bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Implementing Virtual Career Counseling and Advising at a Major University
Authors: Haberstroh Shane , Rowe Shirley , Cisneros Stefanie
Published: February 2011

With college students using the Internet to meet a variety of professional and personal needs, college campuses are seeking ways to enhance their student services by using emerging technologies. In this case study, the authors discuss the implementation of online career advising and planning services via synchronous chat sessions. Given the constraints concerning vendor selection, procurement issues, software implementation, and limited budgets, it was critical for the career counseling team to find a robust, secure, and affordable software platform to meet their needs. It was important that this software and service appeal to students as they sought personal career development. The team considered existing practice standards to guide the implementation of this innovative student service. With these elements in place, the authors discuss the process of launching an online career planning and advising program and the resulting challenges that emerged.
Virtual Tutoring
Authors: George Beena , Dykman Charlene
Published: February 2011

This case presents the story of TutorVista, an e-business organization based in India that provides online tutoring services to students in different parts of the world. TutorVista had been able to meet growth expectations and gain recognition in the lucrative private tutoring market because of its innovative technology platform and business model. As a fledgling organization charting new territory, TutorVista faced the dual challenges of creating and capturing the demand for online tutoring and managing resources to satisfy the shifting demand. Note: this case was constructed based on interviews with individuals at TutorVista.
Taking a Byte of Telephony Costs
Authors: Hoanca Bogdan , Whitney Richard
Published: February 2011

In 2006, the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) upgraded the telephone system at its main campus in Anchorage from a traditional private branch exchange (PBX) architecture to a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) system. This case describes the organizational decisions that led to the change; the scope and the process of upgrading; and the current status of the new VoIP system. The actual migration to VoIP was completed less than a year after the start of the project. The transition process went smoothly. User satisfaction with the performance of the VoIP system is very high. Based on extensive interviews with decision makers and the technical personnel involved, this case also describes financial considerations (including “creative” ways to stretch a limited budget), outsourcing considerations, training related issues, as well as lessons learned.
IS Strategic Processes
Authors: Fardal Harald Oddvar , Sørnes Jan
Published: February 2011

In large, geographically dispersed organizations, achieving a successful Information Systems (IS) strategy can prove very challenging. This case describes how a CIO in such an organization met that challenge by focusing on actions rather than plans, and on bottom-up processes rather than top-down decisions. The CIO keyed on benefitting from employees’ competencies. The organization, here called “NorConstruct,” has few long-term IS strategic plans. Instead, it has developed five different IS strategic themes on a general level. It’s actual IS strategy takes place through different IS projects. The case is told through the CIO and provides rich descriptions of IS strategic processes in NorConstruct, as well as the CIO’s thoughts on the pros and cons. Throughout the case, several relevant reflections are described.
A Cluster Analysis of Physician’s Values, Prescribing Behaviour and Attitudes towards Firms’ Marketing Communications
Authors: Karayanni Despina
Published: February 2011

In this paper, the authors present an exploratory research on the associations between physicians’ personal values with physicians’ prescribing criteria and preferred marketing communications. The research involved extant marketing research and primary data collection. The resulting quantitative research instrument was then administered to a sample of 69 physicians, yielding a 69% response rate. All but the demographic measures were tapped by 5-point scales and a series of factor and reliability analyses assessed unidimentionality and reliability of research constructs. A series of ANOVAs and Tukey tests depicted the differences among three clusters. Implications are that physicians’ personal values may be a meaningful basis of segmentation for the pharmaceutical market, and findings may be useful for both marketing strategy planners and researchers examining physicians’ prescription behavior and attitudes towards firms’ marketing communication efforts.
Efficient Forensic Analysis for Anonymous Attack in Secure Content Distribution
Authors: Jin Hongxia
Published: February 2011

This article discusses a forensic technology that is used to defend against piracy for secure multimedia content distribution. In particular we are interested in anonymous rebroadcasting type of attack where the attackers redistribute the per-content encrypting key or decrypted plain content. Traitor tracing technology can be used to defend against this attack by identifying the original users (called traitors) involved in the rebroadcasting piracy. While traitor tracing has been a long standing cryptographic problem that has attracted extensive research, existing academia researches have overlooked many practical concerns in a real world setting. We have overcome many practical concerns in order to bring a theoretical traitor tracing solution to practice. The main focus of this article is on designing efficient forensic analysis algorithms under various practical considerations that were missing from existing work. The efficiency of our forensic analysis algorithms is the enabling factor that ultimately made the first time large scale commercialization of a traitor tracing technology in the context of new industry standard on content protection for next generation high-definition DVDs.
Conducting Forensic Investigations of Cyber Attacks on Automobile In-Vehicle Networks
Authors: Nilsson Dennis K. , Larson Ulf E.
Published: February 2011

