The world is constantly changing and developing, and society must adapt to this change to respond to emerging challenges. It is possible to see a certain inflexibility in changing the educational system, resulting in methodologies and strategies that are outdated and poorly adjusted to the present day, which has the potential risk of the learning process becoming unimpressive and inefficient. Although the content of educational programmes in educational institutions is up-to-date, it is not capable of equipping students with qualities and tools that are highly valued in the job market, such as multidisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, the capacity for resilience and the autonomy to develop attitudes towards objectives. This results in students not feeling prepared to enter the labour market and often questioning whether they have made the right career decision. Another relevant aspect is that the practical component of the curricular units does not develop the appropriate skills to deal with the complexity of the challenges at the start of professional activity, resulting in greater difficulty for the students, consequently leading to demoralization and abandonment of jobs. In this aspect, National Professional Associations must present themselves as potential solutions to this problem, starting a connection with students still in high school so that students can understand which professional area interests them most. Concerning engineering, an area quite intrinsic to mathematics, science, and technology, and with different specialities, many students are reluctant to know whether this aspect will fulfil them. This study aims to present the work carried out by the National Professional Engineering Association among its members, in Portugal, as well as how the strategy developed impacts students' choices for a professional future in this scientific area.

Abstract Context Data visualizations and dashboards are essential in disseminating information to broad audiences. However, designing these instruments is complex due to the multitude of involved factors. Theoretical frameworks are therefore critical to guide the design and implementation of data visualizations. Objective This article presents the approach used to pinpoint key features that impact the creation of information visualizations, organize these features using meta‐modelling, and validate the final artefact through expert judgement. Method Meta‐modelling facilitates the distillation of characteristics and functionalities critical for the development of information systems. Utilizing this method, a dashboard meta‐model was constructed in preceding research, yielding a framework of abstract components and connections to delineate specific products. This meta‐model serves as a robust tool for the automated generation of information visualizations and dashboards. Nonetheless, to confirm its quality and efficacy, it underwent a thorough quality assessment and expert evaluation to identify and address potential shortcomings. Results The validation process resulted in positive ratings and constructive feedback to enhance the meta‐model's present iteration. Experts mainly highlighted the meta‐model's complexity and the clarity of certain entities, noting potential confusion for non‐experts. Conclusions While the meta‐model is confirmed to be a coherent and pertinent tool, it requires additional clarifications to simplify its complexity. Addressing this, graphical interfaces have been developed to enable users to interact with the dashboard meta‐model—and to create dashboard instances—through straightforward interactions.

In the evolving landscape of educational tools, Open Educational Resources (OERs) represent a wave of innovation and accessibility, offering open access materials to spread knowledge. However, their application faces several challenges, particularly in their usability and integration. The ENCORE project addresses these challenges by introducing a new workflow for the sharing and creation of OERs, which includes the collaboration on and definition of key technological components. A central feature of this approach is the development of a meta-model that standardizes OER structures, thereby improving their discoverability and ease of sharing. Additionally, the project proposes a Generative AI service designed to generate assessment activities based on these OERs. This integrated approach, combining the meta-model and workflow, seeks to seamlessly connect the discovery and use of resources, fostering an engaged and collaborative environment for OERs.

Mentoring programs foster individuals' professional and personal advancement, serving as a foundation for exchanging knowledge and developing skills. In this context, a mentoring program, part of a Mentoring in Science program for Higher Education Institutions supported by the British Council, empowers academic women in STEM fields and strengthens their leadership skills. Seventeen semi-structured interviews were conducted with a mentoring program's participants (engineering, science, and health areas). This research aims to categorize the main motivations that drive professional women in the STEM field to make visible the diversity of perspectives that influence their professional development and thus serve as a source of inspiration for other women. A qualitative methodology that includes classic content analysis of scientific production will be applied to carry out this study. The analysis results will be grouped into three main categories: 1) Motivations that drive women to pursue STEM careers, 2) Perceived importance for women to develop in STEM careers, and 3) Interest in participating in mentoring programs. Regarding the contribution of this work, we aim to spotlight experiences and aspirations, emphasizing the crucial role of mentoring programs in guiding young women aspiring to pursue STEM careers. This work seeks to underscore the significance of mentorship in fostering their professional journeys.

