MCCE 2010 Proceedings

Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on

Methods and Cases in Computing Education

Held in Cádiz (Spain), June 30th 2010

Published by the Spanish Chapter of the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education with the collaboration of the University of Cádiz.

www.uca.es www.sigcse.es

ISBN 978-‐84-‐694-‐0523-‐9

Methods and Cases in Computing Education by Spain ACM SIGCSE Chapter is licensed under a Creative Commons Reconocimiento

2.5 España License.

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Foreword

By Juan-‐Manuel Dodero, president of the ACM SIGCSE Spanish Chapter

The ACM SIGCSE Spanish Chapter is the chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) serving Spain. It started operations in 2008. The chapter provides a forum for common problems among educators working to develop, implement and evaluate computing programs, curricula and courses, as well as syllabi, laboratories, learning technologies, and other elements of teaching and pedagogy. The Chapter supports activities complimentary to SIGCSE, the ACM, and other ACM activities in the Spain area.

The Chapter is organized and operated for educational and scientific purposes, its aim being to increase knowledge about computing education, as well as to serve as a means of communication for those interested in this discipline. This workshop on Methods and Cases in Computing Education (MCCE) is the third of a series of events intended to the dissemination of the activities of the chapter members. As such, it publishes articles dealing with the joy, pain and hope of our daily teaching and research experiences in computing education. The MCCE workshop thus constitutes a forum open to anyone wanting to contribute to the chapter aims. The birth of the Chapter and the MCCE workshop, have the main objective of contributing to the discussions on the European Higher Education Area held among the Spanish Higher Education community. For the third edition of MCCE, held at Cádiz, a number of contributions were selected after a peer review process carried out by the chapter committee members and renowned international researchers.

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Table of contents

Introduction to University and the ICT Sector......................................................... 1

Davinia Hernández-‐Leo, Verónica Moreno Oliver

Collaboration and competitiveness in project-‐based learning ............................... 8

Pablo Recio Quijano, Noelia Sales Montes, Antonio García Domínguez, Manuel Palomo Duarte

Case of an online course: Java Programming....................................................... 15

Ángel García-‐Beltrán

Adapting LEARN-‐SQL to Database computer-‐supported cooperative learning ................................................................................................................ 22

Xavier Burgués, Carme Martín, Carme Quer, Alberto Abelló, M. José Casany, Toni Urpí, M. Elena Rodríguez

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Introduction to University and the ICT Sector Davinia Hernández-‐Leo (1), Verónica Moreno Oliver (2)

(1) Universitat Pompeu Fabra Roc Boronat, 138, 08018 Barcelona [email protected] (2) Universitat Pompeu Fabra Roc Boronat, 138, 08018 Barcelona [email protected]

Abstract The innovative subject “Introduction to ICT” combines a general Introductory Course to the University with elements around the Information and Communication Technologies sector (including the ICT engineer competence profile, market aspects, etc.)

This new course has been developed and implemented in three degree programmes offered by the Polytechnic School at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. The course team consists of thirteen teachers, including business professionals, librarians, computer technicians, institutional representatives as well as an educationalist responsible for advising on methodology and study techniques. The subject was designed for a high number of students (260). At the end of the course, we collected quantitative and qualitative information about the students’ satisfaction. The findings show the positive vision that they had about the topics worked during the subject.

This paper describes the course, its implementation and evaluation and, of course, the details of the findings that we collected about students' satisfaction.

Keywords: Introduction to the University, Teacher coordination, work about competences training, immersion in European Higher Education Area (EHEA).

1. Introduction

The transition to University is certainly an important change for students, since it represents the evolution of the regulatory context as well as training orientation. Both elements affect their academic and personal lives (Gairín, 2004). Adapting to this new way of doing and learning can be more or less traumatic depending on variables that affect the adaptation process such as the maturity of the student or previous learning experiences.

To ensure the processes´ quality of transition between the different stages of education, we must ensure the organization (Guillamón and Feixas, 2005), Universitat Pompeu Fabra, gives substantial support to minimize the most harmful effects that transition could cause to help students overcome insecurities, lack of information, uncertainties or lack of study skills (Brick, 2006), which may in turn lead to academic failure and drop out in the early months.

The first step to act on this line was to design the Course of Introduction to the University (CIU) during 2006 to 2007. Then, the Universitat Pompeu Fabra raised the possibility of offering an introductory course for new students and this was the moment when the Polytechnic School (among other faculties and schools of the UPF) decided to conduct a pilot study.

To this end, some teachers began to reflect on the objectives, content, overall structure of the course and other specific characteristics for good design of the program.

In addition, we must consider the introduction of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), which implies an additional change with double reading:

Maybe this effort to adapt the degrees with consistency and quality to the EHEA has

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exhausted everyone involved and they do not feel sufficiently motivated to carry out a proposal as CIU

Or maybe, it could be an opportunity to initiate processes of structural and organizational change such as the design, development and evaluation of the CIU, which way be useful in the processes of decision making when creating the new degrees.

Thus, during 2007-‐2008 the CIU was held for the first time in the ESUP with a program developed by a group of internal and external UPF professionals.

From this first experience arose a paper (Moreno et al, 2008a; 2008b) in which the results are collected as well as progress in terms of immersion in the EHEA. All these results were considered in the design of the CIU 08-‐09 and for the ITIC subject too.

With the arrival of the new degrees it was decided to turn this into a mandatory course for all freshmen at the UPF. This was the beginning of the ITIC subject. Specifically this subject has a weight of 6 ECTS credit concentrated in the first quarter.

Given the design of new degrees this course consists of two main blocks: one concerning the introduction to the University and another focused on the introduction to the sector, enterprise and ICT market. Each block is also divided into subsections; for example, they have got their own laboratory practices, workshops and works about specific themes. And each one had different requirements, duration, evaluation weight, etc. There is a certain level of integration between the two blocks. The content for some of the methodological activities carried out in the introduction to the University block were related to ICT sector issues, and to practice the written communication skills introduced in the first block, the students were asked in the second block (introduction to the sector) to write an academic report on ICT market aspects.

Below you will found the methods that we used, the evidences that we collected and finally, the conclusions in play.

2. Methods

As presented in the previous section, the subject of ITIC is composed of two large blocks closely linked through practice and activities, with the aim of not losing sight of transversally and continuity of the subject. This objective is reinforced with greater intensity with the realization of a final report to be presented in public. This work has a number of requirements (quality of information sources, formal quality of both written and oral presentation, etc.) to secure the use of everything worked (or much of the content) along the subject. With each and every one of them we want to guarantee the quality of their work, not only the result but also the whole process.

The formative program is based in work and competences development, not only instrumental but also transversal (Tuning project, 2006), so, we must collect evidence about all of them. This variety is the principal motivation to design a complete methodological model as it can be seen in Table 1.

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Table 1. General and specific competences in ITIC

Since this is an introductory course, the proficiency levels for some of the basic skills is low because there are others subjects along the degrees will work them at higher levels. Anyway, this is an ideal moment to enable them to become familiar with them.

At this point, we present the methodological strategy. It is characterized by the combination of plenary lectures with sessions of individual and group work that students perform in large group sessions or small.

In particular, the work inside and outside the classroom is organized as follows:

• Lecture sessions of presentation: the teacher presents the theory about each theme of the course. Students are expected to participate with questions and comments.

