{"title":"“Code Yourself” and “A Programar”: A bilingual MOOC for teaching computer science to teenagers","authors":"I. F. D. Kereki, A. Manataki","doi":"10.1109/FIE.2016.7757569","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2016.7757569","url":null,"abstract":"In a technology-fueled world, coding is an essential skill for young people. MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), which are free online courses available to a very large number of people, are an effective and increasingly popular option for teaching scientific topics to a worldwide audience. However, despite the large number of MOOCs available on computer science, there is a scarcity of coding-related MOOCs that are designed for children and teenagers. In this paper, we present a programming MOOC that was recently developed by The University of Edinburgh and Universidad ORT Uruguay for teenager high school students with no prior programming experience. The MOOC was collaboratively developed by the two teams, resulting in a shared instructional design but with a bilingual delivery: “Code Yourself” in English and “A Programar” in Spanish. In this paper, we describe the course design for a young audience and we discuss the international co-development of the course materials. Furthermore, we present results from its simultaneous bilingual delivery in spring 2015, where around 85000 students participated. Student surveys show encouraging results: more than 93% found that the course met or exceeded their expectations, and more than 90% stated that they plan to continue programming in the future.","PeriodicalId":212128,"journal":{"name":"2016 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)","volume":"217 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133504854","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Combining projects and informational sessions to create a comprehensive introduction to the department","authors":"Rebecca M. Reck, Girish Krishnan","doi":"10.1109/FIE.2016.7757503","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2016.7757503","url":null,"abstract":"The Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has five major research areas: data analytics; decision and control systems; design and manufacturing; financial engineering; and operations research. During the summer of 2015, faculty and graduate students from each of the last four areas designed mini-projects and assignments to cover the research areas of the department in a required first-year course. The goal of the designed course was to provide a comprehensive overview of the department and an engaging experience for first-year students. Project-based learning and Kolb's cycle for experiential learning were used to inform the structure of the course. Pre-surveys and post-surveys were administered to gather feedback from students in the course. On the surveys, students reported an increase in understanding of each of the research areas and a positive experience in the course.","PeriodicalId":212128,"journal":{"name":"2016 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131154385","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Theory-based course design for professional master's degree program in Business Engineering","authors":"Brit-Maren Block","doi":"10.1109/FIE.2016.7757511","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2016.7757511","url":null,"abstract":"The shortage of young engineers presents a structural problem that deflates growth and innovation and causes high value losses for the economy. To achieve sustainable success in securing new recruits, prospective students from working life are highly relevant for the universities, because they act at the crossroads of Engineering and Business. Although the offer of studying programs alongside work has grown in recent years in Germany, there is still a lack of theory-based development in didactic concepts for this specific studying group. Generally, there is still a need for research in context of accompanied studies and student-centered contact with the learning professionals. This paper aims to generate new insights in a threefold way: (1) by specifying challenges and approaches for accompanied studying programs in Business Engineering; (2) by explaining the theoretical framework for the methodical educational arrangement of exemplary engineering courses; and (3) by describing first experiences with the concept during the development and implementation in selected engineering courses. This generates empirically grounded knowledge on the theory-based course design for learning professionals and contributes the translation of pedagogical research to practice.","PeriodicalId":212128,"journal":{"name":"2016 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)","volume":"58 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125103222","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Shaymaa E. Sorour, Shaymaa Abd El Rahman, Tsunenori Mine
