bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A 360-Degree Perspective of Education in 3-D Virtual Worlds
Authors: Eschenbrenner Brenda , Nah Fiona Fui-Hoon , Siau Keng
Published: May 2010

Three-dimensional virtual world environments are providing new opportunities to develop engaging, immersive experiences in education. These virtual worlds are unique in that they allow individuals to interact with others through their avatars and with objects in the environment, and can create experiences that are not necessarily possible in the real world. Hence, virtual worlds are presenting opportunities for students to engage in both constructivist and collaborative learning. To assess the impact of the use of virtual worlds on education, a literature review is conducted to identify current applications, benefits being realized, as well as issues faced. Based on the review, educational opportunities in virtual worlds and gaps in meeting pedagogical objectives are discussed. Practical and research implications are also addressed. Virtual worlds are proving to provide unique educational experiences, with its potential only at the cusp of being explored.
Pattern Discovery from Biological Data
Authors: Nahar Jesmin , Tickle Kevin S. , Shawkat Ali A. B.M.
Published: May 2010

Extracting useful information from structured and unstructured biological data is crucial in the health industry. Some examples include medical practitioner’s need to identify breast cancer patient in the early stage, estimate survival time of a heart disease patient, or recognize uncommon disease characteristics which suddenly appear. Currently there is an explosion in biological data available in the data bases. But information extraction and true open access to data are require time to resolve issues such as ethical clearance. The emergence of novel IT technologies allows health practitioners to facilitate the comprehensive analyses of medical images, genomes, transcriptomes, and proteomes in health and disease. The information that is extracted from such technologies may soon exert a dramatic change in the pace of medical research and impact considerably on the care of patients. The current research will review the existing technologies being used in heart and cancer research. Finally this research will provide some possible solutions to overcome the limitations of existing technologies. In summary the primary objective of this research is to investigate how existing modern machine learning techniques (with their strength and limitations) are being used in the indent of heartbeat related disease and the early detection of cancer in patients. After an extensive literature review these are the objectives chosen: to develop a new approach to find the association between diseases such as high blood pressure, stroke and heartbeat, to propose an improved feature selection method to analyze huge images and microarray databases for machine learning algorithms in cancer research, to find an automatic distance function selection method for clustering tasks, to discover the most significant risk factors for specific cancers, and to determine the preventive factors for specific cancers that are aligned with the most significant risk factors. Therefore we propose a research plan to attain these objectives within this chapter. The possible solutions of the above objectives are: new heartbeat identification techniques show promising association with the heartbeat patterns and diseases, sensitivity based feature selection methods will be applied to early cancer patient classification, meta learning approaches will be adopted in clustering algorithms to select an automatic distance function, and Apriori algorithm will be applied to discover the significant risks and preventive factors for specific cancers. We expect this research will add significant contributions to the medical professional to enable more accurate diagnosis and better patient care. It will also contribute in other area such as biomedical modeling, medical image analysis and early diseases warning.
Machine Learning Techniques for Network Intrusion Detection
Authors: Tran Tich Phuoc , Tsai Pohsiang , Jan Tony , He Xiangjian
Published: May 2010

Most of the currently available network security techniques are not able to cope with the dynamic and increasingly complex nature of cyber attacks on distributed computer systems. Therefore, an automated and adaptive defensive tool is imperative for computer networks. Alongside the existing prevention techniques such as encryption and firewalls, Intrusion Detection System (IDS) has established itself as an emerging technology that is able to detect unauthorized access and abuse of computer systems by both internal users and external offenders. Most of the novel approaches in this field have adopted Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies such as Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) to improve performance as well as robustness of IDS. The true power and advantages of ANN lie in its ability to represent both linear and non-linear relationships and learn these relationships directly from the data being modeled. However, ANN is computationally expensive due to its demanding processing power and this leads to overfitting problem, i.e. the network is unable to extrapolate accurately once the input is outside of the training data range. These limitations challenge IDS with low detection rate, high false alarm rate and excessive computation cost. This chapter proposes a novel Machine Learning (ML) algorithm to alleviate those difficulties of existing AI techniques in the area of computer network security. The Intrusion Detection dataset provided by Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD-99) is used as a benchmark to compare our model with other existing techniques. Extensive empirical analysis suggests that the proposed method outperforms other state-of-the-art learning algorithms in terms of learning bias, generalization variance and computational cost. It is also reported to significantly improve the overall detection capability for difficult-to-detect novel attacks which are unseen or irregularly occur in the training phase.
Bayesian Networks in the Health Domain
Authors: Nadathur Shyamala G.
Published: May 2010

