Abstract
Motivation and engagement play a crucial role in student success in a course. Students may lose interest or underestimate courses that tackle non-core learning outcomes to their specific curriculum or program. Gamification, using game elements (e.g., rewards, challenges) in non-game contexts, is one way to motivate and engage students. Some educational courses use project-based learning, where students tackle problems, overcome obstacles, and gain knowledge. Quest-based games are designed as systems of challenges that players must complete to advance and win the game. They were linked with education by applying specific game mechanics to a computing course unit. This paper case studies the application of a quest-based gamification approach in a mandatory software engineering course to boost engagement among higher education students. Results were collected through observational methods and surveying the students, indicating a tendency for higher grades in course years implementing gamification while maintaining satisfactory levels of motivation and engagement. © 2023 International Conference on Higher Education Advances. All rights reserved.

Abstract
The ionosphere is a fundamental component of the Earth's atmosphere, impacting human activities such as communication transmissions, navigation systems, satellite functions, power network systems, and natural gas pipelines, even endangering human life or health. As technology moves forward, understanding the impact of the ionosphere on our daily lives becomes increasingly important. CubeSats are a promising way to increase understanding of this important atmospheric layer. This paper reviews the state of the art of CubeSat missions designed for ionospheric studies. Their main instrumentation payload and orbits are also analyzed from the point of view of their importance for the missions. It also focuses on the importance of data and metadata, and makes an approach to the aspects that need to be improved.

Abstract

Abstract
Several systems that employ machine learning models are subject to strict latency requirements. Fraud detection systems, transportation control systems, network traffic analysis and footwear manufacturing processes are a few examples. These requirements are imposed at inference time, when the model is queried. However, it is not trivial how to adjust model architecture and hyperparameters in order to obtain a good trade-off between predictive ability and inference time. This paper provides a contribution in this direction by presenting a study of how different architectural and hyperparameter choices affect the inference time of a Convolutional Neural Network for network traffic analysis. Our case study focus on a model for traffic correlation attacks to the Tor network, that requires the correlation of a large volume of network flows in a short amount of time. Our findings suggest that hyperparameters related to convolution operations-such as stride, and the number of filters-and the reduction of convolution and max-pooling layers can substantially reduce inference time, often with a relatively small cost in predictive performance.

Abstract
In an automatic music playlist generator, such as an automated online radio channel, how should the system react when a user hits the skip button? Can we use this type of negative feedback to improve the list of songs we will playback for the user next? We propose SkipAwareRec, a next-item recommendation system based on reinforcement learning. SkipAwareRec recommends the best next music categories, considering positive feedback consisting of normal listening behaviour, and negative feedback in the form of song skips. Since SkipAwareRec recommends broad categories, it needs to be coupled with a model able to choose the best individual items. To do this, we propose Hybrid SkipAwareRec. This hybrid model combines the SkipAwareRec with an incremental Matrix Factorisation (MF) algorithm that selects specific songs within the recommended categories. Our experiments with Spotify's Sequential Skip Prediction Challenge dataset show that Hybrid SkipAwareRec has the potential to improve recommendations by a considerable amount with respect to the skip-agnostic MF algorithm. This strongly suggests that reformulating the next recommendations based on skips improves the quality of automatic playlists. Although in this work we focus on sequential music recommendation, our proposal can be applied to other sequential content recommendation domains, such as health for user engagement.

Abstract
Presence is often used to evaluate Virtual Reality (VR) applications. However, the raw scores are hard to interpret and need to be compared to other data to be meaningful. This paper leverages a database of 1909 responses to the Igroup Presence Questionnaire (IPQ) in different contexts to put forward a scale that qualitatively interprets raw Presence scores for VR experiences. The qualitative grading encompasses the acceptability dimension and analogous academic grading scales ranging from A to F and the adjective of such scores in a scale from Excellent to Unacceptable. Furthermore, the qualitative grading system encompasses Presence and its subscales Spatial Presence, Involvement, and Experienced Realism as defined by the IPQ. Adopting this grading system, supported by a robust dataset of Presence scores, enables practitioners to evaluate and interpret individual IPQ scores, allowing them to gain insights regarding the evaluated applications' effectiveness.