The introduction of a wireless gateway as an entry point to the automobile in-vehicle network reduces the effort of performing diagnostics and firmware updates considerably. Unfortunately, the same gateway also allows cyber attacks to target the unprotected network which currently lacks proper means for detecting and investigating security-related events. In this article, we discuss how to perform a digital forensic investigation of an in-vehicle network. An analysis of the current features of the network is performed, and an attacker model is developed. Based on the attacker model and a set of generally accepted forensic investigation principles, we derive a list of requirements for detection, data collection, and event reconstruction. We then use the Integrated Digital Investigation Process proposed by Carrier and Spafford (2004) as a template to illustrate how our derived requirements affect an investigation. For each phase of the process, we show the benefits of meeting the requirements and the implications of not complying with them.
Volatile Memory Collection and Analysis for Windows Mission-Critical Computer Systems
Authors: Savoldi Antonio , Gubian Paolo
Published: February 2011

Most enterprises rely on the continuity of service guaranteed by means of a computer system infrastructure, which can often be based on the Windows operating system family. For such a category of systems, which might be referred to as mission-critical for the relevance of the service supplied, it is indeed fundamental to be able to define which approach could be better to apply when a digital investigation needs to be performed. This is the very goal of this paper: the definition of a forensically sound methodology which can be used to collect the full state of the machine being investigated by avoiding service interruptions. It will be pointed out why the entire volatile memory dump, with the necessary extension which is nowadays missing, is required with the purpose of being able to gather much more evidential data, by illustrating also, at the same time, the limitation and disadvantages of current state of-the-art approaches in performing the collection phase.
A Biologically Inspired Smart Camera for Use in Surveillance Applications
Authors: Haltis Kosta , Sorell Matthew , Brinkworth Russell
Published: February 2011

Biological vision systems are capable of discerning detail as well as detecting objects and motion in a wide range of highly variable lighting conditions that proves challenging to traditional cameras. In this paper, the authors describe the real-time implementation of a biological vision model using a high dynamic range video camera and a General Purpose Graphics Processing Unit. The effectiveness of this implementation is demonstrated in two surveillance applications: dynamic equalization of contrast for improved recognition of scene detail and the use of biologically-inspired motion processing for the detection of small or distant moving objects in a complex scene. A system based on this prototype could improve surveillance capability in any number of difficult situations.
Mobile Phone Forensic Analysis
Authors: Curran Kevin , Robinson Andrew , Peacocke Stephen , Cassidy Sean
Published: February 2011

During the past decade, technological advances in mobile phones and the development of smart phones have led to increased use and dependence on the mobile phone. The explosion of its use has led to problems such as fraud, criminal use and identity theft, which have led to the need for mobile phone forensic analysis. In this regard, the authors discuss mobile phone forensic analysis, what it means, who avails of it and the software tools used.
Steganography in Thai Text
Authors: Samphaiboon Natthawut , Dailey Matthew N.
Published: February 2011

Steganography, or communication through covert channels, is desirable when the mere existence of an encrypted message might cause suspicion or provide useful information to eavesdroppers. Text is effective for steganography due to its ubiquity; however, text communication channels do not necessarily provide sufficient redundancy for covert communication. In this paper, the authors propose a novel steganographic embedding scheme for Thai plain text documents that exploits redundancies in the way particular vowel, diacritical, and tonal symbols are composed in TIS-620, the standard Thai character set. This paper provides a Thai text stegosystem following a provably secure construction that guarantees covertness, privacy, and integrity of the hiddentext message under meaningful attacks against computational adversaries. In an experimental evaluation, the authors find that the message embedding scheme allows 203 bytes of embedded hiddentext message per 100KB of covertext on average, and that the document modifications are not readily noticed by observers. The stegosystem is thus a practical and effective secure system for covert communication over Thai plain text channels.
Spatio-Temporal Just Noticeable Distortion Model Guided Video Watermarking
Authors: Niu Yaqing , Krishnan Sridhar , Zhang Qin
Published: February 2011

