bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
What are Avatars Made of?
Authors: Lim Kenneth Y. T.
Published: May 2011

Interest in massively multi-protagonist online games and virtual worlds as platforms for learning has shifted of late from the realm of what might easily be perceived as geeky curiosity, to learned and formalized educational research, to an increasing number of policy-makers and school leaders making the investment in land and establishing in-world institutional presences. This chapter seeks to frame such worlds in a contemporary interpretation of socio-cultural theory, in such a way that their unique affordances for learning are foregrounded in terms of the nascent meme of the Zone of Regulatory Development. Particular consideration will also be paid to the dimensionality of such worlds, and the implications thereof to notions of identity and situativity.
Problem-Solving Style, Problem Complexity and Knowledge Generation
Authors: lo Storto Corrado
Published: May 2011

It is assumed that organizational knowledge is created as a by-product of collective creative technical problem-solving, when people work together to deal with unfamiliar and unexpected situations. Two major outcomes emerge from the analysis of experimental data: (1) different cognitive environment patterns are more conducive than others to organizational learning; (2) there exists some fit between the cognitive environment pattern and the team technical problem-solving style, as some cognitive practices and social behaviours adopted during technical problem-solving are more effective than others in certain cognitive environments. Particularly, practices and behaviours that are more associated to creativity have a not negligible weigh in the generation of knowledge. Ninety-one cases of technical problem-solving occurred during product innovation within 35 small firms studied.
The Structure of Idea Generation Techniques
Authors: Knoll Stefan Werner , Horton Graham
Published: May 2011

Idea generation techniques play an important role in the innovation process. Until recently, the space of techniques has been unstructured, and no clear guidelines have been available for the selection of an appropriate technique for a given innovation goal. This chapter uses an engineering approach to study and develop idea generation techniques with the aim of obtaining more structured and rigorous guidelines for generating ideas. One element of this approach was to identify and understand the fundamental mental principles underlying an idea generation technique. In this chapter, three such principles suffice to cover a large range of published idea generation techniques and can be used to improve the utility of idea generation within the innovation process.
Creative Management, Technology and the BBC
Authors: Nicoli Nicholas
Published: May 2011

The past decade has witnessed increased attempts by managers, scholars and policy-makers to stimulate the creativity of organisations. The practice of stimulating organisational creativity has led to a paradigm shift known as creative management, the focus of which is to use these practices to achieve competitive advantages. Such creative stimulation can come in a variety of forms. These include identifying and influencing environmental conditions that can increase the chances for creating new and significant products or services. In order to stimulate creativity, current creative management literature proposes the use of technology as a disseminator of knowledge and ideas. This chapter offers a literature review of creative management and technology use for creativity. It next introduces a case study of how technology is used as a creative management tool at the BBC. The findings of the study indicate that although the BBC’s yearly revenues are under sustained pressure, the organisation has invested heavily in technology in order to maintain its high creative standing. In conclusion, supported by the findings of the case study, this chapter corroborates and further advocates the use of technology as a significant component of creative management practices.
The Opportunities and Challenges of Technology Driven Creative Collaborations
Authors: Larach Diego E. Uribe , Cabra John F.
Published: May 2011

The onset of the 21st century is marked by deep psychological and sociological transformations affecting every scale of human endeavor, ranging from individual to crowd behavior. Deep and central to these transformations is the penetration of digital communication and computer technology into modern day life. Above all, this new and evolving technological landscape has opened exciting new possibilities to drive creative behavior, organizational creativity and innovation through computer-mediated interactions. Such opportunities are met with equal challenges that need to be addressed in order to harness the full potential of massively distributed creative collaborations. This chapter will elaborate on the underlying trends that give rise to these opportunities and challenges and to what extent these trends will govern creativity and innovation in areas of organizational life such as business, education, science and design in the next 10 to 30 years.
Applying Learner-Centered Design Principles to UML Sequence Diagrams
Authors: VanderMeer Debra , Dutta kaushik
Published: May 2011

The Unified Modeling Language has been shown to be complex and difficult to learn. The difficulty of learning to build the individual diagrams in the UML, however, has received scant attention. In this paper, we consider the case of the UML sequence diagram. Despite the fact that these diagrams are among the most frequently used in practice, they are difficult to learn to build. In this paper, we consider the question of why these diagrams remain so difficult to learn to build. Specifically, we analyze the process of learning to build sequence diagrams in the context of cognitive complexity theory. Based on this analysis, and drawing on the theory of learner-centered design, we develop a set of recommendations for presenting the sequence diagram building task to the student analyst to reduce the complexity of learning how to build them.
Information Privacy
Authors: Kane Gerald C. , Schwaig Kathy Stewart , Storey Veda C.
Published: May 2011

The acquisition and use of personal information by large corporations continues to be a leading issue in the age of virtual communication and collaboration. This research reviews and analyzes the privacy policies of large US companies to evaluate the substance and quality of their stated information practices. Six factors are identified that indicate the extent to which a firm is dependent upon consumer personal information, and therefore, more likely to develop high quality privacy statements. The study’s findings provide practical and theoretical implications for information privacy issues, particularly for consumers who need to decide whether to disclose their personal identifying information to firms. The research also highlights the complexity and challenges of managing personal private information.
Reverse Engineering from an XML Document into an Extended DTD Graph
Authors: Shiu Herbert , Fong Joseph
Published: May 2011

