Computer Engineering Courses Research Articles

Complementary Training Program in Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Courses

Contribution: This work evaluates the role of the complementary training programs (CTPs) offered by the Center for Research and Development in Electronic and Information Technology (CETELI), from the Federal University of Amazonas, Brazil. This analysis highlights the relevant role of the CTP, carried out by CETELI, in supporting students in the engineering undergraduate course, thus reducing dropouts and improving retention of low-income students. Background: The great challenge of engineering courses and of all courses in the technological area is to keep in step with the job market and, thus, provide better conditions for entering trainees. Intended Outcomes: Based on the experience of this work, other electrical engineering courses should be encouraged to adopt partnerships with industries, offering the possibility for students to carry out project activities on topics of interest to industries and, especially in developing countries like Brazil, to associate this activity with the provision of scholarships. Application Design: The evaluation assesses the impact of the various CTP partnership projects (PPs) on the graduation rate (GR), on students’ academic performance, and on the average graduation time (GT). It also assesses how the CTP students entered the job market, measuring whether the CTP facilitated their entry. Findings: It was observed a difference in the GR between the students who participated in the CTP and students that did not participate in the CTP. For the computer engineering course, this rate was about five times higher. It was observed that more than half of the students who participated in the CTP entered the market and were hired almost immediately for work in their area of training.

Player Engagement Analysis of a Business Simulation Game from Physiological, Psychological and Behavioral Perspectives: A Case Study

To obtain an accurate understanding of player experience (PE) in serious games that simulate organizational environments, many factors must be considered and intertwined, psychological, physiological and related to the game performance itself. Such elements can be analyzed using experimental techniques such as recording attentional aspects or monitoring brain waves and subjective methods such as questionnaires. The objective of this work was to analyze the possible benefits of using a business simulation game (BSG) as a resource to stimulate learning based on the measurement of engagement in its different dimensions, using a hemoencephalogram (HEG) device to monitor cortical activation and the eye tracking (ET), for measuring pupillary dilation, both used concomitantly, in addition to pre- and posttest questionnaires, to record participants’ expectations and perceptions of the game experience. Data collection was carried out with 10 students and professors in the computer engineering course at the University of La Laguna, Spain. The results indicate that critical situations and recurring ethical decisions in the game are important elements of the involvement of participants. In addition, the two devices proved to be suitable as a source of important information in determining the flow and attentional level for BSG.

Case of Study in Online Course of Computer Engineering during COVID-19 Pandemic

Practical activities and laboratories, where the students handle hardware devices, are an important part of the curriculum in STEAM degrees. In face-to-face learning, the students go to a specific classroom where the hardware is available. However, laboratories are one of the challenges of distance education, due to the impossibility of the students attending classes at a certain place. This is especially relevant since the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks to the increase of students enrolled in distance education. Different approaches to tackle this problem have been adopted, ranging from mixed models where lectures are online but physical attendance to laboratories is required to purely virtual models where virtual worlds or augmented reality have been used to simulate the real hardware. This paper presents the case of study of a flexible laboratory for the use of Arduino in a Computer Technology course with 153 students, geographically distributed in Spain and Latin America. The goal of the case study is to study the impact of such a flexible laboratory in the course, based on four fundamental parameters: student access to the online lectures, participation in the course and marks obtained, and satisfaction surveys. The results show that students have increased their marks by 28.8% and their class attendance by 247.18%, doing more elaborate and complex work than in previous courses. Therefore, it is considered that they have satisfactorily integrated the knowledge acquired during the subject, and the projects with Arduino in Computer Technology have an impact on the flexibility and personalization of the education, motivate students and increase its educational productivity and effect on the quality of education, influencing the learning experience.

Application of Competitive Activities to Improve Students’ Participation

Making students to become intrinsically motivated to participate in daily class activities is an open challenge that has been addressed in different ways. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of an educational innovation project, named TrivialCV, in terms of student motivation, engagement and learning outcomes. We analyze the impact of two types of activities: multiplayer team-based competitions created for delivery during a live class session and single-player competitions created to be played asynchronously from home. We deployed these activities in two different computer engineering courses (programming fundamentals and operating systems) and used questionnaires, grades and activity tracking in the virtual campus to evaluate their impact. After the analysis, we can assert that the use of TrivialCV activities was useful for providing additional motivation to the students and improving their engagement with the courses in which they were deployed. TrivialCV activities were very well received by the students, who considered them fun, engaging and useful.

