Development of Interactive Documents to Empower Learning in Robotics-related Subjects
(Sep’19–Aug’21) University Project
This Innovative Education Project pursuits the design and development of interactive documents, based on the Jupyter Notebook technology, aiming to empower the learning in robotics-related subjects in the University of Málaga. Interactive documents, also called living documents or computational stories, allow lecturers to combine in the same place text fields, images, equations, videos, links to additional material, and executable code, hence generating comprehensive and contextualized material that also includes the interactivity and possibilities of an application.
In engineering subjects, the utilization of practical sessions for problem solving and development of code/applications is a commonly used pedagogical resource to consolidate the concepts provided in theorethical lessons. However, in subjects that require the handling of abstract thechnical concepts from different fields, the design of problems to be solved that supports these concepts is very complex. This results in practical sessions that do not cover all the relevant concepts, that only do it superficially, or that are discnnected, which forces the student to make an additional effort to acquire a holistic knowledge about the subject.
Figure 1. Example of interactive document developed with Jupyter Notebook
This Innovative Education Project pursuits the design and development of interactive documents, based on the Jupyter Notebook technology, aiming to empower the learning in robotics-related subjects in the University of Málaga. These subjects integrate concepts from algebra, probability, statistics, calculus, discrete mathematics, or programming. Interactive documents, also called living documents or computational stories, allow lecturers to combine in the same place text fields, images, equations, videos, links to additional material, and executable code, hence generating comprehensive and contextualized material that also includes the interactivity and possibilities of an application. With these developments we pursuit an improvement in the quality of the resources offered to our students, as well as in their learning and training possibilities.
REFERENCE: PIE19-165 FUNDED BY: University of Málaga PERIOD: Sep 2019 – Aug 2021 PRINCIPAL RESEARCHER: JAVIER GONZÁLEZ-JIMÉNEZ and JOSÉ RAÚL RUIZ SARMIENTO INSTITUTION: Unversity of Málaga
Publications
Publications in the scope of this project:
Contents
Journals (1)
2021
J.R. Ruiz-Sarmiento, S.F. Baltanas-Molero, J. Gonzalez-Jimenez
@article{raul2021jupyter,
title = {Jupyter Notebooks in Undergraduate Mobile Robotics Courses: Educational Tool and Case Study},
author = {Ruiz-Sarmiento, J. R. and Baltanas-Molero, Samuel-Felipe and Gonzalez-Jimenez, Javier},
url = {https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/11/3/917},
doi = {10.3390/app11030917},
issn = {2076-3417},
year = {2021},
date = {2021-01-01},
journal = {Applied Sciences},
volume = {11},
number = {3},
pages = {917},
abstract = {Jupyter notebooks are recently emerging as a valuable pedagogical resource in academy, being adopted in educational institutions worldwide. This is mainly due to their ability to combine the expressiveness of traditional explanations from textbooks, with the interaction capabilities of software applications, which provides numerous benefits for both students and lecturers of different fields. One of the areas that could benefit from their adoption is such of mobile robotics, whose recent popularity has resulted in an increasing demand of trained practitioners with a solid theoretical and practical background. Therefore, there is a need of high quality learning materials adapted to modern tools and methodologies. With that in mind, this work explores how the introduction of Jupyter notebooks in undergraduate mobile robotic courses contributes to improve both teaching and learning experiences. For that, we first present a series of (publicly available) educational notebooks encompassing a variety of topics relevant for robotics, with a particular emphasis in the study of mobile robots and commonly used sensors. Those documents have been built from the ground up to take advantage of the Jupyter Notebook framework, bridging the typical gap between theoretical frame and interactive code. We also present a case study describing the notebooks usage in undergraduate courses at University of Málaga, including a discussion on the promising results and findings obtained.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
Jupyter notebooks are recently emerging as a valuable pedagogical resource in academy, being adopted in educational institutions worldwide. This is mainly due to their ability to combine the expressiveness of traditional explanations from textbooks, with the interaction capabilities of software applications, which provides numerous benefits for both students and lecturers of different fields. One of the areas that could benefit from their adoption is such of mobile robotics, whose recent popularity has resulted in an increasing demand of trained practitioners with a solid theoretical and practical background. Therefore, there is a need of high quality learning materials adapted to modern tools and methodologies. With that in mind, this work explores how the introduction of Jupyter notebooks in undergraduate mobile robotic courses contributes to improve both teaching and learning experiences. For that, we first present a series of (publicly available) educational notebooks encompassing a variety of topics relevant for robotics, with a particular emphasis in the study of mobile robots and commonly used sensors. Those documents have been built from the ground up to take advantage of the Jupyter Notebook framework, bridging the typical gap between theoretical frame and interactive code. We also present a case study describing the notebooks usage in undergraduate courses at University of Málaga, including a discussion on the promising results and findings obtained.
@inproceedings{burgeno2020iceri,
title = {A Collection of Jupyter Notebooks Covering the Fundamentals of Computer Vision},
author = {Burgueño, A. M. and Ruiz-Sarmiento, J. R. and Moreno, Francisco-Angel and Gonzalez-Jimenez, Javier},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.21125/iceri.2020.1189},
doi = {10.21125/iceri.2020.1189},
isbn = {978-84-09-24232-0},
year = {2020},
date = {2020-11-01},
booktitle = {ICERI2020 Proceedings},
pages = {5495-5505},
publisher = {IATED},
series = {13th annual International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inproceedings}
}
@inproceedings{baltanas2019inted,
title = {Empowering Mobile Robotics Undergraduate Courses by Using Jupyter Notebooks},
author = {Baltanas-Molero, Samuel-Felipe and Ruiz-Sarmiento, J. R. and Gonzalez-Jimenez, Javier},
year = {2020},
date = {2020-03-01},
booktitle = {14th annual International Technology, Education and Development Conference},
address = {Valencia, Spain},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inproceedings}
}