Perceptual Watermarking should take full advantage of the results from human visual system (HVS) studies. Just noticeable distortion (JND), which refers to the maximum distortion that the HVS does not perceive, gives a way to model the HVS accurately. An effective Spatio-Temporal JND model guided video watermarking scheme in DCT domain is proposed in this paper. The watermarking scheme is based on the design of an additional accurate JND visual model which incorporates spatial Contrast Sensitivity Function (CSF), temporal modulation factor, retinal velocity, luminance adaptation and contrast masking. The proposed watermarking scheme, where the JND model is fully used to determine scene-adaptive upper bounds on watermark insertion, allows providing the maximum strength transparent watermark. Experimental results confirm the improved performance of the Spatio-Temporal JND model. The authors’ Spatio-Temporal JND model is capable of yielding higher injected-watermark energy without introducing noticeable distortion to the original video sequences and outperforms the relevant existing visual models. Simulation results show that the proposed Spatio-Temporal JND model guided video watermarking scheme is more robust than other algorithms based on the relevant existing perceptual models while retaining the watermark transparency.
Secure Robust Hash Functions and Their Applications in Non-interactive Communications
Authors: Li Qiming , Roy Sujoy
Published: February 2011

A robust hash function allows different parties to extract a consistent key from a common fuzzy source, e.g., an image gone through noisy channels, which can then be used to establish a cryptographic session key among the parties without the need for interactions. These functions are useful in various communication scenarios, where the security notions are different. The authors study these different security notions in this paper and focus on forgery attacks, where the objective of the attack is to compute the extracted key (hash value) of a given message. This paper will examine information-theoretical security against forgery under chosen message attacks. The authors prove that it is not possible due to the entropy of the hash value of a given message can be reduced arbitrarily when sufficient message/hash pairs have been observed. In this regard, the authors give a computationally secure scheme, where it is computationally infeasible to compute the hash value even when its entropy may not be high.
A Distance Learning System for Teaching the Writing of Chinese Characters over the Internet
Authors: Sun K.T. , Feng D.S.
Published: February 2011

This paper proposes an intelligent tutoring system (ITS) for teaching students to write Chinese characters over the Internet. In the proposed system, students can use a pen (or drag the mouse) to write Chinese characters on a digital board using a browser such as Microsoft Internet Explorer. For realizing the situation of student’s writing behavior, a neuron-based student model was designed to learn the writing style of each student. This system has been in development since 1996, and includes 2,734 Chinese characters (taught in primary schools). It has been used in elementary schools, and by thousands of students. Educational research reveals that over 82% of primary school students had some problems in using the correct stroke orders when writing Chinese characters, and the improvement exhibited by an experimental group was significant (F = 25.331, p < .005).
A Remote Experimental System for Traditional Japanese Craft Designs Using Analysis of Relation Between Kansei Words and Room Space
Authors: Sugita Kaoru , Miyakawa Akihiro , Shibata Yoshitaka
Published: February 2011

In this paper, a remote experimental system for traditional Japanese craft design for students of architecture in universities and professional design schools is proposed. Many students at different locations can share those craft elements distributed over high-speed networks to design the insides of buildings and houses so that the human being can be satisfied emotionally. In order to demonstrate the relation between human feeling and traditional Japanese crafts, an on-line analysis method is provided and carried out by wed-based questionnaire. Eventually, those analytical results could be reflected to our remote experimental system to totally design the most desired houses with the best intentions to human feelings.
MASCARET
Authors: Buche Cédric , Querrec Ronan , De Loor Pierre , Chevaillier Pierre
Published: February 2011

This study concerns virtual environments for training in operational conditions. The principal developed idea is that these environments are heterogeneous and open multi-agent systems. The MASCARET model is proposed to organize the interactions between agents and to provide them reactive, cognitive and social abilities to simulate the physical and social environment. The physical environment represents, in a realistic way, the phenomena that learners and teachers have to take into account. The social environment is simulated by agents executing collaborative and adaptive tasks. These agents realize, in team, procedures that they have to adapt to the environment. The users participate to the training environment through their avatar. In this article, we explain how we integrated, in MASCARET, models necessary to the creation of Intelligent Tutoring System. We notably incorporate pedagogical strategies and pedagogical actions. We present pedagogical agents. To validate our model, the SÉCURÉVI application for fire fighters’ training is developed.
Virtual Spaces as Artifacts
Authors: Prasolova-Forland Ekaterina
Published: February 2011

Space is important for learning and socializing. Cyberworlds provide a new space for socialization and communication with a great degree of flexibility, allowing users to create and manipulate virtual land. This suggests considering virtual spaces as artifacts. In this paper we use different theoretical approaches on artifacts and experiences of usage of a virtual world we have created to revise the original design and to derive a new set of requirements for virtual places and spatial artifacts.
Distance-Learning Courseware Discrimination for Discernment Ability Training
Authors: Tang Changjie , Lau Rynson W.H. , Li Qing , Poon Jean W.H. , Zhang Tianqing
Published: February 2011

