Adaptability and interoperability in the field of highly interactive web-based courseware

Introduction This is a collection of 34 self-test exercises related to the anatomy of the abdomen, urinary, and reproductive systems. All learning objects are interactive, requiring learners to process information and make decisions. These are intended to accompany undergraduate anatomy courses and be used by instructors and students in premedical, predental, nursing, and other healthcare-related curricula. Methods For each area of anatomy, students may select from a range of exercises including short-answer, matching, and multiple-choice questions. The modules use Flash software to enable a high level of learner interaction with the content, such as the ability to drag-and-drop anatomical structures on line drawings, and checkboxes with structure names for anatomical structure identification on dissected cadavers. In addition, learners may navigate through an abdomen and pelvic case study that requires student feedback in order to progress through the cases. Immediate feedback is provided to the learner upon selection of a structure in order to reinforce the learning. Results Although no formal study of effectiveness has been conducted, anecdotal evidence indicates that students value and appreciate the interactive learning modules. Discussion The module successfully achieves true interactivity in the educational context, as it both challenges learners to cognitively process basic science information in order to make a decision, and provides immediate feedback about that decision. The Adobe Flash plug-in was chosen as the deployment tool because it was ubiquitous across computer platforms, suitable for the development task, and the necessary expertise was available.

Interactive digital Learning objects is a core of eLearning systems. Although multimedia learning theory support learning via multimedia. Surprisingly, observations imply that a significant number of students change interactive learning objects to static printed text. The aim of this study is to find what factor(s) influence changing interactive learning objects to print. To achieve the goal, a survey conducted in Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST) E-Learning Centre. Qualitative content analysis revealed “reviewing problem” as a main theme. To find key factors related to the problem, 169 online learners voluntary answered an online questionnaire. To analyse quantitative data Educational Data Mining (EDM) were used. Finding from the decision tree and rule induction that conducted by WEKA, revealed the “problem of reviewing” is the most important factor that interpret student behaviour in printing interactive digital learning objects.

In mobile learning, limitations of most mobile devices to access rich multimedia contents demands the use of small and interactive learning objects. The selection of learning objects for mobile devices from repositories is based on learning objects metadata. However, most of the metadata are not readily available without downloading the learning objects first. Web crawlers can be used to retrieve the metadata but unfortunately some repositories have policies of blocking the crawling software agents. On the other hand the search engines which can be crawled publicly such as Google contains summary of search results which can be used to generate metadata for rating and identifying the learning objects that may be effective for mobile devices. This paper therefore presents a mechanism of crawling the search engines for metadata as used in Automatic Mobile Learning Objects Compilation (AMLOC) model to facilitate the discovery of learning objects for mobile devices.

Content-Based Indexing of Spatial Objects in Digital Libraries

Digital libraries maintain information lifecycles for the digital objects contained therein. Typically these information lifecycles stipulate that a digital object is deleted at the end of its lifecycle. We propose a transient framework for digital libraries in which suitable objects are transformed through a state transition lifecycle thereby reducing the need to ever delete the digital object from the digital library, Transience works for certain media types and we describe and positively evaluate a prototype deployment in the domain of security video.

This paper presents an approach of two-way data exchange between the citation content analysis, provided by the Cirtec project, and the big research digital library Socionet. Many papers in Socionet have citation relationships with other papers and also linkages with authors’ personal profiles and through them with other information objects. It allows making an enrichment of data for the citation content analysis by different additional information and, as well, linking results of such analysis with objects in a digital library, like papers, their authors, affiliation organizations, etc. We discuss what numeric and qualitative indicators can be built by citation content analysis based on the Cirtec open citation data. Since these indicators have IDs related with digital library objects, they can be integrated and visualized as computer-generated annotations to papers’ full texts in PDF.

The FRBR-model provided by the IFLA Study group on the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records addresses the need for a more thorough model of bibliographic information. This paper describes a solution for applying the FRBR model to existing bibliographic catalogues. This is accomplished by augmenting the catalogue with an externally stored map that contains relationships and entities according to the model. The core of the system is the Digital Library LinkService developed at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology - a flexible and general purpose link service developed to support the structuring of information objects in digital libraries. A client application is developed to visualize the map and to enable users to interact with the map by navigating along the available paths.