Nowadays, with fast technological progression and an increasing complexity of problems, society needs more efficient and more sustainable solutions. This entire dynamic must be based on sustainable development goals (SDGs) as they present themselves as a common global vision of humanity's goals and targets. Within this premise, education is a key factor in producing responsible, competent, multidisciplinary, and highly trained Engineers who can respond to society's needs. However, there is a global opposite trend where there is a decreasing number of students enrolled in higher education in courses in this scientific area. With the objectives of awakening a sense of ingenuity and promoting vocations in Engineering in elementary and high school students, the Ha Engenharia em Mim® (There is Engineering in me) program was developed by the national professional association of Engineers in Portugal, the Ordem dos Engineers. Through this creative tool, curiosity, sagacity, astuteness and attractiveness towards Engineering are stimulated in a simplified and captivating way, meaning that the widespread implementation of this program can mitigate or reverse the trend of students moving away from choosing careers in Engineering.

This study examined the potential of the W-STEM mobile app to inspire and motivate more young women to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Developed within the Erasmus+ project "Building the future of Latin America: engaging women into STEM," the W-STEM application collects testimonies and life trajectories of outstanding and successful women in various STEM areas, presenting them as role models of easy access. Through in-depth interviews, invaluable insights were gained into the motivations, achievements, recommendations, and experiences these outstanding STEM women shared. Analysis of these testimonials revealed inspiring messages and critical lessons that can encourage the involvement of the next generation of women in traditionally male-dominated STEM disciplines. By leveraging the ubiquity of mobile devices, the W-STEM app provides unprecedented access to female role models in STEM, demystifying stereotypes and encouraging more young women to pursue paths in these fields. With its focus on providing inspiration, guidance, and resources in an accessible and engaging way, W-STEM represents a powerful technological tool that promotes gender equity and female participation in STEM fields. As of May 17, 2024, the application has garnered 16,275 views across 344 videos, averaging 47.28 views per video. These metrics highlight the app’s significant reach and engagement, underscoring its potential impact in providing accessible female STEM role models to a broad audience and encouraging more young women to explore and succeed in STEM careers.

User interfaces (UIs) play a crucial role in defining user experiences and influencing the success of software products. While UI design has traditionally been subjective and iterative, data-driven approaches are becoming increasingly popular to ensure that Uis meet user needs and expectations. However, contextual factors such as the application domain can present challenges for designing Uis that are both effective and efficient. This is particularly true in the health domain, where Uis must be adapted to specific tasks and user expertise to maximize the support provided by software systems. Moreover, the urgency of delivering fully functional systems in short periods can relegate UI design to a second plane. This paper presents a framework proposal for refactoring and improving Uis using a data-driven approach, providing an efficient and systematic methodology to address not solved UI issues introduced during previous software development processes. The proposed framework has been successfully applied to two medical platforms, demonstrating the importance of data-driven approaches for UI refactoring in domains with particular necessities.

Abstract The misinformation problem affects the development of the society. Misleading content and unreliable information overwhelm social networks and media. In this context, the use of data visualizations to support news and stories is increasing. The use of misleading visualizations both intentionally or accidentally influence in the audience perceptions, which usually are not visualization and domain experts. Several factors influence o accurately tag a visualization as confusing or misleading. In this paper, we present a machine learning approach to detect if an information visualization can be potentially confusing and misunderstood based on the analytic task it tries to support. This approach is supported by fine‐grained features identified through domain engineering and meta modelling on the information visualization and dashboards domain. We automatically generated visualizations from a tri‐variate dataset through the software product line paradigm and manually labelled them to obtain a training dataset. The results support the viability of the proposal as a tool to support journalists, audience and society in general, not only to detect confusing visualizations, but also to select the visualization that supports a previous defined task according to the data domain.

The labor market increasingly demands workers with STEM skills, not only knowledge and skills related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics, but also transversal skills associated with STEM education; critical thinking, creativity and problem solving are some of the skills demanded in workers and that STEM approaches seek to integrate. There are different models of STEM education according to the level of integration of the four disciplines. Moreover, educational systems are different depending on the country and associated external factors that affect the teaching processes. For this reason, the implementation of STEM education differs between countries. In this context, it is necessary to exchange ideas and experiences among the different regions in order to identify best practices and work together for improving STEM education. This work presents the results of a multicultural panel that was organized in Turkey to explore the differences and similarities between four countries from different continents: Egypt, United States of America (USA), Spain, and Turkey.

Although the participation of women in the different stages of society has increased, there are still sectors where the presence of women is meager, and the visibility of their contributions to society still much lower. The confinement due to the Covid19 pandemic has only made this reality even more visible. Some studies indicate that by increasing empowering women and girls in settings where they are a minority, economic and social benefits are also obtained. The W-STEM project aims to increase women's participation in STEM disciplines. The paper presents preliminary results of a diagnosis of different STEM programs at one university in Colombia. Results show that seven STEM programs have low female enrolment. Therefore, the paper presents various activities developed to motivate young women to enroll in STEM programs. The activities were open to all interested students, showing that 47% of women participated in the activities. Thus, these processes empower women by providing information and inclusion in spaces to acquire new knowledge and skills.

