bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Commercial Aircraft
Authors: José Lourenço da Saúde  , Jorge Miguel Reis Silva
Published: May 2010

The Air Transportation is the type of activity that exhibits significant complexity mainly due to the fact that to take place a great number of interlinked services need to be made available, ranging from air traffic control and management to ground services as well as to maintenance. In this respect, the utilization of software is permanent, allowing the operators to perform, among various aspects, the relevant operational support of commercial aircraft essentially oriented to aircraft maintenance or in other words compliance with the applicable Continued Airworthiness Instructions. Despite the fact much commercial software is available, little literature exists describing conceptually the whole process. Starting from situation, this book chapter provides the reader and those involved in the development of software for aircraft support the structure and the type of information related thereto.
A Global Optimization Approach to Solve Multi-Aircraft Routing Problems
Authors: Wilson S.P. , Bartholomew-Biggs M.C. , Parkhurst S.C.
Published: May 2010

This chapter describes the formulation and solution of a multi-aircraft routing problem which is posed as a global optimization calculation. The chapter extends previous work (involving a single aircraft using two dimensions) which established that the algorithm DIRECT is a suitable solution technique. The present work considers a number of ways of dealing with multiple routes using different problem decompositions. A further enhancement is the introduction of altitude to the problems so that full threedimensional routes can be produced. Illustrative numerical results are presented involving up to three aircraft and including examples which feature routes over real-life terrain data.
Collaborative Decision Making and Information Sharing for Air Traffic Management Operations
Authors: Alves Martins Osvandre , Silva Loubach Denis , Volnei Meinerz Giovani , Marques da Cunha Adilson
Published: May 2010

One of the most notable concepts related to the future cooperative Air Traffic Management (ATM) is the Collaborative Decision Making (CDM). This new management philosophy of using collaborative technologies and procedures to enable ATM partners drives efforts towards the common goals of sharing and exchanging information. To support the implementation of CDM, a likely solution was found in the context of System of Systems (SoS), system integration, and interoperability. Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) principles and technologies were recognized as one of the best alternatives to allow this implementation. Within this architecture, the System Wide Information Management (SWIM) has been developed on the last decade, and SWIM applications will be accessible to all ATM partners on the next decade by providing full airspace information, updated in real-time by all involved partners. This chapter presents an overview of key elements in information sharing for ATM and explains how SOA, SWIM, Aeronautical Information Management (AIM) and CDM support each other development.
Component-Based Development of Aeronautical Software
Authors: de Oliveira Ítalo Romani , Veiga Gimenes Ricardo Alexandre , Rady de Almeida Jr. Jorge
Published: May 2010

Modern aircraft heavily relies on software to fly and operate, which lessens pilot workload, increases flight stability and fuel efficiency, and provides several other benefits. However, the more automated an aircraft is, the more prone to complexity its software modules are, raising special safety issues to be considered in the project. This chapter presents an overview of the Verification and Validation requirements for safety-critical software in aeronautics and, given the high costs to meet them, explains in detail a component-based methodology which can contribute to reduce the overall costs of software development and, at the same time, provide enhanced safety.
The Language Specification PEARL for Co-Designing Embedded Systems
Authors: Gumzej Roman , Halang Wolfgang A.
Published: May 2010

The Specification PEARL language and methodology for hardware/software co-design of embedded control systems is presented. The Specification PEARL language has its origins in standard Multiprocessor PEARL, and was enhanced as foreseen by the standard to model layered and asymmetrical multiprocessor system architectures. Its constructs were extended by additional parameters for model verification and validation by schedulability analysis. Graphical symbols were introduced for Specification PEARL constructs to enable graphical modeling while maintaining their semantic background. Originally, Specification PEARL was intended as a superlayer for normal PEARL programs, implementing the Multiprocessor PEARL specification. Later on, however, it evolved to a methodology to specify and codesign applications for other target programming languages, such as C and C++, based on the superior programming model of PEARL. To supplement structural modeling by a behavioural model, Timed State Transition Diagrams were defined to model program tasks. A system model is verified for coherence by model checking as well as for temporal feasibility with co-simulation. The resulting information is used to correct and fine-tune a current model. To enhance availability and safety as well as to support maintainability, dynamic re-configuration planning is included in the software-to-hardware mapping specifications. Since UML has become the de facto standard also for designing embedded control systems, a UML profile for the methodology was defined using UML’s extension mechanisms.
Ontology-based Patterns for the Integration of Business Processes and Enterprise Application Architectures
Authors: Gacitua-Decar Veronica , Pahl Claus
Published: May 2010

