Effects on learning of time spent by university students attending lectures and/or watching online videos

We apply Carroll's model of school learning, which theorizes about the relationship between time and learning, to motivate the design of a large, first‐year, university mathematics course, where students have the choice to attend lectures and/or watch online videos. The theoretical model informs how the course and resources are designed in order to assist students to spend the time they need to master a task in an efficient manner. We examine the relationship between learning and time spent on lectures and/or videos, by analysing data collected on lecture attendance, videos accessed, and mathematical achievement, prior to, and at the end of, the course. Findings show that students use videos as either a complement to, or substitute for, the lecture, and time spent using either or both resources has a significant impact on learning.     

计算机专业软件工程课程设计的改革与实践

软件工程课程设计是独立学院计算机专业的一门独立实践课程,以培养学生软件开发能力为目标。针对目前独立学院计算机专业学生实训环节薄弱的问题,结合多年的教学经验,对软件工程课程设计的教学模式、MVC模式的应用、多层架构的设计等进行了探讨。通过对软件工程课程设计的改革与实践,有效地提高了学生的实际动手能力、创新能力和解决具体问题的能力,为学生今后的就业执业奠定了坚实的基础。     

An experience in teaching CAD to undergraduate electronic engineering degree students

Computer-aided design and analysis of electronic circuits has been taught to students on an electronic engineering degree course for the past five years. It has been found desirable to introduce CAD after the basic groundwork has been covered. CAD techniques are therefore introduced in the second/third year and developed in the final year of the course. Experience has shown that students obtain a better understanding when these techniques are integrated with the design-orientated electronic subjects in both laboratory and lecture periods.     

Identifying biomarker candidates of influenza infection based on scalable time‐course big data of gene expression

Large‐scale biological data processing is an important topic in computational biology, which gives the promotion of many biomedical research. For example, a huge volume of gene expression data can help us achieve potentially useful medical knowledge and identify disease biomarker candidates. Nevertheless, a great deal of attention has been paid to unscalable single‐time‐point expression data after disease symptoms appear (outbreak period) and there have been few investigations into scalable time‐course expression data before disease symptoms appear (incubation) for each sample. By exploiting such dynamic big data in the incubation, we can easily catch early signals of disease states and prevent illness in the first place. In this study, we apply a new mathematical model on biological data of given incubations and identify biomarker candidates using an intellectualized method. The model narrows a large number of alternative genes into a few ones (top genes), which facilitate the discovery of genes related to disease. The aim of our work is to propose a powerful biomarker‐detecting tool, which helps people to aid early diagnosis or identify effective drug targets before the appearance of clinical symptoms.     

Training in medical informatics

A course is described for the training of medical students in medical informatics (other terms: computational medicine, medical computing). The philosophy behind the course is that there are several modes or levels of human interaction in working with computers, running from registrative functions to assistance at diagnosis and therapy. The course, which consists of five full days, contains lessons in the areas of medical data bases, hospital information systems, medical records, biological signal analysis, computer-assisted diagnosis making, and patient simulation by CAI. Each group of two students has a terminal available, connected to a mini- and/or a microcomputer. The microprocessor takes care of signal analysis and the minicomputer is available for data base construction and interactive operations. The article describes the purposes and contents of all different lessons of this course.     

Promoting creative thinking through the use of ICT

Abstract A great deal has been written about the use of web-based technologies such as the Internet in promoting learning in education. In schools, research has focused primarily on social interaction and group work, student achievement levels and curriculum development. Very little study seems to have been brought to bear upon the promotion of creative thinking by the use of online technologies, and this paper attempts to contribute to this field of study. This paper reports on a pilot study which has investigated the creative impact of information and communication technology (ICT) in a rural primary school in South-west England. The school is unique because it provides a personal networked computer for each of its 41 Year 6 students (aged 10–11 years). A small group of students were interviewed about the learning activities they engaged in over the year, and this paper reports on initial findings with a special emphasis on creative working and thinking ( n  = 6). A model of creativity is presented with three discrete but related modes of activity — problem solving, creative cognition, and social interaction. The paper provides new findings about the nature of creativity in the context of computer based learning environments.     

The integrated use of computer assisted instruction (CAI) and videodisk (VLP) for observation training

Third year students in Psychology at the University of Nijmegen are offered a course on basic skills, part of which is dedicated to observation training. For practical and didactical reasons the format of this training has been changed towards Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI). Integrated visual materials are now presented by videodisk (VLP). Technically the system has been functioning well and student opinion on the program is clearly favourable. No conclusions could be drawn regarding students' classifications of relations but regarding the ability of students to identify elements of behaviour an improvement in results has been clearly confirmed.     

