José Miguel Mota Macias

Universidad de Cádiz | UCA · Department of Computer Engineering

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to face-to-face activities being developed in a virtual format that often offers a poor experience in areas such as education. Virtual Learning Environments have improved in recent years thanks to new technologies such as Virtual Reality or Chatbots. However, creating Virtual Learning Environments requires advanced pro...

This paper describes the types of MOOC considered by researchers, and highlights the latter’s focus on Connectivist MOOC. In addition, it analyses MOOC methodologies, and learners’ interest in MOOC based on the concepts of adaptability, connectivism, and socio-constructivism. This is to address the high dropout rate issue on MOOC platforms. The mai...

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an imposed acquisition of digital skills. End-user development tools have demonstrated their potential, enabling non-expert users without an advanced knowledge of programming languages to create their own software artifacts. Moreover, advances in natural language processing and understanding have enabled the emergen...

Learning the SQL language for working with relational databases is a fundamental subject for future computer engineers. However, in distance learning contexts or unexpected situations like the COVID-19 pandemic, where students had to follow lectures remotely, they may find it hard to learn. Chatbots are software applications that aim to have conver...

The incorporation of virtual reality and mobile learning methodology in university teaching facilitates the teaching-learning process of concepts and complex visualization processes for students, as is the case in social work. The goal of this article is to present the iSWAPP© application aimed at social work students training in complex skills...

Systematic reviews are powerful methods used to determine the state-of-the-art in a given field from existing studies and literature. They are critical but time-consuming in research and decision making for various disciplines. When conducting a review, a large volume of data is usually generated from relevant studies. Computer-based tools are ofte...

Designing visual models to describe and conceptualize objects and systems requires abstraction skills and a predisposition for visual interactions. Readily available modeling tools rely on the users’ logical-mathematical and visual-spatial abilities to support modeling design. However, they fall short of mechanisms to tap into the users’ bodily-kin...

The use of code quality control platforms for analysing source code is increasingly gaining attention in the developer community. These platforms are prepared to parse and check source code written in a variety of general-purpose programming languages. The emergence of domain-specific languages enables professionals from different areas to develop...

Se describen las líneas de investigación del grupo Mejora del Proceso Software y Métodos Formales de la Universidad de Cádiz, en relación a las tecnologías del aprendizaje e informática educativa. Palabras clave: Computación creativa, desarrollo centrado en el usuario, wikis, analítica del aprendizaje, juegos aplicados, aprendizaje móvil de idiomas...

The Internet of Things enables experts of given domains to create smart user experiences for interacting with the environment. However, development of such experiences requires strong programming skills, which are challenging to develop for non-technical users. This paper presents several extensions to the block-based programming language used in A...

The theme selected for the 2019 EuroCALL conference held in Louvain-la-Neuve was ‘CALL and complexity’. As languages are known to be intrinsically and linguistically complex, as are the many determinants of learning (additional) languages, complexity is viewed as a challenge to be embraced collectively. The 2019 conference allowed us to pay tribute...

A visual programming language allows users and developers to create programs by manipulating program elements graphically. Several studies have shown the benets of visual languages for learning purposes and their applicability to robot programming. However, at present, there are not enough comparative studies on the suitability of textual and visua...

Systematic literature reviews and mapping studies are useful research methods used to lay the foundations of further research. These methods are widely used in the Health Sciences and, more recently, also in Computer Science. Despite existing tool support for systematic reviews, more automation is required to conduct the complete process. This pape...

In recent years, 360º videos combined with virtual reality (VR) techniques have been used to recreate highly interactive and immersive environments, allowing its users to directly experience and interact with its content and environment. Unlike traditional video recordings, which usually provide a very restrictive perspective of an object, person o...

The incorporation of mobile applications in educational environments generates a large amount of information resulting from the interaction of students with these applications. The analysis of this information can be of significant importance. The teacher may find it useful, as it can help them to make decisions or to assess the process of teaching...