Increasingly, enterprises are using service-oriented architecture (SOA) as an approach to enterprise application integration (EAI). SOA has the potential to bridge the gap between business and technology and to improve the reuse of existing applications and the interoperability with new ones. In addition to service architecture descriptions, architecture abstractions like patterns and styles capture design knowledge and allow the reuse of successfully applied designs, thus improving the quality of software. Knowledge gained from integration projects can be captured to build a repository of semantically enriched, experience-based solutions. Business patterns identify the interaction and structure between users, business processes, and data. Specific integration and composition patterns at a more technical level address enterprise application integration and capture reliable architecture solutions. We use an ontology-based approach to capture architecture and process patterns. Ontology techniques for pattern definition, extension, and composition are developed and their applicability in business process-driven application integration is demonstrated.
A Semantic Web Service Based Middleware for the Tourism Industry
Authors: Kabak Yildiray , Olduz Mehmet , Laleci Gokce B. , Namli Tuncay , Bicer Veli , Radic Nikola , Milis George , Dogac Asuman
Published: May 2010

Currently in the travel domain, most of the travel products are sold through global distribution aystems (GDSs). Since only major airline companies or hotel chains can afford to join GDSs, it is difficult for small and medium enterprises to market their travel products. In this chapter, we describe a middleware, called SATINE, to address this problem. In the SATINE middleware, existing travel applications are wrapped as Web services. Web services, as such, is of limited use because the service consumer must know all the details of the Web service like the functionality of the Web service (what it does) and the content and the structure of input and output messages. Therefore, we annotate both the service functionality and the service messages with Web ontology language (OWL) ontologies. Service functionality ontology is obtained from the “Open Travel Alliance (OTA)” specifications. Service message ontologies are automatically generated from the XML schema definitions of the messages. These local message ontologies are mapped into one or more global message ontologies through an ontology mapping tool developed, called OWLmt. The mapping definitions thus obtained are used to automatically map heterogeneous message instances used by the Web service provider and the consumer using a global ontology as a common denominator. This architecture is complemented by a peer-to-peer network which uses the introduced semantics for the discovery of Web services. Through the SATINE middleware, the travel parties can expose their existing applications as semantic Web services either to their Web site or to Web service registries they maintain. SATINE middleware facilitates the discovery and execution of these services seamlessly to the user.
Improving Expressive Power in Modeling Data Warehouse and OLAP Applications
Authors: Malinowski Elzbieta
Published: May 2010

Data warehouse and OLAP systems are widely required during the decision-support process, since they provide integrated data in a form that facilitates the expression of complex queries. In order to exploit both systems to their full capabilities, dimensions with hierarchies must be clearly defined. Dimensions can be of different types and they allow users to see quantified data from different perspectives. Hierarchies are important in analytical applications, since they give users the possibility of representing data at different abstraction levels. However, even though there are different kinds of hierarchies in real-world applications and some of them are already implemented in commercial tools, there is still a lack of a well-accepted conceptual model that allows decision-making users to express their analysis needs. In this chapter, we show how the conceptual multidimensional model can be used to facilitate the representation of complex hierarchies and different kinds of dimensions in comparison to their representation in the relational model and commercial OLAP tools, using as an example Microsoft Analysis Services.
Compression Schemes of High Dimensional Data for MOLAP
Authors: Azharul Hasan K. M.
Published: May 2010

The exploration of the possibility of compressing data warehouses is inevitable because of their non-trivial storage and access costs. A typical large data warehouse needs hundreds of gigabytes to a terabyte of storage. Performance of computing aggregate queries is a bottleneck for many Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) applications. Hence, data warehousing implementations strongly depend on data compression techniques to make possible the management and storage of such large databases. The efficiency of data compression methods has a significant impact on the overall performance of these implementations. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the importance of data compression to Multidimensional Online Analytical Processing (MOLAP), to survey data compression techniques relevant to MOLAP, and to discuss important quality issues of MOLAP compression and of existing techniques. Finally, we also discuss future research trends on this subject.
View Management Techniques and Their Application to Data Stream Management
Authors: Quix Christoph , Li Xiang , Kensche David , Geisler Sandra
Published: May 2010

Data streams are continuous, rapid, time-varying, and transient streams of data and provide new opportunities for analysis of timely information. Data processing in data streams faces similar challenges as view management in data warehousing: continuous query processing is related to view maintenance in data warehousing, multi-query optimization for continuous queries is highly related to view selection in conventional relational DBMS and data warehouses. In this chapter, we give an overview of view maintenance and view selection methods, explain the fundamental issues of data stream management, and discuss how view management techniques from data warehousing are related to data stream management. We also give directions for future research in view management, data streams, and data warehousing.
A Framework for Data Warehousing and Mining in Sensor Stream Application Domains
Authors: Jiang Nan
Published: May 2010