• Seminars: These are small-‐group sessions where students work individually or in groups depending on the activities planned by the teacher. The activities outlined in the seminars are diverse in nature so as to enable practice, review and discuss the issues worked actively in the lectures. To prepare the seminars, students perform the preliminary work required at home. The activities form part of the continue evaluation system.

• Practice with PC's: The students work in a computer room. The teacher monitors the work. These practices serve to reinforce the concepts presented in the lecture sessions and personal study. The activity is conducted in groups of two.

• Work about a ICT sub-‐sector: Groups of four or five students deepen over part of the ICT market. The students must use the information received in lectures, practices and reference's documentation and write an academic report. Each group presents the work to be done plenary. The work will be supervised by tutors in the corresponding seminar groups.

General skills Specific Skills

Instrumental

1. Ability to organize and planning.

2. Ability to search and information management.

3. Ability to communicate orally and property written in Catalan and Spanish, to audiences both expert and inexperienced.

4. Troubleshooting.

Interpersonal

Ability to work as a team.

Systemic

6. Ability to adapt to the new situation in University and ESUP.

7. Ability to recognize and understand the diversity and multiculturalism.

A. Basic knowledge of ICT engineering profession.

B. Know the general principles of economics and business, and the impact of ICT on society.

C. Ability to work draft and development in the area of their specialty.

D. Ability to manage own documentation of the profession as specifications, regulations and mandatory standards.

E. Ability to use search tools and bibliographic information resources relating to ICT.

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• Academic debate: Debates are made with preparations beforehand (in groups of four or five people) and students assume the role of an institution to discuss a controversial issue in the ICT sector. It will provide a guide that details the procedure for the conduct during the debates.

• Final exam: Short written examination including all the contents worked along the subject.

As mentioned earlier, the teaching methodology is complex because it must include the work of instrumental competence and transverse. Thus, the evaluation system is also on the same line as shown below.

The evaluation process focused on the achievement level of each of the competence so, every activity with evaluator character was associated with a range of activities and competences. This relation about competences, activities and evaluation weight was explicit in the subject's formative plan. It means that, the students were fully aware of how you would develop the subject at all times (Bloxham and Boyd, 2007).

Some details of this assessment are as follows:

• To successfully overcome the subject is necessary achieving the minimum level required in each of the competencies to be developed along the subject. Every competence was worked in more than one activity, so, this criterion does not mean that the students must pass all the activities. They can fail in 3 (maxim).

• Since most of these skills are employed and evaluated in person (classroom) and continuing along the course, the class attendance was essential. (In general, in the continuous assessment is not taken into account whether the lack of attendance is justified or not.)

It is also a key point for the course that students take an active role. That means they must be critical of the issues raised, they should think about their own ideas while maintaining the interest and curiosity about the material presented throughout the sessions. It is essential that their reflections are based on the formative plan references' and, where possible, also contrasted with the additional sources that are provided along the classes.

Finally, it is worth mentioning to add that the materials were available in a Moodle course (Aula Global) where the students could access all the materials that were needed. Teachers also provided another resources list and materials to widening and deepening about different topics. Also, the students can go to the tutorial sessions always that they need it.

3. Evidence

Given the nature and characteristics of this course, it is coordinated by the director of the Teaching Quality and Innovation Unit (USQUID) of the Polytechnic School. The global evaluation of the course development was evaluated by the USQUID. The pedagogical staff of the USQUID was in charge of designing the instrument to evaluate the students' satisfaction and performing the analysis.

Emphasis was put on this evaluation process, as well as a new item we consider essential for new programs in its distinct character. The evaluation results will provide important indications to enhace the ICT subject which is consider in the Polytechnic School a great opportunity for our students and to increase the academic quality of ESUP.

Trying to cover most of the issues, the USQUID designed several instruments collecting both general aspects of the subject development as more concrete and specific aspects of the teaching

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received.

Specifically, the evaluation of the subject was developed through:

• Conducting an assessment of overall satisfaction by a short questionnaire prepared by the USQUID.

• Conducting an assessment on each and every one of the sessions and activities raised during the subject by a larger questionnaire prepared by the USQUID (in key academic quality, interest, motivation on the topics, quality of resources provided by the teacher, adequacy of the dedication required in each activity, etc.).

• Other elements coming from observations performed along the course (classes, tutorial sessions, etc).

With this information, we can extract a very positive level of satisfaction. It is also true that students have emphasized some elements of improvement such as changing the order of some sessions.

The following findings result from the analysis of the data collected in the evaluation (n = 155):

General aspects:

• The 62.6% of students who responded to the questionnaire believed that there has been no repetition throughout the course.

• About 75% of students believe there is a good level of coordination between teachers of ITIC.

Aspect of the subject they liked most:

• “One of the jobs that I liked the most were the debates, because they present interesting topics around important concepts about the industry.”

• “I like the debates.”

• “The aspects that I have liked most were the work on transversal competences because of their importance (for example oral expression).”

• “What I liked most is the activities involving the interaction and collaboration with classmates, especially the debates.”

• “The level of satisfaction is high; I have found it useful to augment my knowledge about my future professional context.”

• “The debates have been most fun.”

Also we analyzed their academic performance because it represent the final computation of the evaluation that students have been receiving in each and every one of the activities, and therefore represents numerically the achievement of goals outlined in the formative plan: 27 don't presented (10%), 1 suspended more than three minimum requirements, therefore there is no option to recover the subject in September but should be repeated next year, 19 have the opportunity to recover the subject in September (since they fail less than 3 minimums), 213 pass (82%). Considering the totality of the information collected we can make a positive assessment of the subject.

Well worth adding that at the beginning of the quarter, we prepared a document open to all teachers (by Aula Global) where they could add all the comments and suggestions they think can be useful to improve the subject for the forthcoming year. In this way, besides having the detailed

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assessment of students, we also have the teachers’ feedback. Most of the teacher comments are around organizational aspects so that students have more time to prepare the activities and assignments proposed along the course (for example increasing the number of days between debates). This measure will also allow the groups to deepen more in each of the topics proposed. In general, teachers are satisfied on how well the students have received the course.

4. Conclusions in play

This section presents the conclusions reached after the development of the subject ITIC. These conclusions derive from the feedback received by students and teachers, and will help to improve the implementation of the subject in the forthcoming year:

• We must reconstruct some aspects to improve the ordering of topics, for example, present the "oral expression techniques" before carrying out the debates. Doing so, we will also make our students to work harder the transversals competences' related to this issue, such as nonverbal expression, attitude towards a hearing expert and not experts, etc.

• It should be emphasized the use of all resources that UPF offers (for this and for the rest of subjects).

• Increase the time devoted to discuss the advantages and difficulties of group work, since we detected some conflicts where students have asked for help. Team work is an essential transversal competence for engineers (Martinez-‐Monés et. al., 2005; Hernández-‐Leo et al., 2006). Students should understand its importance and challenge from the beginning of their engineering studies and take advantage of the opportunities provided to work in groups to develop this competence.

• Improve the structure of the organization of materials in the Aula Global (Moodle course) so that it is easier to navigate and find materials.

• Increasing the dynamism of some sessions to motivate the students and let them see the value of the issues tackle for their short-‐term future performance in the University and a subsequent professional development.