Perceptions of Computer Science at a South African university

First year students at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, were surveyed about their perceptions of Computer Science before and towards the end of their first year courses. The aim of this research was to investigate how the students’ attitudes changed during these courses and to assess the impact of the innovative breadth-first curriculum that has been developed in the School of Computer Science which emphasises the fundamentals of the discipline and the mathematical nature of Computer Science. The results show that most perceptions did not change much or that there were changes in both directions. More students, and particularly female students, were positive about their own understanding of the nature of Computer Science after the course than before. However, when asking specifically about jobs and course content, there was not a substantially deeper understanding at the end of the course of what content they would expect to encounter in a Computer Science course or working as a Computer Scientist. Fewer students, particularly male students, thought that Computer Science and mathematics were closely related after the course than before and this was an unexpected result, which may be the result of discrete mathematics topics being taught in courses separate from those in which continuous mathematics topics are taught. Students became less positive about working with computers after the course, a result which supports prior research, but is an issue for concern as computers will play some role in their future careers. The students found the courses challenging and different from their expectations with few students finding the courses unenjoyable.     

数电模电实验平台的应用分析与探讨

数电模电实验室是电子专业基础课程的重要实验平台,数电模电实验课程完成的好,后续的专业课程才能跟得上。数电模电实验平台由数字电路部分和模拟电路部分两大块组成。该数电模电实验平台于2020年8月初制作调试完成,本学期安排了2019级电子信息工程学院本科班学生利用该平台进行数模电实验课程的操作使用,基本达到了预期的效果。根据本学期学生实验成绩与上一学年同专业班级进行比较,成绩有了较多提高,特别是模拟电路数据的测试准确率有明显提升。     

Mediating the impact of technology usage on perceived ease of use by anxiety

Computerphobic adults including first-year university students have been reported to range from 25% to 50%. Although self-reported computer anxiety has reduced in the past decade, it continues to be a significant issue for many. This is especially true for students of today where the stakes are high when using computers for their course work. Anxiety becomes even more critical when students are taking online courses. Past research has shown that computer experience is a strong predictor of whether or not a user will suffer anxiety symptoms while using a computer. Moreover, a substantial amount of work has been done to study the effect of previous computer experience on anxiety and on ease of use of information technologies using the technology acceptance model. However, few, if any, have investigated the role of anxiety in mediating technology usage experience on perceived ease of use. In this study, technology usage is viewed from two perspectives, the computer and the internet. We study the influence of anxiety in mediating the impact of computer and internet experiences on perceived ease of use. Questionnaire data from 114 university students were analyzed. The context was the use of a quiz tool to practice multiple choice questions. Contrary to most related studies, results indicated that anxiety has no mediating role on the impact of computer experience and perceived ease of use. However, anxiety was shown to present some moderating influence on perceived ease of use.     

Virtual teamwork in very large undergraduate classes

Collaborative work is an important part of tertiary education but it is very difficult to arrange and supervise for extremely large classes of students in their first year. The possibility that computer-mediated communication can be used to facilitate this type of learning is appealing from a pragmatic organisational point of view. This paper explains in detail what a ‘virtual team’ is in the educational context. It reports on an interpretive field study where students taking an introductory course were allowed to choose where and when they did the required collaborative work. The paper discusses the factors that should be taken into account when offering students the option of working as a virtual team. These include factors that influence the students’ choice. The project cannot be considered to have been successful but indicates reasons for the lack of success and suggests contexts in which it would be valuable to repeat the project. The importance of extensive preparation in terms of teaching the students necessary social and technological skills cannot be over emphasised.     

网络编程实践课程的探索

针对在网络编程实践课程中存在的学生动手能力差距较大的问题,论述笔者以授课实践为基础,在课程的组织上结合精选推荐选题和自行选题两种方式,力求兼顾两类学生的需求和特点。从课程完成的情况看,取得了一定的效果,对相应的课程建设也有一定的借鉴作用。     

A computer screen-based simulator for hierarchical fuzzy logic monitoring and control of depth of anaesthesia

A computer screen-based simulator has been developed to simulate the administration of intravenous and analgesic drugs. It merges on-line measurements (such as systolic arterial pressure (SAP) and heart rate (HR)) and non-numerical clinical signs (such as sweating, lacrimation and pupil response), using anaesthetists’ experience or self-organizing fuzzy logic control (SOFLC) algorithms to administer drugs into a patient. The hierarchical control architecture includes five parts, which are: monitoring depth of anaesthesia (DOA), drug controller, deciding the sensitivity of the patient, narcotic supplementation and recovery time. It has been developed to predict drug profiles, control the drug levels and assess recovery time during anaesthesia. Meanwhile, linguistic rules and fuzzy set theory have been used to model a patient’s SAP and HR during induction and maintenance stages. Successful simulation results have given confidence to perform on-line clinical trials in operating theatre.     