The recent advances in sensor technologies have made these small, tiny devices much cheaper and convenient to use in many different applications, for example, the weather and environmental monitoring applications, the hospital and factory operation sites, sensor devices on the traffic road and moving vehicles and so on. The data collected from sensors forms a sensor stream and is transferred to the server to perform data warehousing and mining tasks for the end user to perform data analysis. Several data preprocessing steps are necessary to enrich the data with domain information for the data warehousing and mining tasks in the sensor stream applications. This chapter presents a general framework for domain-driven mining of sensor stream applications. The proposed framework is able to enrich sensor streams with additional domain information that meets the application requirements. Experimental studies of the proposed framework are performed on real data for two applications: a traffic management and an environmental monitoring site.
A Data Warehousing Approach for Genomics Data Meta-Analysis
Authors: Collard Martine , Kefi-Khelif Leila , Trang Tran Van , Corby Olivier
Published: May 2010

DNA micro-array is a fastest-growing technology in molecular biology and bioinformatics. Based on series of microscopic spots of DNA sequences, they allow the measurement of gene expression in specific conditions at a whole genome scale. Micro-array experiments result in wide sets of expression data that are useful to the biologist to investigate various biological questions. Experimental micro-arrays data and sources of biological knowledge are now available on public repositories. As a consequence, comparative analyses involving several experiments become conceivable and hold potentially relevant knowledge. Nevertheless, the task of manually navigating and searching for similar tendencies in such huge spaces is mainly impracticable for the investigator and leads to limited results. In this context, the authors propose a semantic data warehousing solution based on semantic web technologies that allows to monitoring both the diversity and the volume of all related data.
Novel Trends in Clustering
Authors: Plant Claudia , Böhm Christian
Published: May 2010

Clustering or finding a natural grouping of a data set is essential for knowledge discovery in many applications. This chapter provides an overview on emerging trends within the vital research area of clustering including subspace and projected clustering, correlation clustering, semi-supervised clustering, spectral clustering and parameter-free clustering. To raise the awareness of the reader for the challenges associated with clustering, the chapter first provides a general problem specification and introduces basic clustering paradigms. The requirements from concrete example applications in life sciences and the web provide the motivation for the discussion of novel approaches to clustering. Thus, this chapter is intended to appeal to all those interested in the state-of-the art in clustering including basic researchers as well as practitioners.
Using Data Mining Techniques to Probe the Role of Hydrophobic Residues in Protein Folding and Unfolding Simulations
Authors: Silva Cândida G. , Ferreira Pedro Gabriel , Azevedo Paulo J. , Brito Rui M.M.
Published: May 2010

The protein folding problem, i.e. the identification of the rules that determine the acquisition of the native, functional, three-dimensional structure of a protein from its linear sequence of amino-acids, still is a major challenge in structural molecular biology. Moreover, the identification of a series of neurodegenerative diseases as protein unfolding/misfolding disorders highlights the importance of a detailed characterisation of the molecular events driving the unfolding and misfolding processes in proteins. One way of exploring these processes is through the use of molecular dynamics simulations. The analysis and comparison of the enormous amount of data generated by multiple protein folding or unfolding simulations is not a trivial task, presenting many interesting challenges to the data mining community. Considering the central role of the hydrophobic effect in protein folding, we show here the application of two data mining methods – hierarchical clustering and association rules – for the analysis and comparison of the solvent accessible surface area (SASA) variation profiles of each one of the 127 amino-acid residues in the amyloidogenic protein Transthyretin, across multiple molecular dynamics protein unfolding simulations.
Agriculture, Communication, and Socioeconomic Development
Authors: Alozie Emmanuel C.
Published: May 2010

This study explores Nigeria’s e-agriculture policies and those of other African governments. It also proposes what e-agricultural strategies these governments could adopt to enhance their agricultural output by examining the history of agriculture in Nigeria; the current status of Nigerian information and communication technologies and e-government policies with emphasis on agriculture. The analysis addresses the role of communications as instrument of national development. In view of the economic status of African countries, the study calls on Nigeria and other African governments to adopt a cautious approach as they embark on e-agriculture policies and acquisition of information and communication technologies to promote national development. The study calls on African governments to liberalize their agricultural policies, establish agricultural cooperatives, educate rural famers and offer telecommunication services in the rural areas if they hope to raise their agricultural productivity.
Newly Emerging e-Commerce Initiatives on the Agricultural Market in Poland
Authors: Adamowicz Mieczyslaw , Strzebicki Dariusz
Published: May 2010

