Ana Isabel Molina Díaz

• PhD
• Professor (Full Professor) at University of Castilla-La Mancha

The use of new technologies to assist and support the needs of people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is increasing. There is many software developments oriented toward this user collective. However, there are hardly any proposals to help developers in the process of creating these applications. In recent years, design and evaluation guidelines...

Providing user-friendly software for groups with special needs is crucial. However, there is a lack of specific evaluation methods and techniques adapted to the characteristics and needs of some users, such as those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The main objective of this work is to validate a UX evaluation methodology that focuses specifica...

This paper describes the process proposed in order to develop the GreedEx Tab mobile application for the Apple iPad. This application will handle the technology of this device to help the user learn greedy algorithms. This addresses the problems detected in the literature on the understanding of this programming schema by students and also the issu...

This paper presents Excursiona, an application that provides substantial value to group excursions. Excursiona promotes collaboration and awareness during the excursion, as the group members navigate the map. Moreover, users can share pictures of interesting points they discover and interact in the chat room. The application has great potential in...

italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Contribution: This article describes the process used to create a questionnaire to evaluate the usability of mobile learning applications (CECAM). The questionnaire includes specific questions to assess user interface usability and pedagogical usabilit...

This paper describes some fundamentals and challenges in using eye tracking for the assessment of usability and accessibility in the fields in Human–Computer Interaction and Educational Computing. This technique has great potential since it allows considering human factors and individual differences in these areas. This non-invasive method, of phys...

Many of the decisions we make are increasingly entrusted to algorithms, although there is evidence that many of them are biased, which aggravate the inequalities of the affected groups. Gender bias is considered the biggest contributor to gender stereotypes and social inequalities. To avoid this type of bias, it is necessary that future developers...

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of health and education and also revealed the need for innovative solutions relative to the challenges confronting these disciplines [...]

Up to now, groupware has enjoyed a certain stability in terms of the users’ technical requirements, being the awareness dimension one of its key services to provide usability and improve collaboration. Nonetheless, currently, groupware technologies are being stressed: on the one hand, the pandemic of COVID-19 has greatly driven the massive use of g...

Quality in higher education requires the evaluation of the teaching-learning and assessment methodologies used by the teachers, the adaptation of the students, as well as the resources used. To respond to this need, this study aims to analyze the validity and reliability of the Factors Related to Teaching Quality (FRTQ) questionnaire, developed for...

In people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), skills related to anticipation and mental flexibility are often impaired, so their thinking tends to be very rigid and their behavior is based on establishing routines. For this reason, children with ASD may show disruptive behaviors when faced with disturbing but necessary activities, such as going to...

The need to compete for users’ attention and provide them with the best user experience has increased the use of persuasion strategies in modern systems. Currently, Persuasive Systems (PSs) promote healthy behavior for well-being, energy consumption, and learning. Although the educational domain has limited investigation compared to other areas, PS...

Physical rehabilitation of people with injuries or illnesses related to the lumbar spine involves an intensive treatment to reduce pain or improve mobility. Research studies have evidenced the benefits of complementing the patient’s regular treatment with exercise routines at home. However, in the case of children and adolescents, there is a risk o...

This paper introduces Learn-CIAM, a new model-based methodological approach for the design of flows and for the semi-automatic generation of tools in order to support collaborative learning tasks. The main objective of this work is to help professors by establishing a series of steps for the specification of their learning courses and the obtaining...

The visualization of programs and algorithms has been demonstrated to be essential when learning to program. Nevertheless, existing graphic representations require a high level of abstraction that most beginner programmers cannot understand. Current state-of-the-art approaches provide promising alternatives, but a significant part leaves the advant...

Featured Application This work analyzes the current state of the physical rehabilitation field focused on the techniques, devices, and methods used with children and adolescents. Moreover, we present improvements of a gamification-based software prototype for home rehabilitation of young patients, based on this study and a previous experiment. Abs...

People working in a cooperative manner need to be updated on events and informed about other users and their activities in their workspaces in order to collaborate effectively. It is necessary that group members feel they are part of the group, in particular when they are geographically dispersed. This kind of information is called awareness and it...

