The paper discusses modern learning approaches in which mobile devices are increasingly used. It ... more The paper discusses modern learning approaches in which mobile devices are increasingly used. It presents an experiment to apply mobile game-based learning to primary school students. A suitable learning model has been designed using adaptive, micro lesson, behavioural and game-based approaches. Based on the model, a mobile math educational game was developed to complement traditional classroom learning and be used at home. The mobile game was tested in a real learning environment. A survey was conducted also with the students and teachers, participants in the experiment, which investigated the attitude toward using mobile game – based learning in mathematics in the direction of – practical applicability, motivation, design, accessibility, support and feedback.
10th International Scientific Conference “TechSys 2021” – Engineering, Technologies and Systems
The paper presents a design of a mobile serious game, suitable for primary school students, consi... more The paper presents a design of a mobile serious game, suitable for primary school students, consisting of a set of tasks for solving. The design offers adaptability in terms of the learning process (learning sequence) and content. Adaptability is realized depending on the success/failure of the students and spent time for solving the tasks, the task difficulty and task type. The motivation of the learner is provoked by collecting points and virtual objects. To experiment the applicability of the design, a prototype of an educational math game for the third-grade students based on the templates (12 kinds of elementary games, suitable for mobile realization and this age group) is created. Math problems are presented in different game levels, where students can collect coins and gold bars, depending on their learning progress.
10th International Scientific Conference “TechSys 2021” – Engineering, Technologies and Systems
The paper presents a design of a mobile serious game, suitable for primary school students, consi... more The paper presents a design of a mobile serious game, suitable for primary school students, consisting of a set of tasks for solving. The design offers adaptability in terms of the learning process (learning sequence) and content. Adaptability is realized depending on the success/failure of the students and spent time for solving the tasks, the task difficulty and task type. The motivation of the learner is provoked by collecting points and virtual objects. To experiment the applicability of the design, a prototype of an educational math game for the third-grade students based on the templates (12 kinds of elementary games, suitable for mobile realization and this age group) is created. Math problems are presented in different game levels, where students can collect coins and gold bars, depending on their learning progress.
The article proposes an addition to the tunnel parsing algorithm that enables it to parse grammar... more The article proposes an addition to the tunnel parsing algorithm that enables it to parse grammars having countable repetitions and configurations of grammar elements generating empty words without refactoring the grammar. The equivalency of trees built by the use of ambiguous grammar is discussed. The class of the ε-ambiguous grammars is defined as a subclass of the ambiguous grammars relative to these trees. The ε-deterministic grammars are then defined as a subclass of the ε-ambiguous grammars. A technique for linearly parsing on the basis of non-left recursive ε-deterministic grammars with the tunnel parsing algorithm is shown.
International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education
Purpose The information technology (IT) sector is a powerful factor in present-day society, and i... more Purpose The information technology (IT) sector is a powerful factor in present-day society, and its role in pro-sustainability policies is crucial. This study aims to gain insight into IT students' perspectives on the role of education for sustainable development (ESD) in their academic curriculum as well as to project their attitudes and actions to prospective employers. Design/methodology/approach This study used a cross-sectional survey design, involving 260 students majoring in IT at a public university in Bulgaria. Findings The majority of the students (67.30%) believed that their university education should promote students’ social and environmental skills. However, 55–65% thought that the current academic curriculum failed to connect subject matter with relevant environmental issues. The students held high expectations of prospective employers. There was a significant concordance between the participants' views on sustainability and their perceived workplace actions. ...
The article describes a string recognition approach, engraved in the parsers generated by Tunnel ... more The article describes a string recognition approach, engraved in the parsers generated by Tunnel Grammar Studio that use the tunnel parsing algorithm, of how a lexer and a parser can operate on the input during its recognition. Proposed is an addition of the augmented Backus-Naur form syntax that enables the formal language to be expressed with a parser grammar and optionally with an additional lexer grammar. The tokens outputted from the lexer are matched to the phrases in the parser grammar by their name and optionally by their lexeme, case sensitively or insensitively.
