Rafael Molina-Carmona

University of Alicante | UA · Computer Sciences and Artificial Intelligence

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) safeguard knowledge, uphold aca-demic integrity, and contribute to societal progress. They are custodians of knowledge, promoting innovation, addressing societal challenges, and disseminating research ethically. With the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI), effective governance becomes crucial to ensure respons...

The objective of this qualitative investigation is to identify the assistive technology recognized by students with disabilities and to determine the assistive technology (software apps and devices) they require both at university and at home. A total of forty-two students, comprising 20 males and 22 females, were recruited from four different coun...

In 2020, the SARS-Cov2 or COVID pandemic broke out around the world and most people were isolated, at least temporarily. The present research shows a 5-year study that focuses on whether there have been changes in the education of the indigenous Waorani people after the pandemic. In order to measure the evolution of the different cultural aspects t...

The introduction of ChatGPT in November 2022 represented a disruptive innovation, leading to a remarkable change in the technological paradigm. The boom in generative AI-based tools arrived, bringing about significant changes. In the world of education, these AI tools have a lot of potential: from acting as a virtual teacher and adapting learning t...

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are evolving towards a new university model called the digital university, which they will only reach by increasing their overall digital maturity. CRUE Spanish Universities (the Conference of Rectors of Spanish Universities) has used a new Digital Maturity Model for Universities (md4u) to analyze the digital ma...

Conferencia interactiva impartida el 19 de octubre de 2023 en el VII Congreso Internacional sobre Aprendizaje, Innovación y Cooperación. CINAIC 2023, celebrado en la Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros de Minas y Energía de la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. La inteligencia artificial (IA) se ha convertido en un tema candente y es crucial qu...

Current Information Technologies are mature enough to favor the creation of adaptive learning systems that also encourages active, autonomous and persistent learning. A solution could be the creation of artificial intelligence algorithms capable of detecting the individual learning needs and features of the learners, what skills they are acquiring...

In computer programming education, despite yearly changes in teaching methodologies, students still struggle to grasp the concepts. When they advance to more complex projects, gaps in their basic knowledge become evident. It seems that the knowledge they learn in the first course is forgotten or not well understood. This proposal aims to explore st...

A TEmap (Technological Ecosystem Map) is a polygonal representation, illustrated as a heat map, of the main elements of a technological ecosystem, a powerful tool to analyse it and detect its strengths and weaknesses. We aim to use this kind of tool to design a course in a platform based on smart learning. Concretely, it is based on CALM (Customize...

The 10th edition of the Technological Ecosystems for Enhancing Multiculturality (TEEM 2022) brings together researchers and postgraduate students interested in combining different aspects of the technology applied to knowledge society development, with particular attention to educational and learning issues. This volume includes contributions relat...

This paper proposes a multidimensional social open model to evaluate the teaching strategies adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic by assessing the decisions made by teachers by a group of teachers acting as evaluators. Based on the analysis of previous studies on teaching, this study aims to propose a formal model for the evaluation of teaching str...

Project Based Learning (PBL) is an active learning methodology with many advantages, but also with some natural challenges to be tackled. Planification, coordination, flexibility and adaptability amonst others are required qualities that will pose challenges for teachers and students implementing PBL. This work presents a particular implementation...

Learning to program is becoming a universally desired ability. Discovering better ways to teach programming and improving existing ones is essential to increase its accessibility. At present, most teaching approaches focus on high-level languages and constructs to ease understanding. However, understanding problems seem to persist making the learni...

The creativity of individuals is manifested through the products they are able to create, so that the attributes of a product also characterize the individual who created it. Therefore, a way of measuring the creativity of an individual is evaluating and measuring the creative attributes of the products he or she created. This is the basis of the n...

The design and development of Serious Games is a complex task, including a considerable risk of failure. Many attempts end up in non-fun, non-engaging games that fail to meet the purpose of improving education. Many different proposals have been published in the form of design frameworks, with the aim of helping practitioners succeed. Although thes...

The traditional manufacturing sectors (footwear, textiles and clothing, furniture and toys, among others) are based on small and medium enterprises with limited capacity on investing in modern production technologies. Although these sectors rely heavily on product customization and short manufacturing cycles, they are still not able to take full ad...

