Teaching approaches supported by Information and Communication Technologies, such as E-Learning, can provide valuable information from Learning Management Systems that generate real-time data about student interactions online. These data might be relevant to fit predictive models that can support educational institutions in making decisions and improving educational strategies. Based on this, several studies have proposed machine learning-based approaches to analyze students' academic performance, in particular, by using multilevel regression models that capture contextual effects and provide an analytical structure that supports the researcher in analyzing the model's behavior concerning the impact factors. Although the contributions on this topic have been quite significant, this article proposes an analytical approach that combines cluster analysis with a multilevel logistic regression model for the E-learning context. In this sense, the cluster analysis provided the formation of non-directly observable groups that proved to be significant in composing the multilevel structure of the logistic regression model. The study results support the researcher in analyzing the behavior of impact factors on academic performance considering the observed clusters. The analysis of the model's predictive capacity was also discussed, as well as considerations to direct future work.

This full research paper expands on the results and discussions from a case study conducted within a Brazilian EdTech company. It focuses on the accuracy of AI-based speech recognition models for automatic transcription of video lectures, aiming to improve the accessibility of Learning Objects (LOs), especially the audible ones. Previous work assessed the quality of automatic transcriptions in English, Portuguese, and Spanish from Speech- To- Text (STT) services provided by major market players (Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft, and OpenAI), using a quantitative approach based on lexical similarity algorithms. Statistically significant differences were identified between the providers and languages evaluated, indicating that STT service can affect the quality of audible OAs enriched with transcriptions or subtitles. This study introduces a new dimension of analysis by incorporating the perceptions of technology students on the accuracy of automatic transcriptions, gathered through an anonymous survey with 56 participants. The survey captured mainly quantitative data using a Likert scale on the accuracy of transcriptions. To provide a comprehensive analysis, this study employs a data triangulation approach, integrating (1) quantitative data from lexical similarity methods, (2) quantitative data from the survey, and (3) findings from a complementary review of the literature. The qualitative analysis, applying Grounded Theory principles to both the survey data and the bibliographic review, enables the exploration of emerging themes and enriches the understanding of factors influencing the quality of automatic transcriptions. This effort underscores the importance of a user-centered perspective and demonstrates the complexity of evaluating STT technologies, pointing to the necessity for future research that combines quantitative and qualitative methods. Additionally, it highlights the relevance of STT in various educational contexts and the need to align such technologies with principles of accessibility and inclusion. By aiming to create more accessible LOs, this work emphasizes the need to develop solutions that ensure inclusion and equity in educational access, reflecting a concerted effort to meet the diverse needs of learners and promote a more welcoming and inclusive learning environment.

This research paper describes a controlled quasi-experiment conducted with 24 distance-learning undergraduate students on teaching introduction concepts of Experimentation in Software Engineering (ESE) with different materials and procedures. The use of experimentation is a de facto way of obtaining data to statistically answer assumptions or concerns, especially in recent decades in the Software Engineering area. The ESE teaching-learning process in undergraduate and graduate programs still lacks evidence of its effective contribution. For instance, no study explores different ways of giving classes, such as traditional in-person or distance education (online). Our focus in this research is answering the following research question: “Is there any difference in applying three different sets of materials in teaching and learning introduction concepts of experimentation in Software Engineering for distance-learning undergraduate students?”. We used three different combinations of materials during learning (i.e., only slides, only recorded class, and both). We conducted activities with such materials in a higher education institution. Despite being incipient, the results demonstrate that in each group/profile of enrolled students, the teaching-learning process mediated by hybrid content (i.e., both slides and recorded classes) had no significant difference concerning students who studied only with recorded classes or slides. The results were obtained using descriptive statistics and inferential (hypothesis) tests. Our contributions here offer evidence-based statistical analysis for ESE education through distance learning, thereby enriching current academic research regarding distance education and facilitating knowledge dissemination in the field.

This paper presents a systematic review of the use of multilevel models for the analysis and prediction of school dropout. Several studies were carried out in this theme, but there are still challenges to be addressed. There are many different applications of multilevel modeling for school dropouts, which makes it difficult to synthesize the main contributions and advances in the area. The lack of a holistic view makes it difficult to understand the main advances and research gaps. To shed some light on this scenario, this literature review covered the most investigated factors at the student and school levels, such as demographic, socioeconomic, family background, and student’s academic performance variables; the main educational environments in which multilevel models were used for the analysis or prediction of school dropout, such as high school/secondary education, and higher education; and the main multilevel models used in these researches, such as the multilevel logistic regression, and the multilevel linear regression. In addition, we also investigated whether the authors used multivariate exploratory techniques or other artificial intelligence techniques to support the fitting and interpretation of the modeling process.

High schools and undergraduate courses present several problems regarding teaching programming. In this perspective, several factors have led to the development of tools to support programming disciplines, including: (i) the persistent problems in teaching programming worldwide, (ii) the inclusion of computational thinking and programming practices in the new Basic Education Curriculum in Brazil, (iii) the need for a lightweight virtual tool that can be freely shared and used, as many available tools charge fees, and (iv) the practical application of knowledge by licentiate degree students in Computer Science, encompassing both learning theories and software development, through the evaluation of the tool. This research aims to develop and evaluate a lightweight web tool through a case study in the context of supporting feedback for programming activities in Brazilian higher education. Additionally, the study investigates whether the feedback is considered the main problem for first-year students in computer courses from the perspective of licentiate computer science students and whether their participation in the case study can improve their skills and abilities in analyzing educational tools. A total of 16 students and three professors from four disciplines participated in the case study, with an online questionnaire as the main instrument for data collection. The analysis was performed considering the collected responses' quantitative and qualitative aspects. We obtained quantitative responses through a Likert scale, while qualitative aspects were analyzed using the Discourse Unveiling Method (UDUM). Positive aspects were identified for both professors and students, providing initial evidence of the tool's potential. Moreover, the study highlighted important feedback from undergraduate Computer Science students, which provides an opportunity to apply their knowledge technically.

This paper presents an investigation of an Experi-ential Learning approach aiming to: (i) provide an experience which bring students closer to practice by means of a real project; and (ii) foster soft skills. Our experience took place in a Software Engineering graduate course, delivered remotely. This work and its results are primarily to be viewed as a feasibility study, although the findings provide interesting results. Active strategies, especially the Experiential Learning, can be a useful approach to provide an experience closer to real-world software industry practices, besides to foster soft skills in the students (particularly Communication, Teamwork, Leadership and Adaptability and Flexibility).

Open educational resources (OER) repositories are essential for the Open Education practices. However, they usually only serve as a place to store OER in file formats that make modifications and remixes difficult. In this context, this work presents “aquare!a”, a dynamic repository which aims to enable the creation and sharing of OER in open and free HTML format in order to enhance primary and secondary education. Its main contribution is to give the user the flexibility to create, to share, to reuse, to revise and to remix OER under appropriate open licenses in just one place. Additional contributions are the license control, which assists the users to learn about open licenses and use them correctly, and a communication interface to interoperate with other systems, which widens the openness of the repository. A validation study demonstrated that “aquare!a” is: (a) an easy-to-use tool, a key feature to support open practices among users with no solid computer skills and to leverage the achievement of tasks by using a software application; (b) a potential educational tool to disseminate open culture among undergraduate students and enhance their writing and creative skills.