The design and creation of groupware tools is a complex task that usually requires the participation of different stakeholders (software engineers, designers, etc.), either working at the same time or collaborating asynchronously. This paper describes an innovative model-driven development process to support the collaborative modeling of group lear...

Programming is a field that influences other disciplines in a transversal way, so its learning is necessary considering the emergence of new jobs that will require programming knowledge in the future. However, programming raises certain difficulties during its learning, especially in understanding programming concepts due to the high level of abstr...

The incorporation of advanced information and communication technologies into the field of education has made the design and deployment of courses and instructional units more and more complicated. In order to support such complex task, methods and techniques have been proposed in the last years for the standardization, formalization and modelling...

This paper presents the evolution experienced by GreedEx, an interactive application to learn greedy algorithms. It shows the four different versions currently available. A first original version for computers, two versions for iPad, and another version for smartphones. Besides, it describes the evaluation performed for each version, which has serv...

Student dropout in Engineering Education is an important problem which has been studied from different perspectives, as well as using different techniques. This manuscript describes the methodology used in order to address this question in the context of learning analytics. Bayesian networks (BNs) have been used as they provide adequate methods for...

La elección de una muestra adecuada es un proceso muy importante en cualquier investigación. En muchas ocasiones se deben contrastar las diferencias entre dos o más grupos. Para garantizar la validez y fiabilidad de las experiencias realizadas debemos utilizar las técnicas más adecuadas. En este artículo se pretende mostrar la importancia de utiliz...

The development of multimedia educational materials aimed at primary school students is of great importance today. The design, mainly of images and text, can influence the efficiency of these materials in the teaching-learning process. One of the most widespread theories that deals with the correct design of multimedia materials is the Mayer's Cogn...

Student dropout in Engineering Education is an important problem which has been studied from different perspectives and using different techniques. This manuscript describes the methodology used to address this question in the context of learning analytics, using Bayesian networks because they provide adequate methods for the representation, interp...

Advances related to the popularization of the Ambient Intelligence approach imply that new styles of computer–human interaction are being adopted, and, at the same time, the need of supporting activities of collaborative nature appears. In these contexts, the concept of implicit interaction appears. This concept refers to those actions that a compu...

Contribution: Findings are provided from an initial survey to evaluate the magnitude of the recursion problem from the student point of view. Background: A major difficulty that programming students must overcome-the learning of recursion-has been addressed by many authors, using various approaches, but none have considered how students perceive th...

Basic "computing literacy" is said to be deemed necessary for all citizens, and provides an opportunity to prepare, over longer periods of time, future computing engineers. The iProg Project intends to achieve computing literacy research objectives by means of a number of applications for Programming Education, based on different techniques for adv...

The growth in the use of mobile devices have allowed for the development of new educational modalities within e-Learning. Because of this, we have shown the evolution experienced by GreedEx, a desktop application that facilitates the learning of greedy algorithms. Two iPad versions were developed (GreedEx Tab v1.0 and v2.0). The first iPad version...

The design of the multimedia materials can influence their effectiveness and efficiency as well as the process of teaching - learning itself. Therefore, it is important to evaluate the suitability of different settings or presentation formats when designing this type of resource. It is recommended a more objective technique such as the eye-tracking...

CIAM Mobile (m-CIAM) is a methodology for the development and modeling of m-Learning applications. It integrates CIAM (Collaborative Interactive Application Methodology) methodology modeling stages with MoLEF (Mobile Learning Evaluation Framework) usability framework factors and dimensions. CIAM gives support to modeling of collaborative and intera...

We have addressed the problem of improving CIAM (Collaborative Interactive Application Methodology) in order to support design, modeling and evaluation of collaborative and interactive mobile applications. CIAM Mobile (m-CIAM) is the result of the integration of CIAM with MoLEF (Mobile Learning Evaluation Framework), which serves as a basis for an...

Over the last several years, many authors have studied the factors that promote adoption of m-learning among students, basing their studies, in most of cases, on well-known models of the acceptance of technology, like the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT). Their proposals include di...

