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Exploring Global Thinking and Team-based Reflection in a Flipped Classroom
Get PDFAt our bachelor programs in computer science, we experience that a large fraction of students drop out from lectures and some eventually drop out from the studies completely. Some of the students are likely the ones that Felder and Silverman classify as the global learners: "They are the synthesizers, the multidisciplinary researchers, the systems thinkers, the ones who see the connections no one else sees." In this paper we will summarise our findings from running a three-week flipped classroom, global thinking session within a traditional database course offered to approximately 100 students. These three weeks covered all the XML related topics in the course. The aim of this project was to study if the flipped classroom would increase motivation and attendance - and thereby possibly the learning outcome. A key challenge in flipping the classroom is how to encourage students to prepare for the classroom sessions. Our approach was to encourage students to prepare for the sessions by designing at-home activities that could fit into the group-based reflection sessions at school. We wanted to encourage global thinking by allowing students to decide on how and in what order they covered the various XML topics. Empirically, the students filled out pre- and post-questionnaires, we observed how students collaborated in the in-class sessions, we conducted in-depth interviews of four of the teams, and we compared the exam results for this cohort of students with the results achieved by the next year cohort, which had the XML topics taught in the traditional way. The main-lessons learned were that students do think that a flipped classroom gives more opportunity for being active and that the majority of the student would like to see more global thinking in learning activities. However, we did not achieve as much at-home preparation or at-school collaboration and reflection within the teams as expected. Many teams split work among themselves and just assembled the individual parts without much reflection and discussion within the team. The exam results do not show big differences between the two groups, although it does seem that the weaker students did worse in the flipped classroom case compared to traditional teaching. 
Using Visualization and Pedagogical Patterns in Support of Undergraduate Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders
Get PDFUndergraduate students with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), who are overrepresented on IT degree programs, experience significant and unique challenges that require specific interventions and support mechanisms. Research on university students with ASD shows mixed results; for many, there is a poor outcome. There is therefore a general need for reports on educational practices and insight from professionals who work closely with these students. Practical support (extended deadlines, a quiet working space) is provided according to well-known recommendations for these students, but pedagogical interventions, which are equally important, are often lacking. This paper describes the professional supervision of undergraduate IT students diagnosed with ASD over a period of several years. The diversity of people with ASD makes it necessary to target each student individually, in order to apply effective methods. Some traits are, however, broadly common to this population, and when correctly identified, pedagogical patterns can be applied to successfully address some of the challenges these students face. As an alternative to (often excessive) verbal explanations, we report how modelling techniques can be used to both explain and visualize practical problems related to subjects like programming and databases. The positive outcomes of this approach are confirmed through interviews, observations of the students and academic results
Quasi Spin Images
Get PDFThe increasing adoption of 3D capturing equipment, now also found in mobile devices, means that 3D content is increasingly prevalent. Common operations on such data, including 3D object recognition and retrieval, are based on the measurement of similarity between 3D objects. A common way to measure object similarity is through local shape descriptors, which aim to do part-to-part matching by describing portions of an object's shape. The Spin Image is one of the local descriptors most suitable for use in scenes with high degrees of clutter and occlusion but its practical use has been hampered by high computational demands. The rise in processing power of the GPU represents an opportunity to significantly improve the generation and comparison performance of descriptors, such as the Spin Image, thereby increasing the practical applicability of methods making use of it. In this paper we introduce a GPU-based Quasi Spin Image (QSI) algorithm, a variation of the original Spin Image, and show that a speedup of an order of magnitude relative to a reference CPU implementation can be achieved in terms of the image generation rate. In addition, the QSI is noise free, can be computed consistently, and a preliminary evaluation shows it correlates well relative to the original Spin Image
Quiz for diskusjon og samarbeid i store klasser
Get PDFQuiz er vorte populært som eit middel for å aktivit læring, og for å auka engagementet åt studentane på førelesing. Mange har teke til orde for quiz som eit nytt, innovativt og positivt verkemiddel, men det meste som er skrive tek utgangspunkt i at quiz er quiz, og alle veit kva det er. I denne artikkelen problematiserer med fenomenet, og drøftar ulike måtar å bruka quiz på, med utgangspunkt i ein fallstudie frå eit emne i grunnleggjande matematikk. 
