Laura Screpanti

• Doctor of Engineering
• PostDoc at Marche Polytechnic University

Il feedback automatizzato, reso possibile da strumenti tecnologici avanzati come l’intelligenza artificiale, rappresenta una frontiera emergente per superare alcune delle sfide tradizionali legate alla personalizzazione e alla scalabilità del processo valutativo, soprattutto in classi numerose. In Italia, nonostante l’interesse crescente a livello...

Even if the importance of feedback in educational training is widely recognized, delivering timely and effective feedback is not always sustainable, especially in educational settings. To address this challenge, this paper presents the use of an Artificial Agent in both the correction process and online feedback delivery. This approach aims to faci...

Internet-based control engineering education combines traditional methods with modern technology, creating a dynamic and accessible learning environment. Both online and traditional approaches have unique advantages and challenges, with the choice depending on factors like student preferences, geographic location, and available resources. A blended...

Slides from the presentation of the paper "A max-plus algebra approach to model laboratory experiences in blended control engineering education" at the 4th IFAC Workshop on Internet Based Control Education - IBCE 2024.

Dolphin presence is typically monitored through Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM), deploying underwater devices. Commercial systems incur substantial costs, leading researchers to try to devise cost-effective sound recorders. While cost-efficient, enhancing recorder performance is crucial. The current study is designed to introduce and validate cos...

The underwater environment is among Earth’s most challenging domains, where failures incur elevated risks and costs for both technology and human endeavors. As a consequence, forecasting the behavior of mechatronic systems through simulation has become increasingly important. Underwater Robotic Simulators (URSs) allow researchers and engineers to s...

Latest developments in acoustic research suggest that using surveying methods based on artificial intelligence (AI) could improve the effectiveness of underwater monitoring. Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) has proven to be a cost-effective approach for gathering information about the acoustic behavior of dolphins and plays a crucial role in study...

Many recent studies highlighted the importance of feedback on the quality of learning. It empowers students to take ownership of their learning, guides institutions in making informed decisions, ensures continuous improvement, fosters engagement and motivation, facilitates open communication, and enables personalized learning experiences. However,...

The necessity to prepare primary students with twenty-first-century skills through STEM-related teaching has considerably grown in the last two decades. Trainings, where robots are built from kits, programmed and tested, are a modern form of interdisciplinary education dedicated to children and youths. Classes in robotics are then expected to stron...

Over the last decade, education has been evolving to equip students with the fundamental skills required to cope with the challenges of sustainability and inclusivity, such as quality education, access to clean water, cultural heritage preservation and protection of marine life. Technology supports the learning process by providing useful tools tha...

Passive acoustics are widely used to monitor the presence of dolphins in the marine environment. This study aims to introduce a low-cost and homemade approach for assembling a complete underwater microphone (i.e., the hydrophone), employing cheap and easy to obtain components. The hydrophone was assembled with two piezo disks connected in a balance...

This paper presents an overview of Educational Robotics (ER) in primary and pre-school education. As ER seems to be gaining popularity for its effectiveness as a learning tool, more research needs to be done in this area. Recent results from ER pilot projects advocate for the integration of ER in K-12 education curricula. On the other hand, teacher...

Control engineering has a cross-boundary nature because its applications span over a wide range of fields, among which science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Creating an automation literacy from the Primary School's age is beneficial for pupils because it supports the development of valuable skills that allow the comprehension an...

Passive acoustics is widely used to monitor dolphin presence in marine environment. The current study proposes a self-made/low-cost approach to assemble a complete and compact underwater acoustic recorder employing inexpensive and widely used components. The system is composed of two main elements: the computing unit (Raspberry Pi Zero 2W single bo...

Il volume discute i risultati emersi durante il convegno FabLearn Italy 2020 La scuola che a­ffronta l’emergenza Covid-19: prospettive e risposte dal making, il coding, la robotica e gli ambienti di apprendimento. Prendendo le mosse dall’introduzione nella didattica curricolare di strumenti per la didattica attiva come il coding, la robotica educat...

Many researchers and teachers agree that the inclusion of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in early education provides strong motivation and greatly improves the speed of learning. Most primary school curricula include a number of concepts that cover science and mathematics, but less effort is placed in teaching problem-solving, co...

