28 research outputs found
Personalized Remedial Recommendations for SQL Programming Practice System
No full textPersonalized recommendation of learning content is one of the most frequently cited benefits of personalized online learning. It is expected that with personalized content recommendation students will be able to build their own unique and optimal learning paths and to achieve course goals in the most optimal way. However, in many practical cases students search for learning content not to expand their knowledge, but to address problems encountered in the learning process, such as failures to solve a problem. In these cases, students could be better assisted by remedial recommendations focused on content that could help in resolving current problems. This paper presents a transparent and explainable interface for remedial recommendations in an online programming practice system. The interface was implemented to support SQL programming practice and evaluated in the context of a large database course. The paper summarizes the insights obtained from the study and discusses future work on remedial recommendations.Peer reviewe
Customer acquisition to Neste Oil K-market Malmi by using direct mailing campaign
No full textThis thesis was commissioned by the entrepreneur of Neste Oil K-Market Malmi, a company in which the author has been working for almost four years now. The station has a K-Market shop, cafeteria, car wash and gas station, all under the same roof. The entrepreneur was very keen on having new regular customers for the car wash, because of its high profit margins and ongoing increase in yearly sales.
The aim of the thesis was for this particular entrepreneur to acquire new corporate customers through a direct mail campaign. This campaign was targeted to companies who have a Neste Oil loyal customer card and are from the nearby area, i.e. Malmi. An advertisement was sent to get new corporate customers to use the car washing services provided by Neste Oil K-market Malmi.
This thesis was produced using the procedural research method during the spring of 2013. The theoretical part of this thesis consists of describing customer acquisition strategy, direct marketing and direct mail. These concepts all supported the author in her undertaking of a direct mail campaign. This part of the thesis explains how and why this specific targeting of companies was done. It also describes how an advertisement is made and then sent to the targeted companies via direct mail.
The entrepreneur of Neste Oil K-market Malmi was aiming to get around 45 contacts, and from these to acquire 20 new loyal customers. This is out of the 450 companies to whom the mailing was sent. Direct mail was seen as the best alternative for executing this particular campaign. The chapter describing the results of this thesis shows how many companies negotiated a partnership agreement and what happened in the few months subsequent to these agreements. The conclusion of this work examines more closely the possible reasons why only 23 contacts were actually made. It looks into whether the mailing should have been done by some other direct marking approach, and whether the advertisement itself was appropriate for this kind of a customer acquisition campaign
Emergence of computing education as a research discipline
No full textThis thesis investigates the changing nature and status of computing education research (CER) over a number of years, specifically addressing the question of whether computing education can legitimately be considered a research discipline.
The principal approach to addressing this question is an examination of the published literature in computing education conferences and journals. A classification system was devised for this literature, one goal of the system being to clearly identify some publications as research – once a suitable definition of research was established. When the system is applied to a corpus of publications, it becomes possible to determine the proportion of those publications that are classified as research, and thence to detect trends over time and similarities and differences between publication venues.
The classification system has been applied to all of the papers over several years in a number of major computing education conferences and journals. Much of the classification was done by the author alone, and the remainder by a team that he formed in order to assess the inter-rater reliability of the classification system.
This classification work led to two subsequent projects, led by Associate Professor Judy Sheard and Professor Lauri Malmi, that devised and applied further classification systems to examine the research approaches and methods used in the work reported in computing education publications.
Classification of nearly 2000 publications over ranges of 3-10 years uncovers both strong similarities and distinct differences between publication venues. It also establishes clear evidence of a substantial growth in the proportion of research papers over the years in question.
These findings are considered in the light of published perspectives on what constitutes a discipline of research, and lead to a confident assertion that computing education can now rightly be considered a discipline of research
Exploring the Past, Present and Future of Computing Education Research: An Introduction
No full textThis chapter is an introduction to the book "Past, Present and Future of Computing Education Research: A Global Perspective.'' This book uses a mixture of scientometrics, meta-research and case studies to offer a new view about the evolution and current state of computing education research (CER) as a field of science. In its 21 chapters, this book presents new insights of authors, author communities, publication venues, topics of research, and of regional initiatives and topical communities of CER. This chapter presents an overview of the contents of this book.Non peer reviewe
Dober tek!