An smart learning system is a computer system that allows to personalize and adapt the learning process to the learner’s needs. To do so, it is necessary to characterize the student so that we can know how he or she learns. The aim of this research is to propose this characterization through a vector of characteristics that are measurable, signific...

Current teaching methodologies are based on concepts such as continuous work, constructivism, project-based learning, gamification, etc.; in short, more active methodologies on the part of the student in which they acquire a leading role and are more responsible for their own learning. Teachers always insist students on the importance of working co...

The aim of this Special Issue is to compile a set of research works that highlight the use of gamification and other advanced technologies as powerful tools for motivation during learning. We have been fortunate to obtain a representative sample of the current research activity in this field.

Performance prediction systems allow knowing the learning status of students during a term and produce estimations on future status, what is invaluable information for teachers. The majority of current systems statically classify students once in time and show results in simple visual modes. This paper presents an innovative system with progressive...

Universities are developing a large number of Open Learning projects that must be subjectto quality evaluation. However, these projects have some special characteristics that make theusual quality models not respond to all their requirements. A fundamental part in a quality modelis a visual representation of the results (a dashboard) that can facil...

For a technology-based learning system to be able to personalize its learning process, it must characterize the learners. This can be achieved by storing information about them in a feature vector. The aim of this research is to propose such a system. In our proposal, the students are characterized based on their activity in the system, so learning...

In many countries around us, traditional sectors (footwear, textiles and clothing, furniture and toys, among others) are supported by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with limited capacity to invest in modern production technologies. Although these sectors rely heavily on product customization and short manufacturing cycles, they are not y...

Many researchers consider Gamification as a powerful way to improve education. Many studies show improvements with respect to traditional methodologies. Several educational strategies have also been combined with Gamification with interesting results. Interest is growing and evidence suggest Gamification has a promising future. However, there is a...

Adaptive learning can be defined as a learning model based on technology that can detect the students individual situation, context, learning needs and style, and the state of their learning process dynamically, and act according to them. So, it is necessary to define a student or learner model, that is, the set of information obtained and retained...

We present the second edition of the Smart Learning track, with the intention of consolidating it and specifying the term. On this occasion, five works are presented that address the use of Artificial Intelligence to help students learn from different perspectives. Thanks to the advances that are taking place in this field, we can determine that th...

Nowadays educational environment presents a set of needs different than years ago and which are no constant anymore. We must assume a learning prepared for those changes and adapted to the student's learning needs and features. This can be achieved with the use of Information Technologies creating a real adaptive learning, a smart learning system....

Video games were initially considered as a form of entertainment. Today, this perception has changed. Many video games have been designed for a wide range of purposes: education, rehabilitation, etc. This paper presents our experience developing video games in collaboration with an association of users with cerebral palsy. Cerebral palsy is charact...

Corporate Social Responsibility can be considered as the integration in an organisation of social and environmental concerns in their operations and in their interaction with their stakeholders on a voluntary basis. Universities, as leaders in higher education and scientific advancement, have long adopted this social responsibility from several poi...

The work of a teacher is dynamic. Year after year it is necessary to adjust the contents and the methodology to the features of the students and the changes in the profession. The authors of this paper are aware of these needs and have been adapting over time a basic programming subject of the degree in Computer Engineering. The objective of this w...

The educational environment we find in our current world does not look like it did some years ago. The learning process has become dynamic and continuous, mainly driven by the great evolution of technology, implying an inevitable change in education. It is a change that requires a complete digital transformation of education to change the teaching...

This is the first occasion Smart Learning track is included in TEEM Conference. Our current digital society faces challenges as preparing our students for an uncertain and changing environment. Learning systems based on technology, adapted to the different learning needs, learning styles and learning rhythms, and personalized for our learners, coul...

Estimating the difficulty of a learning activity is crucial for smart learning systems to provide learners with most suitable activities for their abilities. Generally, difficulty is estimated by teachers according to their experience and based on students' results. For newly designed activities, this estimation is often inaccurate or complicated t...