Large datasets are regularly collected in biomedicine and healthcare (here referred to as the ‘health domain’). These datasets have some unique characteristics and problems. Therefore there is a need for methods which allow modelling in spite of the uniqueness of the datasets, capable of dealing with missing data, allow integrating data from various sources, explicitly indicate statistical dependence and independence and allow modelling with uncertainties. These requirements have given rise to an influx of new methods, especially from the fields of machine learning and probabilistic graphical models. In particular, Bayesian Networks (BNs), which are a type of graphical network model with directed links that offer a general and versatile approach to capturing and reasoning with uncertainty. In this chapter some background mathematics/statistics, description and relevant aspects of building the networks are given to better understand s and appreciate BN’s potential. There are also brief discussions of their applications, the unique value and the challenges of this modelling technique for the domain. As will be seen in this chapter, with the additional advantages the BNs can offer, it is not surprising that it is becoming an increasingly popular modelling tool in the health domain.
Application of Machine Learning Techniques for Railway Health Monitoring
Authors: Shafiullah G.M. , Thompson Adam , Wolfs Peter J. , Ali A.B.M. Shawkat
Published: May 2010

Emerging wireless sensor networking (WSN) and modern machine learning techniques have encouraged interest in the development of vehicle health monitoring (VHM) systems that ensure secure and reliable operation of the rail vehicle. The performance of rail vehicles running on railway tracks is governed by the dynamic behaviours of railway bogies especially in the cases of lateral instability and track irregularities. In order to ensure safety and reliability of railway in this chapter, a forecasting model has been developed to investigate vertical acceleration behaviour of railway wagons attached to a moving locomotive using modern machine learning techniques. Initially, an energy-efficient data acquisition model has been proposed for WSN applications using popular learning algorithms. Later, a prediction model has been developed to investigate both front and rear body vertical acceleration behaviour. Different types of models can be built using a uniform platform to evaluate their performances and estimate different attributes’ correlation coefficient (CC), root mean square error (RMSE), mean absolute error (MAE), root relative squared error (RRSE), relative absolute error (RAE) and computation complexity for each of the algorithm. Finally, spectral analysis of front and rear body vertical condition is produced from the predicted data using Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) and used to generate precautionary signals and system status which can be used by the locomotive driver for deciding upon necessary actions.
The Measurement of Electronic Service Quality
Authors: Bressolles Grégory , Nantel Jacques
Published: May 2010

Several measurement scales have been designed by both practitioners and researchers to evaluate perceptions of electronic service Quality. This chapter tests three of the main academically developed scales: Sitequal (Yoo & Donthu, 2001), Webqual 4 (Barnes & Vidgen, 2003) and EtailQ (Wolfinbarger & Gilly, 2003) and compares them against the scale ensuing from our research: NetQual (Bressolles, 2006). Based on 204 evaluations of consumers that participated in a laboratory experiment involving two Canadian Websites in travel and online insurance, NetQual best fits the data and offers the highest explanatory power. Then the impact of nature of task and success or failure to complete the task on the evaluation process of electronic service quality and attitude toward the site is examined and discussed on over 700 respondents that navigated on six different Websites.
Revisiting Issues, Limitations, and Opportunities in Cross-Cultural Research on Collaborative Software in Information Systems
Authors: Zhang Dongsong , Gaskin James , Lowry Paul Benjamin
Published: May 2010

Previously, Zhang and Lowry (2008) analyzed the issues, limitations, and opportunities in cross-cultural research on collaborative software in information systems. This chapter revisits the issues discussed in that paper and adds to them an analysis of the research done since their analysis, which covered the years leading up to 2005. Five additional articles, published between 2005 and the end of 2008 have been added to their original analysis. Since the beginning of 2005, research has extended to new countries and cultures, and has covered a previously unexplored task type. New insights and opportunities are discussed. Previously, Zhang and Lowry (2008) found seven common failures in CSW-supported cultural research. This update analyzes five new papers against these seven failures and finds their recent research encouraging. The main contribution of this chapter is filling in the gap between the current state of this particular area of research and the previous state at the beginning of 2005 when the analysis of Zhang and Lowry was completed.
E-Business Strategy and Firm Performance
Authors: Quan Jing
Published: May 2010