References

Bloxham, S. and Boyd, P. (2007). Developing effective assessment in higher education. A Practical Guide. Open University Press, London.

Brick, J., (2006). Academic Culture: A Student's Guide to Studying at University, NCELTR, Macquarie Uni, Sydney.

Gairín, J. (2004). La transición entre etapas educativas. In Proccedings of the 8th Congreso Interuniversitario de Organización de Instituciones Educativas. Seville, Spain, 887-‐893.

Guillamón, C. and Feixas, M (2005). El pla de transició i incorporació a la universitat. Algunes notes per guiar l’actuació. In Proceedings of the II Jornada de Campus d’Innovació Docent. Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona, Spain.

Hernández Leo, D., Asensio Pérez, J.I. and Dimitriadis, Y. (2006). Collaborative learning strategies and scenario-‐based activities for understanding network protocols In Proceedings of the 36th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, San Diego, CA, S2F, FIE, 19-‐24.

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Martínez-‐Monés, A., Gómez-‐Sánchez, E., Dimitriadis, Y., Jorrín-‐Abellán, I.M., Rubia-‐Avi, B. and Vega-‐Gorgojo, G. (2005). Multiple Case Studies to Enhance Project-‐Based Learning in a Computer Architecture, Course IEEE Transactions on Education, 48(3), 482-‐489.

Moreno. V., Frangi. A., Bellalta. B., Piella. G. and Infante. J. (2008a) El Curs d’Introducció a la Universitat com a Estratègia Organitzativa per a apropar els estudiants de nova incorporació a l’Escola Superior Politècnica In Proceedings of the X Congrés Interuniversitari d’Organització de les Institucions Educatives, Barcelona, Spain.

Moreno. V., Frangi. A., Bellalta. B., Piella. G. and Infante. J. (2008b) Avaluació del Curs d’Introducció a la Universitat In Proceedings of the II Jornades Internacionals UPM sobre Innovació Educativa i Convergència Europea 2008, Madrid, Spain.

Tuning Project (2006), http://tuning.unideusto.org/tuningeu/, last visited March 2010.

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Collaboration and competitiveness in project-‐based learning

Pablo Recio Quijano (1), Noelia Sales Montes (1), Antonio García Domínguez (2), Manuel Palomo Duarte (2)

(1) Department of Computer Languages and Systems, University of Cádiz C/ Chile nº 1, Cádiz (Spain) {pablo.recioquijano,noelia.salesmontes}@alum.uca.es (2) Department of Computer Languages and Systems, University of Cádiz C/ Chile nº 1, Cádiz (Spain) {manuel.palomo,antonio.garciadominguez}@uca.es

Abstract This paper presents the methodology used in the “Video Game Design” course of the Technical Engineering in Computer Systems (“Ingeniería Técnica en Informática de Sistemas”) degree at the University of Cádiz. This methodology combines collaboration and competition with a strong commitment to free software. On the one hand, students develop video games in teams. On the other hand, grading partially depends on the place obtained in a competition between expert system rulesets developed by the students for a board game exclusively developed for it.

1. Introduction

In recent years, the importance of the video game and electronic entertainment industries has greatly increased. Universities are gradually incorporating their design and implementation in their curricula. At the University of Cádiz, these topics are taught in the “Video Game Design” course of its degree on Technical Engineering in Computer Systems (“Ingeniería Técnica en Informática de Sistemas”).

The course is divided into two parts. In the first part, students are organized into three-‐person teams to develop a video game, following a project-‐based learning approach (Mills & Treagust, 2003). This part is a collaborative experience in medium-‐scale project development in small groups. Projects are hosted on the Free Knowledge Forge of the RedIRIS (Spanish National Research and Education Network) Community to increase their visibility and let students use latest generation tools.

In the second part, students learn about expert systems: a branch of artificial intelligence suited for problems with partial knowledge of the environment (Russell & Norvig, 2009). Students develop an expert system which implements a strategy to play a predefined board game in which two armies move by turns. Students compete against each other by running their expert systems in a predefined environment which implements the game itself. Grading in this part of the course depends on the results obtained in the competition.

2. Course syllabus

“Video Game Design” is an optional course of the third year of the Technical Engineering in Computer Systems (“Ingeniería Técnica en Informática de Sistemas”) degree at the University of Cadiz. It is worth 6 LRU credits (4.5 ECTS credits), which are equally divided into lectures and practical sessions. There are two weekly sessions of two hours each during the second term (from February to June). The course integrates knowledge about several IT branches, such as

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programming, artificial intelligence, physics, modeling, group work, etc. The course has been taught since the 2006–2007 academic year, using a project-‐based learning for most of the course except for the competition.

Since its inception, the course has been strongly committed to using high-‐quality free software, according to the “Institutional Declaration of Support of Free Software” approved by the Governing Council of the University of Cádiz (Universidad de Cádiz, 2004). This commitment is not only due to the ethical responsibility of the University as a public educational organization, but also to the practical benefits linked with the use of free software in education (González Barahona et al., 2004).

Free software can contribute to achieve the objectives established by the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) (García & Rodríguez & Palomo, 2008). Students have access to bleeding-‐edge tools and all information produced during their development, regardless of their economic situation. They can analyze and modify the program for learning and experimenting, and obtain skills as task management, architectural design, software configuration control and other high-‐level skills.

Additionally, free software also tends to be more accessible to disabled users, offer translations in more languages and better conform to existing standards. All these features require specific techniques that students can learn from the code and the developer community, making them more competitive in the labor market. Finally, some of the free software projects are more successful than others: students may see directly what were the key factors and keep them in mind for their own initiatives.

After the insights obtained in the Teacher Training Group GFUCA17 (“Course adaptations for Computer Science degrees at the EHEA”), during 2007, the course was included into the Educational Innovation Project IE-‐26. In 2009, the course was part of the EHEA Adaptation Pilot Experience of the degree and the Teaching Innovation Action “Usage of Web 2.0 collaborative technologies to encourage student teamwork”. These initiatives are part of the Europe Project of the University of Cádiz.

3. Video game development

In the collaborative part of the course, students develop a video game in groups of three and release it as free software. All code is publicly available, but evaluation is done in class using templates previously agreed with the students.

3.1. Software forge

A software forge is an on-‐line environment that provides several tools that simplify collaborative development and eases distributed work. Current forges feature mailing lists, forums, task and bug trackers, content syndication feeds and wikis, among others. These tools provide constant up-‐to-‐date information which allows the teacher to efficiently and closely follow the students’ progress.

Among these collaboration tools, version control systems (such as Subversion) play a key role in enabling the collaboration between the students in each group. Most work is done in a distributed fashion, as differing group member schedules make face-‐to-‐face meetings hard to plan. Version control systems let each student plan their own work in a flexible manner and stay in sync with the rest of the group.

The basic workflow with Subversion is as follows: when the project begins, students create a

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repository with a basic directory structure. At the start of each working session, every developer updates their working copy to the latest revision of the contents of the repository. After making their contributions (new features, bug fixes, etc.), these are committed as new revisions. If in the meantime another developer has sent more contributions, Subversion will merge the changes introduced by both. More advanced workflows exist, but this is often enough for the projects developed in the course.