{"title":"Teacher interventions to enhance the quality of student comments and their effect on prediction performance","authors":"Shaymaa E. Sorour, Shaymaa Abd El Rahman, Tsunenori Mine","doi":"10.1109/FIE.2016.7757736","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2016.7757736","url":null,"abstract":"Today, the use of learning analytics is becoming more crucial in the learning environment for the purpose of understanding and optimizing students' learning situations. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impacts of Teacher Interventions (TIs) on students' attitudes and achievements involved with the lesson by analyzing their freestyle comment data after every lesson. The current study proposes a new method for building an accessible prediction model, which represents students' activities, situations and viewpoints; the method classifies words in the student comments into six attribute types and indicates the most important types that affect the prediction results. Further, the prediction results are compared with the topic-based statistical method that uses Latent Dirichlet Allocation and Support Vector Machine models. The results proved that there were positive correlations between TIs and the quality of writing comments that affect on improving the prediction results.","PeriodicalId":212128,"journal":{"name":"2016 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129417702","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Abstraction and problem solving in an undergraduate electrical engineering circuits course","authors":"Presentacion Rivera-Reyes, L. Pérez","doi":"10.1109/FIE.2016.7757594","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2016.7757594","url":null,"abstract":"The ability to solve problems is a critical skill in all undergraduate engineering curricula. Students' capacity for problem solving is complicated by the fact that higher level reasoning skills, including the capacity for abstraction, are not innate in a person until the mid-twenties or later. The results of an exploratory study that looked at students' episodes of reasoning when solving problems in a sophomore level electrical circuits course are presented. Students' problem solving attempts are analyzed using the representation mapping framework developed by Hahn and Chater that is based on store representations of knowledge and how they are applied. This framework distinguishes between similarity and rules-based cognitive processes, and accounts for memory-bank, rules-based, similarity-based and prototype types of reasoning. Students were asked to think aloud when solving specific problems selected by the course instructor. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed in detail to identify the types of reasoning and the degree of abstraction in the students' problem solving attempts. This study demonstrated that representation mapping is useful framework for studying students' problem solving skills in electrical engineering.","PeriodicalId":212128,"journal":{"name":"2016 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)","volume":"83 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115054524","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Special session: Exploring learning opportunities in engineering education using 2D, 3D and immersive video augmented online technologies","authors":"S. Nikolic, Mark J. W. Lee","doi":"10.1109/FIE.2016.7757390","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2016.7757390","url":null,"abstract":"The goal of this session is to provide engineering educators an opportunity to compare the strengths and limitations in regards to 2D, 3D and immersive video augmented collaborative online learning environments. Participants will also gain valuable hands on experience to provide confidence in using such technologies. This session is targeted to those in the engineering education community that have previously explored the use of more traditional 2D online learning environments (such as Skype, Google Hangouts and Adobe Connect) and are interested in learning more about the possibilities provided by 3D collaborative technologies. At completion participants will have gained a range of practical ideas to implement, with a clearer picture of the opportunities and limitations of emerging 3D immersive online learning tools. While such technologies are not new, there is evidence that more can be done to promote increased usage within engineering education, especially for bringing industry into the classroom. This session aims to help inspire and create debate on the value of incorporating such technologies into the engineering classroom.","PeriodicalId":212128,"journal":{"name":"2016 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122989008","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
B. Jónsson, M. Lárusdóttir, M. Daniels, A. Clear, T. Clear, R. Mcdermott
{"title":"Aligning Quality Assurance at the course unit and educational program levels","authors":"B. Jónsson, M. Lárusdóttir, M. Daniels, A. Clear, T. Clear, R. Mcdermott","doi":"10.1109/FIE.2016.7757419","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2016.7757419","url":null,"abstract":"Quality assurance is a subject that has grown dramatically in importance in recent times. In previous work, we have described how the ACM Curricula can be used to support the Quality Assurance process of educational programs, using the Computer Science program at Reykjavik University as an example. Faculty members and employers of graduates participated in the process, that resulted in providing both detailed quantitative data and qualitative information. The assessment also raised awareness of how abstract topics and learning outcomes from an international standard can be used when revising the curricula of a particular course in a CS program. Quality assurance is indeed a continuous process, where the results of evaluations should be used to drive improvements. In this paper we focus on how a Database course was re-structured based on a recent quality assurance process.","PeriodicalId":212128,"journal":{"name":"2016 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)","volume":"52 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127101339","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Finding good friends to learn from and to