Electronic business (e-business) has been popularly lauded as “new economy.” As a result, firms are prompted to invest heavily in e-business related activities such as supplier/procurement and online exchanges. Whether the investments have actually paid off for the firms remain largely unknown. Using the data on the top 100 e-business leaders compiled by InternetWeek, this chapter compares the leaders with their comparable counterparts in terms of profitability and cost in both short-run and long-run. The authors find that while the leaders have superior performance based on most of the profitability measurements, such superiority is not observed when cost measurements are used. Based on the findings, this chapter offers managerial implications accordingly.
IT's Contribution to Globalization
Authors: Schultz Robert A.
Published: May 2010

In this chapter we will consider this question: To what extent is IT responsible for globalization? But before we can address this question, we need more clarity on what globalization is. Some authors, for example, Thomas Friedman, view globalization very broadly. Friedman uses an invented term, flattening, to include a wide range of phenomena both social as well as economic.1 (Friedman 2005) Friedman’s flattening is always a good thing. The danger in this approach is that there cannot be bad cases of flattening; good and bad aspects of globalization can seem to be completely linked when in fact they are not. For example, I believe that Friedman may tend to view negative features of offshoring to be compensated for just by offshoring’s contribution to “flattening.”
The Basis of Ethical Principles
Authors: Schultz Robert A.
Published: May 2010

My aim in Section 1 was to locate and describe areas of ethical concern in IT-enabled globalization. Yet in doing so, I was not ethically neutral in my judgements. The reader, especially the reader who disagreed with some of those judgements, may wonder how they are justified. In this section, Section 2, I will address precisely that question. I will begin by showing that ethical judgments can be justified. Then I will state a theory of ethical development which I think allows great insight into conflicts of ethical principles. Next I will describe a method for justifying ethical principles called reflective equilibrium. Finally, the rest of Section 2 will examine ethical theories relevant to ethical problems of globalization.
Domestic Theories of Justice
Authors: Schultz Robert A.
Published: May 2010

In this chapter I will deal primarily with principles of justice for a particular society, a society whose members share benefits and burdens and regard themselves as cooperating members of that society. This type of justice is called domestic justice, to contrast it with transnational or global justice. Usually it is people in a given nation who constitute a society and regard themselves as belonging to a single economic and political unit. As I mentioned in the discussion of globalized institutions in Chapter 2, federal arrangements such as the US and the EU are possible with subsidiary units with partial autonomy, both economic and political.
The Ethical Status of Globalized Institutions
Authors: Schultz Robert A.
Published: May 2010

The purpose of this chapter is to determine where ethically globalized institutions need ethical principles and what kind of ethical principles are needed. Two preliminary discussions are needed: First, global or transnational ethics clearly depends on the ethical status of nations. The transnational ethical theories we have just examined differ markedly on this issue, and we need to reach a conclusion about the ethical status of a country or nation. Second, I need to summarize what is right and what is deficient in the transnational ethical theories examined in the two previous chapters. After these rather extensive preliminary discussions, I will examine the ethical requirements of current ethically globalized institutions.
Elements of a Global Contract
Authors: Schultz Robert A.
Published: May 2010

We saw in Section 2, Theories of Globalized Ethics, that there is a need for institutions with transnational ethical authority. Such authority would be needed for: Preventing war; dealing with genocides; dealing with transnational legal problems; and a global economic authority would be needed to deal with problems such as fairness in transnational economic distribution, transnational competition, multinational tax avoidance, and common tax policies to deal with global warming. Without ethical oversight, transnational authority can easily be misused. Thus the World Trade Organization prevents effective environmental regulation of transnational trade and economic action against repressive states, and there are no channels to consider changing these policies other than street demonstrations. But just creating another authority with enough power to oversee transnational institutions effectively will also create the same oversight problem. That is, who oversees the new, more powerful authority? One way around this apparent paradox is a social contract. A social contract is a way for parties to acknowledge that they need to limit their own interests in order to achieve greater cooperative benefits, and can assume that others will do so.1 Oversight may still be necessary if a social contract exists, but the bulk of compliance will rest with observance of the contract for mutual benefit. So much less oversight will be required, and the overseeing institution will need that much less power.
Globalized Ethics and Current Institutions
Authors: Schultz Robert A.
Published: May 2010

In this chapter, I will examine the extent to which current institutions might be able to implement the principles of global justice. I will begin with a few remarks about a market economy and continue with the two major institutions involved in the global economy--states and multinational corporations. Then I will consider other current transnational institutions such as world financial and economic institutions (World Bank, IMF, WTO), the United Nations and World Court, and other transnational NGOs. Finally, a number of practices have transnational impacts, and the Global Principles of Justice require changes to those practices. These are: Property and intellectual property, taxes, and Internet regulation.
Ethical Implications for IT
Authors: Schultz Robert A.
Published: May 2010