Training students in the discernment ability is an important task in distance education. To improve the training results, this chapter makes the following contributions: (1) suggests Web courseware on controversial social issues with different viewpoints for discernment training; (2) constructs the courseware for Discernment Ability using a method called DRPA. This method is presented with five algorithms, for extracting representative phrases, calculating characteristic array, determining the threshold array, objective judgment and subjective judgment; (3) proposes and proves that a new concept, called Gymnastics Threshold, is more accurate than traditional threshold; and (4) uses extensive experiments to show that DRPA is much more efficient and accurate than traditional method.
Knowledge Management as a Reference Theory for E-Learning
Authors: Lytras Miltiadis D. , Naeve Ambjörn , Pouloudi Athanasia
Published: February 2011

E-learning as a scientific field is in an era of transition. In the last decade, several scientific fields worked as reference disciplines for the promotion of the value delivery that new technologies offered to learning. In this paper, we will emphasize the role of knowledge management as a reference theory for e-learning.
On the Convergence of Formal Ontologies and Standardized E-Learning
Authors: Sicilia Miguel-Ángel , Barriocanal Elena García
Published: February 2011

Current efforts to standardize e-learning resources are centered on the notion of a learning object as a piece of content that can be reused in diverse educational contexts. Several specifications for the description of learning objects — converging in the LOM standard — have appeared in recent years, providing a common foundation for interoperability and shared semantics. At the same time, the Semantic Web vision has resulted in a number of technologies grounded in the availability of shared, consensual knowledge representations called ontologies. As proposed by several authors, ontologies can be used to provide a richer, logics-based framework for the expression of learning object metadata, resulting in the convergence of both streams of research towards a common objective. In this article, we address the practicalities of the representation of LOM metadata instances into formal ontologies, discussing the main technical and organizational issues that must be addressed for an effective integration of both technologies, and sketching some illustrative examples using modern ontology languages and a large knowledge base.
A Knowledge Management Roadmap for E-Learning
Authors: Lytras M.D. , Naeve Ambjörn , Pouloudi Athanasia
Published: February 2011

The technological pace and the advent of the knowledge society will set in the next years the new context for e-learning evolution: The convergence of learning and daily life of citizens worldwide will be evident in new services and transparent technologies. Pervasive or ubiquitous learning will be a critical cornerstone and an ultimate achievement of the e-learning research community. Additionally, worldwide efforts will define the social responsibility character of e-learning. In this short visioning paper, we try to address two critical questions: How will knowledge management and relevant technologies affect e-learning in the forthcoming six years? and What are the critical research questions for the new period of e-learning evolution? Many of these aspects could initiate interesting PhD research.
The Design and Prototyping of the Chronobot System for Time and Knowledge Exchange
Authors: Chang Shi-Kuo , Kapoor Anupama , Santhanakrishnan Ganesh , Vaidya Chirag
Published: February 2011

We are involved in the development of a time/knowledge exchange-based system. One of the objectives of the system is to improve the effectiveness of e-learning and distance education. The system envisioned is a chronobot-based system. In this chapter, we discuss the architecture of such a time/knowledge exchange based system. We propose a constraint satisfaction algorithm for time/knowledge exchange in order to solve the time/knowledge exchange problem, which interoperates with the various chronobots, coordinates the settlement of a bid in a distributed manner, and selects the best bid using a metric known as the QoB (Quality of Bid).
Capturing Interactions in Meetings with Omnidirectional Cameras
Authors: Stiefelhagen Rainer , Chen Xilin , Yang Jie
Published: February 2011

Human interaction is one of the most important characteristics of meetings. To explore complex human interactions in meetings, we must understand them and their components in detail. In this paper, we present our efforts in capturing human interactions in meetings using omnidirectional cameras. We present algorithms for person tracking, head pose estimation, and face recognition from omnidirectional images. We also discuss an approach for the estimation of who was talking to whom, based on tracked head poses of the participants. Finally, we address the problem of activity modeling, based on moving trajectories of people in a meeting room. We report experimental results to demonstrate the feasibility of the presented technologies and discuss future work.
A Design and Implementation of a SCORM-Based Courseware System Using Influence Diagram
Authors: Chang Flora Chia-I , Hung Lun-Ping , Keh Huan-Chao , Chang Wen-Chih , Shih Timothy K.
Published: February 2011

Distance learning brings convenience, stability and flexibility. People can learn anytime and anywhere. Designing a distance course and assessing the learner becomes the key issue. In order to solve the disadvantage, a systematic assessment mechanism is proposed to enhance interaction between students and teachers. This paper combines the concept and influence diagram as a courseware diagram which can be implemented as a new authoring tool. First, a course flow chart can be systematically built and student learning performance can be improved by taking different levels of remedial courses based on student performance. Second, course content can be adjusted to maximize students’ learning results with analyzing student’s learning performance. Thirdly, the courseware diagram can be generated with the international distance learning standard, Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM). Finally, this mechanism can be easily used by the instructor. With its user-friendly interface, the instructor will receive prompt feedback from students.
Distance Learning in China
Authors: Chen DeRen , Guo WenYing
Published: February 2011

