Smart interactive tangible objects (briefly, tangibles) can help teachers in the scaffolding of algorithmic thinking of 10-13 years old children. In this work, tangibles deal with graph algorithmic thinking. By following an action-research design approach, tangibles were rapidly developed and used in studies with children and teachers (Bonani et al., 2017, 2018). This poster shows their evolution and the most recent experience: a field study with 8 middle school children, and 5 primary school children, using tangibles for graph algorithmic thinking. Data collected by researchers were mixed (qualitative and quantitative), concerning engagement and learning (e.g., Gennari et al., 2017). Results suggest that tangibles engage pupils and help them understand simple and connected graphs. Future work will seek their adaptation to classes (e.g., Di Mascio et al., 2012).

Design patterns are recognized as a means to improve software maintenance by furnishing an explicit specification of class and object interactions and their underlying intent [Gamma et al. 1995]. Only a few empirical investigations have been conducted to assess whether the kind of documentation for design patterns implemented in source code affects its comprehensibility. To investigate this aspect, we conducted a family of four controlled experiments with 88 participants having different experience (i.e., professionals and Bachelor, Master, and PhD students). In each experiment, the participants were divided into three groups and asked to comprehend a nontrivial chunk of an open-source software system. Depending on the group, each participant was, or was not, provided with graphical or textual representations of the design patterns implemented within the source code. We graphically documented design-pattern instances with UML class diagrams. Textually documented instances are directly reported source code as comments. Our results indicate that documenting design-pattern instances yields an improvement in correctness of understanding source code for those participants with an adequate level of experience.

The paper explains how we investigated student perception of Extreme Apprenticeship as applied to an Operating Systems course, via self-report questionnaires. In particular, the paper explains how we analyzed self-efficacy, before and after the course experience.

Mobile devices consume significant amounts of information, from different sources. Thus they often deal also with sensitive or confidential data, in places or situations that could be not appropriate, or not compliant with a corporate policy: context-aware access/usage control solutions can counter such situations. We propose a prototype, called ProtectMe, that exploits "Sticky Policies" (SP) that are attached to resources and prescribe usage conditions.

The paper describes the eXtreme Apprenticeship methodology and its application inside a blended laboratory on Operating Systems. Extreme Apprenticeship is based on Cognitive Apprenticeship: apprentices learn a task by first observing the master performing it, and then practising under master guidance. The role of a Learning Management System in scaffolding apprentices is underlined, and some preliminary evaluation of the experience is presented.

Learning Management Systems (LMS) represent today's preferred technology for institutional e-learning. Unfortunately, they show poor adaptability to each user's needs, and learners may suffer from the walled garden effect. Many researchers are investigating the Personal Learning Environment (PLE) as a way to overcome such limitations, fostering a lifelong learning perspective. In this paper we propose to extend a LMS, namely DIEL, to unify the benefits of LMS and PLE, supporting better learning experiences and processes. Experiences with the first prototype are also briefly summarized.

The DULP vision is providing an innovative perspective for rethinking learning processes, to become, among the others, ubiquitous and focused on persons in place-centred design, according to the new reality that we face every day. The challenge we present today is to bring the DIEL system further into exploring DULP-provided possibilities, with a specific effort on mobile learning and in the exploration of the meanings of quantitative data collection as indicators of the learning process trends.

In this demo, we present novel features added to the Moodle Learning Management System to achieve collaborative learning

This paper describes the patient record manager and the workflow toolset of the wireless-based e-health system Ward-In-Hand, developed in a European IST (Information Society Technologies) project and currently in use within three hospital wards, in Italy, Spain and Germany. The lack of homogeneity in the healthcare organisations required a suitable implementation of workflow automation tools to create and manage the execution of the care-giving processes, customising them to local ward needs. Solutions for this problem, as well as the integration of the workflow organiser (to be used by individual health professionals during their daily activities) with the patient record manager are discussed.

Abstract Programming applications in computer‐aided design of VLSI are difficult on parallel architectures, especially pipelined implementations derived from their sequential counterparts by algorithmic partitioning. The difficulty is primarily due to lack of good program development environments and tools. Our solution, applicable to message‐passing architectures, is based upon a definition of a broad class of non‐linear pipeline configurations and an asynchronous data‐driven model for pipeline stage interactions. It provides object‐oriented definitions of stages and interconnecting channels. These objects are embedded in C++ so that the correctness of application programs can be tested on a workstation in a simulated environment. The simulation is instrumented to provide data useful in assessing relative computational loading and balancing of stages. Thus a large part of program development can take place in the environment of a workstation familiar to the programmer. A non‐trivial application is developed to illustrate these ideas.

Abstract A method to develop cross‐assemblers is explained by describing the XMETA system, where the advantages given by the semantic power of meta‐assemblies have been combined with the clarity of modern high level languages, such as Pascal, in defining assembly semantics. XMETA accepts a superset of the IEEE‐P694 microprocessor assembly language standard syntax: system structure is detailed and examples are provided to illustrate its use. Actual experiences are briefly summarized in the conclusions.

Abstract We present the results of our experience in introducing modularity into the programming language Pascal in order to aid the creation and use of library modules. Our system performs the symbolic linking of source language modules producing a single Pascal text ready for compilation; performing the link phase before compilation anticipates interface consistency checks, and suggests a possible improvement of program development systems. Our extension is implemented in a preprocessor which ensures a complete compatibility with any standard Pascal compiler. In this paper we examine the main features of some high‐level programming languages which support modularization and data abstraction and some experiences in introducing modularity into Pascal; on this basis we describe our choice in detail. The design and implementation details are discussed and some examples are presented.