An effective adaptive learning system would theoretically maintain learners in a permanent state of flow. In this state, learners are completely focused on activities. To attain this state, the difficulty of learning activities must match learners’ skills. To perform this matching, it is essential to define, measure and deeply analyze difficulty. H...

Virtual Reality is an incipient technology that is proving very useful for training different skills. Our hypothesis is that it is possible to design virtual reality learning activities that can help students to develop their spatial ability. To prove the hypothesis, we have conducted an experiment consisting of training the students using an on-pu...

Segunda edición de la Semana Doctoral EKS

Learning Analytics1 is a powerful tool that provides rich information for students, teachers and academic authorities. There is a wide range of possible applications, and one of them is leveraging the information to improve the instructional design of a course. In this research, we introduce the results of a Learning Analytics engine to improve all...

In video games, organic tutorials are first levels of the games, designed to teach their basic controls while the player plays. They provide some kind of subliminal learning, are very effective and natural and teach without losing the fun, but they are not easy to be properly designed. The purpose of this research is assisting the designers in the...

University has an active social responsibility that is addressed both by acting responsibly as institution and by transferring this ethical duty to the students. Our proposal is achieving the social inclusion of disabled people, as part of the social responsibility of future engineers, through the realization of the final degree project in collabor...

This paper presents PLMan, a game-based learning activity designed to face problems observed in practical lessons about Computational Logics. The main of these problems was unmotivated students, who were showing lack of interest in learning activities. Other problems wereahigh percentage of students abandoning or committing plagiarism, and teachers...

Information technologies have constantly been progressing in recent years, and education systems cannot remain indifferent to these changes. Gamification is a promising line of research that provides many benefits to education, based on motivation, progressiveness, and instant feedback. Precisely, the motivation and the active role of students are...

Peer review is an evaluation strategy increasingly used in educational environments. It has now a central role in the field of teaching, but there is an extensive experience in the field of research. This evaluation method implies an author reviewing, usually anonymously, the work of his or her colleagues who, in turn, can become reviewers of the a...

The article describes a proposed model for assessing the quality of higher distance education based on the technologies of the Information and Communication. This model can be adopted by higher education institutions in order to ensure proper use of Information Technologies and Communication in teaching and learning processes, and strategic process...

Although several definitions of gamification can be found in the literature, they all have in common certain aspects: the application of strategies, models, dynamics, mechanics, and elements of the games in other contexts than games, and the objective of producing a playful experience that fosters motivation, involvement, and fun. In this paper, ou...

Technological ecosystems are a widespread solution to address the challenges of the information technologies in organizations. It is important to have tools to correctly and quickly evaluate them. The Technological Ecosystem Map (TEmap) is a tool to intuitively interpret complex information maintaining both a global and a detailed vision of the tec...

In the last years, the organizations have faced deep changes in their environments that have led them to a new complex and uncertain world. More participatory, flexible and distributed structures are needed to address and reduce this uncertainty and complexity. This new form of governance involves changes in the Strategic Planning process to meet t...

Superadas las diez ediciones, el informe UNIVERSITIC alcanza la madurez realizando el análisis global y minucioso de las TI en el Sistema Universitario Español (SUE). Se lleva a cabo un inventario detallado de los elementos TI presentes en nuestros campus y se aborda un análisis de las buenas prácticas en la gestión de las TI, utilizando un catálog...

Early prediction systems of student performance can be very useful to guide student learning. For a prediction model to be really useful as an effective aid for learning, it must provide tools to adequately interpret progress, to detect trends and behaviour patterns and to identify the causes of learning problems. White-box and black-box techniques...

Nowadays, Big Data techniques have made possible to obtain interesting low-level information from large amounts of data. However, the information is often difficult to be enriched enough to aid in high-level orga nizational processes. The objective of this work is to define a model to allow the use of available information for the design and implem...

The volume and quality of data, but also their relevance, are crucial when performing data analysis. In this paper, a study of the influence of different types of data is presented, particularly in the context of educational data obtained from Learning Management Systems (LMSs). These systems provide a large amount of data from the student activity...