The use of several representation techniques of algorithms, of either a textual or a graphical nature, is common in systems, which support learning of programming. The GreedEx tool, a system for interactive experimentation with greedy algorithms, incorporates some of them. This system has been evaluated several times, using subjective perception qu...

This paper presents the analysis of recent research on mobile learning and usability areas, applying a systematic mapping study. The aim is to understand the tendencies and needs in the m-learning field. The results demonstrate that research in the area has grown significantly since 2013, and we identify a necessity when we see that not all the m-l...

En el presente trabajo se pretende identificar qué formatos favorecen una mayor eficiencia en el aprendizaje, para así establecer unas pautas de diseño (guidelines) respecto a la distribución y modalidad de presentación de información verbal en materiales educativos multimedia. Se realizaron dos experimentos que utilizaron la técnica de seguimiento...

A lo largo de las dos últimas décadas se ha producido en el ámbito educativo un importante desarrollo tecnológico, generalizándose el uso de materiales multimedia en el proceso de enseñanza y aprendizaje. El objetivo de este artículo es mostrar el uso de una técnica de evaluación de materiales educativos novedosa: la técnica de eye tracking. Para m...

Many processes in Software Engineering, and specifically in the Unified Software Development Process, require the participation of several actors who may play different roles. Collaborative software (groupware) can solve the problems that arise when trying to deal with such processes. Within this scope, we have developed a domain independent synchr...

The learning and teaching of Programming can benefit from the principles of Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL). With that purpose in mind, the COLLECE system was created to support synchronous collaborative programming in learning settings. Unlike other systems with similar objectives, COLLECE incorporates many elements to support gro...

Traditionally, the development of systems supporting group work has been considered a complex task because multiple aspects have to be considered. As a consequence, it is necessary to apply methodological processes in order to reach successful and usable systems. CIAM is a methodological approach for developing groupware user interfaces by modeling...

In this paper, a tool based on DataForm models for rapid generation of functional prototypes of user interfaces is proposed. A DataForm is a specification that captures, in a single representation, both the data (Data) that are communicated through the user interface and the user's mental model (Form). A DataForm model eliminates the subjectivity o...

In the last two decades there has been a significant technological development in all areas of society. This technological advance has been transferred to the educational area and now the use of multimedia materials and resources in the teaching and learning process is widespread. The main objective of the study presented in this article is to show...

This paper presents the analysis of recent research on mobile learning and usability areas, applying a systematic mapping study. It also presents the main focus adopted by each publication, the types of mobile device and operative systems. The aim is also to understand the tendencies and needs in the fields of design and evaluation of the m-learnin...

The increasing presence of multimedia materials in the teaching and learning process demands greater attention paid to their design and production. The purpose of this study is to analyze and evaluate different formats for the presentation of multimedia contents aimed to primary school pupils. The ultimate goal is to establish a series of design gu...

In systems supporting learning of programming, it is common to use several techniques to represent algorithms, some of textual and graphical nature. This kind of representations is used by the GreedEx system, a system for interactive experimentation with greedy algorithms. The assessment made of this system thus far is based on the use of questionn...

This paper presents the analysis of recent research on mobile learning and usability areas, applying a systematic mapping study. It also presents the main focus adopted by each publication, the types of mobile device and operative systems. The aim is also to understand the tendencies and needs in the fields of design and evaluation of the m-learnin...

This paper presents the analysis of recent research on mobile learning and usability areas, applying a systematic mapping study. It also presents the main focus adopted by each publication, the types of mobile device and operative systems. The aim is also to understand the tendencies and needs in the fields of design and evaluation of the m-learnin...

The area of programming learning can take advantage of the principles of CSCW. Thus, there exist several systems that have approached to these difficulties. However, awareness support is quite limited in most of these systems. The COLLECE system is one of such tools as it was developed with the goal of supporting synchronous collaborative programmi...

Modeling interactive groupware systems is a complex and multi-disciplinary task. It is necessary to provide designers and engineers with a set of methods, notations and tools to specify the different aspects to consider when designing this type of systems. In this work we present a methodological framework based on the integration of several notati...

It is increasingly common to use languages and notations, mainly of a graphical nature, to assist in the design and specification of learning systems. There are several proposals, although few of them support the modeling of collaborative tasks. In this paper, we identify the main features to be considered for modeling this kind of activities and w...