In line with the popularity of computer and communication technologies, the largest country in the world — China — has joined the era of the Internet. As one of the most important activities on the Internet, distance learning is widely developed by key universities in China. The advantage of distance learning compared to traditional education is its flexibility, timely distribution, scalability, and multi-modality of learning resources. Observing the development process and activities of distance learning from the perspective of one of the largest universities in China2, we summarize a few interesting issues in this paper.
Information Retrieval in Virtual Universities
Authors: Puustjarvi Juha , Poyry Päivi
Published: February 2011

Information retrieval in the context of virtual universities deals with the representation, organization and access to learning objects. The representation and organization of learning objects should provide the learner with an easy access to the learning objects. In this paper, we give an overview of the ONES system and analyze the relevance of two information retrieval models for virtual universities. We argue that keywords-based search (i.e., the Boolean model), though well suited for Web searches, is overly coarse for virtual universities. Instead, the vector model, on which our implemented search engine also is based, seems to be more appropriate, as it provides similarity measure (i.e., the learning object having the best match is presented first). We also compare the performance of four algorithms for computing the similarities (matching).
Learning Object Models and an E-Learning Service Infrastructure
Authors: Lee Gilliean , Su Stanley Y.W.
Published: February 2011

Multimedia data and application systems accessible over the Web are valuable assets for developing instructional materials for teaching, training, problem solving, and decision support. These assets can be used to construct learning objects, each of which is a reusable granule of instruction designed to meet a specific instructional objective. In order to find and use learning objects, an infrastructure for the registration, discovery, binding, and invocation of these objects is needed. Also, there is a need for an e-learning service infrastructure for people in a virtual e-learning community to construct, evaluate, and deliver learning objects. In this work, we model distributed and sharable learning resources by two types of Learning Objects (LOs): Atomic Learning Object and Composite Learning Object. Both types of LOs are published uniformly as Web services in a constraint-based broker in order to make them sharable and reusable. This article presents the learning object models for the specifications of these two types of LOs and an e-learning service infrastructure, which consists of authoring tools for constructing LOs, software components for processing LOs and performing assessments, and an extended Web services framework for the registration, discovery, binding, and invocation of LOs as Web services. This article also presents techniques such as dynamic binding of LOs, rule-based execution of learning processes, and model-based assessment used to make the processing of LOs active, flexible, customizable, and adaptive. The roles and functions of virtual e-learning community members are also discussed.
On-Demand E-Learning Content Delivery Over the Internet
Authors: Li Frederick W.B. , Lau Rynson W.H.
Published: February 2011

An Internet-based e-learning system offers many benefits over traditional learning environments. It provides a time, class size, and geographical location independent learning platform to students in addition to being able to consolidate e-learning content from a vast amount of Internet Web sites and deliver it to students. However, as the e-learning content may be large in data size, students probably need to spend a prolonged period of time downloading the required learning materials. This would likely discourage certain students from using such a learning platform. In this article, we propose a method to deliver e-learning content in an on-demand manner. This allows students to enjoy the benefits of Internet-based learning without suffering the download problem. We also present prototypes of Internet-based learning platforms.
A Practical Software Architecture for Virtual Universities
Authors: Xiang Peifeng , Shi Yuanchun , Qin Weijun
Published: February 2011

This article introduces a practical software architecture called CUBES, which focuses on system integration and evolvement for online virtual universities. The key of CUBES is a supporting platform that helps to integrate and evolve heterogeneous educational applications developed by different organizations. Both standardized educational applications that follow popular e-learning standards, such as SCORM and CELTS, and unstandardized ones can be integrated into CUBES with ease. A regularly used virtual university based on CUBES that includes educational applications covering the entire spectrum of the learning and management process is introduced to examine the usability of CUBES. The authors hope that new architectures, tools, and methods are explored to reduce the effort in building and evolving virtual universities.
SCMP
Authors: Kong Hinny P. , Lim William K.H. , Wang Lei , Gay Robert
Published: February 2011

E-learning standards ensure interoperability and reusability of learning contents. Learning objects that are standard conformant allow a learning management system (LMS) to import learning objects and track user learning progress more easily. This article provides a comprehensive approach complete with both a procedure and a software tool for generating standard conformant learning objects based on the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM). The tool is meant to enhance the productivity and effectiveness of e-learning developers.
Behavior Analysis in Distance Education by Boosting Algorithms
Authors: Zang Wei , Lin Fuzong
Published: February 2011