This paper presents findings on participants of a massive open online course named "Educational Robotics for all" developed under Open edX platform. The document describes the organization and structure of the MOOC and some of its preliminary results. As an example, Module 2 about Gender and STEAM is presented and discussed.

Equality and inclusion are part of the strategic plans of the universities. In particular, the Spanish government has established that the universities should have equality units to apply the principle of equality between women and men. These units are in charge of the definition of the Equality Plans. These Plans vary from one university to another, but they are focused on including the gender perspective in the university's different activities. Teachers' specific training about gender mainstreaming should be one of the key actions to foster equality in higher education. This work presents findings on participants of a course about "Introduction of the gender perspective in the University teaching" developed in the University of Salamanca in June 2020. The document describes the organization and structure of the course with a particular focus on the adaptation to online format due to the COVID-19 crisis. Furthermore, we share some of the results about the participants' perceptions and opinions on the inclusion of nonsexist language in Spanish and their educational practices.

The gender gap is a problem that occurs in different forms in regions and countries around the world. It is a goal of large international organisations, governments, companies and other entities. Although it is not a new issue, it is important to continue studying it and seek mechanisms and strategies to attract and maintain more women in these areas. In particular, in the field of education and employment, the STEM areas present large gender gaps whose reduction would not only impact the equality of men and women but would also have an impact on the economy of the countries and on improving the economic situation of women. In this context, there are initiatives in Latin America working on this issue, but it is necessary to look more deeply into the elements that influence the decision to study careers in these areas. In this context, two focus groups have been held as roundtables with STEM women from different Latin American and European countries, to answer a series of questions centred on their motivations and decisions before and during their university studies. The results obtained have provided some inputs for defining gender equality action plans in ten Higher Education Institutions from Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Mexico. Furthermore, the results show similarities with previous studies involving STEM women with different Latin American profiles.

Gender inequality in STEM careers is a global problem and avoid bias in education can be a solution. This paper presents a framework for inclusion of gender perspective in engineering courses. The methodology followed in its design was divided into two phases: the developed of different educational innovation projects and a co-creation workshop. Several instruments have been created and validated, such as questionnaires, canvas model and rubrics. The framework includes elements such as the self-diagnosis and redefinition of curriculum, contents and practices, specific learning outcomes and gender and sex balanced methods and learning environments for equity.

The gender gap is one of the worldwide problems confronting companies, organizations, and governments through different initiatives according to their action contexts. In the case of the gender gap in engineering, although there are a considerable number of projects and studies, there are few studies that analyse the perception of the engineering students about the gender gap. This work presents a case study in two Latin American universities in Peru and Argentina in order to identify the perception of computer engineering students about issues related to gender and diversity. The results show significant differences between both institutions, with particular attention to the differences in perception between men and women in each country. Moreover, the resuits reveal that only women from Argentine believe that there are differences between women and men in the academic context (N=textbf75).

According to the Global Gender Gap Report 2020, most of the countries have achieved gender parity in educational attainment. Furthermore, Latin America and Europe have more women than men enrolled in tertiary education. The problem arises when those numbers are analysed by degree studies. There is a gender gap in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), with a low number of women enrolled in those programs and even lower numbers of graduates. The universities have a key role to steer new conceptions and understanding of the females in STEM. The higher education institutions have to define measures and policies to reduce the gender gap in the careers of the future. This work aims to provide a proposal to analyse the gender equality gap in STEM as a first step to define gender equality action plans focused on processes of attraction, access and retention and guidance in STEM programs. The proposal was applied in ten Latin American universities from Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Mexico, and five European universities from Finland, Ireland, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom.

Software engineering provides the competences and skills to design and develop robust, secure and efficient applications that solve real problems. Students have to develop their abstract thinking to find solutions taking into account not only technical development, but economic and social impact. In previous years, different changes have been introduced in the teaching methods with significant outcomes. However, students are still facing difficulties with one of the core contents of the subject, UML. For this reason, the present work aims to introduce C4 model as a complement of the existing UML diagrams. This proposal uses the two first levels of the C4 model to complement the requirements elicitation process, traditionally based only on use cases, to let students start the design of their systems without going into greater technical details.