In this chapter, I will examine the ethical consequences for IT of the International Social Contract and the Global Economy Social Contract. I began considering ethical responses to global ethical problems of IT in Chapter 9, IT and Globalized Ethics, and continued the discussion in Chapter 11, Globalized Ethics and Current Institutions. Here I will examine the impact of the two social contracts on those ethical responses.
IT-Enabled Globalization and the Environment
Authors: Schultz Robert A.
Published: May 2010

Problems of environmental ethics transcend global justice. We can behave ethically and justly toward each other across the globe, but at the same time let the environment deteriorate in catastrophic ways. I believe principles of environmental ethics have to be treated as of higher order, and therefore of greater priority than even principles of global justice.1 The environment is not a person and therefore cannot be a participant in a social contract. So the different basis for its priority is that if the environment deteriorates, it makes all of our lives difficult or even impossible. Challenges to the priority of the environment sometimes come from corporations when their own interests in profitability would be harmed. Very often a focus on profit maximization will make the point of view of a corporation shortsighted. Notoriously, corporate stock prices tend to value short-term financial results over longer term results. And corporate financial results do not include externalities, impacts on the environment that are not directly reflected in their balance sheets. Carbon emissions are an excellent example. Developing nations sometimes object to constraints on their development for economic reasons. Their argument is that developed nations have had the benefit of unconstrained economic development, and it is unreasonable to expect them to curtail their development at its current stage. This objection was incorporated into the Kyoto Protocols of 1997 for carbon emissions: Developed countries were required to reduce emissions by 5 percent by 2012, but developing countries had no requirements but could be compensated for voluntary reduction. This feature of the protocols led to their rejection by the US Congress, although every other developed country adopted them. (Sachs 2008) The value of corporations is their ability to achieve economic development. But is economic development itself always a good thing? To what extent should development be constrained by environmental concerns?
Conclusion
Authors: Schultz Robert A.
Published: May 2010

My original project was to determine ethical principles for ethically globalized institutions. I also wanted to determine the role of IT in the ethics of globalization. Economic and cultural globalization are two of the most powerful forces enabled by IT. So my further question was, what is IT’s ethical responsibility with respect to these forces? The two focal points in this book for considering globalization were, first, Information Technology and, second, ethical issues which emerge only at a transnational level.
Toward an Integrated Conceptual Framework of Research in Teen Online Communication
Authors: Zheng Robert Z. , Burrow-Sanchez Jason J. , Donnelly Stephanie , Call Megan E. , Drew Clifford J.
Published: May 2010

This article presents a conceptual framework for research exploring teen online communication. It brings attention to the influences of related elements such as social and individual factors on adolescent needs and behaviors in online communication. The proposed conceptual framework posits that adolescent online behaviors are linked to their needs pertaining to developmental, social-psychological, and cognitive demands. While adolescent needs are influenced by the social and individual factors, such influences also impose indirect impact on adolescent online behaviors. This framework provides a comprehensive picture of teen online communication in terms of the components involved in such communication. Suggestions for future studies are outlined with regard to the validation and implementation of the proposed framework.
Connected at any Cost
Authors: Miller Susan M. , Miller Kenneth L. , Allison Christine
Published: May 2010

The goal of this chapter is to explore the formation of online relationships in the dual contexts of adolescent cognitive and psychosocial development and characteristics of Internet communication technologies. Research revealed that teens use the Internet to support existing, offline relationships and that such use is associated with closer relationships. For those who form online relationships, these are viewed as close or even romantic in nature. However, when compared along various dimensions, online relationships demonstrate weaker ties than do offline relationships. In general, extroverted teens are more likely to form online relationships, although, if that is their purpose, so do introverted teens. Forming online relationships may rest with the teen’s awareness of how to present him or herself given the anonymity of the cue-free Internet environment.
Do High School Students Benefit from the Children's Internet Protection Act?
Authors: Yan Zheng
Published: May 2010

The Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA; 2000) requires an Internet filtering and public awareness strategy to protect children under 17 from harmful visual Internet depictions and has been implemented nationwide since 2001. However, little literature is available documenting its impacts on children’s Internet safety. This chapter first reviews CIPA as well as other existing regulations in protecting children on the Internet. It then presents empirical evidence that CIPA is associated with a decrease in high school students’ Internet use at school but does not appear to have a beneficial effect on their knowledge of Internet safety or opportunities for Internet safety education.
Language Learning and Social Communication Using Chat Rooms
Authors: Demirbilek Muhammet , Mutlu Berna
Published: May 2010

