Gamification methods adapt the mechanics of games to educational environments for the improvement of the teaching-learning process. Serious games play an important role as tools for gamification, in particular in the context of software engineering courses because of the idiosyncratic nature of the topic. However, the studies on the improvement of student performance resulting from the use of gamification and serious games in courses with different contexts are not conclusive. More empirical research is thus needed to obtain reliable results on the effectiveness, benefits and drawbacks. The overall objective of this work is to study the benefits generated by serious games in the teaching-learning process of Computer Engineering degrees, analyzing the impact on the motivation and student satisfaction, as well as on the learning outcomes and results finally achieved. To this end, an intervention is proposed in the subject of Computer Architecture based on two components covering theoretical and practical sessions. In the theoretical sessions, a serious game experience using Kahoot has been introduced, complementing the master classes and class exercises. For the practical sessions, the development of projects with groups of students has been proposed, whose results in terms of computer performance can be compared through a competition (hackathon). Evaluation of the serious game-based intervention has been approached in terms of student satisfaction and motivation, as well as improved academic performance. In order to assess student satisfaction, surveys have been used to assess the effect on student motivation and satisfaction. For the evaluation of academic performance, a comparative analysis between an experimental and a control group has been carried out, noting a slight increase in the experimental group students' marks.

This article presents a continuous assessment methodology for a computer programming course supported by an automatic assessment tool, applied to the practical programming exercises performed by the students. The interaction between the students and the assessment tool was studied through quantitative analyses. In particular, the solutions proposed by the students (computer programs) were analyzed using the verdicts given by the automatic assessment tool: correct solutions or incorrect solutions. In the case of incorrect solutions, the types of programming errors were studied. Additionally, interaction was also studied by analyzing the students’ success rate. This rate is the percentage of correct solutions among the total number of attempts (correct and incorrect). Moreover, the relationship between success rate and academic performance was analyzed. Furthermore, this research examines the students’ perceptions toward the assessment tool through interviews. The results of this study help understanding the benefits and perceptions of the students with respect to the use of an automatic assessment tool in a computer programming course.

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Abstract-A novel proposal to design radiation-tolerant embedded systems combining hardware and software mitigation techniques is presented. Two suites of tools are developed to automatically apply the techniques and to facilitate the tradeoffs analyses.

Abstract-The use of microprocessor-based systems is gaining importance in application domains where safety is a must. For this reason, there is a growing concern about the mitigation of SEU and SET effects. This paper presents a new hybrid technique aimed to protect both the data and the control-flow of embedded applications running on microprocessors. On one hand, the approach is based on software redundancy techniques for correcting errors produced in the data. On the other hand, control-flow errors can be detected by reusing the on-chip debug interface, existing in most modern microprocessors. Experimental results show an important increase in the system reliability even superior to two orders of magnitude, in terms of mitigation of both SEUs and SETs. Furthermore, the overheads incurred by our technique can be perfectly assumable in low-cost systems.