Subversion’s advantages do not end there: the system keeps all intermediate versions of the program resulting from each contribution of each user. Every revision includes the author’s name, its date and time and a description message. This enables all users to fetch any version of the program, either by its version number (1.0) or its date and time (yesterday at 15:00). This information can also be used, for example, to compare different versions of a file.

Moreover, the forge is publicly available, so anyone interested in the video games can download them and spread the word.

3.2. Results

Table 1 reports several statistics for the nine projects carried out during the 2008–2009 academic year (Free Software and Knowledge Office of the University of Cádiz, 2009). Average values for each project and student are shown as well.

Table 1. Statistics for the 2008–2009 academic year

Metric 9 projects Proj. average. Student average

Revisions (commits) 964 107.11 37.08

Total files (raw) 3516 390.67 135.23

Total code files (.h + .cpp)

1096 121.78 42.15

Total lines (raw) 286495 31832.78 11019.04

Total code lines (.h + .cpp)

177884 19764.89 6841.69

Number of additions 3724 413.78 143.23

Number of modifications

1462 162.44 56.23

There is a large difference between the raw file count and the code file count and the raw total lines and code total lines. This is because the projects use Doxygen (Van Heesch, 2010). to produce large amounts of HTML documentation automatically from the C.2ex++ sources.

The data has been obtained using StatSVN (Appendium, 2010) and the RedIRIS software forge. StatSVN is a full-‐featured free software tool that generates statistics of a project from its SVN repository. It also provides information about the work from each developer. For instance, it can show the distribution of work over the term and over the week.

Using this data we can classify the students over several profiles. For example, some students like to work during the night (with almost 40% of their contributions done after midnight), while the rest do the work during the entire day. Regarding weekdays, some groups work on the project during class, so their contributions are focused in working days, and other students work on

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weekends. There are some common patterns, though: contribution rate always increases in the last few days before each monthly presentation.

We conclude that, in general, the students have produced a considerable amount of work bearing in mind that this is an optional 4-‐month course. Each student has sent on average over 37 contributions and has produced more than 40 files. The 177884 lines of source code have generated nearly 110000 lines of documentation.

4. Competition between expert systems

In the competitive part, students face each other with the expert systems they have developed to play a board game similar to Stratego (Palomo, 2007). The game pits two armies made up by several pieces against each other. Every piece has an associated value that is initially only visible to its owner. When two pieces face each other, their values are revealed and the lowest valued piece is removed from the board (“dies”). If both pieces have the same value, both pieces die. The objective of the game is to capture the opponent’s lowest valued piece.

4.1. Development

To perform the competition, a free software tool which provides a common environment where the expert systems can face off each other has been developed: Resistencia en Cádiz: 1812 (Recio, 2010). Using this application, the students can test their expert systems against other expert systems and themselves. This helps students improve their modules and make their systems stronger. Figure 1 shows a screenshot of a game between two teams, with some pieces uncovered.

Fig. 1: Screenshot of a match in “Resistencia en Cádiz: 1812”

Near the end of the course, 2 weeks are used to perform this experience. A 1-‐hour lecture

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provides the required conceptual foundations behind rule-‐based expert systems, emphasizing their practical applications in science and engineering. The second hour of this first session is used to show the main application, so they can get familiar with the environment they are going to use. In this session some sample rules will be shown, from simple cases to a reasonably complex system.

The application is easy to learn and use, so the practical session of that week can be used to code a basic ruleset, so they can be improved at home. They can test their rulesets against some examples included in the system. Two features are very useful for learning. First, it can play a very large set of games automatically, showing general statistics of the behavior of the ruleset. Second, human players can play directly against an expert system and test how it behaves under certain situations.

Lecture time for the second week is used to organize a league which faces all students against each other. Figure 2 shows a screenshot with results from a round and the resulting overall ranking.

Fig. 2: Results on a league-‐format competition

Usually, students identify issues and weak points in their systems during the competition, so they have an extra hour during the last week’s practical session to improve their ruleset. The last hour is used to play a shorter tournament with their improved teams.

4.2. Evaluation

In order to pass this part of the course, the student only needs to defeat a naive (“sparring”) team that is included in the system. This lets the student pass this part with confidence, even if the ruleset ends up in last place in the following competition.

If they want to get a better score, students need to win against their classmates. Students get an extra point for each of: winning once during the league, being in the top half of the league, passing each of the two play-‐off rounds and winning a tournament.

The experience has been rewarding both for the students and the teacher. Students were on average much more interested in this course than in others, judging from the surveys conducted near the end of the term. Results showed a very high score in that attribute, with 4.77 points over 5.

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Students reported that they felt more motivated due to competing with their peers through their work, rather than speed or reflexes, as usual in most video games. Students enjoyed developing a program and seeing it play a game following a strategy without their intervention.

5. Conclusions

We have presented two educational experiences which, combined in a course, focus learning around the student. Students of the “Video Game Design” course collaborate with each other and build up teamwork skills on the one hand, and learn new concepts by competing against each other on the other.

Students have worked together as teams during the whole course, generating 177884 lines of code at an uniform pace. Using StatSVN, we identified several patterns during their development. Every video game is available at the RedIRIS software forge for download.

The competitive part of the course has been well received by the students, being scored with 4.77 points over 5 in the surveys conducted at the end of the course. Students felt more motivated since the ranking of their expert system among their peers’ influenced their grades.

Future editions of the course will mostly preserve its current structure. The collaborative part will mostly be kept as is. However, the rules of the competitive game will be slightly changed over time, so students will not copy the winner strategies of the past courses.

Acknowledgments

This work has been funded for the Acción de Innovación Educativa Universitaria del Personal Docente e Investigador “Empleo de tecnologías colaborativas web 2.0 para fomentar el trabajo en equipo del alumnado” (PIE-‐101) belonging to the Proyecto Europa de la Universidad de Cádiz, funded by the Consejería de Innovación, Ciencia y Empresa of the Junta de Andalucía, the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia and the University of Cádiz.

References

Álvarez, A., Palomo, M., Rodríguez, J.R. (2009). Experiencias en la aplicación de técnicas y herramientas de desarrollo colaborativo de software en una asignatura basada en proyectos. Actas del XVII Congreso de Innovación Educativa en las Enseñanzas Técnicas.

Appendium (2010). Homepage of the StatSVN project. http://www.statsvn.org/

Free Software and Knowledge Office of the University of Cádiz (2009). Proyectos de Diseño de Videojuegos curso 2008/9. http://osl.uca.es/node/998

González Barahona, J., Matellán Olivera, V., de las Heras Quirós, P., Robles, G., eds. (2004). Sobre software libre: compilación de ensayos sobre software libre. Dykinson

I. García, A., Rodríguez, R., Palomo, M. (2008). El software libre en el EEES. Actas del Congreso internacional sobre investigación educativa. page101–page120

Mills, J.E., Treagust, D.F. (2003). Engineering education: Is Problem-‐Based or Project-‐Based learning the answer? Australasian Journal of Engineering Education(3) page2–page16

Palomo, M. (2007). La competitividad como un factor motivante para el aprendizaje de sistemas expertos. Actas de las II Jornadas Nacionales de Intercambio de Experiencias Piloto de Implantación de Metodologías ECTS.