The Effect of Using the Gamification Strategy on Academic Achievement and Motivation towards Learning Problem-Solving Skills in Computer and Information Technology Course among Tenth Grade Female Students

Abstract This study aimed to identify the effect of using the gamification strategy on academic achievement and motivation towards learning problem-solving skills in computer and information technology course. A quasi-experimental method was adopted. The study population included tenth-grade female students in Al-Badi’ah schools in Riyadh. The sample consisted of 54 students divided into two equal groups: control group and experimental group. The study tools comprised an achievement test and the motivation scale. The results showed that there were statistically significant differences between the two groups in the academic achievement test in favor of the experimental group, with a large effect size of the gamification seen on academic achievement. The results also showed that there were no differences between the two groups in the motivation scale, with a small effect size of the gamification on student motivation. One of the most important recommendations of this study was encouraging the use of the gamification strategy in teaching the computer course to help boost students’ achievement levels and applying the gamification in the classroom for prolonged periods to achieve higher student-motivation scales. This study also proposes conducting additional more research studies to gauge the effects of gamification on covering different variables and spanning various subjects and grade levels. Keywords: Gamification, academic achievement, motivation, problem-solving skills, programming, computer, e-learning

Implementation of Problem Based Learning to Solve Real Life Problems

Problem based learning (PBL) has been used for many years and it is one of the effective educational methodologies applicable for distinguished engineering disciplines. It is a widely used student-centric approach through which students get engaged to solve real world problems by research, continuous study, and regular practices along with knowledge utilization during implementation. This study explores the PBL with an advanced computer engineering course of pre-final year students. This study centers around the implementation of a system to solve one of the real-life problems and distinguishes a portion of the difficulties that lie ahead for PBL. Here, to examine the impact of PBL approach for the specified subject, the result of B.Tech. (CE and IT branches) sixth semester students (A.Y. 2019-20 and 2020-21) are considered with various known parameters. Students' feedback is taken at the end of course study. Problem title, hook of the problem, background or history of the problem, clarifying/providing constraints, list of deliverables, strategy to solve the problem, assessment criteria/rubric etc. are provided well in advance to the students to be comprehensible for the problem. Learning sequence sessions are also arranged on a regular basis during problem solving by the facilitator to fill out the gap. As a result, the PBL approach is found to be intended more strongly for engineering students than for other students; in contrast, with traditional MCQ based examination students mostly focus on mug up of concepts rather than implementation and critical thinking. Engineering students are able to work smartly along with hard work, and as a result students have developed their technical skills, collaborative skills, self-learning approach with advanced computer engineering courses. Assessment pattern has changed into advancement with the proposed PBL approach over a traditional MCQ based approach. Continuous assessment is performed on covering all segments of the exam. Results found with traditional approach are contrasted with results found with PBL approach and tracked down that a more prominent number of students had secured more than over average score (>=60%) with the proposed PBL approach and statistically proven for the same. This correlation shows that students are more noticeable and curious about the PBL approach as opposed to robbing up hypothetical ideas and choosing the appropriate answers with a traditional MCQ based approach. In Addition, student’s feedback is observed to be very satisfactory. It has been seen that through PBL, students' retaining level has extremely increased and their learning abilities and understanding level too has improved altogether. PBL plays out a fundamental role for achieving the student's involvement and commitment towardslearning. Logical, critical thinking, teamwork, technical etc. skills for engineering students can be developed effectively with the PBL approach. Keywords— Problem-based learning, Continuous assessment, PBL, self-regulated learning, self-directed learning

Clustering Algorithm to Measure Student Assessment Accuracy: A Double Study

Self-assessment is one of the strategies used in active teaching to engage students in the entire learning process, in the form of self-regulated academic learning. This study aims to assess the possibility of including self-evaluation in the student’s final grade, not just as a self-assessment that allows students to predict the grade obtained but also as something to weigh on the final grade. Two different curricular units are used, both from the first year of graduation, one from the international relations course (N = 29) and the other from the computer science and computer engineering courses (N = 50). Students were asked to self-assess at each of the two evaluation moments of each unit, after submitting their work/test and after knowing the correct answers. This study uses statistical analysis as well as a clustering algorithm (K-means) on the data to try to gain deeper knowledge and visual insights into the data and the patterns among them. It was verified that there are no differences between the obtained grade and the thought grade by gender and age variables, but a direct correlation was found between the thought grade averages and the grade level. The difference is less accentuated at the second moment of evaluation—which suggests that an improvement in the self-assessment skill occurs from the first to the second evaluation moment.