The article specifies the definitions of a Concrete Syntax Tree and an Abstract Syntax Tree. The ... more The article specifies the definitions of a Concrete Syntax Tree and an Abstract Syntax Tree. The different types of knowledge that are shared between a parser and builder modules in a parsing machine, about the syntax tree building, are discussed. For the building of the syntax tree, various Syntax Structure Construction Commands are presented. They are transmitted from the parser to the builder, depending on the type of tree. Template grammars and a computer program (Parser Generator Profiler) that performs parser tests on their basis are described. The empirical results from the different tests (for different combinations of grammar elements), performed with different types of syntax trees, for different parsers generated by different parser generators, are shown. The measurements are based on different criteria such as the time for the tree building, its traversal time, its destruction time, and the memory used by it.
Education in present days is closely connected to usage of information and communication technolo... more Education in present days is closely connected to usage of information and communication technologies in a larger scale. The need of bigger computing power pushes the educational institutions to rely on external providers of information services or to use cloud computing for part of proposed information services. The work emphasizes to the research of types of existing cloud services and how they can be used for supporting mobile learning. Special attention is given to the analysis of the realization models of cloud computing and the opportunity of application in education from the point of view of expenses, security, standardization, etc. 1. Въведение Драстичното увеличение на разходите за хардуер, софтуер и информационни услуги е причина образователните институции да отделят все повече усилия за работа над проблеми като: намаляване на общите разходи за информационна инфраструктура, повишаване на сигурността на информацията, използване на последните достижения в областта, предлаган...
The paper presents an attempt for gamification of learning on the base of the standard e-learning... more The paper presents an attempt for gamification of learning on the base of the standard e-learning course in the virtual learning environment Moodle. Short summary of the serious games, their usage in learning and their kinds is done. Gamification of learning is described in more detail. Game elements, activities and techniques and their possible realization with elements of an e-learning environment, which is not game-based, are discussed. An example of methodology for designing gamification course is presented. INTRODUCTION E-learning has widely entered in both forms of distance learning and traditional ones. A huge amount of e-learning courses in different subject domains are created worldwide. The most pressing issue for trainers is: How to intrigue learners during the process of learning? One possible answer is: by shifting learning into the learner's own reality. It is a commonly known fact that learners spend a lot of time playing e-games. To create e-courses with the new ...
The article describes a new and efficient algorithm for parsing, called Tunnel Parsing, that pars... more The article describes a new and efficient algorithm for parsing, called Tunnel Parsing, that parses from left to right on the basis of a context-free grammar without left recursion and rules that recognize empty words. The algorithm is applicable mostly for domain-specific languages. In the article, particular attention is paid to the parsing of grammar element repetitions. As a result of the parsing, a statically typed concrete syntax tree is built from top to bottom, that accurately reflects the grammar. The parsing is not done through a recursion, but through an iteration. The Tunnel Parsing algorithm uses the grammars directly without a prior refactoring and is with a linear time complexity for deterministic context-free grammars.
The article provides a summary of collaborative learning and assessment and presents their defini... more The article provides a summary of collaborative learning and assessment and presents their definition, basic elements, advantages and application. It is focused on the new role of the learners – who carry the responsibility for their own education and to their peers’, in which they work together, during collaborative activities. Collaborative assessment can be regarded as an educational activity in the collaborative learning. Other advantages, besides the academic ones, are shown – social and psychological. Particular attention is paid to the use of this method in e-learning. E-learning environments that implement collaborative education and assessment are reviewed.
IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering, 2020
The paper presents a study in the field of gamification of learning, in particular – in structura... more The paper presents a study in the field of gamification of learning, in particular – in structural gamification. The four-stages cyclic (Learning – Evaluation – Rewarding – Ranking) gamification learning model is proposed. The used gamified elements (level, story/history, challenge, team, time frame, game progress, status (avatar), bonus, badge, reward, hidden treasures, combo and leaderboard) with their impact to the learner’s motivation are explained. Two plug-ins are designed, developed and tested with real users. One of the plug-ins changes the design of the learning course in game-like view, while the other ranks the students in a leaderboard with their avatars, according to their course progress. The short explanation of the experiment with learners is done and part of the statistical results from the conducted survey in five areas (practical applicability; motivation; design and accessibility; interactivity and communication; and intelligibility) are shown.
IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering, 2019
The article examines the challenges associated with designing and delivering effective training. ... more The article examines the challenges associated with designing and delivering effective training. The authors propose the use of serious games in learning (in particular gamification) to achieve higher motivation in learners than traditional e-learning. Pedagogical approaches, theories and pedagogical models, suitable for the design and construction of gamified e-courses are presented and analysed. A plugin is presented for creating gamified e-courses in a Moodle e-learning environment. The plug-in can be used to automatically transform a standard e-course into a gamified one or the initial creation of a gamified course. It is shown how standard Moodle environment elements can be used in game contexts.
This work proposes a model for planning of education based on resources and layers. Each learning... more This work proposes a model for planning of education based on resources and layers. Each learning material or concept is determined by certain characteristics: a layer and a list of resources and resource values. Models of studied subject domain, learner, information ...
The main purpose of this book is to provide an overview of the current trends in the field of dig... more The main purpose of this book is to provide an overview of the current trends in the field of digitization of cultural heritage as well as to present recent research done within the framework of the project D002-308 funded by Bulgarian National Science Fund. The main contributions of the work presented are in organizing digital content, metadata generation, and methods for enhancing resource discovery. The parts of the book can be downloaded here:
Report published in the Proceedings of the National Conference on "Education and Research in... more Report published in the Proceedings of the National Conference on "Education and Research in the Information Society", Plovdiv, May, 2016In this article a summary is made of the use of standard electronic game’s methods in e-learning. It shows how game-elements and game-mechanics can be applied in e-learning environments. Different types of Serious games – Game-based learning, Gamification of learning, Organizational-dynamic games, Simulation Games and Edutainment have been discussed. The article introduces the game-based model for learning and 70:20:10 education framework. There are examples for e-Learning environments that include some of the abovementioned game-elements and game-techniques. The focus in the conclusion is on the potential benefits of successful implementation of serious games into a learning environments.Association for the Development of the Information Society, Institute of Mathematics and Informatics Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Plovdiv University &...
The main goal of the research is to discover the programming algorithms, which are taught in basi... more The main goal of the research is to discover the programming algorithms, which are taught in basic courses of imperative programming and which do not depend on used algorithmic language. These algorithms can be presented as template codes in different programming languages. The paper shows an approach for teaching imperative language programming on the base of set of templates, called invariants. 98 invariants of algorithms from course "Programming" and 44 invariants of algorithms from course "Algorithms and data structures" are proposed. Example programming codes on two languages (C# and Visual Basic) are given for the particular realization of invariants. The work represents the first step in realization of software system for learning programming on the base of invariants. 1. Въведение Обучението по програмиране е тясно свързано с използване на конкретни програмни езици и версии. Честата смяна на програмен език или версия повдига въпроса за методиката на препо...
The COVID-19 pandemic changed our way of life, affected many industries, and had a major impact o... more The COVID-19 pandemic changed our way of life, affected many industries, and had a major impact on education. The paper presents observations and analyses of the challenges raised by the short adaptation time of the learning process and the caused technical, academic, and communication difficulties. An overview of the distinctive features of e-learning during crises, with special attention to communication, feedback and pedagogical approaches in an electronic environment, has been made. Empirical research of the opinion of students and teachers about online learning was conducted. The used research methods are survey and direct observation. Special attention is paid to the results of the survey, which are presented and discussed in detail.
