The present research and development work focuses on ophidism or ophidic accident
that is a forgotten public health problem, which is normally focused on antiophidic serum
application. Complications are sometimes caused by the patients; delay to go to a
medical centre and the health professionals lacking knowledge of the ophidism
treatment. In this work, we design under canvas model a Massive Open Online Course
(MOOC) on introduction to ophidic accident giving a new accessible, massive and
dynamic training strategy. It is nourished by the students’ contribution; unlike traditional
training programmes. For this reason, it is intended to promote other forms of training on
prevention and knowledge of the ophidic accident, which are priority activities in the
Colombian territory. To end, we highlight that there exist a considerable number of
underestimated cases due to the inadequate registration of the notification forms.

The demands of today's world have induced necessary changes in education curricula, teaching methods, modernization of learning scenarios, pedagogies, didactics, among others. Students now require learning scenarios where they can interact with knowledge directly; turning them into active agents within their training process, capable of solving problems. The main purpose of this research is to evaluate a system of contextual awareness as learning scaffolding in problem solving activities in first semester students of systems engineering, in order to analyze the effect on academic performance and students’ participation in solving problems. Results show that students who had access to the context awareness system as scaffolding for learning had better scores.

Conference Derivative Article. Every day, people need to be trained, either to complement their professional skills or because of personal interests that lead to their well-being. Online education, especially MOOC and SPOC are good alternatives for carrying out continuing educational processes, but are not enough when it comes to learning motor skills. This paper shows a research approach on how MOOC can expand its functionalities so that it can be applied to learning motor skills. It also proposes the development of a project to integrate three components: the integration component, the wearable component and the open edX component for the future development of a "salsa" course. Finally, it proposes an architecture based on the 4+1 view model, where the functionality in different areas of the design is shown.

In the development of the research project "Strengthening and expanding the coverage of postgraduate training in Educational Innovation with ICTs through virtual education strategies relevant to the socio-cultural context of the region", the meaning of Educational Innovations for teachers was investigated. Through 7 focus groups, with the participation of 168 teachers from urban and rural schools, public and private schools, as well as teachers in training, schoolteachers and university professors, from 3 different departments in southwestern Colombia, it was identified, through the use of the grounded theory analysis method, that teachers associate educational innovations with changes in the way they teach in their classes. In this way, the incorporation of ICTs is seen as important, since it facilitates teaching processes, motivates learning and improves the quality and pertinence of education.

The use of the Open edX platform to offer xMOOC courses by different Universities in the world, has led to a growth in the participation of students in the courses, thus generating a set of navigation patterns when interacting with the xMOOC which are recorded in the tracking.log file. So far there is no study that identifies EF-ISF navigation patterns of the set of patterns, for this reason in this document propose the use of the LexRank with Threshold algorithm for the identification of the EF-ISF navigation patterns.

This work analyzes the computational complexity of algorithm BEPtoPNST which transforms a building-evacuation problem (BEP) into a time-ex-panded, process-network synthesis (PNST) problem. The solution of the latter is achieved by resorting to the P-graph method which exploits the combinatorial nature of a BEP. Unlike other approaches, the P-graph method provides not only the optimal solution (best evacuation route as a function of egress time), but also the best n sub-optimal solutions. For the complexity analysis, a generic processor, and a Random-access machine (RAM) model were deployed as well as a mathematical model to calculate the number and cost of the operations performed. It was observed that algorithm BEPtoPNST exhibits an asymptotic complexity of order O ( T | A | (| N | –k)). When solving a BEP, however, the total complexity grows exponentially with order O (T | A | (| N | –k)) + O (2h)) in the worst case; where h represents the total number of operating units specified in the corresponding PNST problem. Nevertheless, the computational comple-xity can be reduced significantly when the P-graph method is deployed.

Manizales has an air quality network which measure particulate matter (PM) in ambient air concentrations. However, this monitoring system does not have information of pollutant concentrations in the vicinity of roads. The objective of this study was to determine the concentration of the fine parti-culate matter (PM2.5) and black carbon (BC) near main roads of Manizales. The evaluation considered micro-environments related with pedestrians of roads and passengers of public transport buses. PM2.5 and BC concen-trations were measured during two weeks for periods of five hours per day in the morning. The instruments used were two DustTrack photometers (model 8533) and a Microethalometer model AE51. The data were analyzed according to each micro-environment and three different zones of the city.

The median values of PM2.5 and BC concentrations were 10 % and 30 % lower in the eastern zone than in the center zone, showing the impact of vehicular emissions in ambient air concentrations. In public transport buses, the median of PM2.5 and BC concentrations were 57 % and 54 % higher than those obtained near roads. In terms of inside the public trans-port buses micro-environment, the contribution of BC was approximately 41 % of the total PM concentrations. This is the first study performed in Manizales in which concentrations of fine particles and BC near roads and public transport (pedestrians and passengers) were evaluated. These types of studies are important for adding new information for air quality management in the city and for complementing the official air quality monitoring.

Nanocomposites are multiphase structures with at least one phase dimension of nanometric order size. Polymer-based materials mixed with low proportions of titanium dioxide nanoparticles (NPs-TiO₂) present a versatile alternative in different industrial applications, considering the optimization of mechanical and thermal properties with respect to pure polymers and conventional materials. In this work, the synthesis and measurement of thermal characteristics of a nanocomposite formed by NPs-TiO₂, 5 nm particle size Anatase phase, in a polyurethane matrix, made with castor oil is reported. The polymeric matrix was obtained through the reaction between the self-condensation of castor oil and diphenylmethane diisocyanate (MDI), while in the synthesis of NPs-TiO₂ the sol-gel technique was used, using as precursor titanium (IV)-bis(acetylacetonate) diisopropoxide. The specific heat (C_p) of the samples was measured by means of the thermal relaxation method and the thermal diffusivity was determined with the photoacoustic technique (α). C_p of the nanocomposite increased by 12.98 % due to addition of the NPs, while α decreased by 98.63 %, compared to the corresponding values of the polyurethane matrix. With a concentration of 3 wt % of NPs-TiO₂ in the matrix, these thermal parameters were found to be below the average values of conventional plastics.

The aim of this study was to model the drying kinetics of microwave and fluidised bed of parchment coffee bean (Coffea arabica L.) using a semi-theoretical approach. A completely randomized design with six treatments: three with microwave drying (MD) and the rest combined with fluidized bed drying (MFBD) was carried out. The drying curves were established until reaching a final moisture content between 10 to 12% w.b. The results indicated that the drying time decreased as the microwave power level increased. When MFBD was used, drying times increased approximately 4-fold compared to MD treatments. The values of effective diffusivity for coffee beans treated with MD and MFBD ranged from 0.913 to1.72×10^-9 m².s^-1 and 0.23 to 0.42×10^-9 m².s^-1, respectively. Although all the models presented high goodness of fit, the two-term model presented the highest R² (0.9855 – 0.9978) and lowest RMSE (0.0128-0.0285). In general, all models adequately fitted the experimental data so they can be used to predict the drying kinetics, therefore they could be very useful in equipment design and optimization of the coffee drying process.