Multimedia Computer-Aided Industrial System Design Based on the Study of Big Data Mining Algorithm

Aiming at the problems of the multimedia computer-aided industrial system, this paper puts forward the application of big data mining algorithm to multimedia computer-aided industrial system design and analyzes in detail the impact of multimedia technology on industrial quality. This paper introduces the advantages of using big data mining algorithm in multimedia computer technology course, shows the operating environment to be met by using the multimedia computer-aided industrial system, follows the guiding principles of the overall design learning theory and artistic conception cognition theory, supplements specific industrial examples, and discusses multimedia industrial design.

Analysis of Cooperative Skills Development through Relational Coordination in a Gamified Online Learning Environment

One of the main problems of the sudden digital transition to online education due to the COVID-19 pandemic is the increased isolation of students. On the other hand, one of the main goals of higher education is to develop students’ cooperative competence. This experimental study presents an online learning environment, consisting of a set of web-based resources such as virtual laboratories, interactive activities, educational videos and a game-based learning methodology. The study also examines the influence of the combination of such resources with active and collaborative learning on the improvement of students’ relationships and the development of cooperative competence. To this end, an analysis was conducted based on the data collected from a core subject of the Computer Engineering and Computer Science Engineering degree courses. The answers of an online survey (n = 289) were examined by using the structural equation modeling technique (SEM). The results suggest that the proposed learning environment has a significant and positive impact on the two dimensions of relational coordination; communication and relationships, and plays a key role in the acquisition and development of cooperative competence. Findings also indicate that effective, accurate, frequent and timely communication, positively influences on students’ relationships. Additionally, this study addresses other important issues with significant theoretical and practical implications for higher education.

Reliability and Safety Engineering for Safety-Critical Systems in Computer Science: A Study Into the Mismatch Between Higher Education and Employment in Brazil and India

<italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Contribution:</i> This article details a systematic study to investigate knowledge that graduate students have about reliability and safety engineering (RSE), comparing it with industry expectations. <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Background:</i> Reliability and safety have always been the main focus while developing safety-critical systems (SCS). An interview study was conducted with engineering students in India and Brazil and with experienced practitioners to investigate a perceived mismatch between education and employment on knowledge related to RSE in SCS. <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Research Question:</i> How does student knowledge of RSE for SCS compare with industry expectations? What measures could be taken by institutes and universities providing computer engineering courses to better meet the expectations of industries regarding SCS? <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Methodology:</i> Interviews and discussions were conducted with 21 practitioners from ten different organizations to identify what expectations they hold for the students they recruit to develop SCS, as these SCS have high reliability and safety requirements. Interviews were conducted with graduate students of various engineering disciplines to assess their knowledge of RSE for SCS. Analyses were conducted to compare industry expectations with students’ knowledge. <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Findings:</i> Analyses indicated most graduate students do not have the range of knowledge regarding RSE that recruiters see as essential for the development of SCS. Hence, it is paramount to rethink computing curricula—to include RSE-related topics.

A Learning Analytics Framework to Analyze Corporal Postures in Students Presentations.

Communicating in social and public environments are considered professional skills that can strongly influence career development. Therefore, it is important to proper train and evaluate students in this kind of abilities so that they can better interact in their professional relationships, during the resolution of problems, negotiations and conflict management. This is a complex problem as it involves corporal analysis and the assessment of aspects that until recently were almost impossible to quantitatively measure. Nowadays, a number of new technologies and sensors have being developed for the capture of different kinds of contextual and personal information, but these technologies were not yet fully integrated inside learning settings. In this context, this paper presents a framework to facilitate the analysis and detection of patterns of students in oral presentations. Four steps are proposed for the given framework: Data collection, Statistical Analysis, Clustering, and Sequential Pattern Mining. Data Collection step is responsible for the collection of students interactions during presentations and the arrangement of data for further analysis. Statistical Analysis provides a general understanding of the data collected by showing the differences and similarities of the presentations along the semester. The Clustering stage segments students into groups according to well-defined attributes helping to observe different corporal patterns of the students. Finally, Sequential Pattern Mining step complements the previous stages allowing the identification of sequential patterns of postures in the different groups. The framework was tested in a case study with data collected from 222 freshman students of Computer Engineering (CE) course at three different times during two different years. The analysis made it possible to segment the presenters into three distinct groups according to their corporal postures. The statistical analysis helped to assess how the postures of the students evolved throughout each year. The sequential pattern mining provided a complementary perspective for data evaluation and helped to observe the most frequent postural sequences of the students. Results show the framework could be used as a guidance to provide students automated feedback throughout their presentations and can serve as background information for future comparisons of students presentations from different undergraduate courses.

