Chatbots have arrived in higher education, and professors are trying to make the most of them. Typically, chatbots are used to help students learn academic subjects. In times of crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, students who were not living with their families during the course, especially international students, were isolated and in critical situations. The student services offices were in constant contact with these students to solve problems, advise them and support them during their stay, within the constraints of confinement and the guidelines dictated by the country at the time. The student services offices were overwhelmed trying to help these students because, although the students' problems were very recurrent, the government guidelines changed from one day to the next. This article proposes the use of a chatbot to provide initial support to students during crisis situations, and facilitate communication between them and the university. The chatbot was tested by more than 160 students and student services staff. The findings support the use of chatbots as a potential tool to facilitate communication with students in emerging emergency situations, and encourage universities to adopt these types of smart tools to be prepared to respond quickly and efficiently to students in times of crisis.

The recent Covid-19 pandemic has presented teachers with new challenges, high-
lighting the need for innovation, renovation, and increased digitisation across all
areas of education, including foreign language learning. At the same time, the
increasing advances in Extended Reality (XR) together with the availability of
authoring tools have created new opportunities to support the teaching/learning
process. However, research suggests that many educators are still reluctant to
integrate such technologies into their teaching syllabus. In this context and with
the idea of encouraging especially language teachers at A1/A2 level to explore the
possibilities of creating novel learning environments using technologies such as
Virtual Reality (VR), in the current study we will share our experience regarding
the use of authoring tools and the design and implementation of a VR language
learning app created with CoSpaces. The latter is a freely available authoring tool
which allows teachers with no specific programming skills to easily create VR
environments in line with their teaching needs. The study consists of two main
parts: the first focuses on describing CoSpaces as an authoring tool and our expe-
rience as developers of a VR app. The second shows the tool’s functioning and
offers those unfamiliar with it a short introduction. It concludes with evaluating
the app’s implementation and analysing teachers' and students' feedback., pp. 54-71

The introduction of mobile devices such as smartphones provides new opportunities to enhance the teaching-learning process of a foreign language. However, its use can affect not only the students' type and form of writing but also their ability to achieve the academic competencies targeted. Thus, aspects such as the development of linguistic and communicative competencies could be affected. In this paper, a comparative analysis of two different versions (a paper and a digital version) of the same learning task is carried out in order to analyze the impact of each on the development of students' linguistic and communicative competencies. The study is conducted with undergraduate students enrolled in a course called German II. Modern Language I (level A1.2, Common European Framework of Reference for Languages). The results obtained illustrate, on the one hand, the advantages of the paper version for developing students' linguistic competence and, on the other hand, that the digital version, despite facilitating students' interaction amongst each other, does not seem to be more suitable for developing students' communicative competence. Future studies will, therefore, focus on identifying those features that might increase the potential of the digital version for fostering the targeted competencies.

Virtual learning environments contain valuable data about students that can be correlated and analyzed to optimize learning. Modern learning environments based on data mashups that collect and integrate data from multiple sources are relevant for learning analytics systems because they provide insights into students' learning. However, data sets involved in mashups may contain personal information of sensitive nature that raises legitimate privacy concerns. Average privacy preservation methods are based on preemptive approaches that limit the published data in a mashup based on access control and authentication schemes. Such limitations may reduce the analytical utility of the data exposed to gain students' learning insights. In order to reconcile utility and privacy preservation of published data, this research proposes a new data mashup protocol capable of merging and k-anonymizing data sets in cloud-based learning environments without jeopardizing the analytical utility of the information. The implementation of the protocol is based on linked data so that data sets involved in the mashups are semantically described, thereby enabling their combination with relevant educational data sources. The k-anonymized data sets returned by the protocol still retain essential information for supporting general data exploration and statistical analysis tasks. The analytical and empirical evaluation shows that the proposed protocol prevents individuals' sensitive information from re-identifying., The Spanish National Research Agency (AEI) funded this research through the project CREPES (ref. PID2020-115844RB-I00) with ERDF funds.