This research presents a catalog of pedagogical practices, theories/methods, and teaching procedures for the elderly. Aging is a natural part of life and is a process of progressive and differential degradation. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the urgency of care for the elderly public. During the lockdown period, this audience’s use of digital technologies grew, especially mobile devices. Despite the increase in the use of these devices, we see that the apps have not been developed considering the particular characteristics of the elderly, since aging can bring challenges and changes related to physical, sensory, perceptual, or cognitive issues. In the context of m-learning apps, it becomes even more urgent to consider pedagogical and accessibility aspects for this audience through specific guidelines for this domain. However, to propose such a guideline, it is necessary to know to define the scope and understand the user’s context. Focusing on this context, we could mention AGE Guidelines - a set of m-learning pedagogical and accessibility guidelines for the elderly. This paper aims to discuss some aspects of the experimental and description phases to develop such guidelines: the establishment of a catalog of pedagogical practices, theories/methods, and teaching procedures. To create this catalog, six interviews with teachers specialized in the education of the elderly were carried out. Based on Bardin’s method, the interviews were recorded and transcribed for later analysis. As a contribution, we expect that the presented catalog will help construct new educational artifacts, including pedagogical practices, theories/methods, and teaching procedures that effectively enable the teaching and learning process of the elderly in practice.

This research full paper presents a systematic mapping on quality attributes and quality models for Open Educational Resources (OER). The OER movement is part of a greater trend towards openness in education. They are represented by teaching materials that are available at no cost to the community to retain, reuse, review, remix, and redistribute. Given the wide availability of OER, how can one guarantee its quality? Motivated by this issue, some initiatives have proposed quality attributes or quality models to design, evaluate, and improve the quality of OER. However, to the best of our knowledge, a complete and detailed overview of how quality is being treated for OER is lacking. Besides, the literature lacks consensus on which quality attributes and quality models are the most relevant and which ones could be more suitable for OER. Also, there is an absence of a comprehensive analysis of the approaches used to establish quality attributes for OER. For this purpose, we carried out a systematic mapping addressing the following research questions: i) what are the quality models or quality attributes proposed for OER?; ii) how have these quality models or quality attributes been established for OER?; iii) how have quality models or quality attributes for OER been evaluated?. We identified quality models for different OER contexts, such as OCW and MOOC, in addition to quality attributes that are important for OER openness characteristics (i.e., retain, reuse, remix, revise, and redistribute). In order to contribute to the community, we presented discussions and highlighted some points and directions for future research.

The selection of variables in a given experiment is crucial, since it is the theoretical foundation that guides how data should be collected and analyzed. However, selecting variables is an intricate activity, especially considering areas such as Software Engineering and Education, whose studies should also consider human-related variables in the design. In this scenario, we aim to investigate how a support mechanism helps in the variables selection activity of the experiment process. To do so, we conducted a preliminary study on the use of an experimental framework composed of a catalog of variables. We explored the domain of the integration of software testing into programming education. Participants were divided into two groups (ad hoc and framework support) and asked to select variables for a given experiment goal. We analyzed the results by identifying threats to validity in their experimental design drafts. Results show a significant number of threats of type inadequate explication of constructs for both groups. Nonetheless, the framework helped to increase the clarity of concepts selected as variables. The cause of most raised threats, even with the framework support, was an inaccuracy in selecting the values of such variables (i.e. treatments and fixed values).

Context: Open Educational Resources (OERs) are free and open materials to support teaching and learning. Generally, OERs are stored in digital repositories and use metadata to describe their content. Because of factors such as dissemination and use of resources, the OER repository collections are increasing rapidly, along with your metadata. However, the metadata is not yet a correctly and frequently used by users, generating several problems finding and retrieving OER. Objective: Considering this scenario, we intend to identify how metadata are being used in the context of OER and what are its implications for finding resources in OER repositories. Method: For this, we conducted an exploratory study across a robust data set composed of 1,243,938 metadata. This data set was build with web crawlers that automatically extracted and organized the data into spreadsheets. Results: Through our research, we identified the main challenges of metadata used in OER context, the impact in the search engines, and identified the key standards and values adopted. Conclusion: Among the most common issues detected we highlight the problem of standardization of metadata values, the lack of presentation of relevant data, the low utilization of metadata during retrieve operation by search engines.

This full research paper is concerned with structuring educational content for mobile learning. Mobile devices are present in various areas of society and, in the educational context, the available resources of mobility and connectivity have contributed to their growing adoption. However, the generation of educational content for mobile devices requires special attention to issues such as: (i) restrictions on mobile devices; and (ii) complexity of developing mobile applications, related to the variety of existing platforms. This paper presents Educom.ml, which is a modeling approach for mobile educational content supported by MDE (Model-Driven Engineering) and IMA-CID (Integrated Modeling Approach - Conceptual, Instructional, Di-dactic). Educom.ml proposes a modeling approach that involves creating models that structure educational content and models that model mobile platforms. In this context, MDE minimizes the complexity of developing cross-platform applications and the automatic generation of educational content. Meanwhile, IMA-CID is responsible for structuring and organizing educational content. To illustrate our ideas, a mobile app was generated based on modeling educational content in the field of elementary mathematics.

This Research Full Paper presents an exploratory study on the availability of open educational resources (OERs) to support the teaching and learning of programming. Currently, programming is considered a fundamental course in many undergraduate programs. Moreover, many countries are teaching children and young people how to program, considering this as an essential skill in the future. However, students report many difficulties when they are learning to program due to limitations of abstraction/logic, syntax, structure, among others. Similarly, teachers also argue that teaching programming is an arduous task due to the preparation of presentations, correction of exercises and creation of projects. Objective: Given this scenario, our objective was analyze the availability of OERs - open materials that present different contents and formats distributed by internet - and their support for programming students and teachers. Method: Aiming to reach the aforementioned objective, we conducted an exploratory study among 3,990 OERs, using computational processing and descriptive statistic. Results: We analyzed the OER descriptions and compared them with the current programming challenges. Also, we investigated aspects of the availability of these materials. Conclusion: There are several OER available that can support teaching and learning of programming. However, to enhancing their dissemination, we must facilitate its discovery, reuse and sharing.

Context: The teaching and learning process has become essential for the evolution of the society as a whole. However, there are still major challenges for achieving the global goals of education, especially if we consider the portion of the population with some type of physical disability. In this context, according to World Federation of the Deaf (WFD), deaf children face many difficulties in education due to inappropriate learning environments. Also, this problem is compounded by the lack of consistency worldwide in the provision of sign language interpreting and translation. Motivation: However, the advent of technology is having a significant impact on the way that sign language interpreters and translators work. In this sense, the union between Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and modern pedagogical practices can be the genesis for the creation of a global learning environment based on sign languages. Objective: In this scenario, this work aims to: (i) obtain an overview of the areas of Software Engineering and their technological solutions in the fields of teaching and learning sign languages; (ii) identify the main educational topics; and (iii) the most investigated sign languages. Method: Therefore, we conduct a Systematic Mapping (SM) with a focus on technologies applied in the teaching and learning of sign languages. Results: We selected 139 primary studies, using a search approach that includes both manual and automated searches, in addition to providing quality criteria for evaluating results. Thereby, we obtained pertinent information about the implemented solutions, in addition to the educational topics and sign languages covered. Conclusions: We conclude that technologies have already contributed to the teaching and learning of sign languages. In this context, different approaches were found, from solutions on traditional platforms (Web, Mobile and Desktop) to the use of Augmented Reality (AR) in smart glasses. However, no solution aims to enable communication between different sign languages, which shows a limitation that can motivate even more innovative research.

This research-to-practice full paper presents an investigation on how to develop soft skills for project management using PBL in the context of undergraduate degree programs of higher education in computing. Projects are a key way to create value and benefits in organizations and the project manager plays a critical role in the leadership of a project team in order to achieve the project's objectives. In order to fulfill this role, the project manager must have some technical and soft skills. In a related perspective, there are several studies concerned with the comparison between what is covered by Computer Science Education and what are the software industry needs. Such studies point out in which areas graduates most frequently do not meet industry expectations, including technical skills and also soft skills. In this context, among the several approaches that have been proposed and applied to improve Computer Science Education, we highlight Project Based Learning (PBL). Aiming to address the lack of approaches focused on the development of soft skills in technology students, in this paper we discuss the conduction of a case study in Information Systems courses, adopting the PBL approach. In this case study, a real project was developed by the students, and soft skills were evaluated before and after performing the project, in order to verify if the PBL approach had any impact on their development. As a result, it was possible to identify improvements in the development of six out of the seven skills assessed, which indicates a satisfactory result for our study.