Information and communication technologies (ICT) have become an inevitable part of adolescents’ daily life and have caused macro and micro changes that are shaping the societies in which adolescents of the future will live. As a two-way real time communication tool, chat rooms are one of the most popular forms of ICT in adolescents’ daily life. Adolescents use ICT for meaningful communication and social interaction with their peers and relatives. Following are some of the purposes for interacting through chat rooms: staying current in what matters to them, shopping, entertainment, creating personal web pages, and, yes, completing homework assignments. These activities can promote opportunities for purposeful communication that leads to increased language production and social interaction as well as promotes higher order thinking skills. The purpose of this chapter is to highlight issues on chat rooms as a two-way real time communication tools frequently used by adolescents with an emphasis on the effects of chat rooms on adolescents’ second language development with a comprehensive review of literature.
Product Modelling in the Building and Construction Industry
Authors: Dado Edwin , Beheshti Reza , van de Ruitenbeek Martinus
Published: May 2010

This chapter provides an overview of product modelling in the Building and Construction (BC) industry based on authors’ experiences gained from various conducted research projects and also taking into account results of other research projects. This chapter starts with an introduction and background of the subject area in terms of motivation, industrial needs and requirements. This is followed by an overview of a historical background of the subject area. In this historical background we distinguish five generations of product modelling developments. The first generation of product modelling developments is characterized by the influence of previous expert and database developments and by the constituting high-level constructs (e.g. EDM, BSM, RATAS and GARM). The second generation of product modelling developments can be characterized by the development of detailed aspect systems and supporting frameworks for data exchange and integration (e.g. IRMA, ATLAS, COMBINE, PISA and IMPPACT). The third generation product modelling developments can be characterized by its focus on collaborative engineering support by means of the application of middleware and client/server technology (e.g. SPACE, CONCUR, BCCM, VEGA and ToCEE) and the development of the IFC. The fourth generation of product modelling developments is heavily influenced by the Internet and Web Services standards such as XML, SOAP and UDDI and related business models such as eBusiness and eWork (e.g. bcXML, ifcXML and eConstruct). The next (fifth) generation of product modelling developments will be based on the emerging semantic web standards such as OWL and RDF, and based on the concepts of ontology internationmodelling as experienced in ongoing (European) projects such as SWOP. After this historical overview, an analysis of the characteristics of interesting conceptual product approaches is presented. Here we discuss the Standardisation, Minimal Model, Core Model, NOT, Vocabulary and Ontology product modelling approaches. Followed by an analysis of a number of specific conceptual product models and how the basic product modelling constructs (i.e. semantics, lifecycle modifiers and multiple project views) are implemented. This chapter ends with a discussion about some ongoing projects (COINS, CHEOPS and SWOP) in the context of future trends.
Extracting Fire Engineering Simulation Data from the IFC Building Information Model
Authors: Spearpoint Michael
Published: May 2010

Fire engineering is a distinctive discipline within the construction industry that has its own language, design goals and analytical approaches. The use of sophisticated and computationally intensive numerical fire simulation tools is becoming more prevalent and the ability to share building-related data is getting serious consideration within the discipline. This chapter examines what fire engineers would like to achieve and how building information modelling (BIM) fits in with those goals. It discusses the types of fire simulation models that fire engineers use and gives a brief description of two particular fire growth models which use different means to represent a fire scenario. The chapter then considers how the IFC building product model can be used to transfer building geometry and property data to fire simulation models. Two commercial BIM tools have been used to create some simple test case buildings to illustrate the transfer process and highlight some of the problems encountered. Finally, the chapter describes some of the challenges involved in sharing building data with fire simulation models and provides recommendations for further work.
BIM and Geospatial Information Systems
Authors: Peters Ewan
Published: May 2010

