Papers by CLAUDIO ALVAREZ GOMEZ
El Profesional de la información, Mar 1, 2024
Written communication is an essential skill for information professionals. Therefore, it is commo... more Written communication is an essential skill for information professionals. Therefore, it is common to implement writing tasks to develop this skill in higher education. However, it is known that students' learning style preferences can influence improved written communication skills unequally among students, considering practice with writing tasks. This study examined how learning style preferences can influence the improvement of written communication skills in a blended learning environment for university students in information and management control engineering. Over seven semesters, 215 students participated in writing tasks supported by a discussion forum, and their learning style preferences were measured and analyzed using the Honey and Mumford model. Student performance on the online forum was repeatedly measured to determine the variation in written communication skills according to different learning style preferences and to identify which students benefited most from the intervention. The results indicate that although students' primary learning style preference influences their performance in written communication, these skills improve regardless of the learning style preference. Students with a primary "reflector" learning style preference were the most numerous and achieved the greatest learning gains. Students with a "theorist" learning style preference demonstrated medium-sized improvements in spelling and writing, and students with an "activist" learning style preference had small but significant increases in the quality of their justification and argumentation. Overall, the results suggest that learning style preferences are a relevant individual characteristic for personalizing electronic or hybrid learning environments in writing tasks.
2010) Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Computers in Education. Putrajaya, Malaysia, 2010
Abstract: The high-penetration of information and communication technologies in our daily activit... more Abstract: The high-penetration of information and communication technologies in our daily activities renews the question about the type of skills learners need to develop on the 21st century. Seeking to foster the development of new media literacies skills in the classroom, we developed Collboard. The Collboard approach combines a pedagogical rationale based on a collaborative strategy aiming at solving open-ended tasks and a technological workflow that incorporates the notion of seamless interactions across different kind of media. ...
At present, computer programming skills are essential in engineering curricula and professional p... more At present, computer programming skills are essential in engineering curricula and professional practice. In spite of this, and after decades of research in programming pedagogy, academic success in introductory programming courses continues to be a challenge for many students. In this research we explore the feasibility of predicting academic results in a modular computer programming course in a Chilean university (N=242), through measurement of psychometric variables linked to implicit theories of intelligence, error orientation, and students attitudes towards programming. Coincidentally with other recent studies conducted in Finland and Turkey, early measurement of implicit theories of intelligence did not emerge as a predictor of academic performance in the programming course. As for error orientation, students exhibiting mild measures of an error strain construct did seem to perform better than students with extreme measures. The variables with the highest predictive potential ...
IEEE Access
Requirements prioritization is an activity aimed at determining the essential requirements to inc... more Requirements prioritization is an activity aimed at determining the essential requirements to include in a software release. Although there are several prioritization methods to systematize this task, there are still unresolved challenges. Existing methods do not guarantee that requirements prioritization meets stakeholder expectations and goals. This is because most prioritization methods operate by considering only quantitative information, making it difficult to formally capture stakeholder interests and perspectives that can rather be made explicit in qualitative terms. Likewise, methods including qualitative information only consider elements associated with benefit estimation, that is, positive aspects of the project, but neglect costs or negative aspects. As a result, the prioritization process is driven by a partial view of constraints. Such methods also fail at capturing and combining expert knowledge that decision-makers can bring into the decision-making process. In this research, we propose a novel method for software requirements prioritization, which facilitates incorporating experts' qualitative assessment at the outset of the prioritization process and considers both benefit and cost constraints. Details of the method are presented, together with a case study describing a real application scenario. Recommendations and guidelines regarding the application of the method are proposed based on the results of the case study. INDEX TERMS Cost-benefit prediction, qualitative prioritization criteria, prioritization method, requirements prioritization.
Journal of Computing in Higher Education
Computer programming is a skill of increasing importance in scientific and technological fields. ... more Computer programming is a skill of increasing importance in scientific and technological fields. However, in introductory computer science (CS1) courses in higher education, approximately one in every three students fails. A common reason is that students are overwhelmed by an accelerated and inflexible pace of learning that jeopardizes success. Accordingly, in the computer science education literature it has been suggested that the pedagogical philosophy of 'mastery learning,' which supports students progressing at their own pace, can improve academic outcomes of CS1 courses. Nevertheless, few extended mastery learning implementations in CS1 have been documented in the literature, and there is a lack of guidance and best practices to foster its adoption. In this paper, we present a four-year action research study in which a modular mastery-based CS1 course was designed, evaluated and improved in successive iterations with cohorts of engineering freshmen in a Latin American research university (N = 959). In the first year of the intervention, only 19.3% of students passed the course in their first semester attempting it. In successive iterations, the instructional design, teaching and learning activities, course content, and course management were iteratively improved such that by the fourth year of offering 77.1% of students passed the course in their first semester. Over this period, course attrition was reduced from 25.0% to 3.8% of the cohort, and students' mean time spent in the course decreased from 23.2 weeks (SD = 7.38) to 14.9 (SD = 3.64). Results indicate that modularization for mastery learning is a viable approach for improving academic results in a CS1 course. Practical considerations towards successful implementation of this approach are presented and discussed.