The process that unifies theoretical techniques from academia with the practical expertise from industry has been considered an interesting approach to software development, since it can increase quality, reduce costs and allow a high level of reuse. In this perspective, we have worked on the integration of industry practices with academic research for evolving a software product line (SPL) for the development of mobile applications in the context of the teaching of programming. The first version of the proposed SPL was evaluated in a previous study and, as a result, we noticed a lack of integration of practitioners in the performed evaluation. Thereby, this work aims at investigating if the expertise of software industry practitioners can somehow improve the SPL proposed and, additionally, identifying which strategies can be adopted to complement the academic theories. Based on this goal we discuss: (i) the evolution of the SPL conceptual architecture under an industry practitioners' perspective; (ii) the proposed improvements based on the industry professionals' point of view; (iii) the representation of the improved SPL architecture adopting an SPL modeling approach; and (iv) the adoption of software industry strategies in the SPL engineering sub-processes, based on quickly development process in small development companies.

This research full paper presents an investigation on pedagogical practices and educational methods used by professionals who work in the teaching of the elderly. The study of the ageing process is one of the most significant research trends of the 21st century and represents new social, educational and computational challenges. Increased life expectancy and the number of elderly elevate the heterogeneity in the segment, beyond the age. This research focuses on education and mobile learning (m-learning) application. Considering the elderly audience, it is necessary to develop m-learning apps based on accessibility and pedagogical proposals, since the elderly may have their physical and cognitive abilities compromised due to age. Currently, there are consolidated accessibility guidelines for software development. However, these guidelines do not regard cognitive, language and learning disabilities. These points are necessary for the process of developing m-learning applications, especially those specific to the elderly user. Thus, this paper aims to present the results of a survey applied with 33 professionals (teachers, pedagogues, gerontologists and others) involved in the education of the elderly. Issues involving teaching practices for the elderly, content preparation, interactivity, and motivation are addressed. This study is part of a larger project aimed to contribute to the development of accessibility and pedagogical guidelines that aim to assist in the process of developing m-learning applications focused on the elderly.

In this research full paper we present a set of requirements for an m-learning application for the elderly. Currently, the elderly population has been growing considerably. This fact leads to the country and society adapt and create new opportunities for this audience, since they can present changes and challenges of aging. One of this challenges involves the educational area. Education can take place formally or informally, with face-to-face or distance classes and, in this context, emerges the concept of mobile learning (or m-learning). This modality of learning has generated great expectations for educators and learners, since it has benefits related to the flexibility of learning, especially regarding the adaptation with respect to space and time of use. Based on this potential for flexibility and adaptation, one of the main goals of m-learning is to democratize access to education. Thus, m-learning applications must be adequate and structured to serve the general population, including the elderly. Considering this audience, it is necessary to develop accessible and pedagogically appropriate m-learning applications, since these users may have different skills in comparison with younger students. Elderly people may have their physical, sensory, perception and cognitive abilities compromised due to the aging process and, therefore, m-learning applications must be developed based on these needs. In this paper we present the requirements elicitation process for a m-learning app, focused on elderly users. The requirements were created based on works that involve eliciting requirements for m-learning in general, pedagogical pattern language for this type of domain and pedagogical and accessibility guidelines for m-learning app focused on the elderly. At the very end, such requirements will support the development of a crossword mobile application to the elderly, which should contribute to the learning process of such audience.

Previous studies mention that students have a hard time learning introductory programming courses. Several studies have already been conducted to understand the problems concerning programming learning. Some investigations managed to classify the problems, they are: some students are unable to obtain a concrete understanding computer programming concepts; some students are not able to apply programming concepts in the construction of programs; some students have no motivation to learn the subject; some students cannot understand the programs already implemented, and some have difficulties in factoring and refactoring programs. To support the learning of these courses, researchers in the field have established teaching support mechanisms, which can be used by teachers when teaching content or by students to train and get prepare for assessments. In particular, some studies are proposing open educational resources. However, even if there is a strong interest in establishing these open resources, the existing educational resources do not consider the difficulties that the students may have in these courses (i.e., resources that increase students' motivation but do not support students who have difficulties learning programming concepts). Still, it is necessary to consider the previous knowledge that each student may have when starting a course. Some students may have some programming knowledge, while others may not. It is also necessary to consider that students have their preferences for learning materials when they are studying (i.e., some prefer video lessons, while others prefer slides). In this sense, this paper addresses the establishment and feasibility study of an open educational resource dedicated to teaching programming, which is specialized for students who have difficulties in learning and applying concepts, understanding programs, factoring and refactoring their programs and/or do not have the motivation to program. This open educational resource was planned considering some definitions related to the students' particularities (i.e., previous knowledge, preferences for teaching materials and programming difficulties), with the function of identifying them and adapting to these particularities. We describe how we have developed the educational resource, how we plan and conduct preliminary evaluations and, in the end, we raise directions for next steps.

Conversational agents have been established to support educational practices, solving students' questions, recommending teaching materials, increasing the motivation of students who have little interest in certain content, among others. Although many studies are discussing the establishing of conversational agents, there is no global understanding of what has been investigated in this area. There are some previous secondary studies that have attempted to map the conversational agents used for educational purposes (i.e., pedagogical conversational agents). However, these studies are limited to include primary studies published in specific sets of conferences and journals. Therefore, an overview of the current state of the art associated with pedagogical conversational agents has not been produced yet. This research paper aims to contribute to the theme, through the presentation of planning, conduction, and results analysis of a systematic mapping on pedagogical conversational agents. We address the following questions: (i) in which areas have conversation agents been investigated?; (ii) at which education levels are conversational agents used?; (iii) which mechanisms do conversational agents use to interact with students?. We also present some discussions about research opportunities that can be explored in future works. This study aims to contribute to the topic of pedagogical conversational agents, helping researchers to have a deeper understanding of what has already been done and to guide their research to subjects not explored yet.

This Research Full Paper presents an overview of the practices that have been used to integrate software testing into programming education. Introductory programming courses compose the core of several undergraduate programs, since programming is a crucial technical skill for professionals in many areas. Given the subject importance, researchers have been conducting several studies to investigate teaching approaches that can help overcoming students' learning difficulties. In particular, studies on introducing software testing into this context present evidence that testing practices can improve students' programming performance and habits. There are many teaching approaches in programming education, which involve different choices of programming paradigm and language, support tools and development practices, such as version control. Likewise, the integration of software testing into such diverse context can also happen in many different ways. Therefore, investigating the ways to teach programming and testing at the same time can help instructors with informed choices. In this sense, we identified teaching practices that have been adopted to integrate software testing into programming education. To do so, we further analyzed a subgroup of 195 papers that returned in our systematic mapping on this research domain. We selected papers describing empirical studies (e.g. survey, qualitative studies, experiments, case studies and experience reports), since this kind of study involves applying a given teaching practice in order to collect evidence or report the observed experience. Overall, our results shed light on how the integration of software testing has been done in different classroom contexts of programming education. We discuss the practices in terms of their application context (i.e. the course), how testing was introduced in theory and practice, and the adopted support tools. We also discuss an important gap regarding the lack of instruction in testing concepts, even when students are responsible to write their own tests.