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Van Heesch, D. (2010). Homepage of the Doxygen project. http://www.doxygen.org/

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Case of an online course: Java Programming Ángel García-‐Beltrán (1)

(1) Universidad Politécnica de Madrid Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales, c/José Gutiérrez Abascal, 2. 28006 – Madrid (SPAIN) [email protected]

Abstract This paper describes the pedagogical methodology and some results drawn from the experience of a Java Programming online course. The work presents and discusses the online learning-‐teaching actions: SCORM contents publishing, self-‐assessment exercises, single and collaborative homeworks delivering and several web-‐based communications. All of these activities are driven to encourage students to practice programming techniques with Java language. The course grading is equally based on the individual and the collaborative activities.

1. Introduction

Several years ago, the teaching methodology for Computer Science courses was fairly traditional, with face-‐to-‐face lectures and laboratory work. Currently, many online systems and tools are used as support to the traditional instructional methods. They can become interactive learning systems helping students to learn the basic concepts of any subject, i.e. computer programming. In this work a methodology for an online course based in virtual tools is described. The fully online Java Programming course is presented at the beginning of this paper; the rest of the paper describes the learning-‐teaching activities by clearly indicating the initial objective, the procedure adopted, and the conclusions drawn from this experience.

2. The course

Java Programming (4.5 ECTS credits, English language, one teacher and about 25 students per academic year) is one of the elective courses taught to Industrial and Chemical Engineering students at the ETSII-‐UPM in the second semester since 2005-‐06. The course is fully online and students and teacher only need a web browser (and a local Java SDK) to develop all the course activities. Prior to this course, students have to learn TurboPascal programming in a first programming course (called Computer Science or Informática) in the very first semester. The second semester begins at the middle of February and lasts until the beginning of June.

2.1. Syllabus

The course is pretended to be an introduction to the Java programming basics. The first units of the syllabus (Table 1) focus on the essential programming elements (data types, control sentences and routines) of Java and the last ones point towards the methodology of object oriented programming paradigm.

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Table 1. Units of the Java Programming course syllabus

Unit 1 Introduction

Unit 2 Program Structure and Data Types

Unit 3 Operators

Unit 4 Control Statements

Unit 5 Return Statement

Unit 6 Objects and Classes

Unit 7 Class Members: Variables and Methods

Unit 8 Inheritance

Unit 9 Interfaces

Unit 10 Packages and Exceptions

2.2. Methodology and grading

Since the 2005-‐06 academic year, the course methodology supported by the AulaWeb virtual campus (Martínez and García-‐Beltran, 2003) involves the following activities classified in two groups:

1. Individual or single activities

Theoretical and practical contents

Self-‐assessment exercises

Single homeworks

2. Team or collaborative activities

Open-‐discussion forums participation

Collaborative final homework

Chat sessions participation

These activities and their implementation match with the three main concerns to be considered in Bologna Process (Fernández et al, 2009): (a) everything that implies an effort for students should be measured, (b) students’ feedback should be continuous and (c) monitoring activities might observe the evolution of the subject. So, the course grading is based not only on the single activities (50%) but also on the collaborative ones (50%). There is no a traditional final examination.

3. Activities implementation

There are no face-‐to-‐face lectures and contents publishing, interactive communication, self-‐assessment and programming homeworks appear as a set of key activities to encourage the students to connect actively in Java basics by “doing”.

All the activities are implemented by means of web based tools. The interactive nature of AulaWeb allows students of programming courses not only to study the material and see programming code examples, but also to edit, compile and run programs written in Java, and to evaluate their level of learning. Students and teachers only need a computer connected to the Internet and a WWW browser in order to take advantage of all the application functions.

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3.1. Theoretical and practical contents

Java Programming course contents are organized in theoretical and practical documents. The theoretical part is provided by a SCORM course (ADL, 2010 and García-‐Beltrán et al, 2007). These contents are a translated adaptation of a book (García-‐Beltrán and Arranz, 2005) and the OCW-‐UPM Programación en Java course (García-‐Beltrán and Arranz, 2008). A SCORM course may be used by the tutors to monitor the student working progress during the academic term, since there are no face-‐to-‐face lectures (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1: SCORM contents for the Java Programming course

The practical part is given by a set of documents, structured into several units of the course syllabus. These documents include solved problems and exercises as well as source programs, which can be edited, compiled and executed by the Java SDK. The proposed problems are sorted by increasing difficulty.

3.2. Self-‐assessment exercises (SAE)

These exercises are used to improve the performance of the students, focus their learning and so drive them to practice computer programming during the academic term. To encourage them the test results make a contribution (20%) to the subject grading, so these marks are meant to motivate and to assess. The questions have been distributed in the corresponding units and can incorporate graphics and multimedia. There are also many types of questions (single choice, multiple choice, numerical input, text, etc) implemented in this tool. However, this course may employ questions with Java Programming code answers (Figure 2) and questions with randomly generated wording (García-‐Beltrán et al, 2009). The code questions are focused on developing programs to do something not on learning language syntax or program rules. Of course the learning of the language syntax and rules are a previous step. The tutor set up exercises for the group of students with short deadlines, so the students must work according to the subject design. Exercises correction is automatic and the student and the teacher can access immediately the results of the self-‐assessment activities. Therefore, the system allows the teacher to track the student’s learning progress during the course.

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Fig. 2: Example of a Java code question in the student interface

The final aim is that tutor may identify knowledge gaps among students in order to have a better understanding of potential corrective activities. As shown in Table 2, students finished 148 SAE configured by the tutor in 2008-‐09.

Table 2. Summary of exercises results for the Java Programming course (2008-‐09)

Unit From: To (deadline): N. Q. Students who did it

Ave. Score (out of 10)

1 Introduction 27/02/2009 06/03/2009 5 17 9,76 2 Program Structure & Data Types 07/03/2009 16/03/2009 5 18 9,11 3 Operators 15/03/2009 23/03/2009 5 18 9,56 4 Control Statements 22/03/2009 30/03/2009 4 19 9,68 5 The return Statement 27/04/2009 03/04/2009 4 18 9,03 6 Objects and Classes 07/04/2009 15/04/2009 4 19 8,55 7 Class members 18/04/2009 30/04/2009 4 19 8,68 8 Inheritance 22/04/2009 05/05/2009 4 21 8,69 9 Interfaces 29/05/2009 10/05/2009 4 19 9,16 10 Packages & Exceptions 05/05/2009 17/05/2009 4 20 9,25

3.3. Single homeworks

Students must face five individual programming assignments during the semester. The homeworks set up and the delivery of the corresponding reports by the students are done by means of AulaWeb. These programming exercises are handed at regular intervals throughout the course. Once the content of the student’s work has been checked, the teacher can mark it and send the corresponding grading and comments to the student. This activity score also contributes (20%) to the course final mark of the student.

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3.4. Open discussion forums

These activities can facilitate the interchange of ideas among lecturer and students, who can publish news and express their own ideas, doubts and comments, and ask or answer questions posed by other students or by the tutor. The AulaWeb forum is opened since the beginning of the academic period and the student participation makes up the 10% of the course final grading.

3.5. Collaborative final homework

The aim is the development of a Java Program using the concepts and programming elements learned in this course. This final homework must be performed in groups of three (or four) students. The tutor selects the students teams composition and each students group has to meet, planify, design and implement one program project. Before the development, students must consult the tutor about the scope of the program. All the projects must include a program (with a main method) in order to test the application code. This work contributes 30% to the student final mark.

