Abstract
There are countless reasons cited in scientific studies to explain the difficulties in programming learning. The reasons range from the subject's complexity, the ineffective teaching and study methods, to psychological aspects such as demotivation. Still, learning programming often boils down to practice on exercise solving. Hence, it is essential to understand that the nature of a programming exercise is an important factor for the success and consistent learning. This paper explores different approaches on the creation of a programming exercise, starting with realizing how it is currently formalized, presented and evaluated. From there, authors suggest variations that seek to broaden the way an exercise is solved and, with this diversity, increase student engagement and learning outcome. The several types of exercises presented can use gamification techniques fostering student motivation. To contextualize the student with his peers, we finish presenting metrics that can be obtained by existing automatic assessment tools. 2012 ACM Subject Classification Applied computing ! Education.

Abstract

Abstract
The Web Ontology Language (OWL) is a World Wide Web Consortium standard, based on the Resource Description Format standard. It is used to define ontologies. While large ontologies are useful for different applications, some tools require partial ontologies, based mostly on a hierarchical relationship of classes. In this article we present bOWL, a basic OWL browser, with the main goal of being pluggable into others, more significant, web applications. The tool was tested through its integration on LeXmart, a dictionary editing tool.

Abstract

Abstract
Computer programming plays a relevant role in the digital age as a key competency for project leverage and a driver of innovation for today's modern societies. Despite its importance, this domain is also well known for their higher learning failure rates. In this context, the study of how computer programming is taught is fundamental to clarify the teaching-learning process and to ensure the sharing of the best practices. This paper presents a survey on computer programming teaching in the first-year courses of Portuguese Universities, more precisely, what is taught and how it is taught. The study focuses essentially on the following facets: The class characterization, the methodologies used and the languages/technologies taught. Based on these criteria, a survey was done which gathers information of 59 courses included in a wide range of Universities spread across Portugal. The results were collected and analyzed. Based on this analysis a set of conclusions were taken revealing some interesting results on the teaching methods and languages used which can be useful to support a discussion on this subject and, consequently, to find new paths to shape the future of programming teaching. 2012 ACM Subject Classification Social and professional topics ! Computer science education.

Abstract
With the advent of cloud platforms and the IoT paradigm, the concept of micro-services has gained even more strength, making crucial the process of selection, manipulation, and deployment. However, this whole process is time-consuming and error pruning. In this paper, we present the design of a framework that allows the chaining of several microservices as a composite service in order to solve a single problem. The framework includes a client that will allow the orchestration f the composite service based on a straightforward API. The framework also includes a gamification engine to engage users not only to use the framework, by contributing with new microservices. We expect to have briefly a functional prototype of the framework so we can prove this concept. © 2020, The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.