This Research Full Paper reinforces that Software Testing can be a helpful practice to students while working on programming assignments. Considering Software Testing as a process, the testing activity is composed by a sequence of steps. When students write and submit their own test cases, they are responsible for the test design, automation, execution, and evaluation. Otherwise, instructors can provide ready-made test suites, needing only to execute it and evaluate it. In this scenario, we conducted an experimental study to investigate how the programming performance of students from the Computer Science area is affected when Software Testing is integrated with programming. We proposed three different approaches: (i) ad hoc programming; (ii) programming and testing by writing the test suite; and (iii) programming and testing with a readymade test suite. We assessed students' programs in terms of correctness, measured by the pass rate of the reference test suite. Results indicate that students had a lower performance with ad hoc programming in comparison with both approaches involving Software Testing. On the other hand, using ready-made test cases raised better results than when students had to write their own test cases. We also assessed students' attitudes towards testing by means of a survey.

This research full paper presents an investigation on how project management education is taught in undergraduate degree programs of higher education in computing. Projects are a key way to create value and benefits in organizations. In today's business environment, organizational leaders need to be able to manage with tighter budgets, shorter timelines, scarcity of resources, and rapidly changing technology. Software project management (SPM) encompasses the knowledge, techniques and tools necessary to manage the development of software products, being one of the most relevant units in the area of software engineering that should be addressed in computing programs. Teaching students effectively any subject is a challenging endeavor by itself. A big issue that may discourage graduate and undergraduate students is the disassociation between theory and practice. Thus, investigating SPM Education is relevant, especially in terms of improving SPM courses. In this paper we investigated the panorama of SPM Education in undergraduate degree programs of higher education in Computing. We surveyed educators who teach or taught software project management to gather information from the academia point of view. In general, the results indicated that SPM is being taught in different contexts in computing undergraduate degree programs. However, despite the efforts expended, there is still a lot to do for graduates to meet industry expectations. There is a need to change paradigms, moving from the traditional approach to teaching approaches that bring students closer to the challenges they will find in the software industry.

This Research-to-Practice Full Paper is concerned with the development of u-learning environments, which is a very complicated task due to, among other factors, the complexity in managing large amounts of context information and adapting content to different users and contexts. Possible solutions to overcome the challenges and provide support for the development of context-aware systems is the use of reference architectures (RA) and service-oriented architectures (SOA). RA is a software architecture that can be applied to build architectures of specific domain systems, supporting the development of system families. SOA is an architectural style that provides functionalities encapsulated in Web services, which make it easier the integration of dynamic adaptive behavior into the applications. Therefore, this paper presents oriented RA to assist the development of context-aware ubiquitous learning environments, characterized by their ability to obtain and use information from the users' context. This enables the software to adapt the behavior, services or didactic resources, in accordance with the context where learning is taking place (e.g., location, time, student preference, etc.). The presented RA, named MOA, can be instantiated to develop specific context-aware learning environments. MOA was built based on ProSA-RA, which is a RA development process, and evaluated using the checklist technique. Also, a prototype was built to illustrate MOA instantiation. The evaluation served to demonstrate the validity of MOA, both at a practical level (applicability) and in meeting the quality requirements stipulated for RA.

Traditionally, students learn about software testing during intermediate or advanced computing courses. However, it is widely advocated that testing should be addressed beginning in introductory programming courses. In this context, testing practices can help students think more critically while working on programming assignments. At the same time, students can develop testing skills throughout the computing curriculum. Considering this scenario, we conducted a systematic mapping of the literature about software testing in introductory programming courses, resulting in 293 selected papers. We mapped the papers to categories with respect to their investigated topic (curriculum, teaching methods, programming assignments, programming process, tools, program/test quality, concept understanding, and students' perceptions and behaviors) and evaluation method (literature review, exploratory study, descriptive/persuasive study, survey, qualitative study, experimental and experience report). We also identified the benefits and drawbacks of this teaching approach, as pointed out in the selected papers. The goal is to provide an overview of research performed in the area, highlighting gaps that should be further investigated.

Research to Practice Full Paper) Even though web programming has become a dominant programming model, it still seems underrepresented as a curriculum topic within many computing programs. Such issue in web development education is not recent and was evidenced in several studies. In a massive, open, and online context, in turn, another issue is the difficulty faced by instructors when designing competency-based activities to support the development of skills demanded by the industry, such as the use of agile practices to encourage simple, more lightweight, and faster software development. Such practices include pair-programming; sharing, discussing, and giving feedback; iterative and incremental development, among others. Believing that web development education needs further investigation, we developed a MOOC about web development that combines Bootstrap and CodeIgniter together with Agile Practices, in order to support lifelong learning in such context. Project-Based Learning was the main active learning strategy used to guide activities in the platform. The course design was based on the Learning Design Framework for MOOCs (LDF4MOOCs), an approach to design for learning that brings together important features and principles in order to provide a deeper understanding of MOOCs in the Software Engineering area and related subjects. In this paper, besides to describe a case study about a web development-based MOOC, we also discuss our findings by evidencing that there are still several technological and pedagogical challenges that need to be addressed so as to enhance the MOOCs learning experience for web development education.

This Research Full Paper presents a catalog of pedagogical patterns for learning applications. Patterns and pattern languages are mechanisms to describe best practices and good designs to capture experience in a way that it is possible for others to reuse such experience. Similarly, pedagogical patterns try to capture expert knowledge on the practice of teaching and learning. Actually, issues related to teaching and learning have been increasingly discussed and studied lately, particularly regarding the development and delivery of computational learning applications. In this scenario, the existing learning applications, despite having several benefits and facilities, present problems and challenges that still need to be better investigated. Therefore, pedagogical patterns can be a tool to assist in the design of new teaching and learning applications as well as to the improvement of the existing ones. Motivated by this scenario, we present a catalog of pedagogical patterns established from the results of a systematic mapping conducted in this domain. Such catalog encompasses the patterns available in the literature and can be used as input for the design of learning applications. This study aimed at the identification of studies showing the use of pedagogical patterns as well as the problems solved when using these patterns. The results were extracted from 51 scientific studies, presenting 312 different pedagogical patterns; the set of retrieved patterns provided input to the creation of a pedagogical pattern language.

This Research to Practice Full Paper presents an empirical investigation of a pedagogical pattern language for mobile learning apps. Mobile learning (m-learning) applications can provide several benefits to learners. However, there are still several problems to be further investigated, such as the challenge to keep the learner motivated while using the application during educational activities. The application design can help to solve this kind of problems. There is a need to understand such problems in the pedagogical level and then properly eliciting requirements that would address those problems. Pedagogical patterns try to capture expert knowledge regarding the practice of teaching and learning in a way that it is possible for others to reuse this experience. Therefore, pedagogical patterns can be a tool to assist in the design of new m-learning applications as well as to the improvement of the existing ones. Aiming to bridge this gap, a pedagogical pattern language entitled MLearning-PL has been proposed to guide the requirements elicitation of m-learning applications projects. We conducted an empirical investigation in order to evaluate the proposed pattern language by means of a experimental study, whose main purpose was to evaluate the solutions provided using MLearning-PL in comparison to an ad hoc approach. A feedback questionnaire was also applied to understand the participants' perceptions about MLearning-PL on its clearness and completeness. The obtained results provided preliminary evidences of the applicability, effectiveness and efficiency of MLearning-PL.