This paper presents an approach to incorporating collaboration among process actors as a major construct for business process modeling. Furthermore collaboration is realized as a reusable software component. This provides today's workflow management systems with an opportunity to integrate collaboration with their existing process execution to realize full co-operation support for business process management. A collaboration-centric application framework based on a reusable collaboration component and a multi-agent platform is proposed. A description of how it was refined through use in a succession of applications used to trial team-working with various groups of mobile workers is included to show the usefulness and maturity of the approach. Finally some information is given in regards to the productisation of the enterprise mobilization platform of which the collaboration-centric application framework is a component.

Many regard widespread development and reuse of software components as one of the next biggest phenomena for software. However, widespread reuse of a software component with poor quality may lead to disasters. Improper reuse of software components of good quality may also be disastrous. Testing and quality assurance is therefore critical for both software components and component-based software systems. This tutorial provides an in-depth look at the technical issues, challenges, managerial aspects, and needs in testing of components and systems. Moreover, this tutorial reports on the recent advances and research efforts in developing new solutions to solve those problems and meet those needs, from the perspectives of component-based software engineering. The tutorial will discuss the state-of-the-art practice, issues, and challenges, new solutions and research efforts in third-party component testing, component-based program validation, and test automation. The targeted audience includes technical managers, software testing engineers, quality assurance people, and development engineers who are working on component-based software projects. The tutorial will be useful for professionals, researchers, and students interested in understanding the general concepts and methods in component testing and component-based software validation. This tutorial assumes that participants have a general understanding of software engineering and software testing methods, and have some working experience in software development and validation.

We present a half-day course to review several information theory applications for computer graphics and visualization. Information theory tools, widely used in scientific fields such as engineering, physics, genetics and neuroscience, are also emerging as useful transversal tools in computer graphics and related fields. We introduce the basic concepts of information theory and how they map into application areas. Application areas in computer graphics include viewpoint selection, mesh saliency, scene exploration, ambient occlusion, geometry simplification, radiosity, adaptive ray-tracing and shape descriptors. Application areas in visualization are view selection for volume data, flow visualization, ambient occlusion, time-varying volume visualization, transfer function definition, time-varying volume visualization, iso-surface similarity maps and quality metrics. The applications fall broadly into two categories: the mapping of the problem to an information channel - as in viewpoint applications - and the direct use of measures such as entropy, Kullback-Leibler distance, Jensen-Shannon divergence, and f-divergences. These would be used to evaluate, for instance, the homogeneity of a set of samples being used as metrics. We will also discuss the potential applications of the information bottleneck method that allows us to progressively extract or merge information in a hierarchical structure.

Abstract: This is an era marked by rapid developments in three different educational arenas -- access, lifelong learning and e-learning. In both developed and developing countries there is a growing demand for access to education... Alongside this growing demand for access, increased numbers of adults are returning to colleges and universities for additional education and training (CIHE, 2002). Lifelong learning has come of age, brought about by changes in attitudes to learning and in employment patterns, where jobs and careers are recast many times during a lifespan. Permeating and supporting these first two developments, in access and lifelong learning, are developments in information and communication technologies (ICT). New technologies are beginning to transform how higher education is organized and delivered both on campus and at a distance. E-learning affords new opportunities to increase flexibility in time and location of study, in forms of communication (for example, asynchronous discussions) and types of interaction... Although e-learning has the potential to provide the kinds of flexibility required by wider access and lifelong learning there are some major obstacles. On the one hand, wider access and lifelong learning require vast increases in specially designed course materials to satisfy the greater range of demands for learning. On the other hand, creating the digital resources necessary for online course delivery requires considerable investment, a factor that makes resource development only viable for courses with large student numbers or sizeable budgets. In order to address this difficulty, numerous national and international initiatives have been funded to investigate ways in which digital learning resources might be developed, shared and reused by teachers and learners around the world (so as to benefit from economies of scale). Behind these initiatives lies a vision of a future in which reusable resources (or 'learning objects' as they are called) could comprise a new currency of exchange within a learning economy. Learning objects, produced by publishers, teachers, support staff and students themselves, would be stored in digital repositories, where they could be easily accessed, recombined and reused within online courses. However, despite this vision, the idea of reusing electronic resources is more complex than the object economy scenario, outlined above, may suggest. The next section identifies seven issues associated with the reuse and sharing of resources. These sections focus on educational design, the need for standards, and on the culture and organization that would be necessary in institutions (and across institutions) if reuse were to become a reality.Editors: Allison Littlejohn (Centre for Academic Practice, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow G1 1QE) Reviewers: Allison Littlejohn & Simon Buckingham Shum Notes: Reprinted with permission from: 'Reusing Online Resources: A Sustainable Approach to eLearning', (Ed.) Allison Littlejohn. Kogan Page, London. ISBN 0749439491.

