Showing papers by "Mauro Coccoli published in 2016"

Cognitive computing in education

Abstract: Cognitive computing is the new wave of Artificial Intelligence (AI), relying on traditional techniques based on expert systems and also exploiting statistics and mathematical model. In particular, cognitive computing systems can be regarded as a "more human" artificial intelligence. In fact, they mimic human reasoning methodologies, showing special capabilities in dealing with uncertainties and in solving problems that typically entail computation consuming processes. Moreover, they can evolve, exploiting the accumulated experience to learn from the past, both from errors and from successful findings. From a theoretical point of view, cognitive computing could replace existing calculators in many fields of application but hardware requirements are still high, even if the cloud infrastructure, which is expected to uphold its rapid growth in the very next future, can support their diffusion and ease the penetration of such a novel variety of systems, fostering new services as well as changes in many settled paradigms. In this paper, we focus on benefits that this technology can bring when applied in the education field and we make a short review of relevant experiences.

Teaching Computer Programming Through Hands-on Labs on Cognitive Computing

Abstract: In this work we report more recent results of a longlasting educational project that we have been carrying on for several years and is evolving continuously. The objective of the mentioned project is making students work on the production of small, yet full featured, software prototypes with a collaborative approach, in a dedicated development environment with suited tools and facilities. At the same time, we seek to lay the foundations to build a pragmatic model to teach cognitive computing programming. We conducted such experience in a programming course at the University of Naples “Federico II” exploiting a software development environment based on the Platform as a Service (PaaS). This made possible to perform a set of cooperative learning activities that we used to demonstrate practically some theoretical concepts, also stressing the use of cognitive computing tools, which introduce a new way of thinking the software design process. From its inception, this educational project has involved a relevant number of students, which has been growing continuously, year after year. At our first attempts, students were assigned a specific activity, which was expected to be concluded within one year. Then, as new classes arrived, we have seen that it was possible to start new activities starting from the precedent achievements, thus requiring further evolutions of the available prototypes. This allowed creating more complex and complete projects, as new tools and services were made available, carrying new opportunities. In the present release, such evolutionary path has led to using the IBM Bluemix platform with its wide range of components, including Watson that is devoted to cognitive computing. This work goes in the direction of developing the smart university model, by using innovative and intelligent services to help raising a new generation of software engineers but also to promote and disseminate a new way for designing and building innovative applications.

A Tool for the Semantic Analysis and Recommendation of videos in e-learning.

Abstract: Video lessons are increasingly adopted in education, especially in universities and lifelong learning projects. Their popularity is due to the people's familiarity with video and to other intrinsic characteristics of this medium, such as the message rapidity and its reproducibility. Accordingly, Massive Open Online Courses are gaining a prominent role in both formal and informal education and many universities provide video courses for their students through suited platforms or even freely accessible to everyone. To improve the effectiveness of video lessons and to make them part of a wider learning environment, we decided to investigate the possibility of making a system that, starting from a video, can suggest further “readings”. Such a system is thought for independent lifelong learners, for regular students, for teachers and instructional designers as well. Keywords-Cognitive computing; video lessons; MOOCs; technology enhanced learning; lifelong learning.