The paper discusses modern learning approaches in which mobile devices are increasingly used. It ... more The paper discusses modern learning approaches in which mobile devices are increasingly used. It presents an experiment to apply mobile game-based learning to primary school students. A suitable learning model has been designed using adaptive, micro lesson, behavioural and game-based approaches. Based on the model, a mobile math educational game was developed to complement traditional classroom learning and be used at home. The mobile game was tested in a real learning environment. A survey was conducted also with the students and teachers, participants in the experiment, which investigated the attitude toward using mobile game – based learning in mathematics in the direction of – practical applicability, motivation, design, accessibility, support and feedback.
10th International Scientific Conference “TechSys 2021” – Engineering, Technologies and Systems
The paper presents a design of a mobile serious game, suitable for primary school students, consi... more The paper presents a design of a mobile serious game, suitable for primary school students, consisting of a set of tasks for solving. The design offers adaptability in terms of the learning process (learning sequence) and content. Adaptability is realized depending on the success/failure of the students and spent time for solving the tasks, the task difficulty and task type. The motivation of the learner is provoked by collecting points and virtual objects. To experiment the applicability of the design, a prototype of an educational math game for the third-grade students based on the templates (12 kinds of elementary games, suitable for mobile realization and this age group) is created. Math problems are presented in different game levels, where students can collect coins and gold bars, depending on their learning progress.
10th International Scientific Conference “TechSys 2021” – Engineering, Technologies and Systems
The paper presents a design of a mobile serious game, suitable for primary school students, consi... more The paper presents a design of a mobile serious game, suitable for primary school students, consisting of a set of tasks for solving. The design offers adaptability in terms of the learning process (learning sequence) and content. Adaptability is realized depending on the success/failure of the students and spent time for solving the tasks, the task difficulty and task type. The motivation of the learner is provoked by collecting points and virtual objects. To experiment the applicability of the design, a prototype of an educational math game for the third-grade students based on the templates (12 kinds of elementary games, suitable for mobile realization and this age group) is created. Math problems are presented in different game levels, where students can collect coins and gold bars, depending on their learning progress.
The article proposes an addition to the tunnel parsing algorithm that enables it to parse grammar... more The article proposes an addition to the tunnel parsing algorithm that enables it to parse grammars having countable repetitions and configurations of grammar elements generating empty words without refactoring the grammar. The equivalency of trees built by the use of ambiguous grammar is discussed. The class of the ε-ambiguous grammars is defined as a subclass of the ambiguous grammars relative to these trees. The ε-deterministic grammars are then defined as a subclass of the ε-ambiguous grammars. A technique for linearly parsing on the basis of non-left recursive ε-deterministic grammars with the tunnel parsing algorithm is shown.
International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education
Purpose The information technology (IT) sector is a powerful factor in present-day society, and i... more Purpose The information technology (IT) sector is a powerful factor in present-day society, and its role in pro-sustainability policies is crucial. This study aims to gain insight into IT students' perspectives on the role of education for sustainable development (ESD) in their academic curriculum as well as to project their attitudes and actions to prospective employers. Design/methodology/approach This study used a cross-sectional survey design, involving 260 students majoring in IT at a public university in Bulgaria. Findings The majority of the students (67.30%) believed that their university education should promote students’ social and environmental skills. However, 55–65% thought that the current academic curriculum failed to connect subject matter with relevant environmental issues. The students held high expectations of prospective employers. There was a significant concordance between the participants' views on sustainability and their perceived workplace actions. ...
The article describes a string recognition approach, engraved in the parsers generated by Tunnel ... more The article describes a string recognition approach, engraved in the parsers generated by Tunnel Grammar Studio that use the tunnel parsing algorithm, of how a lexer and a parser can operate on the input during its recognition. Proposed is an addition of the augmented Backus-Naur form syntax that enables the formal language to be expressed with a parser grammar and optionally with an additional lexer grammar. The tokens outputted from the lexer are matched to the phrases in the parser grammar by their name and optionally by their lexeme, case sensitively or insensitively.