Establishment of the new institutions that could improve Polish agricultural market was one of the main goals of the Polish government agricultural policy in the period of economy transformation. The project of creating agricultural markets was successful. Several regional wholesale markets and commodity exchanges were established and most of them still function with good performance. These markets are the key important marketing channels for market-oriented farmers in Poland. They can also be seen as a source of electronic commerce innovations on the Polish agricultural market. The aim of the chapter is to present the process of establishment and first experiences of electronic market of agricultural products as one of the new e-commerce initiatives on the Polish agricultural market. The chapter also discusses conditions of the electronic exchange development and its impact on the Polish agricultural market.
The Development of e-Agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa
Authors: Maumbe Blessing M.
Published: May 2010

The rapid growth of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) has led to new opportunities to improve food and agricultural production, processing, distribution, and marketing functions in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Such ICT-led transformations are expected to provide vast social and economic benefits to poor agricultural communities thus help uplift their standards of living. The process of how ICT should be applied in agriculture to raise living standards of millions of poor Africans is not yet well understood. Therefore, there is a need to deepen our understanding of ICT deployment and the socio-economic benefits expected from their application in African agriculture. Historically, some technologies failed in Africa and parts of Asia because of inadequate attention to context specific issues, irrelevance, and relatively prohibitive costs. In that regard, this chapter describes a framework for sustainable e-agriculture development in SSA. The proposed framework is based on three related models; (i) e-agriculture service delivery (ii) ICT development and diffusion pathways, and (iii) einformation flow and e-content development landscape. In order to facilitate the effective diffusion and adoption of e-agriculture, a set of “preconditions” and “e-value creation” opportunities are assessed. The identified preconditions help to filter out “irrelevant” ICT, and “e-value creation” facilitates use of context specific and demand- driven e-innovations in agriculture. The chapter identifies and discusses ICT illiteracy, ICT policy gaps, infrastructural deficiencies, and poverty as key challenges affecting the future success of e-agriculture in SSA. The chapter recommends the development of e-policies and e-strategies on e-content, e-trust, e-security, and e-value addition to promote sustainable e-agriculture development on the African continent.
Using ICT to Resolve the Modernization Paradox for Rural Communities in Africa
Authors: Hinton Dawn , Ofori-Dankwa Joseph
Published: May 2010

Rural communities are being heavily influenced by the ongoing modernization process taking place in all African economies and nations. Theoretically the modernization process is intended to help lead to an increase in the economic well being of the citizenry. However, one of the unanticipated outcomes of continuing urbanization and modernization, particularly for rural communities would be the loss of local social relations within such communities. This is similar to what happened in the Western context, where modernization, in the form of industrialization resulted in the loss of social relationships and increasing sense of alienation as cities formed. There is therefore a very real fear that in the African context, the ensuing modernization will result in a paradox where modernization may lead to an increase in economic well-being, but have the unintended consequence of increasing alienation and reducing the sense of community that exists in rural villages. The purpose of this chapter is two-fold. First, the authors theoretically explore the possibility of using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to develop a sense of community in rural villages and thus offset and mitigate the more negative aspects of the modernization process. Second, they propose a way to conceptualize this potential paradox by integrating the well established sociological concepts of Gemeinschaft (community) and Gesellschaft (individualism) with current paradox models of diversity and similarity curves. Such an approach has pedagogical utility in helping to describe and explain the modern paradox confronted by most of the African countries.
Globalized Workforce Development and Responsible Global Citizenship through e-Literacy Capacity Building Programs for Low Income African Countries
Authors: Ogwo Benjamin A. , Onweh Vincent E. , Nwizu Stella C.
Published: May 2010

The skewed global workforce interactions during the agricultural and industrial revolutions which still bother the antagonists of globalization could be straightened by progressive workforce development policies that will mutually benefit high and low income countries. In addition, the e- literacy and information technology boom have further narrowed spatial perception of geographic distance thus providing low-income countries insights on policy dynamics of high income countries and its impact on the rest of the world. Thus in order to attain equity and balanced global workforce development, this chapter explores the rational and different paradigms for capacity building on e-literacy in low income African countries so that their workforce would contribute to the globalized economy and civic responsibility. The chapter contends that e-literacy empowerment should be regarded as a human right issue and that through other ethical globalization efforts every person on earth should form part of the workforce for sustaining the global village.
Learning Theories and Pedagogy
Authors: Tomei Lawrence A.
Published: May 2010

