Mercedes Gómez-Albarrán

The Teaching and Learning of Programming: A Survey of Supporting Software Tools

To counteract the factors that negatively affect the programming learning process and the teaching of programming, different supporting software tools are used nowadays. This paper presents a classification of these state-of-the-art tools, and describes and compares them. The rationale behind the different approaches is presented. Some challenges that the approaches and tools described could face are also pointed out.

Supporting Object Reuse Through Case-Based Reasoning

In this paper we address the problem of locating the appropriate component in an object-oriented software repository along with the issue of extending the component to adapt it to particular requirements. In order to give support to both types of tasks, we use a CBR approach which allows to profit from past experiences with the use of the repository, and to integrate different knowledge sources under the same representation scheme. This approach has been evaluated through a prototype implementation, which addresses the reuse of a general purpose Smalltalk repository.

Recommendation and Students’ Authoring in Repositories of Learning Objects: A Case-Based Reasoning Approach

This paper presents a Case-Based Reasoning approach for the personalized recommendation and the studentsâ?? authoring tasks in on-line repositories of Learning Objects (LOs). The recommender combines content-based filtering techniques together with collaborative filtering mechanisms. Studentsâ?? authoring tasks include the incorporation of ratings of the existing LOs and new LOs, which are peer reviewed. This approach is going to be applied to a repository with more than 200 programming examples written in different programming languages.

A Semantically Enriched Context-Aware OER Recommendation Strategy and Its Application to a Computer Science OER Repository

This paper describes a knowledge-based strategy for recommending educational resources-worked problems, exercises, quiz questions, and lecture notes-to learners in the first two courses in the introductory sequence of a computer science major (CS1 and CS2). The goal of the recommendation strategy is to provide support for personalized access to the resources that exist in open educational repositories. The strategy uses: 1) a description of the resources based on metadata standards enriched by ontology-based semantic indexing, and 2) contextual information about the user (her knowledge of that particular field of learning). The results of an experimental analysis of the strategys performance are presented. These demonstrate that the proposed strategy offers a high level of personalization and can be adapted to the user. An application of the strategy to a repository of computer science open educational resources was well received by both educators and students and had promising effects on the student performance and dropout rates.

Modelling the CBR Life Cycle Using Description Logics

Abstract. In this paper Description Logics are presented as a suitable formalism to model the CBR life cycle. We propose a general model to structure the knowledge needed in a CBR system, where adaptation knowledge is explicitly represented. Next, the CBR processes are described based on this model and the CBR system OoFRA is presented as an example of our approach.

Recommendation in Repositories of Learning Objects: A Proactive Approach that Exploits Diversity and Navigation-by-Proposing

We describe a proactive recommendation approach for repositories of Learning Objects that adapts to the student profile. It comprises a strategy that lets include diversity in the proposals, and uses navigation-by-proposing, a simple conversational process that avoids posing direct questions and carries very little feedback overhead from the students’ perspective

Software behaviour understanding Supported by dynamic visualization and role-play

Visualization techniques are commonly used in computer science, particularly for understanding the interactions intrinsic in the object-oriented paradigm. The visualization effectiveness improves if the student takes an active role during the learning process. In this paper we propose an active learning approach that lies in using role-play simulations in a virtual 3D environment.

User-Adaptive Recommendation Techniques in Repositories of Learning Objects: Combining Long-Term and Short-Term Learning Goals

In this paper we describe a novel approach that fosters a strong personalized content-based recommendation of LOs. It gives priority to those LOs that are most similar to the students short-term learning goals (the concepts that the student wants to learn in the session) and, at the same time, have a high pedagogical utility in the light of the students cognitive state (long-term learning goals). The paper includes the definition of a flexible metric that combines the similarity with the query and the pedagogical utility of the LO.

Understanding object-oriented software through virtual role-play

Visualization techniques are commonly used in Computer Science, particularly for understanding the interactions intrinsic in the object-oriented paradigm. The visualization effectiveness improves if the student takes an active role during the learning process. In this paper we propose an active learning approach that uses interactive role-play simulations in a virtual 3D environment.

A hybrid user-centred recommendation strategy applied to repositories of learning objects

This article describes the guidelines followed in the design of a framework for managing learning object repositories that can be applied to different domains. The main features of the framework are the engagement of the virtual learning community in authoring and maintenance tasks, along with the use of recommender system technology in order to provide personalised searching and retrieval features. This article mainly focuses on the recommendation tasks, which help to identify suitable resources for the students in the virtual learning community. The recommendation approach follows a cascade hybrid strategy that refines the decisions of a case-based recommender by using a collaborative one. The former provides resources that fit the current student profile and promote her learning process. The later includes in the retrieval process the opinion about the usefulness of the resources provided by other members of the virtual learning community.