Research on computer basic teaching in Higher Vocational Education under the background of flipped classroom

In recent years, flipped classroom appears more and more in the teaching process. Flipped classroom can also be called inverted classroom, which gives students the decisionmaking power of learning and improves the efficiency of classroom. This paper will elaborate and analyze the current situation of computer technology course teaching in Colleges and universities and the application of flipped classroom in teaching. This paper discusses the problems existing in the teaching process of computer technology and education course and how to solve the problems effectively with flipped classroom, so as to promote the improvement of students' performance and teaching level.

E-College : an aid for E-Learning systems

The use of Android apps has significantly increased over the past few years, making android the most accepted and trusted operating system for smart devices. According to a survey, in 2020, over 30.5 billion Android mobile apps were downloaded compared to merely 6 billion in 2016, which is quite noteworthy. People worldwide are also becoming habitual to the use of android apps such that they want everything to be available on their mobile devices. The authors have developed ‘E-College’ - an android-based mobile learning application that helps users grasp various programming languages like C++, Java, and Python and help them with their undergraduate computer engineering course curriculum-related resources. The proposed application allows the learner to access a particular programming language's tutorials and explains it with an example and the required code snippet. Using this application, users can also assess themselves by utilizing the provided quiz section, which has various questions. The proposed mobile application also has a recommendation system section that uses machine learning techniques to intelligently serve the most relevant and suitable content for each user. It considers the user's previous learnings on the application and suggests new and relevant learning content for that particular user. During the ongoing global pandemic situation, E-college application is the most effective way to learn and acquire technical skills without stepping out of their home and fraee of cost.

Collaborated Cyber Security Education with Hokkaido Prefectural Police and National Institute of Technology, Tomakomai College

Hokkaido Prefectural Police and NIT Tomakomai College signed a contract about student nurture in cyber security field in 2018. After the contract, we have started collaborated cyber security education. Hokkaido Prefectural Police has spoken to students about cyber security, usage of social network service and cyber security crime. In NIT Tomakomai College, some computer science and engineering course students developed and studied some contents related to cyber security. In this paper, we report the cyber security education in 2018 and 2019.

Exploring the Factors that Influence How (And Why) Community College Instructors Teach Communication and Teamwork Skills in Computer Technology Courses

ABSTRACT In the field of network administration and programming, mastery of technical skills as well as non-technical or soft skills, such as teamwork, problem-solving, self-regulated learning, and communication, are increasingly emphasized both in practice and research. While little research exists concerning the instructional practices of such skills within community colleges, even less is known about community college instructors’ conceptions of these crucial 21st century skills. This paper reports a qualitative, exploratory study examining how community college instructors defined and taught communication and teamwork competencies in their computer technology classrooms. The data was collected from multiple data sources – instructor interviews, observations of classroom teaching, and student focus group discussions about their learning. Main findings include the influence of instructor backgrounds on their teaching practices, the situational nature of how instructors defined and conceptualized communication and teamwork skills, and the prominent use of teacher-centered practices in the teaching of communication and teamwork skills. We conclude that while faculty participants in this study considered teamwork and communication skills to be important, their classroom teaching was insufficiently student-centered to truly cultivate these skills. Thus, we argue that more training, resources, and support structures are needed for community college instructors in order to better cultivate the communication and teamwork skills of their students. This paper adds empirical evidence to the national conversations on the critical issues of skills, student employment, and pedagogy, and also utilizes a triangulating approach to better document faculty teaching practices.

Design and Evaluation of a Mobile Application for an Educational Card Game

Educational games can provide players with rich learning and socializing experiences through different interac-tion paradigms, such as board games, card games, and, more recently, hybrid (physical-digital) games. However, the process of making, maintaining, and evolving an educational analog game is not a trivial task. Balancing the game mechanics and dynamics to provide a pleasant and educational gaming experience can be very difficult to achieve. Furthermore, adding a digital component in the gameplay can disturb the experience of the game and learning ob-jectives, and this kind of insertion should be evaluated. This work then aims to report the process of developing and evaluating a mobile application for helping the gameplay of a card game that focuses on on teaching software testing concepts. Our primary concern during the development of the application was whether its insertion would compromise the learning process or the social experience of the card game. The developed application has the fol-lowing functionalities: point counter, dice scrolling, timer, and a summary of the rules. We designed and developed a first version of the application. Then, we evaluated the impact of its insertion on gameplay by applying the game assisted with the application with students from Computer Science and Computer Engineering courses and, after the end of the game, the participants answered questionnaires about the players’ experience and their impressions about the application. Based on the results, we perceived that the use of the application provided benefits to the players’ experience, although the evaluation highlighted some opportunities for improvement. Thus, we evolve the mobile application based on the comments gathered in this evaluation. This new version has improvements on user’s interface, aiming to provide a better user experience, and new functionalities. Furthermore, we assessed the second version and compared both versions of the mobile app in order to collect evidence regarding improvements in the game experience.