An exploration of STEM freshmen's attitudes, engagement and autonomous learning in introductory computer programming
2019 38th International Conference of the Chilean Computer Science Society (SCCC), 2019
Programming skills and computational thinking are fundamental concerns in professional training i... more Programming skills and computational thinking are fundamental concerns in professional training in Science, Technology’ Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines. In spite of this, in the Chilean higher education system, as in most parts of the world, teaching programming is a challenging endeavor, partly because the majority of freshmen students in STEM undergraduate programs have not been introduced to the fundamentals of the discipline and its applications in K12 education. Therefore, students' attitudes, engagement, and autonomous learning can make a difference in how students in STEM disciplines in higher education face their first programming course. In the present study, we carried out measurement of variables associated to these constructs involving a sample of 1694 freshmen of seventeen STEM programs in a Chilean research university. Relevant differences were found among different STEM programs, and by student gender. Implications of the results obtained and future research avenues are discussed.
A Collaborative Pedagogical Activity Design for Teaching Ethics in a Business School
EDULEARN21 Proceedings, 2021
Automatic Content Analysis of Student Moral Discourse in a Collaborative Learning Activity
Factoring Ethics in Technology, Policy Making, Regulation and AI, 2021
Nowadays the complexity of knowledge, the specialization of labor and the pervasiveness of ICT in... more Nowadays the complexity of knowledge, the specialization of labor and the pervasiveness of ICT in human activity, lead individuals to frequently make complex decisions with ethical implications. The educational system has a fundamental role in preparing specialized human capital in every discipline, however, it also faces the challenge of educating individuals with ethical discernment capabilities and behavior. In this book chapter, we describe the design, implementation and validation of EthicApp-RP, a social platform aimed at higher education settings, for fostering reflection and moral reasoning around ethical cases through a role-playing activity. We present an application of EthicApp-RP involving a cohort of undergraduate business students (N = 85), based on a case in which students play political and public leadership roles in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis. The results indicate that students and teachers acknowledge the learning environment’s capacity to stimulate reflectio...
A CSCL Script for Supporting Moral Reasoning in the Ethics Classroom
Collaboration Technologies and Social Computing, 2019
In many engineering schools around the world, ethics is a compulsory subject. However, teaching e... more In many engineering schools around the world, ethics is a compulsory subject. However, teaching ethics in engineering is not a simple duty, as engineering students usually attribute less value to learning ethics than to other subjects. Hereby, we report on our initial efforts towards developing a CSCL script for fostering meaningful ethical discussions among engineering students in the classroom. The script comprises successive phases in which the students conduct ethical judgments individually, in a small group and in a teacher-mediated class group discussion. The process seeks that students cast their judgments without inhibitions, so it maintains students’ anonymity in all phases. A trial with 35 engineering students confirmed that the tool offers a good usability, averaging a 79.9 score in the System Usability Scale (SUS). Furthermore, the trial cohort highlighted the convenience of anonymity when discussing ethical cases. Analysis of student behavior revealed that ethical judgments tend to be stable across the activity. However, judgments changed mostly in groups where more discussion was generated. In the future, we will study whether group composition that maximizes the heterogeneity of the students in the groups according to their individual ethical appraisals increases the likelihood of students varying their ethical judgments, as a result of argumentative and reflexive processes in discussions.
Applying the concept of implicit HCI to a groupware environment for teaching ethics
Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 2021
Implicit HCI is about computers understanding the intentions and needs of the user and proactivel... more Implicit HCI is about computers understanding the intentions and needs of the user and proactively triggering functions or adapting the interface to help users achieve their goals. In ubiquitous learning environments, this could mean that the software and hardware settings make relevant learning material available to students; activate proper learning environments, like collaborative authoring tools and/or chatting spaces; find most suitable peers for collaborative learning; etc., at the right time or place. In this research, we report on an experience in which we added implicit HCI to an existing application that supports ethics education called EthicApp. Successful methodologies supporting ethics education include students discussing real-life or simulated cases where ethical dilemmas are presented. It is important that students actively participate in the discussion in order to develop their key abilities for ethical discernment. EthicApp implements a methodology in which students read about a case that presents an ethical dilemma, report on their personal stance about it, and then discuss their opinions anonymously in a small group, and then with the whole class. We included an automatic mechanism of group formation in order to maximize discussion and active participation among the students. For this, we first compared two strategies of forming groups: one random and another maximizing the differences of individual students’ judgments about the presented case within each group. We found that the second strategy was the most appropriate to encourage participation. As a result, EthicApp was modified in order to implicitly generate groups with diverging ethical judgments.