Student behavior analysis is an active research topic in distance education in recent years. In this article, we propose a new method called Boosting to investigate students’ behaviors. The Boosting Algorithm can be treated as a data mining method, trying to infer from a large amount of training data the essential factors and their relations that influence students’ academic successes. Based on the trained model, it is possible to predict students’ academic successes and to assist them to adjust their learning behaviors. Among the essential factors selected by the Boosting algorithm, the analysis and comparison are conducted between on-campus students and off-campus students. More importantly, these findings are of great importance to academic administrators, faculty members, and instructional developers in order to improve the teaching modes and online courseware design.
The Efficacy of Case Method Teaching in an Online Asynchronous Learning Environment
Authors: Chen Charlie C. , Shang Rong-An , Harris Albert
Published: February 2011

Case method teaching is a method of instruction that can improve the cognitive learning process. This method is used extensively in face-to-face classes. However, when it is applied to a distance education class in an online asynchronous environment, learning outcomes may differ. This article reports on a study that compares the use of case method teaching in face-to-face and online asynchronous environments. Four hypotheses on student performance were proposed. Correlation analysis supported all of the hypotheses. Other interesting findings regarding online learning also were reported as a result of the data analysis. Overall, an online asynchronous environment can promote students’ participation in certain cases; however, cognitive learning gains do not seem to be as high as in the face-to-face environment. With distance education becoming more prevalent, this is a rich area for future research.
An Architecture for Online Laboratory E-Learning System
Authors: Duan Bing , Hosseini Habib MirM. , Ling Keck Voon , Gay Robert Kheng Leng
Published: February 2011

Internet-based learning systems, or e-learning, are widely available in institutes, universities, and industrial companies, hosting regular or continuous education programs. The dream of teaching and learning from anywhere and at anytime becomes a reality due to the construction of e-learning infrastructure. Traditional teaching materials and methods are shifting to the new paradigm. In higher education, laboratory work is playing an important role in the area of training students and helping students to absorb more knowledge. With the goal of bringing e-learning to the traditional laboratory experiment, in this article, we present an architecture for an online laboratory e-learning system to facilitate the design and deployment of lab-based courses for e-education. The article provides an overall view of the system design and implementation so the Internet-based laboratory can be easily integrated with the e-learning infrastructure.
Explaining Algorithms
Authors: Muldner Tomasz , Shakshuki Elhadi
Published: February 2011

This article presents a novel approach for explaining algorithms that aims to overcome various pedagogical limitations of the current visualization systems. The main idea is that at any given time, a learner is able to focus on a single problem. This problem can be explained, studied, understood, and tested, before the learner moves on to study another problem. Toward this end, a visualization system that explains algorithms at various levels of abstraction has been designed and implemented. In this system, each abstraction is focused on a single operation from the algorithm using various media, including text and an associated visualization. The explanations are designed to help the user to understand basic properties of the operation represented by this abstraction, for example its invariants. The explanation system allows the user to traverse the hierarchy graph, using either a top-down (from primitive operations to general operations) approach or a bottom-up approach. Since the system is implemented using a client-server architecture, it can be used both in the classroom setting and through distance education.
Information Retrieval in Virtual Universities
Authors: Puustjarvi Juha , Poyry Päivi
Published: February 2011

Information retrieval in the context of virtual universities deals with the representation, organization, and access to learning objects. The representation and organization of learning objects should provide the learner with an easy access to the learning objects. In this article, we give an overview of the ONES system, and analyze the relevance of two information retrieval models for virtual universities. We argue that keywords based search (i.e., the Boolean model), though well suited for Web searches, is overly coarse for virtual universities. Instead, the vector model, on which our implemented search engine is also based on, seems to be more appropriate as it provides similarity measure (i.e., the learning object having the best match is presented first). We also compare the performance of four algorithms for computing the similarities (matching).
Implementation and Performance Evaluation of WWW Conference System for Supporting Remote Mental Health Care Education
Authors: Sugita Kaoru , De Marco Giuseppe , Barolli Leonard , Uchida Noriki , Miyakawa Akihiro
Published: February 2011

Information technology (IT) has changed our lives and many applications are based on IT. IT can be helpful for remote mental health care education. Because there are very few mental health care specialists, it is very important to decrease their moving time. But it is not easy to use the conventional TV conference systems for ordinary people, mental health care specialists, and their students because they are not computer specialists. For this reason, we have developed a WWW conference system. Our system can communicate between the mental health care specialists and their students by using the live video on WWW browser. In this paper, we show the implementation and the evaluation of proposed system. The experimental results over the Internet show that our system can be used for real time communication between Fukuoka, Ishikawa, and Iwate prefectures.
E-Learning and Associated Issues in Iran
Authors: Bahreininejad A.
Published: February 2011