Mobile device usage has become part of our daily routine. Our interest is centered on their use in teaching-learning contexts: the so-called m-learning. In this work we try to empirically analyze the use of these portable devices for accessing learning materials. To this end, two empirical studies have been conducted with the aim of analyzing the e...

Over the past few years, a great deal of work has been done in the field of collaborative software (groupware). Many fields of science have taken advantage of these developments, and Software Engineering is one such field. Within this scope, we have developed a domain independent synchronous collaborative tool that can be specialized to work with s...

Abstract The analysis of activities in CSCL (Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning) environments can provide us with some interesting conclusions about collaborative learning processes themselves. Specifically, such an analysis can show the effectiveness of such processes and allow for the definition of intervention mechanisms which can motivat...

Groupware systems are usually difficult to design when following traditional methodologies and approaches for single user systems. In this regard, model-driven approaches have been gaining attention in recent years. In accordance with this paradigm, we developed the SpacEclipse method in a previous work, which is a method for developing collaborati...

In the teaching of those subjects related to computer programming competences, a teaching/learning methodology based on problem solving is often used, which sometimes involves the application of techniques such as pair programming. In addition, to perform the programming-related tasks, it is common to use professional integrated development environ...

This paper presents a methodology for integrating languages and processes, based on the "Framework for Interactive Groupware Systems Development (CIAF: Collaborative Interactive Application Framework)." As a case study, the integration of two proposals under development of interactive systems is performed, the first focused on the development of th...

This work is framed in the area of software development for Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). These software systems are called groupware systems. The development of groupware systems is a complex task, a problem that can be addressed applying the Model Driven Engineering (MDE) principles and techniques, where the use of models is essenti...

Nowadays, Computer-Based Instruction environments and eLearning Systems are gaining in importance. Among these systems we will pay special attention to Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs). An ITS merges eLearning tools with Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques in order to obtain the most suitable pedagogical strategy for each individual student....

The application of the Ambient Intelligence (AmI) approach implies the use of new styles of computer-human interaction as well as the need of supporting activities of collaborative nature. In these contexts, the concept of implicit interaction refers to those actions that a computer considers as inputs although the user has not intended to generate...

The development and specification of interactive systems is a complex process. The use of notations, methods and their respective technological support is necessary for obtaining user interfaces in a purely engineering manner and not in a manner of craftsmanship, as has been the case thus far. In the field of Software Engineering, an interest is cu...

En la docencia de las asignaturas asociadas a las competencias de la Programación, suele emplearse un modelo de enseñanza/aprendizaje basado en la resolución problemas, que en ocasiones implica la aplicación de técnicas como la Programación por Pares. Además, en la realización de estas tareas es habitual el empleo de entornos de desarrollo integrad...

Mobile devices are acquiring a greater presence, being used in many contexts. In this study we aimed to study their use for learning tasks, which are usually carried out under the paradigm of a desktop computer. To this end, we have performed an empirical study in which learning materials are visualized using different supports (conventional comput...

Learning Design (LD) involves the specification of learning/teaching activities. Therefore there are several standards and modeling languages and highlighted between them is the IMS Learning Design (IMS-LD) standard. However, the use of higher level abstraction notations can significantly facilitate the creation of these designs. In particular, our...

This paper describes the experience developed in the subject Human-Computer Interaction 1 (HCI1) in the Promotion to Degree Course that has been introduced during the 2011/2012 academic year in the College of Computer Science, Ciudad Real. This experience has provided us an opportunity to measure and evaluate various aspects of the course from the...

Within the field of groupware systems, collaborative modeling systems play an important role. They are useful and promising tools for many fields of application. In this paper we begin with the evaluation of the usefulness of one of these tools, SPACE-DESIGN, by applying it to a specific domain and by comparing it to a single-user tool which is sha...

Awareness is defined as the perception of the activities being carried out by members of a team in a given context. The use of awareness support techniques reduces the effort needed to realize communicative and collaborative tasks. Therefore, this leads to an increase in group work productivity. In this article we propose a conceptual framework whi...

