Engineering education has solid needs of experimental competences development. Nowadays theses competences can be developed not only in traditional laboratories (hands on) but also through the use of ...computer simulations and remote labs. The use of diversified methods in education and the exploration of new resources and techniques in classroom may allow teachers to motivate more students, and capture their attention due to their different learning styles.The main objective of this thesis project is to better understand the effects on the students’ learning outcomes in different contexts, when subject to similar design approaches using an enquiry-based teaching and learning methodology based on simultaneous use of experimental resources (hands on, simulation and remote labs) together with calculus, in class and assessment. To accomplish this goal, several insights must be taken into consideration, including the teachers’ mediation in each case and the didactical implementations adaptations, but also external factors, such as socio-cultural and/or political factors.
During 2020 and 2021, the world experienced a global change in everyone’s daily lives due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Students were confined in their homes but, luckily, had access to online classes. ...This study aims to assess the changes in self-efficacy perceived by engineering students in a school in Portugal. By helping to understand how students have changed their learning capacities, developed new strategies, and/or need more (or different) support to learn, teachers can target their teaching methods accordingly and contribute to a more sustainable education. A questionnaire was constructed and validated to assess students’ perceptions before and after the associated lockdowns. Five theoretically supported factors emerged from a statistical factor analysis: Communication and Empathy; Focus and Personal Organization; Teamwork and Individual Work Capacity; Technical and Cognitive Resources Management; and Emotional Resources Management. This work shows students’ percept that they improved their teamwork and individual work capacity and their technical and cognitive resources management. In general, students seem to have been able to be more autonomous as they managed to work and develop their cognitive resources; however, their emotional state and ability to focus decreased. Perceived self-efficacy was less affected in older students than in younger ones, suggesting that this group may have adapted better to the pandemic restrictions. Students who were already at university showed less impact than those moving from high school to university. There was also a difference between those who endured these changes at only one level of education and those who endured them at both levels (high school and university), with this last group being the most negatively affected.
Conducting laboratory experiments is of vital importance in science and engineering education, independently the level of education. Nowadays, teachers have different ways of allowing students to ...develop these competences other than hands-on labs, such as simulations and remote labs. This study is focused on the combined use of the three resources, carried out by 51 teachers, in 25 different courses. In total, 39 didactical implementations in the electric and electronics area were performed in several Higher Educational Institutions and Secondary Schools, in Argentina and Brazil. This occurred during 2016 and 2017 academic years, under the scope of the VISIR+ project and VISIR was the implemented remote lab and reached 1569 students. Teachers' perception about student acceptance and performance with VISIR as well as teachers' satisfaction with VISIR, were cross analysed with course characteristics as well as didactical implementation design factors and several interesting correlations stood out: Teachers extra care in designing VISIR tasks accordingly to the learning outcomes/ competences they want their students to develop revealed as a crucial factor; Teacher experience with VISIR plays an important role in students' satisfaction with the tool; Teacher introduction and support to VISIR along the semester is also an important factor.
The focus of this Special Issue is aimed at enhancing the discussion of Engineering Education, particularly related to technological and professional learning. In the 21st century, students face a ...challenging demand: they are expected to have the best scientific expertise, but also highly developed social skills and qualities like teamwork, creativity, communication, or leadership. Even though students and teachers are becoming more aware of this necessity, there is still a gap between academic life and the professional world. In this Special Edition Book, the reader can find works tackling interesting topics such as educational resources addressing students’ development of competencies, the importance of final year projects linked to professional environments, and multicultural or interdisciplinary challenges.
Early on, students must develop competences by implementing simple or complex electronic circuits with Operational Amplifiers (OpAmps). Traditionally, these skills were mainly developed in laboratory ...classes, but technology allows us to explore other and complementary ways of aiding students in this achievement. This paper presents a contribution to improve the way OpAmps are included in electronic engineering courses' curricula. A reconfigurable and expandable kit to teach electronic circuits based on the OpAmp uA741 was designed and implemented. This kit comprises a software application locally interfaced with a hardware platform capable of running in a PC. This platform includes a circuit with the OpAmp uA741 able to reconfigure according to a set of parameters defined by a software application. Its reconfiguration capability also enables the establishment of automatic connections for measuring and for applying signals to a reconfigured circuit, plus the ability to simulate the same or other OpAmp-based circuits. This paper provides an overview about the OpAmp uA741 and its relevance in engineering education. After presenting the kit and make some considerations for its improvement, at the end a brief discussion about its implementation in education according to specific educational strategies and methodologies are provided.