Robotics in Education (RiE) is a broad term that refers to a variety of applications. Robots can enhance learning and teaching, but they can also help overcome impairments, whether physical or social. Even though the advantages of bringing new technologies into schools are clear, the lack of a well-established set of good practices, assessment of e...

In a constructionist environment, robotics engagingly teaches traditional concepts, while applying them to compelling real-world problems. Educational robotics can help students develop soft skills, like teamwork, and improve the way they relate to each other. Researchers in different disciplines have devoted many efforts to exploring this dimensio...

This paper presents the preliminary results of using machine learning techniques to analyze educational robotics activities. An experiment was conducted with 197 secondary school students in Italy: the authors updated Lego Mindstorms EV3 programming blocks to record log files with coding sequences students had designed in teams. The activities were...

Educational robotics has been used for a relatively long time to promote the development of students’ computational thinking, but in most cases, such activities are offered as extracurricular activities to students who are interested in robotics and programming or in specific study programmes in higher education. Despite the fact that Seymour Paper...

This article describes an example of data mining techniques applied to an open educational environment. These novel assessment methods in the educational robotics (ER) field provide empirical evidence of problem-solving styles behind the key tasks of proposed activities within real operative scenarios. A supervised, mixed machine learning (ML) appr...

Educational Robotics (ER) is a powerful tool to help students learn school subjects, robotics, and developing cognitive skills and soft skills. Assessing the learning outcomes of ER activities requires the identification of the model that underly the process. Machine learning can be useful to identify such models and to interpret data. This paper a...

This paper presents the design of an assessment process and its outcomes to investigate the impact of Educational Robotics activities on students' learning. Through data analytics techniques, the authors will explore the activities' output from a pedagogical and quantitative point of view. Sensors are utilized in the context of an Educational Robot...

Digital skills are becoming increasingly central to the educational policy of every country and educational systems are facing new challenges in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. All pupils should gain the knowledge, skills and competences they need, as they determine an individual’s chance to succeed in the future labour market and to h...

Robotics in education (RiE) covers a variety of applications of robots to the world of teaching and learning. Despite all the benefits that robotics can bring to education, a clear definition of the purpose for introducing robotics in education is still missing. Authors aim at facing this issue proposing a classification of RiE experiences, stating...

Educational Robotics is rapidly gaining attention as an effective methodology to develop skills and engage students preserving their peculiar style of learning. It is often tied together with two other methodologies, Coding and Tinkering, characterized by a similar hands-on approach. In order to fully exploit their inclusive features, teachers need...

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Robotic structures that couple autonomous surface vehicles and unmanned underwater vehicles in integrated systems with various levels of cooperation provide interesting solutions to the problem of developing efficient, versatile and cost effective tools for exploration, monitoring and exploitation of the underwater environment. In this paper we des...

In the future boys and girls will be employed in, and maybe create, new jobs connected with technology. We present a project whose aim was to raise interest in STEM education in K12 students and, in particular, to address the lack of participation of female students in STEM careers. For this reason, in September 2017, 20 students (12 girls and 8 bo...

Since the acronym STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) was firstly introduced by the US National Science Foundation to bring technology and engineering into regular K-12 curriculum, Robotics has proven itself to be the sum of STEM disciplines. This paper presents an extra-curricular experience held in a formal environment with the a...

This paper presents an innovative approach to alternating School- Work turnover programme based on Educational Robotics and on project-based learning. At the beginning of the year 2017 (from January to April), Liceo Volta-Fellini of Riccione proposed a STEM practical activity to its own students as a School-Work turnover programme. This course of R...

This paper presents an innovative approach to alternating School-Work turnover programme based on Educational Robotics and on project-based learning. At the beginning of the year 2017 (from January to April), Liceo Vol-ta-Fellini of Riccione proposed a STEM practical activity to its own students as a School-Work turnover programme. This course of R...

Negli ultimi anni, grazie anche all’incremento dei fondi nazionali ed europei disponibili per l’innovazione del settore didattico, è nata l’esigenza di formazione dei docenti in tema di competenze digitali e di innovazione pedagogico-didattica: tema particolarmente sentito nel contesto italiano. L’articolo presenta le principali innovazioni per l’a...

The development of versatile and cost effective robotic tools for exploration and intervention in the underwater environment is presently a topic of interest in marine engineering. A viable, efficient solution is given by robotic platform that couple autonomous surface vehicles and unmanned underwater vehicles in integrated structures with various...