The article specifies the definitions of a Concrete Syntax Tree and an Abstract Syntax Tree. The ... more The article specifies the definitions of a Concrete Syntax Tree and an Abstract Syntax Tree. The different types of knowledge that are shared between a parser and builder modules in a parsing machine, about the syntax tree building, are discussed. For the building of the syntax tree, various Syntax Structure Construction Commands are presented. They are transmitted from the parser to the builder, depending on the type of tree. Template grammars and a computer program (Parser Generator Profiler) that performs parser tests on their basis are described. The empirical results from the different tests (for different combinations of grammar elements), performed with different types of syntax trees, for different parsers generated by different parser generators, are shown. The measurements are based on different criteria such as the time for the tree building, its traversal time, its destruction time, and the memory used by it.
Education in present days is closely connected to usage of information and communication technolo... more Education in present days is closely connected to usage of information and communication technologies in a larger scale. The need of bigger computing power pushes the educational institutions to rely on external providers of information services or to use cloud computing for part of proposed information services. The work emphasizes to the research of types of existing cloud services and how they can be used for supporting mobile learning. Special attention is given to the analysis of the realization models of cloud computing and the opportunity of application in education from the point of view of expenses, security, standardization, etc. 1. Въведение Драстичното увеличение на разходите за хардуер, софтуер и информационни услуги е причина образователните институции да отделят все повече усилия за работа над проблеми като: намаляване на общите разходи за информационна инфраструктура, повишаване на сигурността на информацията, използване на последните достижения в областта, предлаган...
The paper presents an attempt for gamification of learning on the base of the standard e-learning... more The paper presents an attempt for gamification of learning on the base of the standard e-learning course in the virtual learning environment Moodle. Short summary of the serious games, their usage in learning and their kinds is done. Gamification of learning is described in more detail. Game elements, activities and techniques and their possible realization with elements of an e-learning environment, which is not game-based, are discussed. An example of methodology for designing gamification course is presented. INTRODUCTION E-learning has widely entered in both forms of distance learning and traditional ones. A huge amount of e-learning courses in different subject domains are created worldwide. The most pressing issue for trainers is: How to intrigue learners during the process of learning? One possible answer is: by shifting learning into the learner's own reality. It is a commonly known fact that learners spend a lot of time playing e-games. To create e-courses with the new ...
The article describes a new and efficient algorithm for parsing, called Tunnel Parsing, that pars... more The article describes a new and efficient algorithm for parsing, called Tunnel Parsing, that parses from left to right on the basis of a context-free grammar without left recursion and rules that recognize empty words. The algorithm is applicable mostly for domain-specific languages. In the article, particular attention is paid to the parsing of grammar element repetitions. As a result of the parsing, a statically typed concrete syntax tree is built from top to bottom, that accurately reflects the grammar. The parsing is not done through a recursion, but through an iteration. The Tunnel Parsing algorithm uses the grammars directly without a prior refactoring and is with a linear time complexity for deterministic context-free grammars.
The article provides a summary of collaborative learning and assessment and presents their defini... more The article provides a summary of collaborative learning and assessment and presents their definition, basic elements, advantages and application. It is focused on the new role of the learners – who carry the responsibility for their own education and to their peers’, in which they work together, during collaborative activities. Collaborative assessment can be regarded as an educational activity in the collaborative learning. Other advantages, besides the academic ones, are shown – social and psychological. Particular attention is paid to the use of this method in e-learning. E-learning environments that implement collaborative education and assessment are reviewed.
IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering, 2020
The paper presents a study in the field of gamification of learning, in particular – in structura... more The paper presents a study in the field of gamification of learning, in particular – in structural gamification. The four-stages cyclic (Learning – Evaluation – Rewarding – Ranking) gamification learning model is proposed. The used gamified elements (level, story/history, challenge, team, time frame, game progress, status (avatar), bonus, badge, reward, hidden treasures, combo and leaderboard) with their impact to the learner’s motivation are explained. Two plug-ins are designed, developed and tested with real users. One of the plug-ins changes the design of the learning course in game-like view, while the other ranks the students in a leaderboard with their avatars, according to their course progress. The short explanation of the experiment with learners is done and part of the statistical results from the conducted survey in five areas (practical applicability; motivation; design and accessibility; interactivity and communication; and intelligibility) are shown.
IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering, 2019
The article examines the challenges associated with designing and delivering effective training. ... more The article examines the challenges associated with designing and delivering effective training. The authors propose the use of serious games in learning (in particular gamification) to achieve higher motivation in learners than traditional e-learning. Pedagogical approaches, theories and pedagogical models, suitable for the design and construction of gamified e-courses are presented and analysed. A plugin is presented for creating gamified e-courses in a Moodle e-learning environment. The plug-in can be used to automatically transform a standard e-course into a gamified one or the initial creation of a gamified course. It is shown how standard Moodle environment elements can be used in game contexts.
This work proposes a model for planning of education based on resources and layers. Each learning... more This work proposes a model for planning of education based on resources and layers. Each learning material or concept is determined by certain characteristics: a layer and a list of resources and resource values. Models of studied subject domain, learner, information ...
The main purpose of this book is to provide an overview of the current trends in the field of dig... more The main purpose of this book is to provide an overview of the current trends in the field of digitization of cultural heritage as well as to present recent research done within the framework of the project D002-308 funded by Bulgarian National Science Fund. The main contributions of the work presented are in organizing digital content, metadata generation, and methods for enhancing resource discovery. The parts of the book can be downloaded here:
Report published in the Proceedings of the National Conference on "Education and Research in... more Report published in the Proceedings of the National Conference on "Education and Research in the Information Society", Plovdiv, May, 2016In this article a summary is made of the use of standard electronic game’s methods in e-learning. It shows how game-elements and game-mechanics can be applied in e-learning environments. Different types of Serious games – Game-based learning, Gamification of learning, Organizational-dynamic games, Simulation Games and Edutainment have been discussed. The article introduces the game-based model for learning and 70:20:10 education framework. There are examples for e-Learning environments that include some of the abovementioned game-elements and game-techniques. The focus in the conclusion is on the potential benefits of successful implementation of serious games into a learning environments.Association for the Development of the Information Society, Institute of Mathematics and Informatics Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Plovdiv University &...
The main goal of the research is to discover the programming algorithms, which are taught in basi... more The main goal of the research is to discover the programming algorithms, which are taught in basic courses of imperative programming and which do not depend on used algorithmic language. These algorithms can be presented as template codes in different programming languages. The paper shows an approach for teaching imperative language programming on the base of set of templates, called invariants. 98 invariants of algorithms from course "Programming" and 44 invariants of algorithms from course "Algorithms and data structures" are proposed. Example programming codes on two languages (C# and Visual Basic) are given for the particular realization of invariants. The work represents the first step in realization of software system for learning programming on the base of invariants. 1. Въведение Обучението по програмиране е тясно свързано с използване на конкретни програмни езици и версии. Честата смяна на програмен език или версия повдига въпроса за методиката на препо...
The COVID-19 pandemic changed our way of life, affected many industries, and had a major impact o... more The COVID-19 pandemic changed our way of life, affected many industries, and had a major impact on education. The paper presents observations and analyses of the challenges raised by the short adaptation time of the learning process and the caused technical, academic, and communication difficulties. An overview of the distinctive features of e-learning during crises, with special attention to communication, feedback and pedagogical approaches in an electronic environment, has been made. Empirical research of the opinion of students and teachers about online learning was conducted. The used research methods are survey and direct observation. Special attention is paid to the results of the survey, which are presented and discussed in detail.
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Papers by Elena Somova