3.6. Chat sessions

There are three chat sessions per course: at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of the academic period. Due to its spreading, Microsoft Messenger is used to carry out the sessions (Microsoft, 2010). Evening hours are choosen for these sessions because students timetable used to take up mornings and afternoons. The chat sessions length is approximately one hour.

4. Results

In order to determine the goodness of the methodology, success data of a traditional (face-‐to-‐face, in Spanish) Java Programming course is compared to the fully online course results (similar to Sánchez et al 2009 analysis). Both courses are elective ones taught in the ETSII-‐UPM. The two-‐hours per week lectures in the traditional course address not only the theory but also the practice of the course and are taught using the Spanish language in a computer laboratory. Table 2 shows the success rate in both courses since 2005-‐06 academic year. In short the rate of students passing the traditional course (63.9%) is worse than the online’s one (87.9%).

Table 2. Traditional course vs. online course results comparison

Java Programming (Face to face – Spanish) Java Programming (Online – English)

Acad. Year Students: Pass/Total % Pass Students: Pass/Total % Pass

2005-‐06 22/33 66,7 23/25 92,0

2006-‐07 13/24 54,2 21/24 87,5

2007-‐08 13/19 68,4 23/27 85,2

2008-‐09 12/18 66,7 20/23 87,0

Total 60/94 63,9 87/99 87,9

5. Validation

To analyse the effectiveness of the methodology, at the end of the academic period, students completed a survey, providing anonymous and very interesting feedback about the courses. The responses for the questions were given a five-‐position scale graded from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 5 (Strongly agree). An example of the survey results for the 2008-‐09 academic year is shown in Table 3.

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Table 3. Summary of students survey in the Java Programming course (2008-‐09)

Question Students Answers 1 2 3 4 5 Ave. 1 I enjoyed using the virtual learning management system 23 21 2 1 3 5 10 3,95 2 The methodology enabled me to practice and develop

programming skills 23 20 0 1 4 5 10 4,2

3 I worked harder than I would have done without it 23 21 2 1 4 5 9 3,86 4 It encouraged me to work consistently throughout the term 23 21 1 2 4 6 8 3,86 6 The activities results have been a fair reflection of my ability 23 21 0 1 4 7 9 4,14

6. Conclusions and future work

An approach of a learning-‐teaching methodology in a Java Programming online course has been presented. Java Programming online course has been taught since 2005-‐06 academic year. Data collected during five years of application are showed. To date, students generally report an encouraging experience in this online course. The virtual campus facilitates innovative and easy funcionalities to plan courses, provide contents, develop several learning activities and evaluate students. New technologies and tools can help and effectively change the classical approach of learning/teaching of taking lessons, assignments and manual grading with many educational benefits and low cost. Virtual platforms employment may be very efficient in the pedagogical process: students have spatial and temporal flexibility to do the assignments and also immediate feedback and lectures can support (any-‐size) groups of students, make easy and/or avoid the grading discrepancies and focus their activity on issues regarding content and didactics. Furthermore, this kind of web-‐based systems may help to reduce distance barriers not only for local or national students but also for other students from international institutions. The overall conclusion is that this type of non-‐presential methodologies is generally viewed positively by students and tutors.

Future plans include a more exhaustive analysis of collected data and the development of a new set of Java programming code questions for the self-‐assessment database.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to acknowledge the support of A. Alonso, J. M. Arranz, P. Avendaño, M. Aza, L. Blanco, S. Campos, D. Cortés, J. A. Criado, F. de Ory, C. Engels, M. Fernández, V. Gámiz, P. García, M. González, J. Granado, T. Hernández, I. Iglesias, J. A. Jaén, A. R. López, D. López, J. A. Martín, M. Martín, R. Martínez, F. J. Mascato, D. Molina, C. Moreno, L. M. Pabón, S. Pastor, J. C. Pérez, A. Rodelgo, S. Tapia, A. Valero, E. Villalar and C. Zoido.

References

ADL, Advanced Distributed Learning (2010), About Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM), http://www.adlnet.gov/Technologies/scorm/default.aspx

Fernández, C., Díez, D., Torres, J. and Zarraonandía, T. (2009). The cost of learning and teaching Java in the Bologna process, In Proc. of the 2nd Workshop on Methods and Cases in Computing Education, Barcelona, Spain, pp. 41-‐45.

García-‐Beltrán, A. and Arranz, J.M. (2004). Introducción a la Programación con Java, Sección de Publicaciones de la ETSII-‐UPM, Madrid.

García-‐Beltrán, A. and Arranz, J.M. (2008). Programación con Java I, OpenCourseWare-‐UPM, http://ocw.upm.es/lenguajes-‐y-‐sistemas-‐informaticos/programacion-‐en-‐java-‐i

García-‐Beltrán, A., Martínez, R., Muñoz, D. J. and Muñoz-‐Guijosa, J. A. (2007). Implementación de

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un Módulo de Gestión de Contenidos SCORM en la Plataforma AulaWeb, In Proc. of SPDECE 2007, Diseño, Evaluación y Desarrollo de Contenidos Educativos Reutilizables, Bilbao, Spain.

García-‐Beltrán, A., Tapia, S., Martínez, R. and Jaén, J. A. (2009). Simulator for a Multi-‐Programming Environment for Computer Science Learning and Teaching, International Journal of Engineering Education, 25-‐2, 221-‐227.

Martínez, R. and García-‐Beltrán, A. (2003). AulaWeb, un sistema de e-‐learning para la gestión, evaluación y seguimiento de asignaturas, Industria XXI, 4, 26-‐27.

Microsoft (2010), Windows Live Messenger, http://windowslive.es.msn.com/

Sánchez, S., Rodríguez, D. and Clarisó, R. (2009), Comparing a fully online course to a blended one: the case of compilers, In Proc. of the 2nd Workshop on Methods and Cases in Computing Education, Barcelona, Spain, pp. 52-‐60.

Sun Developer Network Site (2010), Developer Resources for Java Technology, http://java.sun.com/

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Adapting LEARN-‐SQL to Database computer-‐supported cooperative learning Xavier Burgués (1), Carme Martín (1), Carme Quer (1), Alberto Abelló (1), M. José Casany (1), Toni Urpí (1), M. Elena Rodríguez (2)

Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya Mòdul A0, Campus Nord. Jordi Girona Salgado 1-‐3. 08034 Barcelona, Spain {diafebus,cquer,aabello,mjcasany,martin,urpi}@essi.upc.edu

Universitat Oberta de Catalunya Rambla del Poblenou 156. 08018 Barcelona, Spain

[email protected]

Abstract LEARN-‐SQL is a tool that we are using since three years ago in several database courses, and that has shown its positive effects in the learning of different database issues. This tool allows proposing remote questionnaires to students, which are automatically corrected giving them a feed-‐back and promoting their self-‐learning and self-‐assessment of their work. However, this tool as it is currently used does not has the possibility to propose structured exercises to teams that promote their cooperative learning. In this paper, we present our adaptation of the LEARN-‐SQL tool for allowing some Computer-‐Supported Collaboration Learning techniques.