One of the most important aspects of collaborative systems is the concept of awareness, which refers to the perception and knowledge of the group and its activities. Support for the design and automatic development of awareness mechanisms within collaborative systems is hard to find. Furthermore, awareness conceptualizations are usually partial and...

The design and development of groupware systems is a difficult task, especially due to their multidisciplinary nature and the technical complexity of these kinds of systems (e.g. distribution, data sharing, multi-user interfaces). A model-driven development approach could help to deal with this research problem. This paper presents an approach to t...

Describing CSCL scenarios can be performed in a standard way. To do so, Instructional Design or so called Learning Design (LD) can be used for describing CSCL scenarios by mean of a de facto specification known as IMS Learning Design (IMS-LD). A typical teaching/learning scenario based on this specification implies the use of several tools which mu...

In the last few years, the production of systems which support learning and group work has been high. However, the design and development of these types of systems are difficult, mainly due to the multidisciplinarity involved. Furthermore, the Graphic User Interface (GUI) of an application is receiving greater attention, since it can be decisive in...

One of the most important aspects of groupware systems is the concept of awareness, which refers to the perception and knowledge of the group and its activities. This paper extends a previously developed ontology-based conceptualization for the development of user interfaces in groupware systems that support awareness. Specifically, we are interest...

In this paper we propose a conceptual framework for the design the groupware user interface. It supports the interface design enabling integration with software development processes through UML notation. We studied relevant proposals in the domain of CSCW and HCI. Taxonomy is defined in order to classify concepts from those proposals. Finally, the...

Learning to program is an important subject for students of Computer Science. Mentoring these students is a time-consuming and complex task. In this paper, we present a learning and tutoring environment that integrates task/solution delivery, assessment support and tutor's annotations, by extending Eclipse to a "Real World Integrated Development En...

The standardization of eLearning environments and the design of collaboration scripts are two research areas that are acquiring a greater attention within the Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) community. IMS Learning Design (IMS-LD) is the specification used to describe instructional strategies. In this paper we analyse the suitabili...

Within groupware systems, collaborative modelling systems play an important role. They are useful and promising tools for many fields of application. One of these fields in which collaborative modelling tools can be useful is the design and systematic development of usable User Interfaces (UI) using task models. In this paper, the use of a generic...

In the last years a great amount of collaborative applications have been developed. Advances in wireless technology and its integration on mobile devices offer support to user-to-user interaction on the move, becoming any place a potential collaborative scenario. With the aim of obtaining an appropiate support for the development of multi-plataform...

The design and systematic development of usable user interfaces (UI) is becoming increasingly important. The use of task models is considered to be the main approach for the specification of the presentation tier in interactive applications. The task modelling for the specification of the interaction in a complex application may require the partici...

Las nuevas necesidades de trabajo colaborativo requieren de nuevos tipos de herramientas software. En este sentido, en trabajos previos se ha tratado de abordar el desarrollo de herramientas distribuidas síncronas que den soporte a tareas de construcción de artefactos o diagramas. De este modo, se ha propuesto un enfoque basado en metamodelado para...

Since 1997 the CHICO research Group has been one of the main promoters of HCI at the Castilla-La Mancha University (UCLM) and in Spain. This Group is leading the research and teaching of HCI in the Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering (ESI in the Spanish acronym) at this University. Now, with the aim of defining the academic offer adapting i...

This paper describes the taxonomy for designing interactive groupware systems. The taxonomy defines the objectives, methods and principles for classifying models and facilitates their integration. In particular, we show the integration process of models in two notations such as CIAN, which considers collaboration and human-computer interaction issu...

In this article we explain how we apply the CIAM methodology based on the CIAN notation in order to generate user interfaces in collaborative applications. CIAM has been applied successfully in the development of desktop applications, such as Domosim-TPC, demonstrating its effectiveness in the definition of user interfaces for collaborative applica...

The design of the groupware systems is a progressively extended task, which is difficult to tackle. There are not proposals to support the joint modeling of collaborative and interactive issues of this kind of systems, that is, proposals that allow designing the presentation layer of these applications. In order to solve this lack we propose a meth...