No full textTämä opinnäytetyö käsittelee Slovenian Istrian ruokakulttuurin pääpiirteitä ja niihin vaikuttaneita tekijöitä. Työssä tuodaan esille Slovenian Istrian alueelle tyypillisimmät raaka-aineet, perinneruuat ja ruuan valmistustavat. Työn tarkoituksena on selvittää tämän pienen alueen ruokaerikoisuuksia ja niiden tarjoamia makuelämyksiä. Opinnäytetyö pohjautuu kirjallisiin ja sähköisiin lähteisiin, omiin kokemuksiin ja havainnointiin opiskelijavaihdon aikana sekä kirjailija Alberto Pucerin haastatteluun. Työssä on tarjolla tietoa, jota ei saa muuten kuin kokemalla itse. Opinnäytetyön alussa selvitetään, mitä ruokakulttuuri tarkoittaa ja mitkä tekijät vaikuttavat ruokakulttuurin muodostumiseen ja muutoksiin. Myös matkailun vaikutuksia ruokakulttuuriin ja ruokamatkailua tarkastellaan. Tämän jälkeen syvennytään Sloveniaan ja Slovenian rannikkoseutuun eli Slovenian Istriaan. Lopussa käsitellään Slovenian Istrian ruokakulttuuria ja yleisimpiä perinneruokia. Italia on vaikuttanut eniten Slovenian Istrian ruokakulttuuriin ja ruoka on enemmän välimerellistä kuin balkanilaista. Kuitenkin Slovenian Istrian keit-tiöllä on oma makunsa, joka on juuri kyseiselle alueelle tyypillinen. Tyypil-lisen maun alueen ruoille antavat paikalliset, tuoreet raaka-aineet ja yrttien runsas käyttö.This thesis deals with the main characteristics of Sloveniaʼs Istria food culture and the influences which have had an effect on it. The thesis will discuss the most typical ingredients, traditional food and various methods used to prepare local Istria dishes. The main objective of this work is to describe the food experiences of this little area, together with the abundance of flavours on offer. Literature, along with various internet findings, serves as a primary source, whilst personal observations and experiences in the country during student exchange programme offer additional information. Along with excerpts from an interview conducted with the renowned author Alberto Pucers, this thesis offers information which can not be found in any other way but through personal experience. Firstly, the term commonly referred to as âfood cultureâ will be defined, detailing its origin as well as its evolution over the years. The influence of foreigners and the travel industry on the food culture is also examined. After the chapter on food culture, Slovenia as a nation is discussed, with particular focus on the coast which is better known as Sloveniaʼs Istria. Sloveniaʼs Istria food culture is influenced mostly by neighbouring Italy, and its cuisine is more Italian (Mediterranean) than Balkan. However, Sloveniaʼs Istria has its own taste which is typical for that area. Fresh local ingredients and herbs give the food its unique taste
Creating an educational plugin to support online programming learning: A case of IntelliJ IDEA plugin for A+ Learning Management System
No full textEducational plugins are extensively utilized in both, the industry and academia. Academically, the plugins are used to optimize certain labor-intensive and error-prone manual operations for students, such as loading, installing, completing and submitting the assignments. The thesis sets out to explore the features and functionalities of different educational plugins by developing the plugin to support a programming course at the Aalto University. As follows, the thesis goes through a thorough process of pitching, developing, implementing, reporting feedback and resulting feedforward. The process is facilitated by a three-member development team with the author of this thesis acting as a hands-on Scrum Master. The stakeholders’ requirements of stability and fault-tolerance were met in an IntelliJ IDEA plugin, written in Java 8 and Scala. The Eclipse-based IDE was replaced with IntelliJ as the former was discontinued in 2018. Java 8 was chosen over Kotlin as none of the team-members are Kotlin-fluent and as Java 11 was not yet released at the start of the development. Also, as the plugin interacts with Scala components, a minor part of the application is written in Scala. The plugin is designed to interoperate with the existing backend learning management system A+ as a third-party data provider. Dependencies pruned during the process include IntelliJ Platform’s compatibility with future IDE versions (solved through regular adjustments by the developers), Gradle IntelliJ plugin’s compatibility with the Platform, standard Java libraries (solved through an automated vulnerability scanning), etc. The project is ongoing, with testing routinely performed with the stakeholder and student feedback fed back into the development process. However, future improvements include reworking the architecture, extending the testing scope, and multi-course support
Comparison of nutritional composition, bioactivities, and FTIR- ATR microstructural properties of commercially grown four mushroom species in Sri Lanka; Agaricus bisporus, Pleurotus ostreatus, Calocybe sp. (MK-white), Ganoderma lucidum