This paper discusses an overview of e-learning in Iran, including some of the challenges. It also discusses the results of a survey.
Web-Based Appreciation and Peer-Assessment for Visual-Art Education
Authors: Lin Kuan-Cheng , Yang Shu-Huey , Hung Jason C. , Wang Ding-Ming
Published: February 2011

This study describes the application of a Web-based portfolio for appreciation and peer assessment for visual-art education in elementary school. Besides examining the effectiveness of the proposed system in enhancing visual art education, this study also addresses how Web-based portfolios can help teachers to assess student learning progress and facilitate peer assessment. The results of questionnaires and interviews shows that the proposed portfolio system can help student learning and the peer assessment component of the proposed portfolio system can help the students’ learning in visual-art education in elementary school.
Personalisation in Web-Based Learning Environments
Authors: Santally Mohammad Issack , Alain Senteni
Published: February 2011

It is postulated that one of the main problems with e-learning environments is their lack of personalisation. This article presents a comprehensive review of the current work in the field and proposes a framework for research in promoting personalisation in Web-based learning environments. The concepts of adaptability, adaptivity and the limitations of completely adaptive systems are discussed. The conception of more interactive environments that are both adaptable and adaptive, which can assist the teacher in making interesting pedagogical decisions while tutoring in a virtual environment is proposed. Two versions of an algorithm that can be used to offer personalisation in the framework described are developed and discussed in this article. The algorithm is basically a method devised to select the most appropriate learning object from a pool of potential objects that exist in the repository.
WSGB
Authors: Dow C. R. , Huang L. H. , Chen K. H. , Chiu J. C. , Lin C. M.
Published: February 2011

Growing Book refers to an electronic textbook that is co-developed, and has the ability to be constantly maintained, by groups of independent authors, thus creating a rich and ever-growing learning environment that can be conveniently accessible from anywhere. This work designs and implements a Web Service-based Growing Book that has the merits of single sign-in, multilevel usage, multilingual access, and multimodal multimedia for content sharing. XML Web service techniques and authentication mechanisms are used to provide single sign-in service across distributed Web sites, allowing easy teaching material reusing. Also, a multilingual page switching mechanism for Growing Books is developed and implemented. Challenges during the development of Growing Books are evaluated and analyzed. In addition to the importance of the single sign-in function, our analysis results demonstrate that the content-based features of Growing Book appeal more to students than other features and are often used for immediate judgment of course materials. Furthermore, a multilingual Growing Book is good for worldwide usage and greater accessibility.
A Pedagogical Approach to the Design of Learning Objects for Complex Domains
Authors: Busetti Emanuela , Dettori Giuliana , Forcheri Paola , Ierardi Maria Grazia
Published: February 2011

In this article we describe an approach to the design of learning objects (LOs) suitable to support learning in complex domains. We briefly discuss, from an educational point of view, the methodological choices underlying the design of LOs to be used as didactical materials in a distributed Web-based environment, presently under development, devoted to robotics education at the university level. We show how our pedagogical approach to knowledge acquisition and to the use of technological tools is realised by means of didactical units which can be implemented as LOs with various aims and correspondingly different structures. We also address the issue of supporting students’ learning in ways that differ according to the requirements of each situation and illustrate how such support can be implemented by means of our pedagogically oriented LOs.
Chinese Brush Calligraphy Character Retrieval and Learning
Authors: Zhuang Yueting , Zhang Xiafen , Lu Weiming , Wu Fei
Published: February 2011

Chinese brush calligraphy is a valuable civilization legacy and a high art of scholarship. It is still popular in Chinese banners, newspaper mastheads, university names, and celebration gifts. There are Web sites that try to help people enjoy and learn Chinese calligraphy. However, there lacks advanced services such as content-based retrieval or vivid writing process simulation for calligraphy learning. This article proposes a novel Chinese calligraphy learning approach: First, the scanned calligraphy pages were segmented into individual calligraphy characters using minimum-bounding box. Second, the individual character’s feature information was extracted and kept. Then, a corresponding database was built to serve as a map between the feature data and the original raw data. Finally, a retrieval engine was constructed and a dynamic writing process was simulated to help learners get the calligraphy character they were interested in and watch how it was generated step by step.
eWorkbook
Authors: Costagliola Gennaro , Ferrucci Filomena , Fuccella Vittorio , Oliveto Rocco
Published: February 2011

