As schools endeavor to provide all students with access to computational thinking and computer science, the hackathon emerges as a competitive and high-energy event that uses authentic problems to motivate learners to engage in the domain of computing. This article presents the design case of a hackathon for teenagers as enacted over five…

This report explores the first iteration of a teacher professional development courselet grounded in constructionist theory and activities. This online teacher professional development (oTPD) courselet provided opportunities for teachers to engage in just-in-time, ongoing TPD within a social networking site for educators. The topic of the oTPD was…

This article critiques learning design as a representation for sharing and developing practice, based on synthesis of three projects. Starting with the findings of the Mod4L Models of Practice project, it argues that the technical origins of learning design, and the consequent focus on structure and sequence, limit its usefulness for sharing…

Programmable system-on-chip (PSoC), which provides a microprocessor and programmable analog and digital peripheral functions in a single chip, is very convenient for mixed-signal electronic system design. This paper presents the experience of teaching contemporary mixed-signal electronic system design with PSoC in the Department of Automation,…

Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) is changing the way we build, operate, and maintain our software-intensive systems. Several projects using MDE practices are reporting significant improvements in quality and performance but, to be able to handle these projects, software engineers need a set of technical and interpersonal skills that are currently…

Purpose: The elderly are often unfamiliar with computer technology and can encounter great difficulties. Moreover, the terms used in such systems may prove to be a challenge for these users. The aim of this research is to tutor the elderly on using an adaptive e-shop system in order to buy products easily. Design/methodology/approach: In view of…

This paper draws upon the experience of an interdisciplinary research group in engaging undergraduate university students in the design and development of semantic web technologies. A flexible approach to participatory design challenged conventional distinctions between "designer" and "user" and allowed students to play a role…

In this paper, we present an ontology to represent the semantics of the IMS Learning Design (IMS LD) specification, a meta-language used to describe the main elements of the learning design process. The motivation of this work relies on the expressiveness limitations found on the current XML-Schema implementation of the IMS LD conceptual model. To…

This article describes an outreach program to broaden participation in computing to include more students with visual impairments. The precollege workshops target students in grades 7-12 and engage students with robotics programming. The use of robotics at the precollege level has become popular in part due to the availability of Lego Mindstorm…

The paper describes an ontology-based framework for bridging learning design and learning object content. In present solutions, researchers have proposed conceptual models and developed tools for both of those subjects, but without detailed discussions of how they can be used together. In this paper we advocate the use of ontologies to explicitly…

The objective of this paper is to introduce a standards-based model for adaptive e-learning and to investigate the conditions and tools required by authors to implement this model. Adaptation in the context of e-learning is about creating a learner experience that purposely adjusts to various conditions over a period of time with the intention of…

The Cognitive Tutor Authoring Tools (CTAT) support creation of a novel type of tutors called example-tracing tutors. Unlike other types of ITSs (e.g., model-tracing tutors, constraint-based tutors), example-tracing tutors evaluate student behavior by flexibly comparing it against generalized examples of problem-solving behavior. Example-tracing…

Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) that employ a model-tracing methodology have consistently shown their effectiveness. However, what evidently makes these tutors effective, the cognitive model embedded within them, has traditionally been difficult to create, requiring great expertise and time, both of which come at a cost. Furthermore, an…

This paper introduces "Collage", a high-level IMS-LD compliant authoring tool that is specialized for CSCL (Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning). Nowadays CSCL is a key trend in e-learning since it highlights the importance of social interactions as an essential element of learning. CSCL is an interdisciplinary domain, which…

This paper describes the achievements of an innovative eight-year research program first introduced in Mizoguchi and Bourdeau (2000), which was aimed at building a theory-aware authoring system by using ontological engineering. To date, we have proposed OMNIBUS, an ontology that comprehensively covers different learning/instructional theories and…