No full textAbstract Mushrooms have been consumed as delicacies since ancient times; however, little knowledge is available on the nutritional and bioactive properties of commercially grown mushroom species in Sri Lanka; button (Agaricus bisporus), oyster (Pleurotus ostreatus), Makandura white (Calocybe sp.), and Reishi (Ganoderma lucidum). Samples from four mushroom species were analysed for proximate composition, mineral and fatty acid content, and antioxidant, antidiabetic, and microstructural properties. Carbohydrate, protein, fat, ash, and dietary fibre content in mushroom species ranged from 64.83–79.97%, 10.53–23.29%, 0.57–4.37%, 2.80–11.00%, and 33.04 to 75.33%, respectively. The highest (P ≤ 0.05) protein and ash content were observed in A. bisporus, and G. lucidum had the highest (P ≤ 0.05) fat and dietary fibre content. When considering the micronutrients, G. lucidum comprised higher (P ≤ 0.05) Ca, Mg, Mn, and Cu, while A. bisporus had higher (P ≤ 0.05) Fe and Zn contents than other species. Essential omega-6 fatty acid, linoleic (18:2n-6) content was in the range of 37- 81% in studied mushroom samples. Results obtained from FTIR (Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy) in conjunction with ATR (Attenuated total reflectance) revealed the presence of functional groups associated with fat (̴1740 cm−1), protein (̴1560 cm−1), polysaccharides (1500–750 cm−1) and moisture (̴3300 cm−1) in mushroom samples. According to the results, P. ostreatus showed the highest (P ≤ 0.05) polysaccharide content, while G. lucidum showed the lowest (P ≤ 0.05). The highest (P ≤ 0.05) total phenolic content (TPC) (3.95 ± 0.05 mg GAE/g DW) and total flavonoid content (TFC) (2.17 ± 0.06 mg CE/g DW) were observed in P. ostreatus. Antioxidant activity measured by DPPH, ABTS, and FRAP methods was higher (P ≤ 0.05) in P. ostreatus and A. bisporus compared to the other two species. Among all the studied mushroom species, G. lucidum showed the highest (P ≤ 0.05) α-amylase (IC50 = 77.51 ± 6.80 µg/mL) and α-glucosidase (IC50 = 0.4113 ± 0.08 µg/mL) inhibition activities. This study reveals the potential of using A. bisporus, G. lucidum, and P. ostreatus for nutritional, functional, and therapeutic uses. Graphical Abstrac
Study on resource allocations for sustainable competitive advantage
No full textToday’s concern and problem for most of the companies is the way of surviving and prospering in current and future periods of time in the marketplace. Sustainable competitive ability can be one of the ways of adaptation to the global business and rapid environment requirements. Operational competitiveness is not easy to be sustainably improved because of unpredictable environment situations, such as continuous increasing customer needs, global competitive environment, rapid and unpredictable changes in government policy, company crisis during significant changes etc. However, it is possible to make adaptive adjustments on operations strategy level in dynamic business environment and to become competitive enough compared to the competitors. The purpose of this paper is to define and assess sustainable competitive advantage and the direction of development in housing business. It can be analysed by two core factors, i.e. Sense and Respond (S&R) methodology, Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) as well as Sustainable competitive advantage (SCA) method. This study also focuses on applying S&R method in order to optimize operational competitiveness as well as defining the competitive priorities of the case company. The analysis results show the critical areas in different departments of the case company, which can help the managers to make quick decisions. In addition, they reveal that during the crisis the resource allocation is continuously changing and therefore the operation strategy of the case company is not well defined as well as competitive advantages are not enough sustainable.© 2013 The author(s). The article is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed
Wire rope isolator identification and dynamic modeling for small amplitude vibrations
No full textPublisher Copyright: © 2024 The Author(s)Wire rope isolators are used in variety of applications to protect sensitive equipment from vibration. The nonlinear hysteretic behavior of steel wires provides advantages when compared to linear vibration isolators. This study proposes an amplitude dependent stiffness and damping model for low amplitude vibrations under axial loading, where the parameters can be determined with an experimental procedure. Comprehensive experimental results of forced vibration tests with varying loading, frequency and preload were considered in the model identification. Amplitude dependent stiffness and loss energy models were determined from the test data, and the effect of the preload and loading frequency on the model parameters were studied. It is shown, that the effect of preload and frequency is not evidently clear, while the effect of vibration amplitude is more significant. The mathematical model was further verified against measurements from base excitation loading. The proposed model can be used to study the effectiveness of the selected wire rope isolator configurations in chosen application, and to effectively perform dynamic design studies.Peer reviewe
Exploring the Past, Present and Future of Computing Education Research: An Introduction
No full textThis chapter is an introduction to the book “Past, Present and Future of Computing Education Research: A Global Perspective.” This book uses a mixture of scientometrics, meta-research and case studies to offer a new view about the evolution and current state of computing education research (CER) as a field of science. In its 21 chapters, this book presents new insights of authors, author communities, publication venues, topics of research, and of regional initiatives and topical communities of CER. This chapter presents an overview of the contents of this book.</p