A framework for lab work management in mass courses. Application to Low Level Input/Output without hardware

This paper describes a complete lab work management framework designed and developed in the authors’ department to help teachers to manage the small projects that students are expected to complete as lab assignments during their graduate-level computer engineering studies. The paper focuses on an application example of the framework to a specific lab work related to Low Level Input/Output. Special emphasis is laid on the most complex aspects of such environments. The management framework provides specific tools for dealing with these issues: the management of student work delivery and evaluation results accessibility, automatic or semi-automatic assessment of student work, and detection of lab assignments that are highly suspect of having been copied. Additionally, the lab work framework represents a method through which a closer peer-to-peer or one-to-many communication with students can be attained. The lab work described in the paper is a small project based on a specification document. It is designed to get students to gain an in-depth knowledge of the computer Input/Output subsystem. While the framework has been in use for over 10 years, the specific Input/Output lab work has been managed by the framework tool-chain for the last 6 years, and used by over 2000 students. The lab work management framework is a step towards the feasibility of a closer-to-the-student higher education system, where the main interaction between students and teachers can be based on individual or on small group tutorials. Using the tool-chain, the academic load of teachers in mass course environments can be kept at acceptable levels, making for higher quality education.     

Introducing the personal software process

The personal software process (PSP) has been developed by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) to address the improvement needs of individual software engineers. It should also be of help to small projects and modest-sized software organizations. In a one-semester graduate-level course, engineers are introduced to measurement, planning, and quality control methods. A defined sequence of programming exercises are used to illustrate these methods and the exercise data are used to provide the students with feedback on their performance. The PSP course has been taught at five universities at both the graduate and senior undergraduate level. Various PSP introduction methods have also been tried at four industrial organizations, but the course format has also been found most effective. Results to date indicate that PSP training motivates engineers to use disciplined methods and it helps them to achieve significant quality and productivity improvements. While PSP principles have been demonstrated with software engineering students, their effectiveness has not yet been measured in industrial practice. This paper describes the PSP process, the strategic approach and experience to date.This work is supported by the US Department of Defense.     

The role of new technologies in the learning process: Moodle as a teaching tool in Physics

In this work we present an overview of the undergraduate online Physics course that we have implemented in the Moodle platform. This course has been developed as an enhancement of the face-to-face courses. The aim of this course is to create an online learning community which helps both teachers and students to have a virtual space where we can share knowledge through different kinds of supervised activities, chats and forums. As we will show in this paper, the students’ response to this initiative has been very good: the online Physics course helps them to reinforce their abilities and knowledge.     

Ability-training-oriented automated assessment in introductory programming course

Learning to program is a difficult process for novice programmers. AutoLEP, an automated learning and assessment system, was developed by us, to aid novice programmers to obtain programming skills. AutoLEP is ability-training-oriented. It adopts a novel assessment mechanism, which combines static analysis with dynamic testing to analyze student programs. It not only helps students to sufficiently test the programs, but also evaluates whether the programs meet the specification or not. AutoLEP encourages students to find and work through bugs, by providing automatic syntactic and structural checking, and immediate detailed feedback. This can improve students’ learning experience in programming and reduce the workload of the teaching staff. AutoLEP has been used in the C programming course at Harbin Institute of Technology and many other universities since 2004. The feedback on AutoLEP and its incorporation into the introductory programming course has been positive, both by students and teaching staff.     

A Software Engineering Project Course for Undergraduate Students

Software engineering(SE) courses are confronted with predicaments how to cultivate students' engineering concept and how to abridge the distance between the academy and industry.The "Computing and Software Engineering,III(CSE III)" helps students mimic a real-world software development and broaden realworld SE view.With the spiral model as the main development model,the CSE III course includes not only the SE theory knowledge,but also quick learning,team cooperation,development management and risk management skills which meet the real-world industry requirements.Our contribution is providing an introductory course for multiple dimensions of knowledge,creating a real-world software development circumstance for students under quantitative control and designing a systematic and practical evaluation mechanism which stimulates the interests of students.CSE III has been executed from 2009 and obtains a valuable teaching and learning effects among our teachers,TAs and students;and we add refinements to the course according to feedbacks of participants.This paper will describe the design and practice of the CSE III course.     

中美工程制图及CAD 系列课程及教育比较

工程制图系列课程是工科专业本科生的基础课程。课程向学生传授技术制 图和机构零件的表达方法和技术,以及CAD 软件系统的使用方法。文章从实际教学的第一 手材料出发,对中美两校同类课程的教学目标、课程内容和学生对课程评价进行了比较。对 课程改革提出了建议和意见。