Analysis of a teaching and learning method supported by open source codes and web activities

In this paper the Authors describe a series of activities that has been planned and completed at Sapienza University of Rome. This contribution concerns the development of an original web-site that has been created for supporting the students enrolled at the course of Mechanical Engineering. The developed Site, called KinSynth, is a virtual space where the students have both download and upload privileges, which allows them to exchange a variety of information, mainly Codes written in Open Source Programming Languages. The system allows all the up-loaders to achieve Authoring credits and this feature trigs certain psychological dynamics among the learners that the Authors of the present investigation are willing to analyze. Hence, an online survey has been proposed to all the registered students-users with two objectives: a) understanding whether the Site is really useful to all the students, or only to a sub-group of them; b) achieving a better knowledge of the learners' typologies and attempting to correlate them with their attitude for these Web-based activities. The questionnaire has been developed on the basis of some indicators which could identify some student typologies, such as, for example, those making reference to the Gardner's multiple intelligence model, and some web-user styles. The results will be used next semester in order to build up new orientation activities. © 2012 IEEE.