2015 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition Proceedings
The application of methodological innovations in the teaching of engineering has been promoted an... more The application of methodological innovations in the teaching of engineering has been promoted and justified for several years now, especially those based on active learning and problem-based learning. However, the adoption of these new methodologies by universities has been slower than expected. Although many of the indicated causes refer to resistance by professors (e.g. a lack of time for implementation), there are also those that are based on resistance by students. In particular, an attitude of distrust is mentioned with regard to these innovations, which normally require greater student participation. However, if the student has been part of passive learning during the majority of his life, how valid is his opinion about a methodology that he does not know? In order to analyze this, we performed a two-stage study on the perception about learning methodologies on university students in Universidad de los Andes, Chile. The first stage consisted in changing a course to the active learning methodology and surveying the course's students (N=56) at the beginning as well as the end of the course, asking them to describe their ideal class. The results showed that the attribute "participative", which is key in an active learning methodology, went from a selection of 41% before the course to 68% after the course was finished. The second stage corresponded to a general perception study of the engineering students at the same university, which was performed two years after starting to take 3 of the major's courses with methodological innovations based on active learning. The study included 581 students (62% of the total students at the School), who were asked to describe their ideal class. We compared the results of the opinions of freshmen (N=198) with upperclassmen that had taken courses with active learning (N=210) and those who had not (N=173). This study showed different cases where the description of the ideal class was the consequence of the previous courses that the student had taken, such as the example previously shown about how the attribute "participative" was chosen significantly more by upperclassmen than by freshmen, which coincides with the passive methodologies proper to the country's schools where they had studied. In this way, in this paper we show through diverse situations the influence that experienced methodologies can have on a student, and how through these same methodologies we can change these opinions and make them favorable towards methodologies based on active learning.
Communications in Computer and Information Science, 2014
Recent studies in science and engineering education support that inductive learning activities en... more Recent studies in science and engineering education support that inductive learning activities encouraging active student involvement may improve students' motivation, development of soft skills and academic performance, compared to traditional lectures. Until recently, several technology-enhanced learning environments have been proposed to facilitate such activities in classrooms. However, these commonly depend on dedicated hardware devices, such as clickers or tablet PCs. Contrastingly, smartphones are being massively adopted by society as these become increasingly powerful and inexpensive. Even so, the use of smartphones as learning tools in lecture halls has still not been widely adopted. In this paper we present CollPhoto, a paper-plussmartphone environment that supports face-to-face problem solving activities in the classroom. CollPhoto provides the instructor with instant visibility of students' work, and facilitates him/her conducting discussions, based on a selection of students' responses. We report on the design and initial validation of CollPhoto in the context of two computer science courses.
Implementing collaborative learning activities in the classroom supported by one-to-one mobile computing: A design-based process
Journal of Systems and Software, 2011
Mobile devices such as PDAs, smartphones and tablet computers are becoming increasingly popular, ... more Mobile devices such as PDAs, smartphones and tablet computers are becoming increasingly popular, setting out opportunities for new ways of communicating and collaborating. Research initiatives have ascertained the potential of mobile devices in education, and particularly, the benefits of incorporating them in the classroom for eliciting collaborative learning and active student participation. However, the development of technology-supported learning environments poses challenges to education researchers, ...
A framework to facilitate the development of face-to-face CSCL applications supported by wirelessly networked mobile devices
Collaborative learning activities supported by wirelessly interconnected mobile devices are benef... more Collaborative learning activities supported by wirelessly interconnected mobile devices are beneficial for stimulating the development of students‟ social abilities and can improve academic results. However, software for supporting these practices poses challenges to its developers, because it must be able to cope with the limitations found on mobile devices, while executing reliably and with a good performance. Given these requirements, it is possible to develop software in an adhoc fashion, according to the specific requirements of each pedagogical design and finely optimized for their purposes, in order to minimize resource consumption in the mobile devices. While this approach permits implementing the software, it is costly, because when new software is required, previous developments can be hardly reused. Furthermore, software offers scarce flexibility when changes or adaptations are needed to comply with new requirements. In this investigation a framework was developed for facilitating the development of collaborative learning applications supported by wireless mobile devices in an economical and flexible manner. The framework allows modeling and implementing collaborative learning designs introducing a language that conforms to state of the art developments in the field of CSCL scripts. The language promotes software reuse and flexibility for customizing and tailoring applications to new requirements, following the “Applications = Scripts + Components” guiding principle. In order to experiment the framework‟s capabilities and performance in real scenarios, a pedagogical design that takes full advantage of the framework features was implemented, and tested in both school and university-level classrooms. This Thesis was partially funded by CONICYT/FONDECYT 1080100.
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Papers by CLAUDIO ALVAREZ GOMEZ