Automatic Parameter Optimisation of Service Quality and Resource Usage
Get PDFDevelopers use models to design real world distributed applications that often are subject to Service Level Agreements to find a good balance between the quality of the service and its resource usage. Executable models has been used to observe and study such applications using, e.g., the Real Time ABS language, an executable and object-oriented modelling language.For complex models, due to the high number and dependencies between the parameters, it is very difficult to understand the best possible setting that leads the system towards a desired quality of service, while minimising the usage of computing resources. In this work we present POPT, a parameter optimiser tool that starting from Real Time ABS models, by using AI techniques, searches in an automatic way for the best possible setting to satisfy the developer’s expectations
Evaluating Semantic Vectors for Norwegian
Get PDFIn this article, we present two benchmark data sets for evaluating models of semantic word similarity for Norwegian. While such resources are available for English, they did not exist for Norwegian prior to this work. Furthermore, we produce large-coverage semantic vectors trained on the Norwegian Newspaper Corpus using several popular word embedding frameworks. Finally, we demonstrate the usefulness of the created resources for evaluating performance of different word embedding models on the tasks of analogical reasoning and synonym detection. The benchmark data sets and word embeddings are all made freely available
Thirty Years of NIK: A Bibliometric Study of Paper Impact and Changes in Publication Patterns
Get PDFThe Norwegian Annual Informatics Conference (NIK) has served as the most important national meeting point for the academic community in Norway during the last thirty years. National conferences often have a reputation of being of lesser quality than international conferences. Yet, NIK have practiced peer review with relatively low acceptance rates which is a trait of quality. Based on the assumption that quality and impact are related, this study set out to explore the actual impact of NIK in terms of citations over its thirty-year lifetime. As NIK is not being systematically indexed there are no readily available source of citation data and these were thus manually extracted. The results show that NIK papers do get cited at a level comparable to reputable international conferences, and the ratio of papers that are cited is increasing. The results also show that the title length and the number of authors per paper have increased, whereas papers written in Norwegian do not get cited
An Analysis Tool for Models of Virtualized Systems
Get PDFThis paper gives an example-driven introduction to modelling and analyzing virtualized systems in, e.g., cloud computing, using virtually timed ambients, a process algebra developed to study timing aspects of resource management for (nested) virtual machines. The calculus supports nested virtualization and virtual machines compete with other processes for the resources of their host environment. Resource provisioning in virtually timed ambients extends the capabilities of mobile ambients to model the dynamic creation, migration, and destruction of virtual machines. Quality of service properties for virtually timed ambients can be formally expressed using modal contracts describing aspects of resource provisioning and verified using a model checker for virtually timed ambients, implemented in the rewriting system Maude
Transitioning to Flipped Classroom - an experience report
Get PDFIt is easy to find motivation for flipping a classroom within existing research. Most importantly the students will reportedly learn more. But there is a cost involved. The educator will need new course material - likely videos. Without dedicated resources to handle the extra cost involved when flipping the classroom, the incentive to stay with the traditional lectures may be dominant.But does the transition need to be a 100% flip? In this experience report we look at a gradual flip. In an introductory database course, 9 out of 12 session were flipped. The course resources were a mix of earlier material combined with a limited set of new videos. The exercises were modified, but they were still heavily based on the exercises given the year before.How do the students experience a gradually flipped course? We interviewed students who did participate in the gradual flip and we conducted a survey. In this study we investigate student satisfaction with different parts of the course delivery and compare the results with surveys from earlier course deliveries - before the flip.The overall satisfaction with the gradual flip was somewhat positive. The students did not see a problem with the mixed, gradual, approach. The exam results were at the same level as before and the attendance increased slightly. The students found it reasonable to start the flipped sessions late in the day. The late start made it possible for the students to prepare during their normal working hours as a student.The study provides insight into the transition process from a traditional lecture-based course delivery to Flipped Classroom. Our results suggest that the transition does not have to be immediate. A lecturer may gradually flip a classroom so that the cost of flipping may be spread across multiple years
Recent Trends in Software Testing Education: A Systematic Literature Review
Get PDFTesting is a critical aspect of software development. Far too often software is released with critical faults. However, testing is often considered tedious and boring. Unfortunately, many graduates might join the work force without having had any education in software testing, which exacerbates the problem even further. Therefore, teaching software testing as part of a university degree in software engineering and is very important. But it is an open challenge how to teach software testing in an effective way that can successfully motivate students. In this paper, we have carried out a systematic literature review on the topic of teaching software testing. We analysed and reviewed 30 papers that were published between 2013 and 2017. The review points out to a few different trends, like the use of gamification to make the teaching of software testing less tedious