Abstract The aim of this article is to study how students currently understand the conception of space through different media and how that understanding helps them to intervene in the space. Firstly, the process of teaching and learning as well as innovative supporting technologies are analysed, revealing the characteristics of the contemporary student profile and better ways of teaching according to it. Secondly, we describe the evaluation of an experiment with a virtual reality (VR) system for urban project design with students of architecture from two universities. The premise is that the technology used in VR is familiar to the current profile of students. This paper aims to study the advantages and disadvantages of this trend and to find a balance. To do so, we use a quantitative method to evaluate students' profiles and their level of satisfaction with the system. The results were obtained by a questionnaire and a survey, which show the role and use of technologies in the students' environment and the degree of satisfaction when using it in the educational processes. In line with our assumptions, the value of satisfaction in the use of an advanced visualization technology in the classroom reveals a high level of motivation, in general, with differentiation between students in their first and last phases of studies.

In the fields of Sciences, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, both in career and professional contexts, the society is underrepresented. Technology is part of daily life for most of the population, the introduction of concepts such as diversity and inclusion when developing technology is a crucial objective to achieve a society built on these values. Software and technology must be developed taking into account people, converting diversity and equity concepts related to technological development. The main objective of this work is to describe a case study implemented in the Software Engineering I subject of the Degree in Computer Engineering of the University of Salamanca (Spain) to lay the foundations to establish actions to foster diversity and inclusion into engineering curricula.

MOTIVATION: The Burrows-Wheeler transform (BWT) is widely used for the fast alignment of high-throughput sequence data. This method also has potential applications in other areas of bioinformatics, and it can be specially useful for the fast searching of patterns on coverage data from different sources. RESULTS: We present a nucleosome pattern search method that converts levels of nucleosomal occupancy to a sequence-like format to which BWT searches can be applied. The method is embedded in a nucleosome map browser, 'Nucleosee', an interactive visual tool specifically designed to enhance BWT searches, giving them context and making them suitable for visual discourse analysis of the results. The proposed method is fast, flexible and sufficiently generic for the exploration of data in a broad and interactive way. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: The proposed algorithm and visual browser are available for testing at http://cpg3.der.usal.es/nucleosee. The source code and installation packages are also available at https://github.com/rodrigoSantamaria/nucleosee. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

There is a social and economic concern for the low representativeness of women in the technology industry. The timeline of recent years shows a drop in the interest of women in studying a career related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), just when the demand labor in these fields is growing rapidly and new jobs will continue to emerge, and it is feared that they will not have enough people to cover It There are many social organizations that are taking measures to alleviate this situation, including educational branches, government agencies, industry and technological communities composed of women. In this research, the cases of industry and communities are studied. It is intended to dissect how these two ecosystems work to strengthen mechanisms that minimize the gender gap. On the one hand, the paper addresses, what are the communities, why they arise, what are their objectives, what they contribute to society and what actions they develop to contain the problem. Regarding companies, three major leaders of the sector, namely, Google, IBM and Microsoft, show their weaknesses and successes, and present development programs created to improve the internal situation in the themes of diversity and inclusion.

Software Engineering I is a mandatory subject for undergraduate students that is taught in the second semester of the 2nd year of the Degree in Computer Sciences at the University of Salamanca (Spain). This degree exists since 1989 but it has transformed over time according to the education law changes in Spain and Europe. Software Engineering I is the first subject related to the area of software engineering that is taught in the degree. The novelty of the concepts and the need to develop abstract thinking to acquire the different competences of the subject, implies a handicap to teach the subject. The final grades obtained by the students in the subject are fairly low compared with other subjects in the degree. Moreover, the attendance to the face-to-face classes is continuously reduced throughout the semester, which affects to the continuous assessment. Some initiatives have been applied during previous school years but a global change of the subject is necessary. In order to increase the success rate of the subject and to achieve that students are involved in the learning process, authors have implemented an active learning methodology based on team working. Furthermore, two instruments have defined to measure the impact of the changes and evaluate the pilot.

Gender inequality is a global problem present in all facets of life to a greater or lesser degree. In the fields of Sciences, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, both in career and work contexts, the gender gap continues. The percentage of women who study or work in the technology sector is around 25% according to different international reports. The incorporation of gender studies in the curricula is considered one of the main actions to close the gender gap in tertiary education. Education programs should approach conceptual mismatches between gender or sex and change its foundations to guarantee equal education for any person by limiting the influence of social stereotypes and dominant culture. There are few studies that aim at describing what is the main stream viewpoints among students from research instruments previously validated. This work describes the process to elaborate a questionnaire on gender perspectives and its validation in order to describe what students of Computer Engineering careers think and what changes can be implemented accordingly in future education programs to close the gender gap.