Historically and traditionally, location based information merely represents a feature’s location in a real world setting. Advances in information technology (IT) and data collection techniques have revolutionised the Geographical Information System or Geospatial Information Systems (GIS) industry. The relatively recent explosion in data storage and processing capabilities has led to more detailed and accurate data being collected. This provides a far greater data rich environment and more opportunities for exploiting this information. It is not enough to only know where something is. Questions like but what is it, what’s nearby and what are the associated attributes’ are more relevant now. A data rich Geospatial Information System allows for detailed spatial (location based) queries to be performed to explore and analyse these geographical relationships. In parallel to this information explosion, the built environment has started to embrace this revolution. In essence, a building is a component of a larger group of features which is linked by infrastructure and other elements to create a holistic system. The common factors which connect this system together all have an associated location. When viewing a building in isolation it is clear that it is made up of a number of different individual features. Information about these features is a key part to its design, construction, operation and maintenance. The term (BIM) Building Information Modelling refers to the information system which is developed to manage built features. Of course a building doesn’t float in space; it is closely related to other features and infrastructure. This chapter will explore the value of integrating BIM and Geospatial Information Systems into a single system, why this is important, and how this can be achieved.
Design and Evaluation of an Integrated Design Practice Course in the Curriculum of Architecture
Authors: Tanyer Ali Murat
Published: May 2010

The architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) domain is moving to a new kind of practice. Professionals are leaving the traditional way of design - engineering projects delivery and moving to a more integrated one. The implications of this initiative have started to appear in the curriculum of construction and architecture schools as well. This chapter presents the design and evaluation of an elective undergraduate course which aims to convey both the theoretical and practical principles of integrated design. This course has been designed for the curriculum of architecture to replace the Computer Aided Design and Drafting course, in which traditional 2-dimensional drafting used to be taught. In this new course, students tried to deliver a design project collaboratively by exchanging data between selected applications. Although some technical problems have occurred, the case studies have proved that integrated design is possible using the latest improvements in the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) domain. The evaluation of the course has also revealed various barriers related to implementing integrated design principles at educational programs.
Multipoint Multimedia Conferencing System for Efficient and Effective Remote Collaboration
Authors: Osawa Noritaka , Asai Kikuo
Published: May 2010

A multipoint, multimedia conferencing system called FocusShare is described. It uses IPv6/IPv4 multicasting for real-time collaboration, enabling video, audio, and group-awareness and attention-sharing information to be shared. Multiple telepointers provide group-awareness information and make it easy to share attention and intention. In addition to pointing with the telepointers, users can add graphical annotations to video streams and share them with one another. The system also supports attention-sharing using video processing techniques. FocusShare is a modularly designed suite consisting of several simple tools, along with tools for remotely controlling them. The modular design and flexible management functions enable the system to be easily adapted to various situations entailing different numbers of displays with different resolutions at multiple sites. The remote control tools enable the chairperson or conference organizer to simultaneously change the settings for a set of tools distributed at multiple sites. Evaluation showed that the implemented attention-sharing techniques are useful: FocusShare was more positively evaluated than conventional video conferencing systems.
Factors Encouraging or Discouraging Students from Taking Online Classes
Authors: Changchit Chuleeporn , Klaus Tim
Published: May 2010

Advances in communication technologies, such as widespread use of the Internet, have opened new avenues for continuing higher education. These advances have allowed educators to provide for and satisfy individual variations in learning. Generally, online courses are adaptations of traditional courses; some courses are more suitable than others for such online instruction. As the trend to offer online courses continues, understanding the factors that lead to students’ preference can be useful. Online courses can be costly to develop and to implement, and inappropriately designating courses for online participation can lead to lower student retention rates. This study focuses on students’ perceptions of online courses. The results identify issues that affect students’ perceptions, and this study concludes by suggesting ways for universities to design online programs that better suit the desires of students.
Learning Business Law Online vs. Onland
Authors: Swartz Louis B. , Cole Michele T. , Shelley Daniel J.
Published: May 2010

This article reports on two follow-up studies to “A Comparative Analysis of Online and Traditional Undergraduate Business Law Classes” (Shelley, Swartz and Cole, 2007) designed to further examine two critical areas of e-learning, that is, student satisfaction with, and student learning in, an online environment as compared with an onland, or traditional classroom environment. While the initial study found no significant difference between the two, the second study did find statistically significant differences between the online and the onland course formats with regard to two elements of student satisfaction: (1) student satisfaction with the instructor, and (2) student satisfaction with the course structure. The second study went further to look at the effects, if any, of gender, age and nationality on student satisfaction. There was no significant difference found with age or nationality. There was a significant difference between males and females with regard to two of the research questions. The third study focused on student satisfaction and performance in two onland courses. In both areas, results indicated lower overall means for each of the four central research questions.
Using a Web-Based System to Support Teaching Processes
Authors: Klyuev V. , Nikishkov G.P.
Published: May 2010

