Track 6 - Mobile Apps and computational systems as learning tools Authors: Diogo Ramos, P. B. de Moura Oliveira and E. J. Solteiro Pires https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hL6ouIXLj4&list=PLboNOuyyzZ85H9KngzY-R31GbiqFcOQbH&index=3

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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: oliveira@utad.pt

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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 strong
connection between students and mobile devices.
Mobile applications will be a common tool for teaching and learning
purposes very soon. Students are ready for this change.
 The intensive and constant use of smart
phones by students makes it difficult to stop its
use inside the classroom.

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Introduction and Motivation
How fast will teachers be ready to cope
with their development and use of these
technologies?
 Decisive aspects that will influence the use of mobile applications for
teaching/learning purposes are:
How can a teacher/student with no specialization in mobile devices
programming develop an application?
For Android devices an answer to the last question can be
the use of MIT App-Inventor 2.

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MIT App Inventor 2: Key Issues
 Designer provides a Palette with several blocks
libraries, allowing building the application user
interface and visualizing it at the same time
Why using the MIT App Inventor?
 Uses drag-and-drop programming
methodology with building blocks.
 No syntax problems.

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MIT App Inventor 2: Key Issues
 The process of designing an application and
make it readily available for testing and use in
a mobile device can be very fast.
Why using the MIT App Inventor?
 Using the QR code or provided
character 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 teach
industrial 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 logic
operators.
Global objective of this application is
to bridge the following important
aspects:
i. mathematical representation of
simple logic equations concerning
fundamental operators;
ii. representation of those equations
using an electric circuit;
iii. Ladder Logic Diagram
representation.
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 of
Industrial Automation and Control in the UTAD University in
Portugal.
 While the Application
texts are (at this stage)
in Portuguese, for
exposition sake some
of its components are
translated here to
English.
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 of
industrial automation and control to be solved
by students.

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MCS-2015
 MCS-2015 is application developed to complement the Modelling and Control
Systems course to Biomedical Engineering .

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Teach2Student and Student2Teach Apps
 Teach2Student(T2S) and Student2Teach(S2T) were developed two link teachers
and students.
Teach2Student
Enables teachers:
• to post their students
courses main class’s issues.
• provide students with
specific quizzes.
Student2Teach
Enables students:
• to visualize the posts and
perform quizzes submitted
by their teachers.

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Teach2Student and Student2Teach Apps
 After registering and
sign in the teacher can
manage until four
courses
Teacher2Student
In this case
the course
is Industrial
Automation

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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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Teach2Student and Student2Teach Apps
 After selecting the quiz type, the teacher as to
insert the question and answers.
Teacher2Student

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Teach2Student and Student2Teach Apps
 After selecting the quiz type, the teacher as to
insert the question and answers.
Teacher2Student

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Teach2Student and Student2Teach Apps
 Students can get the posts for the different,
courses:
Student2Teach

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Teach2Student and Student2Teach Apps
 Students can get posts for the different, courses:Student2Teach

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Teach2Student and Student2Teach Apps
 Students can get and use quizzes to test their
knowledge.
Student2Teach

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Teach2Student and Student2Teach Apps
 Students can get and use quizzes to test their
knowledge.
Student2Teach

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Preliminary Results
 Student2Teach application was tested in a course with 18 UTAD students
attending to the Automation and Control course from which 9 had an Android
phone.
 A survey inquiry with 11 questions was filled by students (see paper for details).
 This small sample results
was quite positive and
some suggestions were
already followed in refining
the presented version in
this presentation.:

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Conclusion and Current/Future Work
 Applications developed with the MIT App Inventor to teach/learn Industrial
Automation and Control were reported.
 Two applications named Teach2Student and Student2Teach were developed to
bridge 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 more
representative sample is necessary to validate these two apps