Teaching of programming disciplines is mandatory in several CS courses worldwide. However, this domain still faces limitations and challenges. While these limitations continue to be a reality in classrooms, mobile devices have earned more and more users and, as a consequence, the development of mobile learning applications is rapidly growing as well. Based on the limitations in such domain, on the increasing popularity of mobile devices and on their capability to support the teaching and learning processes through their hardware specificities, in this paper we propose a catalog of gestures for mobile learning applications to be adopted in the teaching of programming. The proposed catalog also provides a way to investigate if mobile devices may motivate students to learning to programming. Four steps were conducted in this work. Firstly, primary studies that propose surface gestures interfaces were identified. Secondly, a list of main commands and programming codes were analyzed and selected to be represented by graphical gestures. Thirdly, the returned primary studies were used to propose a catalog of gestures for those code structures. With two or three possible gestures for each code structure, an evaluation to identify which of those gestures were preferred among undergraduate students was conducted. Based on the results of 69 participants, the final catalog was defined. Finally, in a fourth moment, a gesture recognition application tool was used to perform a usability evaluation. Preliminary evidences suggested the catalog can adequately support m-learning applications for the teaching of programming. Furthermore, the catalog pointed out a positive feedback that can bring a more attractive way for coding, when considered the adoption of mobile devices' small keyboards.

This Research Full Paper presents a systematic mapping that aims to characterize the current scenario of mobile application development considering accessibility issues for elderly people. Currently, the use of mobile devices has been growing exponentially, giving way to new ways of relating, working, performing daily tasks and learning. In this context, mobile learning has emerged seeking to democratize access to knowledge for different audiences. To achieve this democratization, it is necessary to develop mobile learning applications considering accessibility issues, in order to reduce barriers that might exist. Due to the increase of the life expectancy, such applications must also be accessible for elderly users. In this context, we conducted a systematic mapping that aims to characterize the current scenario of mobile application development considering accessibility issues for older people. The idea is that the results help us to establish a set of accessibility guidelines to assist in the process of developing and evaluating mobile learning applications for senior users. To achieve the main objective, 32 studies were considered to extract the data. The results obtained are relevant to highlight the current panorama of the area, as well as to present discussions about the need for studies related to the development of accessible mobile applications.

This research full paper presents a study on graduates' knowledge gaps in software testing according to industry needs. Several studies indicate that students graduate from computing programs with a knowledge gap in software testing. In this sense, we aimed to investigate in details this broader testing gap, by considering gaps in the level of testing topics. We conducted a survey with Brazilian practitioners in order to collect data (N=90). For each testing topic, knowledge gaps were calculated as the difference between what respondents' learned/practiced in undergraduate courses and what they actually applied in industry after graduating. Results provide evidence on points that could be improved in software testing education. Firstly, for all testing topics there was a negative gap on practice activities. This means that students could benefit from more testing assignments throughout the curriculum. Regarding gaps in concepts, some testing topics presented negative gaps (such as test in web applications) and others positive (such as test in aspect oriented software and mutation analysis). Therefore, results suggest that it is possible to counterbalance them in order to reduce the existing gaps. We also present respondents' opinions about their experience in software testing education and industry practices.

Software Engineering (SE) is an important topic to be taught in Computer Science courses. However, teaching of theoretical concepts with no link to their practical applications or no examples in the student's context may discourage learning, justifying why teaching and learning are great challenges of education in universities. In attempt to bridge such gap, several approaches have been proposed and applied to improve teaching and learning SE such as project based learning (PBL), a well-known approach already applied to teach SE. Nevertheless, there's a lack of understanding about how to better apply PBL and how to take advantage of this approach, for future use. There is also a lack of experience report describing how to use, its challenges and difficulties, what could be hampering to widely adopt it. We present our experience applying a PBL approach combined with project management to create an environment considering aspects such as dealing with managers and real stakeholders. The goal is to bring students closer to the reality of developing a software project in the business context. Our experience indicates positive results on the adoption of a PBL approach. In general, students were enthusiastic and positive about the use of this approach, the presence of a manager and the importance of using real-world problems with real stakeholders.

Software testing can be very helpful to students if adopted in programming assignments throughout the Computer Science curriculum. Many testing practices involve students writing their own test cases. This approach implies that students are responsible for the test design task while performing the test activity. On the other hand, some testing practices follow the opposite approach of providing ready-made test cases, so students only need to execute and evaluate test results for their solution code. In this paper, we investigated the effect of test design in student programming performance. We conducted an experiment comparing two different testing approaches during programming assignments: student-written and instructor-provided test cases. We also assessed students' perceptions of this subject by means of a survey. Results suggest that when students are responsible for test design, i.e. when they write their own test cases, they perform better in programming assignments.

Despite the popularity of MOOCs in providing opportunities for socialization, collaboration, and professional improvement, there has been little research exploring them in the context of Software Engineering Education (SEE). The purpose of this study is to provide a better understanding of practices and challenges when developing academic software engineering MOOCs. To this end, we research (i) how MOOCs in SEE are designed and (ii) what learning design considerations educators and learning designers have when developing SEE-related MOOCs. To address the first research question, a systematic mapping is performed to outline the current landscape. The second research question is answered by analyzing and reflecting on practical experiences acquired during the design of a MOOC on Agile Software Development. The design of the course was based on the Pedagogical Design Pattern Framework for MOOCs, an approach to design for learning that was defined in our previous studies. For this course, two environments were considered: (a) course-time on the Tim Tec MOOC platform for deeper engagement with active learning activities, such as Project-based learning; (b) a Facebook group as a social and collaborative learning space, including scenarios based on problem-based learning to activate prior knowledge. Some of the pedagogical strategies adopted to motivate self-regulated learning included self-introduction video, diary, diagnostic self-assessments, development of small projects alone and in pairs. Our findings provide evidence that there are still several technological and pedagogical challenges that need to be addressed so as to enhance the MOOCs learning experience for SEE. Technological issues identified include the development of tools and educational games, which should be integrated into MOOCs, and the use of learning analytics to support motivation, user experience, and more active learning in specific topics, such as Project Management, Agile Methods, and Requirements Engineering. In turn, the most significant and needed improvement to the pedagogical aspects is a re-thinking of the virtual moment in the MOOC platform so as to optimize it through activities that promote active learning and contextualized assessments.

Almost all college and university courses have integrated disciplines for the teaching of programming in their curricula. The importance of knowing “how to program” has contributed towards increasing private and public initiatives for the teaching of programming in different countries. Many of such initiatives include changes in the curriculum of primary and high schools, replacing disciplines by programming classes. Despite the increasing needs for the learning of programming, many limitations and problems as (i) learning to program, (ii) application of programming concepts, (iii) understanding of programs, (iv) process of refactoring and factoring programs, (v) students' motivation, and (vi) teachers' difficulties have been imposed on this domain. In this perspective, this paper presents a survey conducted with Brazilian teachers and learners, from private and public institutions, aiming at: (i) identifying the relevance of the international problems in Brazilian higher education, (ii) identifying the main solutions that have been adopted in programming disciplines and their limitations, including software solutions, and (iii) collecting problems in teaching of programming in learner's perspective. Based on the results of the survey, a set of main challenges to be solved for providing a better adoption of programming disciplines in Brazilian curricula are presented and discussed. The challenges are complemented with discussions about the economic and technological limitations of the country. Moreover, means to mitigate the problems presented in both scenarios, national and international, are discussed as well.

Several studies suggest that the teaching of software testing should begin as early as possible, since introductory programming courses. In this way, the teaching of both subjects, programming and testing, becomes an integrated teaching approach. Testing practices in this context can provide a timely feedback to students while they are still working on programming assignments and, as a result, increase the quality of their code. Besides, developing students' testing skills earlier is useful to improve their programming skills as well, since both kinds of skills are complementary. However, this integration is not straightforward, because lecture hours and the coverage of programming topics must remain the same, while testing concepts and practices are introduced. For this reason, when designing an educational approach to introduce testing practices to novice programmers, there is also the need to address potential difficulties faced by both students and instructors. Considering this scenario, this paper aims at identifying the challenges raised due to the integration of software testing into introductory programming courses. The goal is to provide support for instructors who intend to adopt the integrated approach. The challenges have been identified from the results of a systematic mapping we conducted of the literature in this domain. The main contribution of this paper refers to the establishment of a catalog of challenges faced to integrate software testing into introductory programming courses. We also discuss possible solutions to design courses using the integrated approach and point out challenges that have been scarcely addressed in the literature. Finally, we indicate directions that can be explored in future educational empirical studies in this context.