Pseudocode is one of the recommended methods for teaching students to design algorithms. Having a tool that performs the automatic translation of an algorithm in pseudocode to a programming language would allow the student to understand the complete process of program development. In addition, the introduction of quality measurement of algorithms d...

The representation of musical information through notation systems is a process of multidimensional nature, of high complexity , and which is subject to a practically infinite level of casuistry. The translation of these processes into the digital domain has meant an unprecedented revolution for the recording and dissemination of musical informatio...

One of the most valuable skills for teachers is the ability to produce their own digital solutions, translating teaching concepts into end-user computer systems. This often requires the involvement of computing specialists. As a result, the development of educational programming environments remains a challenge. Learning experiences based multimoda...

In recent years, several visual programming languages and tools are emerging, which allow young students to easily program applications. Particularly, the block-based language used by Scratch has been the standard in most school initiatives to introduce Computational thinking (CT) in courses unrelated to computing. However, CT competences are not s...

Una de las competencias específicas de la asignatura de Dibujo Técnico en primero de los grados de ingeniería hace referencia al desarrollo de la capacidad de visión espacial. En este sentido, la comprensión del Sistema Diédrico por parte del alumno permite el desarrollo de la misma y proporciona las bases para una inmersión más sencilla en otros á...

Augmented Reality (AR) technology allows the inclusion of virtual elements on a vision of actual physical environment for the creation of a mixed reality in real time. This kind of technology can be used in educational settings. However, the current AR authoring tools present several drawbacks, such as, the lack of a mechanism for tracking the stud...

Learning experiences based on multimodal interactive applications are becoming common at all educational levels. Designing assessments for learning applications is often addressed through learning analytics. Multimodal interactive applications generate a large amount of data about students' interaction that can provide insights about their profile,...

Technology of Augmented Reality (AR) has been successfully applied to create technical manuals that guide operators during the supervision, control and maintenance of industrial processes. These manuals using visual elements overlapping the image of the real world captured by a camera, manage to improve the industrial process reducing economic cost...

Las interacciones de los estudiantes con dispositivos y aplicaciones móviles con propósitos educativos generan una gran cantidad de información que puede ser tratada con técnicas analíticas y de minería de datos para que el profesor pueda tomar decisiones relacionadas con el aprendizaje. No obstante, el desarrollo de aplicaciones móviles que sean c...

Slides from presentation of VEDILS

En el presente trabajo se describe Vary, un entorno de desarrollo basado en Eclipse, el cual permite escribir algoritmos en pseudocódigo y posteriormente, ejecutar los programas obtenidos mediante la transformación de dichos algoritmos en código fuente. En este caso, el entorno realiza la transformación automática desde pseudocódigo a código C/C++....

The Open Discovery Space (ODS) project was conceived to introduce innovative resource-based teaching and learning practices in European schools, to promote the creation of communities between European school members and to boost the demand for open educational resources among teachers. After 3 years of applying the ODS innovation model, more than 2...

Nowadays, virtual learning environments are developed as digital ecosystems based on existing resources, applications, and web services. Even if they are not hosted in a centralized course management system, they are usually highly coupled. In this paper, we show how semantic technologies can help decoupling them. We build an e-learning web ecosyst...

comprising 51 partners from 23 European countries. ODS project aspires to boost demand for OERs and to introduce innovative teaching and learning practices in schools through the effective use of these resources. The project also intends to promote the creation of communities between European schools. In order to concentrate both, OERs and school c...

OpenDiscoverySpace (ODS) is a 3-year European FP7 project comprising 51 partners from 23 European countries. ODS project aspires to boost demand for OERs and to introduce innovative teaching and learning practices in schools through the effective use of these resources. The project also intends to promote the creation of communities between Europea...

Virtual learning environments are developed nowadays as digital ecosystems based on existing resources, applications and web services. Even if they are not hosted in a centralized course management system, they usually are highly coupled. In this paper we show how semantic technologies can help decoupling them. We build an elearning web ecosystem e...