1,720,978 research outputs found
A study of code design skills in novice programmers using the SOLO taxonomy
No full text12th International Computing Education Research ConferenceThere is a wealth of literature dealing with the difficulties of novice programmers with basic programming constructs such as variables, assignment and conditionals. In this paper we extend the study to two other core CS1 topics: loops and vectors (represented as single dimensional arrays). By the end of their first semester of instruction, students are expected to have acquired both the ability to reproduce given syntactic structure and basic design skills that allow them to write small pieces of code that extend, modify or combine in new ways the basic programming constructs.This work presents an evaluation framework that uses the SOLO taxonomy to assess programming questions' complexity. Our framework extends SOLO by using the term "building block" as an adaptable parameter that explicitly defines the student's ability to increasingly write more complex pieces of code. The granularity of a "building block" is determined by the amount of programming practice students have carried out up to that point. The analysis of final exam answers using this framework allows us to quantify the progress made by one cohort of novice programmers in the mastery of basic design skills and to study correlations between mastery of these skills and overall course performance. Furthermore, we identify common errors that illustrate the challenges students face when trying to combine programming constructs in non-trivial ways.Cruz Izu, Amali Weerasinghe, Cheryl Pop
CRISTAL: adapting workplace training to the real world context with an intelligent simulator for radiology trainees
No full textIntelligent learning environments based on interactions within the digital world are increasingly popular as they provide mechanisms for interactive and adaptive learning, but learners find it difficult to transfer this to real world tasks. We present the initial development stages of CRISTAL, an intelligent simulator targeted at trainee radiologists which enhances the learning experience by enabling the virtual environment to adapt according to their real world experiences. Our system design has been influenced by feedback from trainees, and allows them to practice their reporting skills by writing freeform reports in natural language. This has the potential to be expanded to other areas such as short-form journalism and legal document drafting.Hope Lee, Amali Weerasinghe, Jayden Barnes, Luke Oakden-Rayner, William Gale, and Gustavo Carneir
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Studying Human Tutors to Facilitate Self-explanation
No full textAbstract. This paper reports the first phase of a project with the goal of developing a general model of self-explanation support, which could be used in both open- and closed-ended domains. We studied how human tutors provide additional support to students learning with an existing intelligent tutoring system designed to help students learn database modelling. We report on the findings from this study, which will serve as the basis for defining the model. We also discuss directions for future work.
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