- This full paper addresses an innovative practice in the experimental teaching/learning in Engineering courses. Engineering is a practical profession where doing is the key. Experimental work and ...the immersing in the lab environment (hands-on, simulations, remote labs) helps students to construct and strengthen their knowledge. The VISIR+ Project (ERASMUS+), launched in November 2015 and concluded in Abril 2018, intended to disseminate VISIR - Virtual Instrument Systems in Reality (the most used remote lab in electric and electronics area of expertise) in Latin American countries (Argentina and Brazil) by installing a system in five Higher Educational Institutions. It involved 13 educational institutions, 25 different courses, several of them with successive didactical implementations. It comprised 49 teachers and 1,595 students. During the project about 27 research papers were published disseminating the projects' results. At the end of the project, the expectations were that the impact could remain in the long-term promoting VISIR remote lab and the dissemination of good practices. The project ended four years ago, and each installed VISIR system continued to promote teaching diversification using different experimental resources (including VISIR) then contributing to student learning. The aim of this work is to understand the impact of these didactical practices while using VISIR in these last years. This study was based on a questionnaire complemented with an interview with each person of contact. The results point to an increase of VISIR's usage in almost all institutions, particularly during the pandemic period. Overall, the educational impact involved more than 23 different institutions, 45 courses (most of them with several editions), 118 teachers and 4,866 students. The impact in the scientific community implied additional 31 publications with VISIR as its main core. These numbers support the sustainability of the VISIR+ project over the years, positively contributing to a more diversified engineering education of these students and their experimental competences development.
As technology is increasingly being seen as a facilitator to learning, open remote laboratories are increasingly available and in widespread use around the world. They provide some advantages over ...traditional hands-on labs or simulations. This paper presents the results of integrating the open remote laboratory VISIR into several courses, in various contexts and using various methodologies. These integrations, all related to higher education engineering, were designed by teachers with different perspectives to achieve a range of learning outcomes. The degree to which these VISIR-related outcomes were accomplished is discussed. The results reflect the levels of student engagement and learning and of teacher involvement. From the analysis, a connection between these two aspects was traced, although only related to the user profiles. VISIR is shown to be always of benefit for more motivated students, but this benefit can be maximized under particular conditions and characteristics.
Este trabalho assenta na aplicação de métodos quimiométricos no tratamento da informação multivariada relativa a estatísticas criminais.Uma das principais contribuições destes métodos de tratamento ...de informação é claramente auxiliar a interpretação e racionalização dos dados que passa, em grande medida, pela deteção dos padrões subjacentes. Só quando estes são conhecidos se podem criar modelos de previsão e desenvolver políticas de prevenção e controlo.Neste contexto a análise multivariada é incontornável quando se está perante informação proveniente de sistemas multicomponentes. Na maioria dos casos, a inspeção do perfil global dos dados é claramente mais informativa que a avaliação parâmetro a parâmetro.Neste trabalho é efetuada a caracterização de uma variedade de dados relativos a detenções e a delitos cometidos nos Estados Unidos da América durante o período de 2005 a 2011. Os resultados mostram que a combinação dos métodos quimiométricos selecionados (análise de agrupamentos hierárquico, análise de componentes principais) com algumas medidas econométricas (curva de Lorenz e coeficiente de Gini), permite tirar conclusões sobre a distribuição e relação espácio-temporal de vários tipos de crimes. A abordagem proposta pode servir de base para futuros desenvolvimentos na criação de modelos e análise de fatores, também aqui enunciados.Especificamente, os crimes relacionados com a droga e o álcool desempenham um papel fulcral na distinção entre os diversos estados americanos. Existe uma variação gradual das características criminais desde os estados rurais do centro Norte até à periferia mais rica e urbanizada. A correlação com outros indicadores, nomeadamente a população e o crime, foram também encontrados.
The objective of this work is to study how teachers’ mediation can promote the development of students’ epistemic practices (EPs), in a classroom environment, using computer simulations (CS) ...articulated with experimental work (EW). In particular, we want to explore characteristics of teacher mediation using CS articulated with EW as a didactical approach and what EPs occur when students work in the pathway from theory (T) to the observable-world (OW), and vice-versa. We report a multi-case study with two teachers of a primary teacher education course. We use multimodal narratives (a description of what happens in the classroom, using several types of data collected) to analyse the students’ EPs and the teachers’ mediation. This analysis is made using the qualitative analysis software (NVivo 8®).
The results point that the differences in the occurrences and pathways found in students’ EPs can be related to the different characteristics of teachers’ mediation. The results also point to the existence of students’ epistemic practices that were differently promoted depending on the use of CS or EW, which means an interesting complementarity between the two teaching approaches. When teachers’ mediation incorporates the use CSs articulated with EW.
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