relationship diagrams used in the conceptual design of databases. The results indicate that the differences between manual and automatic assessment is less than 075 points over a total of ten which confirms the validity of the proposed approach. As a conclusion, the validity of the proposed method to assess entity/relationship diagrams reducing teacher correction time and unifying applied correction criteria is corroborated.

ACME: Plataforma de Aprendizaje Electrónico (e-learning) con Funcionalidades Deseables en el Ámbito de la Ingeniería

In this article we present a set of functionalities that we consider to be of fundamental importance for an e-learning platform that has to be applied in the context of engineering studies. As a practical case we describe the ACME platform, highlighting the automatic generation and assignation of problems with open solutions, the on-line correction and feed-back to the students, the automatic assessment of problems and the final assessment of students work. ACME has been used in the University of Girona in Spain, during the last years. The results, both qualitatively as well as quantitatively, confirm us that the application of the platform improves academic outcomes and also the learning process of the students. As a conclusion it can be said that elearning platforms that provide the described functionalities are suitable for engineering studies and overcome the main limitations of standard platforms.In this article we present a set of functionalities that we consider to be of fundamental importance for an e-learning platform that has to be applied in the context of engineering studies. As a practical case we describe the ACME platform, highlighting the automatic generation and assignation of problems with open solutions, the on-line correction and feed-back to the students, the automatic assessment of problems and the final assessment of students work. ACME has been used in the University of Girona in Spain, during the last years. The results, both qualitatively as well as quantitatively, confirm us that the application of the platform improves academic outcomes and also the learning process of the students. As a conclusion it can be said that elearning platforms that provide the described functionalities are suitable for engineering studies and overcome the main limitations of standard platforms.