PurposeThe purpose of this research is to propose an evaluation framework for analyzing learning objects usage, with the aim of extracting useful information for improving the quality of the metadata used to describe the learning objects, but also for personalization purposes, including user models and adaptive itineraries.Design/methodology/approachThe paper presents experimental results from the log usage analysis during one academic semester of two different subjects, 350 students. The experiment examines raw server log data generated from the interactions of the students with the classroom learning objects, in order to find relevant information that can be used to improve the metadata used for describing both the learning objects and the learning process.FindingsPreliminary studies have been carried out in order to obtain an initial picture of the interactions between learners and the virtual campus, including both services and resources usage. These studies try to establish relationships between user profiles and their information and navigational behavior in the virtual campus, with the aim of promoting personalization and improving the understanding of what learning in virtual environments means.Research limitations/implicationsDuring the formal learning process, students use learning resources from the virtual classroom provided by the academic library, but they also seek information outside the virtual campus. All these usage data are not considered in the model proposed here. Further research is needed in order to obtain a complete view of the seeking information behavior of students for improving the users' profile and creating better personalized services.Practical implicationsThis paper suggests how a selection of fields used in the LOM standard could be used for enriching the description of learning objects, automatically in some cases, from the learning objects usage performed by an academic community.Originality/valueFrom libraries beginnings, they have been a “quiet storage place”. With the development of digital libraries, they become a meeting place where explicit and implicit recommendations about information sources can be shared among users. Social and learning process interactions, therefore, can be considered another knowledge source.

Software reusability is believed to be the key to improving software development productivity, while specification plays an important part in software reuse. From a modern object oriented view, the reusable software components can be grouped into three categories. Procedural components, abstract data types and concrete data objects. Both procedural components and abstract data types can be parameterized in many Object-Oriented languages. Specifications for reuse of these components are discussed in detail in this paper. The reusable software components and their specifications will form a reusable software library, and the information extracted from the specifications forms a knowledge base. Based on the knowledge base and the reusable software library, a new software development paradigm with software reusability can be realized.

This paper presents and validates a methodology for integrating reusable software components in diverse game engines. While conforming to the RAGE component-based architecture described elsewhere, the paper explains how the interactions and data exchange processes between a reusable software component and a game engine should be implemented for procuring seamless integration. To this end, a RAGE-compliant C# software component providing a difficulty adaptation routine was integrated with an exemplary strategic tile-based game TileZero. Implementations in MonoGame, Unity and Xamarin, respectively, have demonstrated successful portability of the adaptation component. Also, portability across various delivery platforms Windows desktop, iOS, Android, Windows Phone was established. Thereby this study has established the validity of the RAGE architecture and its underlying interaction processes for the cross-platform and cross-game engine reuse of software components. The RAGE architecture thereby accommodates the large scale development and application of reusable software components for serious gaming.

OBJECTIVE: In this paper, the authors describe the design, development and evaluation of specific simulation software for Cytogenetics training in order to demonstrate the usefulness of computer simulations for both teaching and learning of complex educational content. BACKGROUND: Simulations have a long tradition in medicine and can be very helpful for learning complex content, for example Cytogenetics, which is an integral part of diagnostics in dysmorphology, syndromology, prenatal and developmental diagnosis, reproductive medicine, neuropediatrics, hematology and oncology. METHODS AND MATERIALS: The simulation software was developed as an Interactive Learning Object (ILO) in Java2, following a user-centered approach. The simulation was tested on various platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac-OSX, HP-UX) without any limitations; the evaluation was based on questionnaires and interviews amongst 600 students in 15 groups. CONCLUSION: This simulation has proved its worth in daily teaching since 2002 and further demonstrates that computer simulations can be helpful for both teaching and learning of complex content in Cytogenetics.