There is little doubt that the most dominant form of instruction is pedagogy, also referred to as didactic, traditional, or teacher-guided instruction. The pedagogical model of instruction has been around for centuries. Young boys were received into schools (most often schools with religious purposes) that required them to be obedient, faithful, and efficient servants of the church (Knowles, 1984). From these beginning developed the practice of pedagogy which remains the dominant form of instruction for the traditional learner. Pedagogy is derived from the Greek word “peda,” meaning child and “agogos,” meaning “the study of.” Thus, pedagogy has been defined as the art and science of teaching children. In a pedagogical model, the teacher has responsibility for making decisions about the content to be learned, the methodology for delivering the instruction, the sequencing and presentation (i.e., when it will be learned), and ultimately, an assessment of whether or not the material has been learned. Pedagogy, by its definition and nature, places the student in a submissive/ receptive role rather than an active learning position, requiring unswerving compliance to the teacher’s directions. It is based on the assumption that the teacher knows best what the student should learn; the teacher assumes the position of “sage on the stage” and the result often is a teaching and learning environment that promotes dependency on the instructor. For the earliest years of educational psychology, teachers believed that the best way for their students to master content was through repetition, a principle derived from behavioral learning theory; a notion that dominated educational thinking since the time of Ivan Pavlov and his experiment with animals. Students should spend their time copying spelling words, reiterating historical dates and places, and proving and re-proving mathematical formulas until they ‘learned’ the information. Contemporary behaviorists viewed the environment as the single most important key to successful learning. Environmental factors provided the external stimuli to learning and the consequential behavior that resulted was deemed the response. Stimulus ? response (S ? R) became the formula for teaching in these early years of educational practice that found its place in educational practices up through the 1950’s.
Learning Theories and Andragogy
Authors: Tomei Lawrence A.
Published: May 2010

The adult learner is a relatively new phenomenon in the annals of educational practice. How can this be considering we have been teaching adults for almost as long as we have been teaching children? – longer if you believe in the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve. Still, any review of the educational literature on teaching and learning will show a preponderance of research and investigation concerning children and comparatively little specifics regarding adults.Andragogy. Until the 1960s, the models developed to teach children functioned equally for the teaching of adults. The first use of the term “andragogy” was attributed to Malcolm Knowles when, in 1968, he introduced the term androgogy (with an “o”) in the journal, Adult Leadership. His article was entitled “Androgogy, not Pedagogy!” and was followed promptly with a 1970 book in which he specifically defines the term as the “art and science of helping adults learn.” By the 1980s, Knowles’ thinking had changed considerably. In his text, Modern Practice of Adult Education: From Pedagogy to Andragogy, he recognizes the considerable debate instigated by his 1970 thesis and begins to suggest andragogy as an alternative teaching and learning approach appropriate for adult learners. Furthermore,
Learning Theories and Allagegogy
Authors: Tomei Lawrence A.
Published: May 2010

Chapter Three introduces the reader to the newest “ology” of teaching: allagegogy: “teaching to transform” as introduced by Priest (2002), to describe a newer approach to education that focuses on learner independence and the inherent changes that define lifelong learning. Linked closely to allagegogy is the humanistic school of educational psychology. From the humanistic perspective, teachers are concerned with making learning responsive to the affective needs of their students, those related directly to the student’s emotions, feelings, values, and attitudes.
The Cognitive, Affective, and Psychomotor Domains
Authors: Tomei Lawrence A.
Published: May 2010

The Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, better known as Bloom’s Taxonomy, is a classification system that governs how learning objectives are designed, implemented and assessed. First proposed in 1956, Benjamin Bloom began his scrutiny into educational objectives by exploring the cognitive domain (which will serve as the focus for this chapter). Later, with other colleagues including Lorin W. Krathwohl and S. R. Kibler, he considered the affective and psychomotor domains to round out his body of study. Bloom’s taxonomy differentiates six levels of teaching and learning: (1) knowledge, (2) comprehension, (3) application, (4) analysis, (5) synthesis, and (6) evaluation. This chapter offers a perspective for developing instruction purposely targeting the traditional learner.
The Higher Order Learning Domain of the Adult Learner
Authors: Tomei Lawrence A.
Published: May 2010