Computer aided assessment (CAA) tools are more and more widely adopted in academic environments mixed to other assessment means. In this article, we present a CAA Web application, named eWorkbook, which can be used for evaluating learner’s knowledge by creating (the tutor) and taking (the learner) on-line tests based on multiple choice, multiple response and true/false question types. Its use is suitable within the academic environment in a blended learning approach, by providing tutors with an additional assessment tool, and learners with a distance self-assessment means. In the article, the main characteristics of the tool are presented together with a rationale behind them and an outline of the architectural design of the system.
Ubiquitous Computing Technologies in Education
Authors: Hwang Gwo-Jen , Wu Ting-Ting , Chen Yen-Jung
Published: February 2011

The prosperous development of wireless communication and sensor technologies has attracted the attention of researchers from both computer and education fields. Various investigations have been made for applying the new technologies to education purposes, such that more active and adaptive learning activities can be conducted in the real world. Nowadays, ubiquitous learning (u-learning) has become a popular trend of education all over the world, and hence it is worth reviewing the potential issues concerning the use of u-computing technologies in education, which could be helpful to the researchers who are interested in the investigation of mobile and ubiquitous learning.
Supporting Learners' Appropriation of a Web-Based Learning Curriculum
Authors: Rasseneur-Coffinet Dorothee , Smyrniou Georgia , Tchounikine Pierre
Published: February 2011

This article presents an approach and tools that can help learners appropriate a Web-based learning curriculum and become active participants in their learning. The approach is based on a detailed modeling of the curriculum and intends to equip the learners with different computer-based tools facilitating a multiple point of view perception of the curriculum, while promoting self evaluation and self regulation of the learners’ curriculum performance. The proposed architecture is generic and can be used in the context of an already existing Web-based learning system. We define what we call “appropriation,” describe our approach, present different tools that have been implemented, and present the findings from the first experiments.
A Semantics-Based Information Distribution Framework for Large Web-Based Course Forum System
Authors: Chim Hung , Deng Xiaotie
Published: February 2011

We propose a novel data distribution framework for developing a large Web-based course forum system. In the distributed architectural design, each forum server is fully equipped with the ability to support some course forums independently. The forum servers collaborating with each other constitute the whole forum system. Therefore, the workload of the course forums can be shared by a group of the servers. With the secure group communication protocol and fault tolerance design, the new distribution framework provides a robust and scalable distributed architecture for the large course forum system. The forum servers can be settled in anywhere as long as a broadband network connection to Internet is provided. Our experimental performance testing results show that the large forum system is a high performance distributed system with very low communication overhead cost. In addition, all course forums are classified by their teaching content relevance. Relevant course forums can be arranged on the same forum server together. Hence our distribution framework also provides a knowledge-based taxonomic storage solution to build a large digital course teaching material library.
Quasi-Facial Communication for Online Learning Using 3D Modeling Techniques
Authors: Wang Yushun , Zhuang Yueting
Published: February 2011

Online interaction with 3D facial animation is an alternative way of face-to-face communication for distance education. 3D facial modeling is essential for virtual educational environments establishment. This article presents a novel 3D facial modeling solution that facilitates quasi-facial communication for online learning. Our algorithm builds 3D facial models from a single image, with support of a 3D face database. First from the image, we extract a set of feature points, which are then used to automatically estimate the head pose parameters using the 3D mean face in our database as a reference model. After the pose recovery, a similarity measurement function is proposed to locate the neighborhood for the given image in the 3D face database. The scope of neighborhood can be determined adaptively using our cross-validation algorithm. Furthermore, the individual 3D shape is synthesized by neighborhood interpolation. Texture mapping is achieved based on feature points. The experimental results show that our algorithm can robustly produce 3D facial models from images captured in various scenarios to enhance the lifelikeness in distant learning.
Speech-Enabled Tools for Augmented Interaction in E-Learning Applications
Authors: Selouani Sid-ahmedA. , Lê Tang-Ho , Benahmed Yacine , O’Shaughnessy Douglas
Published: February 2011

This article presents systems that use speech technology, to emulate the one-on-one interaction a student can get from a virtual instructor. A web-based learning tool, the Learn IN Context (LINC+) system, designed and used in a real mixed-mode learning context for a computer (C++ language) programming course taught at the Université de Moncton (Canada) is described here. It integrates an Internet Voice Searching and Navigating (IVSN) system that helps learners to search and navigate both the web and their desktop environment through voice commands and dictation. LINC+ also incorporates an Automatic User Profile Building and Training (AUPB&T) module that allows users to increase speech recognition performance without having to go through the long and fastidious manual training process. The findings show that the majority of learners seem to be satisfied with this new media, and confirm that it does not negatively affect their cognitive load.