A platform-independent Java Web application named TSI (Teacher-Student Interaction) that supports communication between an instructor, teaching assistants and students in a traditional on-campus course is presented in this chapter. Using the TSI, the instructor and teaching assistants can handle most of the routine work: upload student personal information, send students personal emails, etc. The system can easily be installed and administered individually by an instructor inexperienced in computers. It is as simple as a pen for students. Students can check their personal data (scores and comments), download educational materials, etc. As part of the TSI, a VBA application is used to analyze the course log files. This tool is helpful in understanding individual and group students’ behaviors. The TSI was successfully tested during six years at the University of Aizu (Japan) in an environment where English is one of the working languages and both students and professors are non-native speakers of English.
The Impact of Examination Software on Student Attitudes and Examination Performance
Authors: Baker-Eveleth Lori , Eveleth Daniel M. , O’Neill Michele , Stone Robert W.
Published: May 2010

The impact of examination software on student attitudes was investigated. The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) provides the theoretical foundations for studying the completion of examination on student laptop computers. The model applies TAM to link both faculty and technical support for the examination software to student attitudes towards the software, while it is mediated by the perceived usefulness and ease of use of the software. The model is empirically tested using questionnaire responses from 107 students enrolled in sections of a business core course using the examination software. The statistical technique used is structural equations modeling. Empirical results show that perceived usefulness and ease of use of the software have direct, meaningful impacts on developing positive attitudes toward the software. Furthermore, faculty support and ease of system use impact student attitudes in a meaningful fashion indirectly through perceived usefulness. These empirical results are discussed and implications for instructors are offered.
Identifying the Risks Associated with Primary School Children Using the Internet
Authors: O’ Reilly Derek
Published: May 2010

The Internet is becoming widely available and increasingly important in the modern world. Because of this, it is very important that children start to familiarize themselves with the Internet at a young age. As technology is becoming increasingly part of our daily lives, computers and the Internet have been adopted into schools. The sea of information and learning activities available on the Internet has the potential to greatly help in the development of young minds. However, the question remains as to how safe an environment the Internet is for young children. Children might not see any dangers beyond the physical environment where they live. Therefore, the Internet can be an unsafe place for them to venture into. Children can be targeted by a wide number of Internet risks. For these reasons, the problem of how to keep children who are using the Internet safe must be solved. This paper identifies the potential risks associated with primary school children using the Internet. This paper evaluates the level of understanding of Internet safety that children have. This paper identifies what children use the Internet for and what information that they are willing to reveal while online. The findings of this paper are based on analysis of a survey carried out on 645 Irish primary school children in February 2007.
The Best Edtech of 2007
Authors: Howard Bruce C.
Published: May 2010

As part of a larger project for the NASA-sponsored Classroom of the Future to benchmark the effectiveness of educational technologies, researchers used multiple data sources to develop a list of exemplars and delineate common design features. The exemplars included promising educational technologies, tools, websites, resources, software, and hardware. Each exemplar was placed into one of six categories: knowledge and comprehension tools, interactive technologies and problem-solving tools, product-creation tools, efficiency and productivity tools, communication and collaboration tools, and technology tutors. The features of each exemplar were described, and a set of common design principles for that category was developed.
Setting Trends for Educational Technologies within the National Science Foundation
Authors: Howard Bruce C. , Curtis Laura J.
Published: May 2010

Our research team evaluated 18 months of National Science Foundation (NSF) program announcements and awarded programs to discern the amount and type of emphasis placed upon educational technologies. NSF issued 65 solicitations for proposals with 53.8 percent calling for educational technology components. A sampling of 366 of the 1,180 funded projects, showed that 34.7 percent included educational technology. Twenty-five percent of the projects were in biology and cognitive science, with another 40% in general science, computer science, technical education, engineering, and math. Many types of educational technologies were funded, with an emphasis on cognitive tutors/intelligent agents, distance learning, and online communities.
Instructional Design, Web 2.0 Style
Authors: Howard Bruce C.
Published: May 2010

In the previous articles, we reported on the results of a multifaceted research study on how to benchmark and use emerging educational technologies. Our approach blended classic research methods with those used in market research studies. We gathered data and expertise from a variety of sources, including academic research articles, industry reports, interviews with leaders and national pacesetters, and the experiences of our own veteran staff. Our objective was to create a means by which decisions about affordances, constraints, and effective use could be made in a just-in-time fashion. We have only scratched the surface.
Sharing Insights
Authors: Pérez-Fragoso Carmen
Published: May 2010