Teaching the adult learner has dramatically changed over the years mostly in response to research and investigations that have come to define the term “andragogy.” Although he was not the first to use the term, Malcolm Knowles popularized the term andragogy that first appeared in the writing of Alexander Kapp. Since then, many citations have compared and contrasted andragogy with pedagogy in an attempt to distinguish what makes the teaching of adults different than teaching children. Much of the research focuses on several crucial assumptions about the characteristics of adult learners. Adults are considered autonomous and self-directed learners. Active involvement by adult learners in the instructional process calls for them to serve as their own principal facilitators for learning. Instructors are advised to solicit participant perspectives about the topics presented and the strategies to be employed in teaching concepts; assessments that will ultimately evaluate their progress and performance and the responsibility for learning that will dictate the conduct of lesson delivery. Group participation and leadership are keys to successful learning.
Visual-Based Resources for Teaching
Authors: Tomei Lawrence A.
Published: May 2010

Research has found that students learn better when they rely on the instructional strategy best suited to their own particular learning style (Fitzsimmons, 1996). While concrete learners depend on the text-based workbook for reinforcement, abstract learners find visual media more to their liking. Microsoft Power Point creates presentations suitable for the classroom by offering a multimedia environment for concepts and ideas important for understanding. It provides a suite of tools to create powerful slide shows incorporating bulleted lists and numbered text; multimedia clip art, pictures, sounds, and movies; links to teacher-validated web sites, programs, and documents; colorful charts and graphs; and, a choice of output options tailored to individual learning styles. Power Point offers an extensive fare of commands, options, and menus. With the advanced features of auto content wizard, hyperlinks, and printing alternatives, it also provides an array of all the tools necessary to build truly exciting and interactive instructional materials.
Delivering Instruction to the Adult Learner
Authors: Tomei Lawrence A.
Published: May 2010

There is no commonly accepted definition of an adult learner. The best that most educators are able to do (and still feel relatively satisfied with the attempt) is to recognize certain characteristics commonly attributed to adults. For example, adult students characteristically engage is multiple roles that affect both the amount and quality of time they devote to learning. Too, adults typically bring more life experiences to the classroom than traditional students. Experiences often provide a rich source for grounding their learning and for building a basis for new knowledge. Sometimes, these experiences interfere with learning and must be set aside, replaced with new schemata for acting on novel situations. Many adults find that formal education (especially returning to school after years spent in pursuit of career goals) serves as an especially uneasy transition point in their lives. As adults move through a series of stages such as education, insecurity and uncertainty is commonplace. Adult students frequently have established educational goals (especially when compared to their traditional counterparts). They are more likely paying for their education, focused on off-campus activities, and are likely to be peers (age-wise) or even older than their instructors. Adult education constitutes those interested in teaching adult learners or who are already working with adults in an educational capacity and would like further certification and professional credentials. Studying adult education gives candidates further knowledge, training, skills, understanding and appreciation of adult education as its own unique area of practice and study. Although many of the philosophies, psychologies, and leadership traits for the adult educator are similar to those focused on the traditional learner, the history and sociology of adult learning is different. Topics particular to adult education include administration, curriculum development, learning and teaching methods and adult education as it relates to social change, current trends and global context. Those interested in focusing on adult education at whatever level find themselves as adult English as a second language (ESL) teachers, continuing education teachers and professors, or teachers of adults seeking a high-school diploma. Others provide General Educational Development (GED) preparation, literacy
Methodologies for Assessing the Traditional Learner
Authors: Tomei Lawrence A.
Published: May 2010

Assessment may be defined as “any method used to better understand the current knowledge that a student possesses.” (Dietel and Knuth, 1991). Assessment can be as simple as a teacher’s subjective judgment of student performance or as complex as a standardized achievement test. The concept of “current knowledge” implies that what a student knows is always changing and therefore teachers are to make assessments about their students’ achievements repeatedly throughout the school year. The elements of technology-based materials and lessons introduced in this book have identical reasons for undergoing the scrutiny of formal evaluation as any other form of valid classroom assessment. The purposes of assessment are many, depending in large measure on the initiators of the evaluation. Administrators use assessment to set standards and policies, direct resources, establish goals, and monitor the quality of education. Learners gauge their progress, assess strengths and weaknesses, measure school accountability, and make informed educational and personal career decisions.
Methodologies for Assessing the Adult Learner
Authors: Tomei Lawrence A.
Published: May 2010

Assessments, when properly considered and constructed, have a potential to recognize and value the adult learner, their varied learning styles, and the diverse backgrounds which they represent in the classroom. Properly prepared, assessments present the adult with complex, purposely ambiguous, open-ended problems and tasks that demand from them the ability to integrate knowledge and demonstrate mastery and performance of critical skills. It is important for course designers to create an environment in which formal assessment is fully utilized to track and document learners’ educational successes and learning shortfalls gains. Teachers conduct informal assessment on a daily basis. They should be encouraged to use the informal tools and procedures consistently, testing and retesting as needed and documenting changes in skill levels to gauge learner progress and supplement lesson instruction as it moves forward.
Methodologies for Assessing the Distance Learner
Authors: Tomei Lawrence A.
Published: May 2010