1. Introduction

Universities in Europe are involved in an uniformisation process in the so-‐called high European Space for Higher Education (ESHE). The adoption of this framework requires the reduction and optimization of the time spent in learning tasks with active participation of the student. ESHE also increases the importance of practice, personal relationships and the capacity to work within a team. These goals suggest the reduction of explanations in classes and the increase of personal and cooperative tasks performed by students.

Because of these reasons we began to introduce new didactic methods in the area of databases some time ago. On the one hand, since three years ago, we are using the LEARN-‐SQL tool (Abelló et al., 2007; http://www.upc.edu/learn-‐sql/) that promotes self-‐learning and self-‐assessment, makes evaluation of exercises easier, and provides information about the knowledge of the students on different subjects of the database area. On the other hand, since one year ago, we have also introduced cooperative learning techniques in database courses.

In both cases we began with a reduced number of students, in order to do not introduce changes that affect a big number of students, also to get used to the new learning techniques, and finally, because the preparation of classes and exercises, its evaluation, and also the feed-‐back that must be given to students requires much time from the teacher. Once extended gradually the application of these techniques, we have now practiced both didactic methods in courses with a considerable number of students. As the results obtained are satisfactory and promising, we will go further by using an adaptation of the LEARN-‐SQL tool that: provides the functionality of defining group exercises that must be solved by some cooperative learning techniques; helps us in the evaluation of students; gives feed-‐back to groups of their effective learning; and facilitates Computer-‐Supported Cooperative Learning (CSCL), that is, the cooperative learning in an online framework.

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In this paper we are presenting our adaptation of the tool, the particular cooperative techniques that the tool will provide, the results of the use of theses techniques that we have already experienced without the help of computers, and how we can take advantage of the implementation of these techniques with the tool. The structure of the paper is the following: section 2 describes the tool; section 3 presents its adaptation to new learning techniques, the results of the use of these techniques in ordinary classes, and how we are taking advantage of the online implementation of these techniques; and finally, section 4 gives some conclusions.

2. LEARN-‐SQL

LEARN-‐SQL (Learning Environment for Automatic Rating Notions of SQL) is, in fact, a system composed of three tools (see Fig. 1), following the IMS QTI proposal (IMS learning Consortium, 2006). The Authoring Tool allows the teacher to manage the repository of questions or exercises, which can be used later on in several questionnaires. The students access remote questionnaires, to answer the questions that the teacher has assigned previously to them through the Moodle learning environment (Alier, 2007) which acts as the Remote Questionnaires Tool. Finally the Scorer evaluates the students solutions.

Fig. 1 LEARN-‐SQL system

Currently, the categories of exercises that may be taught with the help of our tool are: SQL queries, SQL table definitions, SQL row insertion/deletion/updating, SQL view definition, relational algebra, conceptual model translation to relational model, normalization, verification of properties of a relational model, multidimensional queries, materialized views, table access structures, optimization and access plan. There are other tools related with learning in the database area, but, as far as we know, they just correct SQL queries and in some cases relational algebra (Brusilovsky et al., 2010; Dekeyser et al., 2007; Kenny & Pahl, 2008; Mitrovic, 2003; Sadiq et al., 2004; Soler et al., 2006, 2007).

We have implemented our tool with a strategy that evaluates in an objective way the students' solutions, taking into account that the exercises may be solved in many different ways and that is not possible to know the whole set of correct solutions in advance. The strategy is based on several executions (depending on the exercise and its category) of the student solution using different inputs. Each execution constitutes an experiment which verifies if one of the possible mistakes has been committed. Assuming that the set of inputs are complete, if each experiment done with the student question solution produces the same effect than the one produced by the

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teacher question solution, we may guarantee the correctness of the student solution.

Currently we use the tool in our courses proposing three types of questionnaires:

• When a new subject that drives to a new category of exercises is introduced, we propose training questionnaires that the students solve online not during a class. Training questionnaires are evaluated but just to give feed-‐back to the student of his learning progress.

• If the new subject is especially difficult, the training questionnaire is solved at class with help of the teacher.

• When we want to evaluate if the students have achieved the learning specific goal of a certain category of exercises, they do a questionnaire in class for evaluation purpose. In these questionnaires some penalty is applied taking into account the number of students attempts.

Taking into account our experience with the tool, we may see that its use has several advantages: the teacher is no required to take part on the evaluation (automatic evaluation, leaving to the teacher more time available for the preparation of new exercises); the student may use it at any time and in any place, since it may be used through Moodle obtaining an immediate answer from the tool (interactive, online); the student receives feed-‐back about his errors and has the possibility to correct them and to submit a new answer (self-‐learning); the use of the tool as a training tool has increased the questions of the student to the teacher in order to clarify their knowledge, showing an improvement in the maturity of their learning of the different database subjects (learning goals achievement and average grade increased from 6.5, on a 0 -‐ 10 scale, to 8.5). Moreover, the tool can perform with good response time even if the number of students is very high (scalable) and it is easy to extend to support new categories of exercises (extensible).

From the student’s point of view, the tool not only has been accepted; in addition it is considered a valuable help. This can be concluded from the answers to a six-‐monthly opinion poll, involving more than 400 students (175 of them answered the poll) and 3 courses. The results obtained were (1 stands for maximum disagreement, 5 for maximum agreement):

• Having the tool available outside the laboratory helps me learning: 4.08

• Knowing the grade and the possibility to retry helps improving the grade: 4.05

• Messages about mistakes are useful: 2.99

• This is a good tool to learn SQL: 3.86

3. CSCL LEARN-‐SQL

We are going to begin the section explaining the implementation of cooperative learning techniques (CoLT) to our database courses and, after that, we will describe each of the techniques used and our adaptation of LEARN-‐SQL for implementing them. Finally, we summarise the results that validate our implementation and, thus, justifies the adaptation of LEARN-‐SQL.

3.1. Implementing cooperative learning

Before introducing computer-‐supported cooperative learning techniques we decided to test these kind of practices in ordinary classes without any use of computers, in order to do a kind of validation of its use in the databases area.

After assisting to different introductory cooperative learning courses, we studied the big diversity

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of techniques recommended that may be considered as cooperative learning that may be find in the literature (Barkley et al., 2005; Jonhson et al., 2006; Kagan, 1994). We also considered the types of exercises to which we wanted to apply this kind of learning. These exercises are concrete exercises of some of the categories introduced in section 2, which can be solved in one or two hours of students work, that may have more than one correct solution and the learning objectives of which correspond to the Application level in the Bloom’ Taxonomy (Bloom, 1956). It was also important for us to promote the comparison and discrimination among multiple solutions to exercises together with the positive interdependence and both individual and group accountability of the learning advances.

We finally considered the types of students that we have and our experience in asking them to do team-‐work. Our students are more or less homogeneous in morning classes taking into account their previous knowledge of the databases area (we think this is the only kind of diversity to currently take into account), but not in the afternoon classes, since there are a lot of students that already use databases in their jobs and also some students that repeat the course. Our experience in team-‐work is that having big teams (of more than three people) increases the chance to have students that do not do anything, although we knew that this must be solved by means of a proper design of the cooperative learning techniques and the evaluation.