The case presents an analysis of the postings of a group of online teachers from a Mexican public university as they confront the challenges and rewards of their day-to-day teaching activities. They commented on their problems and accomplishments in a discussion forum during one semester. The problems included academic-administrative issues, difficulties of students in the appropriation of the platforms and the self-regulation of their learning, time management, negotiation and penalization of tasks delayed and other pedagogical concerns to the lack of institutional support. The findings suggest that the problems that online teachers face share specific characteristics and, according to the teachers, are mostly due to the pedagogical relationship being technologically mediated. Through the analysis, the author hopes to illustrate the complex technological, organizational and cultural issues that accompany online teaching and learning, and how the institution and the individual teachers dealt with them.
Knowledge Organization with Mashups
Authors: Zhu Qin , Meza Justin
Published: May 2010

Knowledge is based on fact and is often obtained from experience or via association. Knowledge organization is the systematic management and organization of knowledge (Hodge, 2000). With the advent of Web 2.0, mashups have become a hot new thing on the Web. A mashup is a Web site or a Web application that combines content from more than one source and delivers it in an integrated way (Fichter, 2006). This chapter will first discuss knowledge and knowledge organization and review literature on these topics. Then the authors will explore the concept and look at the components of a typical mashup. In addition, they will provide an overview of various mashups on the Internet. From these facts, the chapter proceeds to draw some connections between knowledge organization and mashups, solidifying the authors’ assertions with an elaboration on their real-world, a mashup experiment in an enterprise environment. The authors will describe how they mixed the content from two sets of data and created a new source of data: a novel way of organizing and displaying HP Labs Technical Reports. The findings from this project will be included and some best practices for creating enterprise mashups will be given. Finally, they will discuss the future of enterprise mashups.
Computer-Aided Detection and Diagnosis of Breast Cancer Using Machine Learning, Texture and Shape Features
Authors: Júnior Geraldo Braz , de Oliveira Martins Leonardo , Silva Aristófanes Corrêa , de Paiva Anselmo Cardoso
Published: May 2010

Breast cancer is a malignant (cancer) tumor that starts from cells of the breast, being the major cause of deaths by cancer in the female population. There has been tremendous interest in the use of image processing and analysis techniques for computer aided detection (CAD)/ diagnostics (CADx) in digital mammograms. The goal has been to increase diagnostic accuracy as well as the reproducibility of mammographic interpretation. CAD/CADx systems can aid radiologists by providing a second opinion and may be used in the first stage of examination in the near future, providing the reduction of the variability among radiologists in the interpretation of mammograms. This chapter provides an overview of techniques used in computer-aided detection and diagnosis of breast cancer. The authors focus on the application of texture and shape tissues signature used with machine learning techniques, like support vector machines (SVM) and growing neural gas (GNG).
Content-Based Access to Medical Image Collections
Authors: Caicedo Juan C. , Camargo Jorge E. , González Fabio A.
Published: May 2010

Medical images are a very important resource for the clinical practice and operation. Thousands of them are daily acquired in hospitals to diagnose the health state of patients. However, once they have been archived as part of a large image database, it is very difficult to retrieve the same image again since it requires remembering dates or names. Furthermore, in such cases in which the same image is not required, but a physician is looking for images with particular contents, current technologies are not able to offer such functionality. The ability to find the right visual information in the right place, at the right time, can have great impact in the medical decision making process. This chapter presents two computational strategies for accessing a large collection of medical images: retrieving relevant images given an explicit query and visualizing the structure of the whole collection. Both strategies take advantage of image contents, allowing users to find or identify images that are related by their visual composition. In addition, these strategies are based on machine learning methods to handle complex image patterns, semantic medical concepts, image collection visualizations and summarizations.
Software Quality Management
Authors: Vitharana Padmal , Mone Mark A.
Published: May 2010

While the value of the Capability Maturity Model (CMM), ISO 9000, and Total Quality Management (TQM) concepts in managing software quality has been widely acknowledged, shortcomings of these approaches have also been recognized. The current research synthesizes existing literature bases in CMM, ISO 9000, TQM, among others, to identify six critical factors of Software Quality Management (SQM) and then develops an instrument that can be used to measure critical factors of SQM. Validity and reliability are established by reviewing existing literature, testing a preliminary version of the instrument among a group of researchers and industry experts, and empirically testing a revised version of the instrument among a group of IS professionals. The authors conclude by addressing quality management research issues in the emerging open source software (OSS) paradigm.