Mobile learning has emerged as a new and promising learning modality, providing more interactivity and flexibility to learners, tutors and teachers in carrying out educational activities and practices. However, in spite of the benefits, the existing applications still have several issues and challenges to be addressed, such as the quality evaluation of the resulting mobile learning applications. Aiming to bridge this gap, in our work we have defined a set of requirements for mobile learning applications, by means of a mobile learning catalog proposal, entitled ReqML-Catalog. The current catalog is an evolution of other previous versions with several improvements. It was firstly established from the results of systematic literature reviews previously conducted and also based on the knowledge of domain specialists. In order to improve and evolve the catalog, more domain specialists and already established models were considered aiming to standardize the terms used. In general, users were enthusiastic and positive about the ReqML-Catalog and its importance, indicating positive evidence on its use. The adoption of ReqML-Catalog can assist in the design and evaluation of mobile learning applications, definition of reliable software tests that show the applications' limitations and drawbacks and elaboration of requirements for the applications. Using ReqML-Catalog, it is also possible to compare different mobile learning applications, verifying which catalog items are included in each one.

Teach students how to program is the main goal of most introductory CS courses. In fact, programming is one of the basic skills a professional in CS should have. However, there are many difficulties students face when they are learning how to program and, consequently, it is common introductory programming courses have high dropout rates. The purpose of this paper is to identify and discuss the most common fixes students use to improve the correctness of their programs. The findings can be useful to help students to produce more correct programs and highlight issues about possible difficulties they are having. To do so, we used the BLACKBOX data collection, which stores the actions of the BLUEJ programming environment users. The main idea was to observe the modifications students did in their source codes that made a failed JUNIT test case become succeeded. The results suggest the majority of fixes students use in their source codes are related either to the change of expressions or to the restructuring of code, reflecting difficulties in logic and problem solving among students.

Software testing is a relevant activity to provide evidence of qualifty of software products. However, there is a lack of qualified professionals in this area. This can be caused due to difficulty in teaching software testing through approaches that use only theoretical classes and traditional tools. In addition, there is a lack of motivation due to the work environment and the strategies of allocation and responsibility of these professionals in development and testing teams. To mitigate these problems, approaches have been used to support software testing education, such as: educational games, integrated teaching of software testing with programming, educational modules, among others. The objective of this paper was to develop an educational game named Testing Game, addressing the following topics: functional testing, structural testing and mutation testing. To support the development of the Testing Game, we performed a systematic mapping aiming at selecting a game engine. To evaluate the efficiency of the game, we conducted a feasibility study to evaluate the quality regarding motivation, user experience and learning from the point of view of the students. We also evaluate the usability of the Testing Game. Approximately 85.64% of people who participated in the study assessed the quality of the game in a positive perspective regarding motivation, user experience and learning from the point of view of the students. Regarding the usability of the game, students identified minor problems. Through this work, we realize that the game Testing Game can constitute as a complementary resource to support software testing education.

The benefits of using assessment tools for programming assignments have been widely discussed in computing education. However, as both researchers and instructors are unaware of the characteristics of existing tools, they are either not used or are reimplemented. This paper presents the results of a study conducted to collect and evaluate evidence about tools that assist in the assessment of programming assignments. To achieve our goal, we performed a systematic literature review since it provides an objective procedure for identifying the quantity of existing research related to a research question. The results identified subjects in the development of new assessment tools that researchers could better investigate and characteristics of assessment tools that could help instructors make selections for their programming courses.

The decision-making process in the educational context has been widely investigated as an effective mechanism to support educators and administrators in distance and blended learning. Pattern discovery in data produced by Learning Management Systems (LMS) elicits important information about the educational process, especially when considering correlations between stakeholders interacting in different perspectives of the LMS like grades, access, forum or message communications. In this paper, we propose a data and metadata model for Learning Analytics applications using data from LMS. This model is LMS independent and supports Business Intelligence and Data Mining applications for decision-making in the educational context. Our model considers the use of historical data from LMS treated under three perspectives that can be analyzed individually or correlated. The model also allows analysis considering different stakeholders (student, educator, etc.) and levels of granularity (institution, department, course, discipline, etc.). In this sense, the proposed model allows consistent and correlated analysis of data from LMSs. As a result, our model effective collaborates with the educational process through an efficient decision-making.

Patterns and pattern languages are mechanisms to describe best practices and good designs to capture experience in a way that it is possible for others to reuse this experience. Similarly, pedagogical patterns try to capture expert knowledge regarding the practice of teaching and learning. Issues related to teaching and learning have been increasingly discussed and studied, particularly computational learning applications. In this scenario, the existing educational applications, despite having several benefits and facilities, present problems and challenges that need to be better investigated. Therefore, pedagogical patterns can be a tool to assist in the design of new teaching and learning applications as well as to the improvement of the existing ones. This study aims at the identification of studies showing the use of pedagogical patterns as well as the problems solved when using these patterns. To do so, we have conducted a systematic mapping in which 35 scientific studies presenting 109 pedagogical patterns were analyzed. The results are relevant to outline the current landscape of the area and they also highlight discussions that may guide future investigations on the topic.

The increasing adoption of ICT-based modalities to learn is a reality in several domains. However, the adoption of these modalities and their consequent benefits have not been properly exploited in domains such as the teaching of programming. This research aims at proposing a mobile learning requirements catalog capable of: (i) identify requirements to allow the development of mobile applications for teaching of programming with reuse-based Software Engineering approaches; and (ii) connect such requirements with educational theories and programming problems. The main goal is to create the necessary knowledge base to understand the domain engineering of this area. In order to initially evaluate our requirement catalog, a case study is briefly discussed. Positive evidences on the usefulness of the catalog have been achieved. In future work, the catalog will be included as part of the domain analysis phase in a reuse-based software engineering technique for the creation of m-learning applications for the teaching of programming.

Mobile learning has emerged as a new and promising learning modality, providing more interactivity and flexibility to learners, tutors and teachers in carrying out educational activities and practices. However, its adoption, still poses problems and challenges, such as the quality evaluation of the resulting learning applications. In this paper, we discuss the establishment of a method for evaluating the quality of mobile learning applications. The development of the method was based on a systematic review of quality characteristics of mobile learning applications, which resulted in a quality characteristics catalog for this type of application. The proposed quality method comprises: (i) a quality model, which establishes a well-defined set of criteria and requirements; (ii) metrics, i.e., the quality requirements are mapped into attributes that can be measured. To make the measurements was developed a checklist, which comprises 80 questions, classified into eight different groups responsible for the establishment of quality criteria; and (iii) judgment criteria, i.e., for each defined checklist answer a punctuation is assigned, allowing the question to receive a value characterizing its level of quality.. The method was applied in the evaluation of three mobile applications for English teaching: Duolingo, Wingua, and Rosetta Stone. In order to evaluate these three applications, they have been tested by a specialist in the software quality area and for each of the applications, the proposed checklist was answered. From the results obtained, we can conclude that the method proposed is adequate for evaluating the quality of mobile learning applications.

Open Educational Resources (OERs) have provided new perspectives for the construction, access and sharing of knowledge. While OERs can bring benefits to, and impact on education, there are still challenges to their widespread production and use. One of the challenges faced by developers (including educators and practitioners) of OERs has been how to produce quality and relevant learning materials, capable of being reused and adapted in different learning situations. In our work we propose and define an agile learning design method to support the design and creation of OERs. It is based on agile practices from software engineering and on practices of learning design from the OULDI project at the UK Open University. We illustrate our ideas with an experiment that validates the proposed method through its application in the design and creation of an OER in the software testing domain. The results obtained so far have shown that the method is feasible and effective for the design and creation of OERs.