All these previous considerations helped us to decide the following:

• The teams of students would be of three people, which would be randomly generated, with a requirement to have (as much is possible) students with previous knowledge about the database area distributed among the different teams. The teams are meant to be stable in order to increase fidelity, complicity and harmony in the personal relationships.

• We began with the implementation of three different kinds of techniques on a non computer supported framework. We have made variations of the techniques found in the literature in order to fulfill our requirements.

• We decided to begin the adaptation of LEARN-‐SQL to allow team support. This support is necessary whatever technique is going to be applied. As we said before, the Remote Questionnaire tool is used through Moodle and we use as much as possible Moodle functionalities. Thus, our courses are Moodle courses and our students are Moodle participants of the courses. However, Moodle does not give us the concept of team of students. For this reason we implemented functionalities for team management that allow the teacher to create randomly the teams, defining their size and if it is necessary defining incompatibilities among students. In spite of the initial requirements stated above, the new Moodle module for defining teams allows also the students to create and enroll to teams. Another functionality already defined at this stage was the possibility to obtain lists of students and teams and to assign grades individually or by team.

3.2. CoLT techniques and online implementation

We present now the three techniques practiced (which we refer to as CoLT1, CoLT2 and CoLT3, borrowing this naming procedure from Barkley et al., 2005) for wich we are going to provide an online implementation adapting them to LEARN-‐SQL, giving the possibility to use them outside the classroom. In the existing literature we just have found the approach in (de Raadt et al., 2007) that tries to add cooperative learning techniques to online database learning. Their approach proposes the use of just one technique that is similar to the one refereed here as CoLT3.

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3.2.1. CoLT 1

This is an instance of the write-‐pair-‐share technique (Barkley et al., 2005). We used it to teach the students how to make the translation of an UML class diagram to a relational database schema and also view creation exercises. The procedure was:

1. Give the same exercise to each member of the team; each student has to solve it individually. In the particular case of relational databases design, the exercise was an UML class diagram to be translated. Every student had to propose a relational schema.

2. Ask the students to join with the other members of their team and discuss about the proposed solutions. The difference with the write-‐pair-‐share technique is in the number of people that join to discuss their solutions.

3. Each team must create a joint solution that must be given to the teacher. The solution is corrected by the teacher and the feed-‐back is given to the students in the next class. This part is different from write-‐pair-‐share technique, where the students present the solution of the pair to the class, because we have observed that sometimes, when the students know that they can be asked to present something, they are just worried about his presentation and do not hear what the other students present nor the comments of the teacher to other students.

The purpose of the use of this technique was to promote the discussion and discrimination among different solutions. The grade obtained by each student becomes the grade of the other members of the team, trying to achieve positive interdependence.

LEARN-‐SQL can assist to publish the statement of the problem as a questionnaire; during stage 1 (individual thinking), the students are not allowed to submit any answer; during stage 2 (discussion) the tool can be the communication channel; finally, during stage 3 one chosen student is allowed to submit an answer in behalf of the entire team. Submitted answers are made public to all the students together with the grade and corresponding feedback.

3.2.2. CoLT 2

We designed this technique as an extension of the Structured Problem Solving techniques (Barkley et al., 2005). We used it to teach the students how to do exercises on serialization and concurrence control of transactions. The procedure was:

1. Give to the team one or more exercises and the steps that the team must follow to solve the exercises. In our case the steps were specific of the problem to be solved.

2. Ask the students to solve the exercises in group. The teacher gives feed-‐back if it is necessary during this part of the activity.

3. Give to each student one or more exercises similar to the ones solved before that, this time, must be solved individually. This stage does not exist in the Structured Problem Solving technique, but we think that it is important to achieve the learning of each member of the team.

The purpose of the use of this technique was to promote the students to practice together and learn from each other. Another purpose is to increase the positive interdependence, since individual students’ solutions grades affect positively or negatively to the other members of the team and, thus the students are interested that all other members of the team learn to solve the exercises.

In LEARN-‐SQL we will have four questionnaires. One of them will be available to all the students of

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the team and the students will discuss and communicate with the tool as a communication channel. They will be allowed to send to the scorer as many solutions as they want, with no penalty. Afterwards, each of the other three questionnaires will be available to a single member. Some penalty will be applied as the students use more attempts. Submitted solutions will be made public to all the students together with the grade and corresponding feedback.

3.2.3. CoLT 3

The last technique that we practiced and that we are going to adapt in LEARN-‐SQL is based in the Send-‐A-‐Problem technique (Barkley et al., 2005). We used it to teach the students how to do relational algebra exercises and also in teaching methods for accessing data, and their efficiency implications. The procedure was:

1. There are three sets of exercises (each one with one or two exercises). Each member of a team solves one set of exercises.

2. Afterwards, each member of the team checks the solutions of another member of the team without interaction. In the original technique, Send-‐A-‐Problem, the different sets of exercises are solved by teams, and in this stage the solutions are passed to another team that proposes its own solution.

3. Finally each member of the team takes the solutions and the correction done by the other two members and gives an agreed solution to the teacher. In the Send-‐A-‐Problem technique it is a third team that decides which must be the agreed solution.

The purpose of the use of this technique was to promote learning to compare and discriminate among multiple solutions; it also promotes positive interdependence since the corresponding grade is assigned to each member of the team.

In this kind of activities, the students will use LEARN-‐SQL in each stage of the procedure. In the first and second stage, we do not consider the solution for grading the students; thus, the grade will depend just on the last solution sent, which will receive a penalty in case of multiple submissions. Submitted solutions will be made public to all the students together with the grade and the corresponding feedback. The teacher will have information about the individual learning based in stage 3, but also in the solutions provided in stages 1 and 2, since is in this stage when the student has to show his knowledge about the subject.

3.3. Results of the experience with collaborative techniques

Fig. 2 shows the mean grade obtained by students in three exercises during three consecutive semesters on one course (involving 104, 137 and 123 students). Green bars correspond to semesters prior to the introduction of collaborative techniques and the red ones to the semester in which the same exercises were done using the techniques stated in the graphic itself (CoLT1, CoLT2, CoLT3). There is only one case out of six in which the result for an exercise is slightly better with no collaborative techniques (CoLT2, autumn 2009 vs. spring 2009). We did realize that the exercises to be solved individually were significantly more difficult than the ones solved in group; we think that this is the reason that caused this result.

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Fig. 2 mean grade obtained by students in exercises during consecutive semesters

4. Conclusions

The importance given to the active involvement of the students in the learning process is increasing every day. In particular, using teams to make the learning be the result of discussion, reasoning and sharing of knowledge within the team is a strategy that is getting very used.

In this paper we have presented our experience on the application of cooperative learning techniques in the area of databases. We have shown the positive results obtained and how we are making a step forward incorporating such techniques in LEARN-‐SQL, a self-‐assessment and self-‐learning of SQL tool that we have been using since three years ago. Our aim is to make it easy to work within a team without the need to meet in the same space, and time and to save time to students and teachers increasing thus the efficiency of the learning process.

Acknowdgments

This work has been made with the help of the teaching quality improvement project 2009MQD 00251, granted by the Catalan government, and the UPC teaching innovative project Adaptació de LEARN-‐SQL al nou Espai Europeu d'Educació Superior (EEES).

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This document was finished in Cádiz,

June 15th, 2010

ISBN 978-‐84-‐694-‐0523-‐9

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