Journal of Engineering Education Transformations

Nitya N. Kulkarni ¹, Nirmala Patil ¹, K. G. Karibasappa ¹, Meena Maralappanavar ¹

Affiliations
1 School of Computer Science and Engineering, K. L. E. Technological University, IN

Abstract

Discrete Mathematical Structures (DMS) is one of the most important foundation courses that a computer science engineering student takes in his/her 2nd year. One of the outcomes of the course is to develop logical reasoning in students. Logic helps students to develop mathematical reasoning that seeds to software development skills.There have been many deliberations on the methods to teach logic. Traditional methods of teaching propositional and predicate logic are being questioned as the methods fall short to develop student's ability to reason. There has been emphasis on the usage of visual methods in the recent years for teaching logic. This is for the reason that current generation learners are mostly visual learners and also for the fact that the ability to reason is directly connected to vision. With this reference, authors of this paper have made an attempt to teach first order logic by amalgamating traditional and visual methods. The basics of first order logic was taught to students using traditional method of chalk and talk in which the examples related to real world and computer science were discussed. After cultivating the basic foundation of logic, students given a task to map the concepts learnt in the class to the content of a video as part of a graded assignment. This new pedagogical activity mainly addressed propositional logic. It involved identifying propositions from the given video, connecting them with logical connectives based on the video content and solving these premises using inference rules and laws of logic. The authors analyzed the effects of the new practice by comparing course attainment of 2016-17 and 2015-16 batches. The study shows that there has been improvement by 22%. However, since the experimentation was conducted for the first time, making decisive conclusions on the method is premature.

Keywords

Logic, Pedagogy,Visual Method.

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Prakash Hegade ¹, Nirmala Patil ¹, Indira Bidari ¹

Affiliations
1 School of Computer Science and Engineering, KLE Technological University, Hubli-31, IN

Abstract

Along with core courses, an education program is usually designed with discretionary elective courses for professional advancement. It is naturally inherent that most electives' course contents need periodic apprise to persevere to the state-of-art. The pace at which industries adapt to new technologies is considerably rapid as compared to the teaching and learning that happens at the university. However, an elective design needs an equal role and support to be played by the industry and the institute. This paper proposes the design principles for an elective course, which envelopes from curriculum structure to evaluation methodologies. The principles are outlined to cover the design aspects, selection methodologies for the content and course materials, syllabus division to units, course learning outcomes, teaching pedagogy, industry principles, evaluation methodologies, and course learning attainment. Each principle is presented with an objective and deliberation. The intended principles were applied to the design and delivery of an elective – Semantic Web. The course, which was offered with an industry-institute collaboration, was opted by 125 students in the sixth semester. The paper further presents each of the principles as applied and delivered for the semantic web course. The course attainment with respect to course learning outcomes, student elective opt ratio, and the feedback obtained stand in favor of the proposed model. The principles can be applied to design the elective for enhanced learning experiences and make students industry-ready, which is one of the major objectives for introducing the electives.

Keywords

Design, Elective, Industry, Learning Outcomes, Principles.

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Prakash Hegade ¹, Nirmala Patil ¹, Namita Kanthi ¹

Affiliations
1 KLE Technological University, Hubli-31, IN

Abstract

The effective integration strategies of blended learning with traditional, designed a decade ago and proven effective, scalable, and flexible, now put forth several other challenges with delivery and evaluation. Especially for the elective courses, they demand assessments that add value to the course and the student's resume. The principles of elective design, the delivery tools, and techniques, the number of students, the significance of the course, etc., are some of the major evaluation parameters to be considered for the design of assessment strategies. This paper presents one such evaluation methodology, portfolio design, for the courses delivered in a blended learning model, which can also be adapted to the offline learning model. The model involved problem analysis, concept relation, design thinking, solution approaches, implementation, and presentation in the form of a portfolio. The portfolios were created online using various open source tools. The paper presents the model and design goals in detail. The first offering of the course had course projects, and the second offering had portfolio creation. The grades and attainment have improved in the second offering compared to the first one. There is also improvement in the course attainment where course learning objectives have remained the same. Portfolios are an effective strategy to evaluate one's course understanding. Portfolios can be an effective way to present the course realizations to the community as justified through the t-test analysis.

Keywords

Assessment, Blended-Learning, Elective Design, Portfolio.

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