Teaching of programming foundations has been subject of several investigations, because it is believed that the required activities can contribute to the development of students more able to solve problems and to adapt to any environment or situation. Some works have argued about the integration of Flipped Classroom and Problem-Based Learning in Computer Science courses to potentiate this kind of teaching, but fewer evidences that investigate the real application between these approaches were found. Thus, in order to enhance the Flipped Classroom in-class activities, this paper reports an experience to implement and apply Flipped Classroom and Problem-Based Learning approaches for a CS1 course. Additional concepts of programming contests, group formation and learning styles were also used. In general, the main findings suggest that the Flipped Classroom model, if well-planned and carefully designed, can benefit students. However, these initial benefits are more related to student's motivation and social behavior than those associated with grades and the effective learning. Results also indicate that PBL may be an adequate approach to enhance the face-to-face time in the inverted classroom.

The frequent advances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) represent an opportunity to rethink teaching and learning in the context of virtual education. In this perspective, MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) have been promoting research in the technological and educational areas, since they serve as an emerging and powerful knowledge-building platform for anyone, anytime and anywhere. However, limitations in the current development of MOOCs have required the search for strategies to support their personalization in order to enhance the users' learning and others skills, such as the ability to self-regulate and to work in a collaborative way, and not just to replicate the content already taught in the traditional classroom, through videos or other passive learning activities. Considering the need for changes in the MOOC's pedagogical model, this research aimed to investigate and promote a reflection about the possibility of using Flipped Classroom Teaching Model principles to design this type of virtual and massive environment. The paper starts with a description of MOOCs, Flipped Classroom and some related works used to support personalized learning in MOOCs. As a result of this investigation, we present some conceptual strategies for educators to design MOOCs from FC ideas and principles. We envisage that adaptation and incorporation of concepts of Flipped Classroom, already applied in face-to-face classroom, can also act as an effective intervention to support personalized learning in MOOCs, helping students to take the active role in their own process acquisition of skills and knowledge construction.

The teaching and learning process of memory hierarchy is a not simple task. Many topics studied in theory may discourage learning due to its complexity. Resources have been developed to improve learning experiences, and learning objects are resources worth taking into account. This paper presents a learning object called Amnesia, which aims to facilitate the knowledge construction by simulating the structure, functionality and performance of the memory hierarchy in von Neumann architecture, specifically considering the cache memory module. Experimental studies demonstrated an increase in student learning when this object was used. In addition, the students' motivation to use learning objects also increased.

One of the activities associated with the Systematic Literature Review (SLR) process is the selection review of primary studies. When the researcher faces large volumes of primary studies to be analyzed, the process used to select studies can be arduous. In a previous experiment, we conducted a pilot test to compare the performance and accuracy of PhD students in conducting the selection review activity manually and using Visual Text Mining (VTM) techniques. The goal of this paper is to describe a replication study involving PhD and Master students. The replication study uses the same experimental design and materials of the original experiment. This study also aims to investigate whether the researcher's level of experience with conducting SLRs and research in general impacts the outcome of the primary study selection step of the SLR process. The replication results have confirmed the outcomes of the original experiment, i.e., VTM is promising and can improve the performance of the selection review of primary studies. We also observed that both accuracy and performance increase in function of the researcher's experience level in conducting SLRs. The use of VTM can indeed be beneficial during the selection review activity.

Smarty is a variability management approach for UML-based software product lines. It allows the identification, representation and tracing of variabilities in several UML models by means of an UML profile, the Smarty Profile, and a systematic process, the Smarty Process, with guidelines to provide user directions for applying such a profile. The existing UML-based variability management approaches in the literature, including Smarty, do not provide empirical evidence of their effectiveness, which is an essential requirement for technology transfer to industry. Therefore, this paper presents empirical evidence of the Smarty approach at class level. In addition, this paper demonstrates how Smarty has evolved, by means of its profile and guidelines, based on the obtained results of an experiment and the subjects feedback analysis.

This paper presents a customization of a learning design approach, OULDI, to designing and implementing Software Engineering courses. We propose an iterative process for the application of the OULDI views. This process starts with a course map view and follows a series of steps that ends with the evaluation of the design reflecting on the balance of the proposed activities. A case study is presented in which two institutions were involved in the design and implementation of an experimental software engineering course. Feedback from students, designers and lecturers was collected to support the validation of the design and implementation of the course. This showed that learning design, with the process proposed here, is a feasible approach for the design of software engineering courses.

The increasing presence of mobile devices in the society has motivated the use of these gadgets in several segments. This reality has contributed to the emergence of a new and innovative modality of learning - the mobile learning, or simply, m-learning. In short, mobile learning is based on the use of a set of specific mobile applications, which possesses similar features and specific characteristics according to the learning goals. In a different but related perspective, the emerging reuse technique of Software Product Line (SPL) allows mass customization and systematic derivation of products, such as mobile learning applications. Motivated by this scenario, we have worked on the establishment of M-SPLearning, a SPL to the mobile learning applications domain. M-SPLearning has been developed throughout a proactive adoption model, according to the basics of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). In this paper, we discuss the main aspects of the development of M-SPLearning, focusing on the implementation phase. Also, as a case study, we illustrate two products generated by the SPL proposed. The main results obtained suggest the practical feasibility of adopting M-SPLearning in the development of mobile learning applications.

The flipped classroom (FC) is an inverted version of the traditional learning model. An inversion between in-class and out-of-class activities exists: students learn new content by watching video lectures at home and exercises and group activities are performed in the classroom with teacher mentoring. In this paper, we describe an experiment that involves the use of digital technologies and tools that support the adoption of the flipped learning model. The participants of our experiment possessed an academic background; however, they also wanted to gain qualifications to teach in the Brazilian network of professional and technological education. The main findings from the experiment are related to the students' and instructors' attitudes toward the FC model and the type of tools that are employed in the experiment.

Even providing several benefits and facilities with regard to teaching and learning, the development of mobile learning environments present problems and challenges that must be investigated, especially with respect to the definition and adoption of architectural patterns. Indeed, most of these environments are built in an isolated way, having their own architectures and structures, which can negatively affect the capacity to standardization and support of architectural definition. Motivated by this scenario, in this paper we propose a service-oriented reference architecture for mobile learning environments. This architecture, named Ref-mLearning, aims at contributing to the development, reuse and interoperability of such environments, also allowing an increase in quality and cost reduction during their development. Ref-mLearning was developed according to a systematic process for the definition of reference architectures, and has been evaluated by means of a reference model for reference architectures. The preliminary results obtained suggest that Ref-mLearning is complete, presenting most of the relevant elements with respect to a reference architecture.

Learning to program computers and other devices are becoming an essential skill for students of high school and college. With this knowledge, young people can master the tools and technology that are part of everyday life. However, the traditional teaching, even in computer science courses, needs to break the barrier and use new approaches to motivate students to learn programming in an effective way. Participation in programming contests can promote student engagement. Although there are systems that support training for programming contests, they don't still promote student engagement and neither personalized and effective learning. This article aims to propose a recommendation system to support the student's performance in programming contests, with the goal of providing personalized learning. Problems are recommended according to the profile and student's skills. Therefore, we used ephemeral personalization, pull-delivery recommendation and content-based filtering approaches. Usability tests were conducted to validate the system. Finally, we present an application scenario where this system can be used how a pedagogical strategy for teaching programming.