Traditional evaluations methodologies are not always sufficient to properly assess effective online instruction. There is a need for student evaluations specifically designed to provide online instructors with feedback about the effectiveness of their technology-based teaching practices. As more instructors move their courses into the online environment, the one consistent question remains, “How do I know that my distance students are learning?” Techniques to assess learner mastery of content material are as diverse as the various formats of distance courses. The traditional assessment strategies (e.g., multiple choice, true/false, essays, etc.) continue to remain an option in a virtual learning environment. They are easily administered through the various learning management systems (LMS) and nearly every LMS has a test module that supports online examinations. Once created, these objective tests can incorporate multimedia (i.e., video, audio) for a more visual assessment. Other assessment strategies commonly used in the traditional classroom can also be easily converted to the online environment such as online discussions (i.e., chat rooms and discussion boards) and submission of written papers, essays, or reports (via drop boxes). Additionally, more advanced distance educators are able to include simulations, activities, group projects, virtual case studies, collaborative presentations or reports, and role-playing.
Use of Social Software in Education
Authors: Kalelioglu Filiz , Gulbahar Yasemin
Published: May 2010

In this chapter, numerous educational activities are presented for instructors in order to address each type of multiple intelligences. Most probably, these educational activities are those which are already being experienced by many instructors. The key point here is that although students are exposed to many educational activities, instructors generally don’t have any idea or rather don’t consider the learning outcomes in terms of multiple intelligences. In general, assessment activities are based only on the chunk of knowledge that the student gains after any particular activity. In fact, instructors should deal with the effects and improvements in students other than just the knowledge, after engagement in educational activities. Thus, instructors should base their instructional plans on a theoretical basis, especially when integrating technology into their courses. Hence, the development and changing activities and other tasks of social software according to the multiple intelligences that underline individual differences were discussed briefly in this chapter.
Learning Together with the Interactive White Board
Authors: Larson Linda , Vanmetre Sharon
Published: May 2010

Interactive whiteboards (IWB) are the latest technology trend in schools and businesses. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss how social software and IWB technology promotes active engagement and interactive content delivery. Using IWB technology users are able to interact, collaborate, and evaluate. To implement the IWB effectively, there are numerous issues to address: professional development, interactivity, feedback, collaboration, and the future of the IWB.
Harnessing Web 2.0 for Context-Aware Learning
Authors: Fu Wai-Tat , Kannampallil Thomas
Published: May 2010

We present an empirical study investigating how interactions with a popular social tagging system, called del.icio.us, may directly impact knowledge adaptation through the processes of concept assimilation and accommodation. We observed 4 undergraduate students over a period of 8 weeks and found that the quality of social tags and distributions of information content directly impact the formation and enrichment of concept schemas. A formal model based on a distributed cognition framework provides a good fit to the students learning data, showing how learning occurs through the adaptive assimilation of concepts and categories of multiple users through the social tagging system. The results and the model have important implications on how Web 2.0 technologies can promote formal and informal learning through collaborative methods.
The e-Tutor in Learning 2.0 Scenarios
Authors: Rotta Mario
Published: May 2010

With this contribution, we briefly explain how both the e-Tutor role and competencies have changed since the beginning of the debate about this essential e-Learning human resource. Until now, what set of professional functions were requested to be a good e-Tutor? What training policies must be identified to give an answer to the needs of e-Tutors for them to be able to interact effectively in e-Learning scenarios oriented to sharing knowledge and social networking?
Entering the Virtual Teachers' Lounge
Authors: Dunn Randall
Published: May 2010

As communication and connection are essential instruments for professional educators, this chapter seeks to examine the effectiveness of an online “virtual teacher’s lounge” in the framework of offline communities. Essentially, an online discussion forum for educators is evaluated for the purpose of determining whether the forum provides a “space” conducive for the development of a community of professional educators as benchmarked against an understanding of offline community formation and existence. The foundational works of Ferdinand Tonnies, James Coleman, and Ray Oldenburg are used to develop 12 characteristics of community—as understood in the context of social communities. The study finds that online communities closely resemble offline communities in structure and interaction, but only for select participants. The participants observed demonstrating or facilitating the characteristics of community comprise around 10% of the total number of users participating in the analyzed discussions.
From Theory to Practice
Authors: Seidman Hope , Mamers Andrea , Mitelman Bev , Gauthier Mariève
Published: May 2010