This article presents a study that combines a systematic mapping of the use of gamification in SQL learning with a case study conducted in a database course in higher education. The research addresses the convergence between gamification and SQL learning by evaluating and categorizing existing literature and integrating this review with the analysis of a specific implementation of gamification techniques. Various gamification strategies and approaches used in educational settings to facilitate the understanding and mastery of SQL are examined, highlighting effective practices and areas of opportunity. It also identifies emerging trends, challenges and research gaps, providing a comprehensive overview of gamification in database education. This blend of theoretical analysis and case study aims to inform educators, researchers and practitioners about the current state of gamification in SQL learning, and to encourage critical reflection and innovation to improve pedagogical practice in this specific area.

Cross-matching data stored on separate files is an everyday activity in the scientific domain. However, sometimes the relation between attributes may not be obvious. The discovery of foreign keys on relational databases is a similar problem. Thus techniques devised for this problem can be adapted. Nonetheless, when the data is numeric and subject to uncertainty, this adaptation is not trivial. This paper firstly introduces the concept of Equally-Distributed Dependencies, which is similar to the Inclusion Dependencies from the relational domain. We describe a correspondence in order to bridge existing ideas. We then propose PresQ: a new algorithm based on the search of maximal quasi-cliques on hyper-graphs to make it more robust to the nature of uncertain numerical data. This algorithm has been tested on seven public datasets, showing promising results both in its capacity to find multidimensional equally-distributed sets of attributes and in run-time.

SQL is a key programming language for data scientists, but its learning is sometimes challenging, especially if the learner does not have a proper computer science background. This article introduces ChatbotSQL, a conversational agent that aims to support the autonomous learning of the SQL language for database querying. ChatbotSQL proposes exercises and guides about the steps to be taken by the learner in case of doubts, providing customised feedback. ChatbotSQL has been created on top of IBM Watson Assistant and is available in a web platform. Students in a higher education database subject used ChatbotSQL extensively, showing a positive perception of its usefulness in supporting the resolution of complex queries, This paper is part of the R&D project CREPES (ref. PID2020-115844RB-I00), funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/. It is also partially granted by the ``EMERGIA'' programme, funded by the Junta de Andalucia through the grant EMC21_004171.

Comprehension of stories requires readers to take the perspective of the story characters and imagine or feel their cognitive and affective states. The study investigated how variations in emotional valence within a literary text affected readers' global text processing, as reflected in their eye movements during the first and second-pass reading, and their memory for text. Processes of reading were also examined in relation to readers' dispositional empathy. Undergraduate students (N = 42) were assigned to an emotionally negative or neutral reading condition. They read a natural text passage from a suspense story while their ocular behavior was registered. After reading, they responded to multiple-choice questions assessing their memory of the text. Results revealed longer first-pass fixation times for content evoking negative emotions than for neutral content, which could be suggestive of a more analytical processing of the former. These effects were however local and did not impact the processing of the text at global level. Memory for the emotionally negative content was more accurate than memory for the neutral content. Dispositional empathy did not contribute to reading processes and outcome. Findings are discussed against the mixed results in the current literature and practical implications are also outlined.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to face-to-face activities being developed in a virtual format that often offers a poor experience
in areas such as education. Virtual Learning Environments have improved in recent years thanks to new technologies
such as Virtual Reality or Chatbots. However, creating Virtual Learning Environments requires advanced programming
knowledge, so this work is aimed to enable teachers to create these new environments easily. This work presents a set of
extensions for App Inventor that facilitate the authoring of mobile learning apps that use Chatbots in a Virtual Reality environment,
while simultaneously monitoring of student activity. This proposal is based on integrating block-based languages
and Business Process Model and Notation diagrams. The developed extensions were successfully implemented in an educational
app called Let’s date!. A quantitative analysis of the use of these extensions in App Inventor was also carried out,
resulting in a significant reduction in the number of blocks required. The proposed contribution has demonstrated its validity
in creating virtual learning environments through visual programming and modelling, reducing development complexity.