This article describes the development, implementation and preliminary operation assessment of Multiuser Network Architecture to integrate a number of Remote Academic Laboratories for educational purposes on automatic control. Through the Internet, real processes or physical experiments conducted at the control engineering laboratories of four…

LEGO Mindstorms NXT robots are being increasingly used in undergraduate courses, mostly in robotics-related subjects. But other engineering topics, like the ones found in data acquisition, control and real-time subjects, also have difficult concepts that can be well understood only with good lab exercises. Such exercises require physical…

This study developed an adaptive web-based learning system focusing on students' cognitive styles. The system is composed of a student model and an adaptation model. It collected students' browsing behaviors to update the student model for unobtrusively identifying student cognitive styles through a multi-layer feed-forward neural network (MLFF).…

The effects of written feedback in a computer-based assessment for learning on students' learning outcomes were investigated in an experiment at a Higher Education institute in the Netherlands. Students were randomly assigned to three groups, and were subjected to an assessment for learning with different kinds of feedback. These are immediate…

In today's unstable market economy, individuals have to be skilled to work efficiently in constantly changing and complex situations. Thus, graduate students have to be trained to cope with unpredictable situations before they enter the workforce. They need to exercise occupational skills, such as leadership skills, during higher education.…

Automatics and Robotics subjects are always greatly improved when classroom teaching is supported by adequate laboratory courses and experiments following the "learning by doing" paradigm, which provides students a deep understanding of theoretical lessons. However, expensive equipment and limited time prevent teachers having sufficient…

This paper proposes a new model for team building, which enables teachers to build coherent teams rapidly and fairly for the term projects of software engineering courses. Moreover, the model can also be used to build teams for any type of project, if the team member candidates are students, or if they are inexperienced on a certain subject. The…

This study examined the impact of collaborative filtering (the so-called recommender) on college students' use of an online forum for English learning. The forum was created with an open-source software, Drupal, and its extended recommender module. This study was guided by three main questions: 1) Is there any difference in online behaviors…

The construction of the European Higher Education Area has been an adaptation challenge for Spanish universities. New methodologies require a more active role on the students' part and come into conflict with the previous educational model characterised by a high student/professor ratio, a lecture-based teaching methodology and a summative…

Context-aware ubiquitous learning (u-learning) is an innovative approach that integrates wireless, mobile, and context-awareness technologies to detect the situation of learners in the real world and provide adaptive support or guidance accordingly. In this paper, a context-aware u-learning environment is developed for guiding inexperienced…

Interactive instructional methods are characterized by engaging students with the course material and involve delivering feedback for their efforts. Using a mixed 2 x 2 factorial experiment, we compared the effects of multiple choice answer formats (word versus letter) and methods (automated versus manual) on 70 undergraduate students' acquisition…

Simulations make it possible to explore physical and biological phenomena, where conducting the real experiment is impracticable or difficult. The implementation of a software program describing and simulating a given physical situation encourages the understanding of a phenomenon itself. Fifty-nine students, enrolled at the Mathematical Methods…

Remote laboratories can provide distant learners with practical acquisitions which would otherwise remain precluded. Our proposal here is a remote laboratory on a behavioural test (open field test), with the aim of introducing learners to the observation and analysis of stereotyped behaviour in animals. A real-time video of a mouse in an…

Determined if college students learn better when using lecture/CAI than by using the conventional lecture method to present visually oriented material. Results indicated no significant difference between the test groups in amount of learning; also, it took longer to present examples to the control group than for the treatment group to absorb…

A computer-based replacement for an electronics laboratory experiment was created and tested on second-year undergraduate students in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Southampton (England). Responses, assessed by questionnaire, showed that computer-assisted learning techniques provide a viable means for teaching…