As the average age of Canada’s public servant inches toward 50, it is expected that between 30-40% of the government’s key knowledge workers will retire in the next five years. Consequently, the government is challenged with attracting and retaining new employees and ensuring that all public servants have the necessary skills and knowledge to do their jobs well. Since formal learning does not alone prepare employees to perform in complex work environments, the federal Public Service is implementing informal learning strategies to facilitate knowledge creation and exchange and to manage tacit knowledge. This chapter describes how technology-supported communities of practice are being employed across Canada with the support of the Canada School of Public Service. The strategic context, challenges, lessons learned, and vision for the future are also discussed.
The Virtual University
Authors: Stein David S. , Glazer Hilda R. , Wanstreet Constance E.
Published: May 2010

By offering self-designed, guided independent study, for-profit virtual universities began as alternatives to traditional graduate education that emphasized full-time study and ignored the life demands of adult students. However, through the process of gaining accreditation, recognition by the academy, and acceptance in the marketplace, virtual universities now more closely resemble traditional institutions. Their challenge to traditional academic practices predominately rests with the use of electronic tools for learning and the access virtual universities provide thousands of part-time learners pursuing doctoral degrees.
Collaborative Learning
Authors: Rahman Hakikur
Published: May 2010

Learning is considered as one of the potential tool to empower a community. Over the past three decades, technology mediated learning has been recognized as an alternate channel replacing/ supporting/ strengthening the traditional forms of education in various forms, especially with the advent of interactive and collaborative learning. Open and distance learning (ODL) emerges as a potential means of enhancing educational access. On the other hand, open educational resources (OER) emerge as a potential material of this new paradigm of knowledge acquisition process. However, the organizational learning at the peripheries and capacity development at the grass roots remain almost unattended, despite recognized global efforts under many bottom-up empowerment sequences. Social components at large within the transitional and developing economies remain outside the enclosure of universal access to information and thus knowledge to equitably compete with the global knowledge economy. Keeping all these in mind, in a tiny spike, a program has been initiated in a rural corner of Bangladesh to enclave grass roots communities as part of the life long learning processes. The members of the society will be given traditional and non-traditional education, depending on their demands, aspirations and capabilities through a technology mediated educational institution. By clustering them into smaller groups, a micro-credit program will run to empower them economically and socially. Different categories of project (education, health, environment, technology) will run throughout the year for their skill development and knowledge building. Furthermore, adopting appropriate technologies, like introduction of solar power (cooking, water logging, lamps, machineries), wind mills (water logging, electricity) community people will be assisted to carry out their tasks rapidly and easily with limited impact on the local environment and resources. Finally, the surrounding communities will be taken under a Wi-Fi mesh to form a knowledge building network (continued education, self employment, information bank, data mining, improved livelihood, capacity development, market research, food security, basic health promotion, social development, increased governance and sustained advancement) with the intention to propagate knowledge beyond the peripheries.
Web 2.0 Technology for Problem-Based and Collaborative Learning
Authors: Buckley Clive N. , William Angela M.
Published: May 2010

Collaborative problem-based learning (PBL) has a well established history within medical and health care education. Undergraduate nursing students at the Glyndwr University undertake PBL to explore ethical issues of health care; traditionally these students meet in person to discuss scenarios, provided by tutors, and present the product of their deliberations to the rest of the class. The geographical dispersion of the students has meant that most discussions have been limited to those times when the students are physically on campus by virtue of their timetabled classes. By using Web 2.0 technologies, students are able to collaborate at distance, at a time that suits them. This chapter describes how students have used these emerging technologies to share ideas and resources to prepare for class presentations; described also are the underpinning theories that inform this work together with an analysis of student use and feedback.
Integrating Blogs in Teacher Education
Authors: Hao Yungwei
Published: May 2010

This chapter demonstrates some of the educational merits of blogs; including how blogs can be integrated in teacher education and proposing a methodology for evaluating blogs to meet the goals of reflection and technology literacy in teacher education. An undergraduate-level course was integrated with blog technology to help readers better understand the inquiry-oriented nature of the blog medium. This exemplar course modeled Web 2.0 technology to teacher educators and pre-service teachers who intend to integrate the technology into their future teaching. Surveys and interviews were used to investigate participant attitude toward blogs. The researcher proposes Zeichner and Liston’s (1987) Reflective Index as a potential framework for evaluating the quality of reflection in blogs. It is expected that this instructional model of blogs will help educators, in particular teacher educators and instructional designers, to design courses to more effectively meet the goals of higher-order thinking required in 21st century teacher education.