A genetic algorithm‐based approach for making pairs and assigning exercises in a programming course

AbstractPair programming is an approach where two programmers work to solve one programming problem sitting shoulder to shoulder on a computer. Several studies indicating numerous benefits of using pair programming as a teaching strategy exist. However, only a few of them take into consideration the mechanism followed for pair formation. With an aim to study the impact of pair programming on undergraduate students, we try to make the pairs compatible with a genetic algorithm‐based approach. Using a genetic algorithm, the system ensures that every pair in the class gets a particular combination of skills and personality traits. We also developed a desktop application to assign programming exercises to students dynamically. To assess the efficacy of pair programming in introductory programming course, a formal pair programming experiment was run at Netaji Subhas University of Technology. The pair programming experiment involved a total 171 undergraduate students from a computer engineering course. At the end of the program, we assessed the programming abilities of every student. We also analyzed the impact of a genetic algorithm‐based pairing mechanism. On the basis of assessments, it is observed that pair programming is a successful pedagogical tool for facilitating active learning of introductory programming courses. Responses to survey garnered from undergraduate students hint that the genetic algorithm approach leads to compatible pairs.

Investigating learning outcomes in engineering education with data mining

AbstractHigher education institutions are catching up on their high competition and challenges are in their analysis productivity. The major challenge is to monitor and analyze student progress through learning outcomes in the curriculum. One of the approaches is the outcome‐based education (OBE) model to deal with learning outcomes. OBE is an integral part of higher education institutions. The OBE system is a key step for accreditation in engineering education. OBE focuses on a student‐centered approach. The OBE is not restricted to well‐defined teaching strategies or direct evaluations but also encompasses indirect evaluations to help students achieve the intended outcomes. In this investigation, engineering students’ data have been analyzed forming three distinct clusters to group students according to best, average, and worst achievement of learning outcomes in two different computer engineering courses generally taught in the early semesters in higher education institutions. A data mining clustering approach is used to segment students using k‐means and k‐medoids techniques. Clustering can be regarded as a data modeling technique that provides summary data that interact with multiple disciplines and plays an important role in a wide range of computer applications. The investigation comprises of two parts for analysis: one part of the analysis is the mid‐term and final exam scores, the quiz and assignment results, the laboratory results, and the evaluation, together with the learning outcomes achieved, and the other part is the comparative analysis of learning outcomes achieved in both engineering courses clustering with the best, average, and worst attainments, respectively. In this investigation, the results obtained from clustering data points show that the same group of clusters with the best, average, and worst learning outcomes achievements formed using both k‐means and k‐medoid clustering for one course. On the other hand, a diverse group of clusters with the best, average, and worst learning outcomes achievements formed using both k‐means and k‐medoids clustering for another course.

The Analysis of Student's Science Metacognition Ability in Information System and Computer Technology Courses

The Analysis of Student's Science Metacognition Ability in Information System and Computer Technology Courses

Development of E-Module Oriented Flipped Classroom Strategies in Computer Network Learning

The learning process is essentially a communication process that’s carried out synchronously and asynchronously. The results of observations in the Computer Network Engineering course, there are problems that the lecturer is not present, the learning resources used printed materials, as well as the existing books not updated and the sources are not by the syllabus so that the impact on student learning outcomes is low. E-Module is equipped with audio, video, images, and animation. The purpose of this study is to produce an E-Module in Valid, Practical, and Effective Computer and Network Engineering courses. This type of research is Research and Development with the ADDIE development model. The research data were obtained from tests of validity, practicality, and effectiveness. The results of the validity of the E-Module scored 93.3%, the results of the practicality assessment were obtained through questionnaire assessment by lecturers with a score of 96% and an assessment by students with score 91.7%. The Flipped Classroom Strategy-oriented E-Module was considered effective in increasing student motivation and learning outcomes, an average score of 91.6% for student activities was obtained. Based on the data above, the E-Module in Computer and Network Engineering courses is valid, practical, and effective for use in the lecture process.