app inventor as a tool to reach students

TEEM'2015, PORTO1

APP Inventor as a Tool to Reach Students

Diogo Ramos, Paulo Moura Oliveira and E. J. Solteiro Pires

INESC TEC , UTAD Pole, UTAD University

Department of Engineering

School of Sciences and Technology

UTAD University

5000-801 Vila Real, Portugal

email: [email protected]

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Presentation Layout

1. Introduction and Motivation

2. MIT App Inventor 2: Key Issues

3. Apps for Teaching/Learning Automation and Feedback Control

4. Teach2Student and Student2Teach Apps

5. Preliminary Results

6. Conclusion and Current/Future Work

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Introduction and Motivation

The use of smart phones within university students is increasing.

My experience as a lecturer shows that currently there is a very strongconnection between students and mobile devices.

Mobile applications will be a common tool for teaching and learningpurposes very soon. Students are ready for this change.

The intensive and constant use of smartphones by students makes it difficult to stop itsuse inside the classroom.

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Introduction and Motivation

How fast will teachers be ready to copewith their development and use of thesetechnologies?

Decisive aspects that will influence the use of mobile applications forteaching/learning purposes are:

How can a teacher/student with no specialization in mobile devicesprogramming develop an application?

For Android devices an answer to the last question can bethe use of MIT App-Inventor 2.

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MIT App Inventor 2: Key Issues

Designer provides a Palette with several blockslibraries, allowing building the application userinterface and visualizing it at the same time

Why using the MIT App Inventor?

Uses drag-and-drop programmingmethodology with building blocks.

No syntax problems.

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MIT App Inventor 2: Key Issues

The process of designing an application andmake it readily available for testing and use ina mobile device can be very fast.

Why using the MIT App Inventor?

Using the QR code or providedcharacter code.

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Apps for Teaching/Learning Automation

and Feedback Control

Applications developed with MIT App-Inventor have been used in UTAD to teachindustrial automation/ feedback control courses:

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Apps for Teaching/Learning Automation

and Feedback Control eLogicum is a simple application which can be

used to revise basic notions concerning logicoperators.

Global objective of this application isto bridge the following importantaspects:

i. mathematical representation ofsimple logic equations concerningfundamental operators;

ii. representation of those equationsusing an electric circuit;

iii. Ladder Logic Diagramrepresentation.

AND OR

NOT XOR

EDGES INFO

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eLogicum

Example: OR operator

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eLogicum

Example: XOR operator

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Automatum

The Automatum application was developed to support courses ofIndustrial Automation and Control in the UTAD University inPortugal.

While the Applicationtexts are (at this stage)in Portuguese, forexposition sake someof its components aretranslated here toEnglish.

Topics

Quizzes

Problems

Tutorials

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Automatum

Quiz Example T1

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Automatum

Quiz Example T5

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Automatum

Tutorial Example

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Automatum

Problems:

A set of problems covering several topics ofindustrial automation and control to be solvedby students.

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MCS-2015

MCS-2015 is application developed to complement the Modelling and ControlSystems course to Biomedical Engineering .

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Teach2Student and Student2Teach Apps

Teach2Student(T2S) and Student2Teach(S2T) were developed two link teachersand students.

Teach2Student

Enables teachers:

• to post their studentscourses main class’s issues.

• provide students withspecific quizzes.

Student2Teach

Enables students:

• to visualize the posts andperform quizzes submittedby their teachers.

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After registering andsign in the teacher canmanage until fourcourses

Teacher2Student

In this casethe courseis IndustrialAutomation

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Teach2Student and Student2Teach Apps A maximum of 5 Posts can be prepared and sent

to Student2Teach, per lecture.

Two types of quizzes can be selected by teachers:

Teacher2Student

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After selecting the quiz type, the teacher as toinsert the question and answers.

Teacher2Student

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After selecting the quiz type, the teacher as toinsert the question and answers.

Teacher2Student

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Students can get the posts for the different,courses:

Student2Teach

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Students can get posts for the different, courses:Student2Teach

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Students can get and use quizzes to test theirknowledge.

Student2Teach

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Students can get and use quizzes to test theirknowledge.

Student2Teach

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Preliminary Results

Student2Teach application was tested in a course with 18 UTAD studentsattending to the Automation and Control course from which 9 had an Androidphone.

A survey inquiry with 11 questions was filled by students (see paper for details).

This small sample resultswas quite positive andsome suggestions werealready followed in refiningthe presented version inthis presentation.:

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Conclusion and Current/Future Work

Applications developed with the MIT App Inventor to teach/learn IndustrialAutomation and Control were reported.

Two applications named Teach2Student and Student2Teach were developed tobridge teachers and students.

Teach2Student enable teachers to send posts and quizzes to their students.

Student2Teach enable students to see the posts and quizzes prepared by students.

Preliminary results obtained with a small sample are positive. However a morerepresentative sample is necessary to validate these two apps

app inventor as a tool to reach students

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