Both software testing and programming foundations are difficult subjects to be taught. In case of programming, experiences have suggested that the mastering of testing can contribute to enhance the students' skills of comprehension and analysis. So, automatic test-based assessment systems have been developed and adopted in programming courses. Aiming at investigating the adoption of assessment systems also in the teaching of software testing, in this paper we discuss the use of ProgTest - a tool for the submission and automatic evaluation of programming assignments based on testing activities. As most of the automatic assessment systems, ProgTest offers benefits such as immediate feedback, objectivity and consistency of the evaluation, and a substantial time saving in the evaluation of the programming assignments. Additionally, since it performs the assessments based on testing activities, ProgTest also offers benefits for the teaching of software testing. Results from two experiments involving the use of ProgTest in testing courses are presented, providing evidences on the feasibility of its adoption to support the teaching of testing concepts and criteria.

Open Educational Resources (OERs) have been emerged as an important mechanism for democratization of access to education. In fact, the free and open distribution of these resources contributes with the dissemination of knowledge and facilitates the access to information, benefiting the society as a whole. Similar to software, the development of OERs requires the application of appropriate methods and practices to ensure the productivity and quality of the resulting products. Agile methods seem to be an interesting approach in this perspective. However, initiatives to foster the development and delivery of quality and reliable OERs, according to agile principles and with reduced costs, are still incipient. In our work we discuss the establishment of an agile method for the development and delivery of OERs. The proposed method is based on the main characteristics, practices and principles of well-known agile methods for software. To illustrate our ideas, the method is discussed in terms of its application in the development of an OER in the FLOSS (Free / Libre and Open Source Software) domain.

In this paper we discuss the establishment and application of IMA Tool - a web-based tool for the modeling and automatic generation of educational content. The tool is based on IMA-CID - an approach for modeling educational content, capable of addressing conceptual, instructional and didactic issues altogether, in an integrated way. IMA-CID and IMA Tool have been applied in the development of an educational module for software testing. The preliminary results indicate the effectiveness of such mechanisms for modeling and generating content.

In recent years, issues related to teaching and learning have been more and more discussed and investigated by the scientific community. Mobile learning (m-learning) environments, despite the benefits provided, are still considered as new and incipient products. Among the limitations observed in the construction and adoption of such environments, we highlight the lack of specific quality guidelines to allow an adequate evaluation of them. In short, the planning and execution of a systematic evaluation among m-learning environments can ease their selection and adoption by apprentices, tutors and educational organizations. Motivated by this scenario, in this paper we propose a process for the quality evaluation of mobile learning environments. To validate our ideas, we have applied the proposed process in the quality evaluation of a set of m-learning environments. The promising results achieved suggest the feasibility of adopting the process for quality evaluation purposes in the m-learning domain.

Virtualization tools, useful softwares that enables tests and evaluation of functionalities, have been used in computer network classes to provide an environment for practice experiments. Although some papers describe these tools and their technical benefits, they do not provide quantitative information about its effectiveness. This paper presents a proposal for systematic use of this category of tools in computer classes and a evaluation of the Netkit tool use in computer network classes. It will be shown how tutorial sections have been developed to these courses, the receptivity from the students through surveys and a statistical analysis of how much students grades can be improved by applying such tutorials. Finally, it will be possible to conclude that, in fact, the use of such tools is strongly advised.

Educational resources, such as learning objects, have been more and more used in education and training context. The free and open distribution of these resources contributes to the dissemination of knowledge and facilitates access to information. Following this trend, Open Educational Resources (OER’s) have emerged to assist in the teaching and learning processes in general. Motivated by this scenario, the purpose of this paper is to characterize the state-of-the-art regarding the development, delivery and reuse of OER’s. A systematic literature review was conducted and some initiatives were identified and investigated. Additionally, a preliminary set of characteristics to be considered in the development of OER’s was also established. In general, we noticed a lack of systematic methods for the appropriate creation and adoption of OER’s. In this sense, this work provides guidance for new research and development in the area.

The interface is the main mechanism of communication between user and system features. In educational software, successful user interface designs minimize the cognitive load on users, thereby users can direct their efforts to maximize their understanding of the educational concepts being presented. We investigated whether a reduced interface make few cognitive demands on users in comparison to a complete interface. In this context, this research aims at analyzing a reduced and a complete interface of an interactive geometry software, and verify the educational benefits they provide. To this end, we designed the interfaces and carried out an experiment involving 69 undergraduate students. The experimental results indicate that an interface that hides advanced and extraneous features helps novice users to perform slightly better than novice users using a complete interface. After receiving proper training, however, a complete interface makes users more productive than a reduced interface.

This workshop aims at bringing together researchers and practitioners to present contributions and discuss strategies for distance learning software engineering postgraduate education.

Programming foundations is not an easy subject to be taught - many students have difficulties understanding the abstract concepts of programming and have a wrong view about the programming activity. In order to address these problems, experiences have suggested the integrated teaching of programming concepts and software testing in introductory CS courses. Shortly, the idea is that testing can contribute to enhance the students' capabilities of understanding and analysis. However, such perspective requires tools to provide an adequate feedback to evaluate the students' performance concerning programming and testing activities. In this paper we describe ProgTest - a web-based tool for the submission and automatic evaluation of practical programming assignments based on testing activities. Results from a preliminary validation of ProgTest are also presented. Such results provide evidences on the practical use of ProgTest as a supporting mechanism for the integrated teaching of programming foundations and software testing.

The development of effective learning objects that explores blended learning, collaborative, and open development requires a laborious process. Information created and used at each phase of the process must be manually translated and augmented until achieving a proper product. The issue of systematic development of learning objects can be addressed using model-driven development. In fact, each phase in the development of learning objects requires a specific type of user/developer profile and generates different models. This article defines a model-driven approach for the open and collaborative development of learning objects. The approach herein described uses concept maps, represented as CXL documents, and statechart-based models, which are represented as UML models in XMI documents. Finally, the later model is used to generate learning objects, given a specific platform description. The current implementation supports the generation of slides in LaTeX/Beamer format. The feasibility of the approach is demonstrated using a course on software testing for undergraduate students, with learning objects generated for a context that comprises both traditional classroom and blended learning.

Educational modules, concise units of study capable of integrating theoretical/practical content and supporting tools, are relevant mechanisms to improve learning processes. In this paper we briefly discuss the establishment of mechanisms to ease the development ofeducational modules - a Standard Process for Developing Educational Modules and an Integrated Modeling Approach for structuring their learning content. The proposed mechanisms have been investigated in the development of the ITonCode module - an educational module for teaching inspection and testing techniques. Aiming at evaluating the module we have replicated an extended version of the Basili & Selby experiment, originally used for comparing V&V techniques, now considering the educational context. The obtained results were mainly analyzed in terms of the student's uniformity in detecting existent faults, giving us very preliminar evidences on the learning effectiveness provided by the module produced.

Though software testing courses are commonly taught as part of software engineering curricula, software testing is still a challenging issue in software engineering education. Students frequently see testing only as something that happens at the end of the development process. Two challenges can be recognized: "how to make the students recognize the relevance of the testing activity?" and "how to motivate the students on using testing ideas in their projects?". In an attempt to explore the impact of introducing testing practices throughout development, during the past Fall semester we modified the project requirements in a course on object-oriented analysis and design offered to the undergraduate students in computer science at Georgia Institute of Technology. Our idea was to require the students to start thinking about testing as early as possible, by including testing-related practices in all phases of the development process. This paper presents the details of the testing approach used in the course and discusses the results we obtained, in terms of the students' attitudes and learning.

Abstract Mutation testing, originally proposed for unit testing, has been extended to integration testing with the proposition of the Interface Mutation criterion. This paper presents the results of an experiment using two mutation‐based testing criteria for unit and integration testing phases: the Mutation Analysis and the Interface Mutation adequacy criteria, respectively. The aim is to investigate how they can be used in a complementary way during the testing activity, establishing an incremental testing strategy comprising the unit and integration testing phases and guidelines on how to obtain a high mutation score with respect to mutation testing with a low cost, in terms of the number of mutants generated. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.