IEEE Revista Iberoamericana de Tecnologias del Aprendizaje

This paper presents innovations to stimulate the autonomy of engineering students by using different active methodologies. The strategies designed to address this problem are based on analyzing students’ learning styles and incorporating specific tools into teaching practice, such as “M-eRoDes,” which supports the automatic evaluation and feedback of concept maps created by them. Among the main fi... View full abstract»

This paper describes the development of courses in the field of digital design that use Arduino boards as their main platforms. Arduino offers an intuitive development environment and multiple hardware and software resources that allow rapid development of microcontroller-based projects. However, due to the vast amount of information available, students were losing the capability to design their o... View full abstract»

Raspberry Pi has the capability of being configured as an access point and as a web server, so it can be used for creating applications reachable from mobile devices without needing an Internet connection. The proposal is based on the possibility for students to answer questionnaires from their mobile devices. The teacher can observe answers in real time. This solution adds dynamism integrating th... View full abstract»

We developed a proposal of a usability evaluation by the experts of a learning management system (LMS). The instrument is designed on the basis of the general criteria for the heuristic evaluation proposed by Nielsen, as well as on international standards, guides, and recommendations for software quality (ISO 9241 and ISO 9126). We present the results from applying the usability evaluation instrum... View full abstract»

The Robot@Factory competition was recently included in Robotica, the main Portuguese Robotics Competition. This robot competition takes place in an emulated factory plant, where automatic guided vehicles (AGVs) must cooperate to perform tasks. To accomplish their goals, the AGVs must deal with localization, navigation, scheduling, and cooperation problems that must be solved autonomously. This rob... View full abstract»

In this paper, we propose the utilization of augmented reality (AR) in a smart classroom (SaCI). The architecture of a SaCI has been proposed in a previous work, based on the paradigm of multi-agent systems. In this paper, we propose an agent that provides services of AR to display and design, among other things, augmented scenarios. In addition, we define an experimental real environment in SaCI ... View full abstract»

Interest in studying computer science has been extended to children. However, it is unclear which educational method should be used. Teachers need help to tackle this task. Therefore, this paper proposes using metaphors, such as recipe/program (and sequence), pantry/memory, and boxes/variables. It also illustrates the possibility of applying these metaphors to any resource available to the teacher... View full abstract»

This paper proposes to apply data mining techniques to predict school failure and dropout. We use real data on 670 middle-school students from Zacatecas, México, and employ white-box classification methods, such as induction rules and decision trees. Experiments attempt to improve their accuracy for predicting which students might fail or dropout by first, using all the available attributes; next,... View full abstract»

This paper describes a learning activity on computational thinking in ethics classroom with compulsory secondary school students (14-16 years old). It is based on the assumption that computational thinking (or better “logical thinking”) is applicable not only to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics subjects but to any other field in education, and it is particularly suited for decisio... View full abstract»

This paper describes a project-based learning case example developed at the University of Lleida, Spain. This proposal was addressed to third-year engineering students and combines knowledge from computer vision and robotic control to complete an automation project task. The learning target was to develop a computer vision system that must detect a small object placed randomly on a target surface ... View full abstract»

This paper presents the results of applying an educational data mining approach to model academic attrition (loss of academic status) at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Two data mining models were defined to analyze the academic and nonacademic data; the models use two classification techniques, naïve Bayes and a decision tree classifier, in order to acquire a better understanding of the att... View full abstract»

This paper describes how an educational digital material supports the improvement of skills in the development of algorithms within math problems, which belong to a part of an operative computational thinking, in students of the subject logic programming. This paper reflects how students lack the fundamentals of math and the algorithmic thinking which is required to solve the problems established ... View full abstract»

Although several definitions of gamification can be found in the literature, they all have in common certain aspects: the application of strategies, models, dynamics, mechanics, and elements of the games in other contexts than games, and the objective of producing a playful experience that fosters motivation, involvement, and fun. In this paper, our approach gamifying the learning process of a sub... View full abstract»

Previous research studies have reported strong evidence that the emotional state of students may have a considerable impact on their learning. In this paper, we present an empirical study that evidences that it is possible to influence the user's affective state in a controlled way, by adapting the system's response. As part of this paper, we have analyzed the affective impact of varying the level... View full abstract»

This paper investigates the use of learning management systems as tools constituting student's personal learning environments in the degree of informatics applied to education in the National University of Chimborazo-Ecuador. The main result of this paper is that there is an increasing number of courses that rely on virtual classrooms, but learning occurs both in and out of these learning environm... View full abstract»

In the context of the European Higher Education Area, it is needed to propose new motivation ways to engage university students in lectures. Since they prefer the application of active methodologies rather than passive ones, and they enjoy the use of interactive devices, using technology in the classroom seems promising. Thus, this paper presents an experience conducted in four technical subjects ... View full abstract»

This paper presents a cooperative project developed by a network of schools and company of different regions of Spain. The project consisted in the development of a home and building automation system for practical teaching in vocational training. The system is based on the Arduino platform to allow the easy development of new applications and hardware modules. This paper also presents the first e... View full abstract»

The traditional teaching-learning processes used by Chilean universities are changing. This document describes two innovative strategies applied to teach software engineering (SE) at two universities in Chile. Teaching experiences are part of our ongoing effort to improve the current teaching-learning strategies of SE in the mentioned universities. In this paper, we describe our teaching experienc... View full abstract»

The task of choosing an authoring tool for creating digital instructional materials is becoming complex, since the amount of possibilities is daily increasing. In this sense, this paper presents the development and the evaluation of an authoring tool taxonomy made in compliance with the ANSI/NISO Z39.19 international standard. The taxonomy was classified over 400 tools and was published on a Web s... View full abstract»

A blended learning teaching experience conducted at Spain’s National Distance University is described. The project consisted of integrating technology (a virtual learning platform) and teaching methodologies (multimedia contents, weekly deliverables, continuous self-assessment, mentoring, a four-month timetable, and webinars) to enhance student engagement, performance, and satisfaction. A statisti... View full abstract»

This paper describes the experience during the execution of a project that applied the project-based learning (PBL) methodology for teaching an undergraduate course on image processing at the Universidad de los Llanos. During this project, the learners, the students of electronics engineering and computer science, were able to complement their lectures, process and manipulate images, and build the... View full abstract»

Computational thinking is a cognitive process that allows generating solutions to problems through the use of skills, such as abstraction, decomposition, and algorithmic design. This paper presents the proposal to evaluate computational thinking of new students to relate knowledge indicated in the subject methodology of programming and to offer an initial environment of learning. This paper descri... View full abstract»

The learning habits of a new generation of students, i.e., those growing up with cell phones, access to social media, and video games, are significantly different from the habits of the educators who are preparing them for the future workplace. The effectiveness of traditional lecture-based classrooms has been questioned by educators, parents, industry, and government. In the field of science, tec... View full abstract»

This paper presents the design of the didactic strategy modeling language (DSML) according to the principles of Physics of Notations (PoN). The DSML is a visual and activity-oriented language for learning design characterized by the representation of different activities according to the nature of the task. Once the language is designed, a blind interpretation study is conducted to validate the se... View full abstract»

Video games can be considered constructivist instructional materials because of their potential to promote student-centered opportunities in the classroom. Since the emergence of this educational trend, called digital game-based learning, several studies have been conducted to evaluate the effect that learning or recreational video games have had on learners and on their mastery of learning object... View full abstract»