inspire","authors":"J. Bennedsen, Siegfried Rouvrais","doi":"10.1109/FIE.2016.7757426","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2016.7757426","url":null,"abstract":"This innovative practice paper presents a self-evaluation model for study programs or institutions linked with a unique quality enhancement process. It focuses on enhancement at the study program level but can be used at different levels. The study program evaluates itself on 28 criteria. Based on such self-evaluation, it identifies a subset of the criteria it would like to improve. The improvement process has at its heart a cross-sparring collaborative and iterative approach, whereby paired study programs are to learn and inspire each other by being critical and constructive friends. This paper focus on the pairing - how can a good match be made so that there will be new insights and inspirations? The criteria draws upon an international super-set of criteria from engineering accreditation systems like ABET, EUR-ACE, CEAB or Engineers Australia, and is extensible. They are scored on process maturity levels as found in the most recent ISO/IEC 33020:2015 series, and complemented by contextual parameters such as the size of the study program, disciplinary main focus or geography. The authors propose a pairing algorithm to find the best match for (engineering) study programs that want to learn from and to inspire each other. Based on four pilots conducted in the fall 2015, this paper reflects on the pairing of eight accredited engineering study programs.","PeriodicalId":212128,"journal":{"name":"2016 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)","volume":"45 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116373874","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
T. Lind, Å. Cajander, B. Sandblad, M. Daniels, M. Lárusdóttir, R. Mcdermott, T. Clear
{"title":"Students envisioning the future","authors":"T. Lind, Å. Cajander, B. Sandblad, M. Daniels, M. Lárusdóttir, R. Mcdermott, T. Clear","doi":"10.1109/FIE.2016.7757701","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2016.7757701","url":null,"abstract":"How can students be included as critical stakeholders in the systems and services provided by a university? To address the whole student experience, we engaged students and employees at a large Swedish university in a vision seminar process to elicit how these groups envisioned an ideal future university, and the necessary changes to technology and organisational structures required to achieve this ideal version. The process entailed six four-hour workshops with four groups consisting of six participants each. A survey instrument was used to follow up on the participants' experiences of participating in the vision seminar process and their thoughts on the future of the university. The results show that the participating students were more positive compared to the university employees. The students envisioned harmonized interdepartmental systems, seamlessly integrating a variety of services into one university-provided solution. The employees envisioned their future work as flexible, enabled by technology providing excellent support without hindering pedagogical and organisational development. Using technological frames, these visions of the future are identified, analysed and discussed in relation to the quality of university education and a holistic view on students' university experience. Finally we discuss the broader implications of the visions on the future of university education.","PeriodicalId":212128,"journal":{"name":"2016 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126909717","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
T. Clear, R. Mcdermott, Elin Parsjo, Å. Cajander, M. Daniels, N. Lagerqvist
{"title":"A framework for writing learning agreements","authors":"T. Clear, R. Mcdermott, Elin Parsjo, Å. Cajander, M. Daniels, N. Lagerqvist","doi":"10.1109/FIE.2016.7757718","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2016.7757718","url":null,"abstract":"Active learning is a popular concept for motivating learning. Learning agreements are one strategy towards this goal. They can be used to aid the students to take ownership of their learning and in becoming more active in a course. Learning Agreements are especially useful tools for scaffolding learning in courses with a focus on developing the professional competencies of students, such as in Open Ended Group Projects, Work Integrated Learning or other authentic learning contexts. Such educational contexts are complex and we have found it necessary to scaffold student learning using agreements based on professional competencies. This has led to a pedagogical framework, which has found successful application in a number of contexts. This framework has been built based on discussions with students, and has involved the development of a supporting wiki which contains descriptions of the different professional competencies involved in the learning agreement. The IT based framework has been iteratively developed together with the students taking the course in the fall of 2015. The development and assessment of this framework is contrasted in the context of two courses using learning agreements, one (in Sweden) with a focus on development of professional competencies and the other (in New Zealand) addressing a mix of professional competencies and subject knowledge in a work integrated learning setting.","PeriodicalId":212128,"journal":{"name":"2016 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)","volume":"122 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"113953835","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}