In any learning environment, training activities are the basis for learning. Students need to practice to develop new skills and improve previously acquired abilities. Each student has specific needs based on their previous knowledge and personal skills. The allocation of a proper activity for a particular student consists in selecting a training a...

Gamification is set to be a disruptive innovation in the field of education in the next years, as a way to encourage learning, since when the fun impregnates the learning process, motivation increases and stress is reduced. However, most experiences in learning gamification just remain on the surface, just offering a layer of standardized game elem...

The aim of this work is to improve students’ learning by designing a teaching model that seeks to increase student motivation to acquire new knowledge. To design the model, the methodology is based on the study of the students’ opinion on several aspects we think importantly affect the quality of teaching (such as the overcrowded classrooms, time i...

A prediction system to early detect learning problems is presented. The starting point is a gamified learning system from which a massive set of usage and learning data is collected. They are analyzed using Machine Learning techniques and a prediction of each student’s performance is obtained. The information is weekly presented as a progression ch...

Learning practical abilities through exercises is a key aspect of any educational environment. To optimize learning, exercise difficulty should match abilities of the learner so that the exercises are neither so easy to bore learners nor so difficult to discourage them. The process of assigning a level of difficulty to an exercise is traditionally...

Mathematical morphology addresses the problem of describing shapes in an n-dimensional space using the concepts of set theory. A series of standardized morphological operations are defined, and they are applied to the shapes to transform them using another shape called the structuring element. In an industrial environment, the process of manufactur...

This work arises from the reflections of a group of teachers. These reflections have led us to analyse the different perspectives of the student and the teacher facing the reality that takes place in the classroom, dealing with aspects such as motivation and student work, classroom overcrowding and design of training activities. As a result of this...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a new geometric model based on the mathematical morphology paradigm, specialized to provide determinism to the classic morphological operations. The determinism is needed to model dynamic processes that require an order of application, as is the case for designing and manufacturing objects in CAD/CA...

The potential of integrating multiagent systems and virtual environments has not been exploited to its whole extent. This paper proposes a model based on grammars, called Minerva, to construct complex virtual environments that integrate the features of agents. A virtual world is described as a set of dynamic and static elements. The static part is...

Mathematical morphology has been an area of intensive research over the last few years. Although many remarkable advances have been achieved throughout these years, there is still a great interest in accelerating morphological operations in order for them to be implemented in real-time systems. In this work, we present a new model for computing mat...

There are three key aspects that define the current times, and of course, the world of education: learning, digital and open. Those general ideas give support to the Educational Innovation and lead us to propose the basic matrix of our model, which organizes the different elements of what we think an open education model must consider. The main obj...

Neuroevolution has come a long way over the last decade. Lots of interesting and successful new methods and algorithms have been presented, with great improvements that make the field become very promising. Concretely, HyperNEAT has shown a great potential for evolving large scale neural networks, by discovering geometric regularities, thus being s...

Different kinds of algorithms can be chosen so as to compute elementary functions. Among all of them, it is worthwhile mentioning the shift-and-add algorithms due to the fact that they have been specifically designed to be very simple and to save computer resources. In fact, almost the only operations usually involved with these methods are additio...

Virtual Worlds Generator is a grammatical model that is proposed to define virtual worlds. It integrates the diversity of sensors and interaction devices, multimodality and a virtual simulation system. Its grammar allows the definition and abstraction in symbols strings of the scenes of the virtual world, independently of the hardware that is used...

Virtual Worlds Generator is a grammatical model that is proposed to define virtual worlds. It integrates the diversity of sensors and interaction devices, multimodality and a virtual simulation system. Its grammar allows the definition and abstraction in symbols strings of the scenes of the virtual world, independently of the hardware that is used...

In general geometric models, the design of objects is usually separated from the manufacture. Some advanced models give solutions to some of the derived problems but lack a related model of representation. The proposed model addresses the process of designing objects by assimilation of the machining process. It is based on set theory and mathematic...

Background. The Surface-Trajectory model gives solution to some of the problems presented by the general geometric models where the design of an object is separated from its manufacture. In fact, in this model, the internal representation of objects is made up of machining trajectories. As the display systems usually need triangles to represent the...