Virtual Placements Management Process Supported by Technology: Proposal and First Results of the Semester of Code

Abstract

This paper explains the Virtual Alliances for Learning Society (VALS) European Project technological approach to support a virtual placements management process. Also, this paper shows the first results of the practical part of the project, the Semester of Code, explaining the detected problems, the issues, the challenges and some actions to improve the development of this kind of virtual placements programmes. In order to allow the readers to better comprehend the approach and its results, the manuscript also describes three of the main virtual placements programs around the world, regarding both their organization and technological approach.

Technological Ecosystems

“…The last paper presents a summary of the firsts results of the VALS (Virtual Alliances for Learning Society) European Project [30][31][32] about the experiences of Computer Engineering students performing virtual placements in open software companies all around the world [33,34].…”

Current trends in robotics in education and computational thinking

“…Besides, this CT-related track also gives visibility to research projects that develop CT skills in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) [44,45] and STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) [46,47] contexts such as for example TACCLE3 coding [48], VALS [49], W-STEM [50] or RoboSTEAM [51].…”

Educational Robotics Summer Camp at IPB

“…This project will provide frameworks and tools to facilitate the learning actions based on robotics to teach STEAM areas [1]. The description of similar projects can be found in [2][3][4][5]. Innovative practices in the digital era by applying challenge based learning approaches to address integrating STEAM will be created.…”