Session T3A
Work in Progress - Advanced Programming through Problem-Based Learning Sergio Martin, Elio San Cristobal, Rosario Gil, Antonio Colmenar, Pablo Losada, Nuria Oliva, Manuel Castro and Juan Peire Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, UNED (Spanish University for Distance Education) Madrid, Spain {smartin, elio, rgil, acolmenar, plosada, mcastro, jpeire}@ieec.uned.es Abstract - The way people learn out of university has much more in common with self-learning and problemsguided learning than with the classical way of teaching, with a teacher speaking in a class and all the students listening with a passive attitude. This paper proposes an exercise to motivate students to learn and use some advanced programming concepts such as the use of wellformed and valid XML documents; how to transform these documents into "human-readable" documents with XSLT style-sheets; communication protocols such as TCP/IP; application level protocols such as HTTP 1.1; and mash-up systems. The problem is intended to improve the mobility in universities with very spread and distributed campuses such as Universities for Distance Education, where this exercise is proposed. For that reason, this subject is especially motivating for these students, due to the fact they ‘suffer’ the consequences of study in a university where mobility plays a relevant role. Through this exercise students will guide their own learning, constructing the mental structures and understanding the programming concepts needed to solve the future programming problems they will find in their careers. Index Terms – Communications, Problem-based learning, Programming, XML. INTRODUCTION This paper describes an exercise for an advanced programming course at University using Problem Based Learning (PBL). The aim of the exercise is to motivate students to learn several programming concepts through the development of a system that could improve the mobility of both students and teachers inside universities. Traditionally, the way of teaching these concepts is through several theory classes and some small practice of some of the concepts. PBL methodology tries to involve students even more in the learning process, motivating them thanks to an interesting development [1]-[3]. In fact, this is the natural way of learning. This approach tries to put the students as they will work out of university having much more in common with this kind of learning than with the classical way of teaching, where there is a teacher speaking and students listening with a passive attitude [4][5]. If a student
feels implicated and motivated with certain project, he/she will look for the suitable information to solve it, and the passive attitude will become active [6]-[9]. DEVELOPMENT The proposed exercise is structured in several issues and questions that students must solve through several steps in order to finish the project. The outcome of the exercise is a system that shows different geographical information of an organization through several applications, such as Google Maps and commercial GPS navigators. Previously to the development of this exercise, students must have studied some theory concepts about some concrete fields, especially about XML documents, XSL style-sheets and communication protocols. The first activity the students must think about is the global infrastructure needed to support the project. Secondly, they must face the challenge of translating a postal address into GPS coordinates. For this task, student will realize they have to read an XML document with the postal information of all the centre of the university. As a consequence, they will have to learn what is it, and how to recover information from it. This activity also includes XML validation and manipulation of DTD (Document type definitions) and XML-Schemas. Once, the information in the XML has been read, the teacher/tutor/moderator will suggest that there is a service provided by Google Maps that allows the translation of postal addresses into GPS coordinates. The challenge in this case is to learn the concepts related with Internet communications, mainly TCP/IP; Application Level Protocols, such as HTTP; and in particular how to use this service. In addition, the system offers several views of the same geographical information. The first one is a web-based system that will show all the points in a map (Google Maps) together with multimedia information. This map will allow establishing routes from one point to others and find any kind of services, such as hotels, restaurants, etc. On the other hand, the system also will allow another view, showing the organization’s geographical information through commercial GPS navigators. In this module, students will learn what an XSL stylesheet is, and how to apply it to an XML document. Thanks
978-1-4244-1970-8/08/$25.00 ©2008 IEEE October 22 – 25, 2008, Saratoga Springs, NY 38th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference T3A-1
Session T3A to these concepts, students will be able to use the geographical information retrieved (name, postal address, GPS coordinates, etc.) to obtain different views of the same information. To achieve this goal they will have to create nine different XSL style-sheets, one for each view.
REFERENCES [1]
Martin, D. “How to be a Successful Student”. Available at: http://www.marin.cc.ca.us/~don/Study/Hcontents.html. Accessed on 15th of October 2007.
[2]
Fincher, S. “Project-based learning practices in computer science education”. Proceedings Frontiers in Education Conference FIE 1998, pp. 1185 – 1191. Oct. 2006.
[3]
Varanasi, M.R. “Work In Progress: An Innovative electrical engineering program integrating project-oriented and lifelong learning pedagogies”. Proceedings Frontiers in Education Conference FIE 2006, Oct. 2006.
[4]
Linge, N. “Problem-based learning as an effective tool for teaching computer network design”. Transaction on Education. Volume: 49 Issue: 1, pp. 5 – 10.
[5]
Alexandrov, V.S.; Alexandrov, N. S. and Ramírez-Velarde, R. “Novel pedagogical paradigms facilitating mixed mode and collaborative learning using open source software,” International Conference in Interactive Computer Aided Learning, Villach, Austria, 2006.
[6]
Gilroy, K. “Collaborative E-Learning: The right approach”. Arsdigita Community Journal, 2000.
[7]
Von Hippel, E. “Democratizing Innovation“. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005.
[8]
Tsukamoto, Y. and Namatame, A. “Distributed learning and cooperative learning”. IJCNN '93-Nagoya. Proceedings of 1993 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks. Volume 2, 2529, Oct. 1993.
[9]
Garrison, D.R. and Kanuka, H. "Blended Learning: Uncovering its Transformative Potential in Higher Education", Internet and Higher Education 7, 2004.
EVALUATION PLAN Once they finished the development, they have acquired experience on the following issues: • XML/XSL Documents. o What a well-formed and valid XML document is and how to validate it. o Document type definition (DTD) and XML-Schemas. o How to read information from an XML document. SAX and DOM. o XSL Style-sheets: Appling XSL stylesheets to XML documents. • Internet Communication Protocols o Basic knowledge of TCP / IP. o Use of IP ports and TCP sockets. o Application level protocols: HTTP. • Mapping information on geographical systems. The evaluation plan consists in the analysis of a survey that students must answer at the end of the course together with the evaluation of the teacher of each group. The main measured features are: • Work in group and cooperation skills • Leadership • Self-learning skills • Understanding of concepts • Global vision of the problem. • Skills to divide problems into modules. • Ability to find solutions • Technical merit • Attractive visual results • Students’ satisfaction • Effort needed to achieve the solution CONCLUSIONS With this exercise students will learn all the necessary concepts by themselves though with the teacher support. Thanks to this methodology students face at university the real problems that they will find in their future careers, and learn how to learn by themselves, which is even a more important lesson than some programming concepts. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors would like to acknowledge the Spanish Science and Education Ministry and the Spanish National Plan I+D+I 2004-2007 the support for this paper as the project TSI2005-08225-C07-03 "MOSAICLearning: Mobile and electronic learning, of open code, based on standards, secure, contextual, personalized and collaborative".
AUTHOR INFORMATION Sergio Martin, Spanish University for Distance Education,
[email protected] Elio Sancristobal, Spanish University for Distance Education,
[email protected] Rosario Gil, Spanish University for Distance Education,
[email protected] Antonio Colmenar, Spanish University for Distance Education,
[email protected] Pablo Losada, Spanish University for Distance Education,
[email protected] Nuria Oliva, Spanish University for Distance Education,
[email protected] Manuel Castro, Spanish University for Distance Education,
[email protected] Juan Peire, Spanish University for Distance Education,
[email protected]
978-1-4244-1970-8/08/$25.00 ©2008 IEEE October 22 – 25, 2008, Saratoga Springs, NY 38th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference T3A-2