Extensible Markup Language (XML) has become a standard for persistent storage and data interchange via the Internet due to its openness, self-descriptiveness and flexibility. This paper proposes a systematic approach to reverse engineer arbitrary XML documents to their conceptual schema – Extended DTD Graphs ? which is a DTD Graph with data semantics. The proposed approach not only determines the structure of the XML document, but also derives candidate data semantics from the XML element instances by treating each XML element instance as a record in a table of a relational database. One application of the determined data semantics is to verify the linkages among elements. Implicit and explicit referential linkages are among XML elements modeled by the parent-children structure and ID/IDREF(S) respectively. As a result, an arbitrary XML document can be reverse engineered into its conceptual schema in an Extended DTD Graph format.
Scalable XML Filtering for Content Subscriptions
Authors: Choi Ryan , Wong Raymond
Published: May 2011

Over the past few years, there have been an increasing number of Web applications that exchange various types of data on the Internet. In this article, we propose a technique for building efficient and scalable XML publish/subscribe applications. In particular, we look at the problem of processing streaming XML data efficiently against a large number of branch XPath queries. To improve the performance of XML data processing, the branch queries that have similar query characteristics are grouped, and common paths between the queries in the same group are identified. Then, these groups of queries are processed against an XML schema to validate query structures. After performing structural matching of queries, the queries are organized in a way that multiple queries can be evaluated simultaneously in the post-processing phase. In the post-processing phase, join operations are executed in a pipeline fashion, and intermediate join results are shared amongst the queries in the same group. The benefit of this approach is that, the total number of join operations performed in the post-processing phase is significantly reduced. In addition, we also present how to efficiently return all matching elements for each matching branch query. Experiments show that our proposal is efficient and scalable compared to previous works.
Towards Autonomic Workload Management in DBMSs
Authors: Niu Baoning , Martin Patrick , Powley Wendy
Published: May 2011

Workload management is the discipline of effectively managing, controlling and monitoring work flow across computing systems. It is an increasingly important requirement of database management systems (DBMSs) in view of the trends towards server consolidation and more diverse workloads. Workload management is necessary so the DBMS can be business-objective oriented, can provide efficient differentiated service at fine granularity and can maintain high utilization of resources with low management costs. We see that workload management is shifting from offline planning to online adaptation. In this paper we discuss the objectives of workload management in autonomic DBMSs and provide a framework for examining how current workload management mechanisms match up with these objectives. We then use the framework to study several mechanisms from both DBMS products and research efforts. We also propose directions for future work in the area of workload management for autonomic DBMSs.
Document SQL (DSQL)
Authors: Sengupta Arijit , Ramesh V.
Published: May 2011

This chapter presents DSQL, a conservative extension of SQL, as an ad-hoc query language for XML. The development of DSQL follows the theoretical foundations of first order logic, and uses common query semantics already accepted for SQL. DSQL represents a core subset of XQuery that lends well to query optimization techniques; while at the same time allows easy integration into current databases and applications that use SQL. The intent of DSQL is not to replace XQuery, the current W3C recommended XML query language, but to serve as an ad-hoc querying frontend to XQuery. Further, the authors present proofs for important query language properties such as complexity and closure. An empirical study comparing DSQL and XQuery for the purpose of ad-hoc querying demonstrates that users perform better with DSQL for both flat and tree structures, in terms of both accuracy and efficiency.
Range-Sum Queries over High Dimensional Data Cubes Using a Dynamic Grid File
Authors: Yu Feng , Luo Cheng , Yu Xiaoguang , Hou Wen-Chi , Wang Chih-Fang , Wainer Michael
Published: May 2011

In this chapter, the authors propose to use the grid file to store multi-dimensional data cubes and answer range-sum queries. The grid file is enhanced with a dynamic splitting mechanism to accommodate insertions of data. It overcomes the drawback of the traditional grid file in storing uneven data while enjoying its advantages of simplicity and efficiency. The space requirement grows linearly with the dimension of the data cube, compared with the exponential growth of conventional methods that store pre-computed aggregate values for range-sum queries. The update cost is O(1), much faster than the pre-computed data cube approaches, which generally have exponential update cost. The grid file structure can also respond to range queries quickly. They compare it with an approach that uses the R*-tree structure to store the data cube. The experimental results show that the proposed method performs favorably in file size, update speed, construction time, and query response time for both evenly and unevenly distributed data.
Multi-Agent Based Dynamic E-Learning Environment
Authors: AlZahrani Saleh , Ayesh Aladdin , Zedan Hussein
Published: May 2011

Grids are increasingly being used in applications, one of which is e-learning. As most of business and academic institutions (universities) and training centres around the world have adopted this technology in order to create, deliver and manage their learning materials through the Web, the subject has become the focus of investigate. Still, collaboration between these institutions and centres is limited. Existing technologies such as grid, Web services and agents are promising better results. In this article the authors support building our architecture Regionally Distributed Architecture for Dynamic e-Learning Environment (RDADeLE) by combining those technologies via Java Agent DEvelopment Framework (JADE). By describing these agents in details, they prove that agents can be implemented to work well to extend the autonomy and interoperability for learning objects as data grid.
Discovery and Mediation Approaches for Management of Net-Centric Web Services
Authors: Petry Frederick , Ladner Roy , Gupta Kalyan Moy , Moore Philip , Aha David , Lin Bruce , Sween Richard
Published: May 2011

This paper describes an Integrated Web Services Brokering System (IWB) to support the automated discovery and application integration of Web Services. In contrast to more static broker approaches that deal with specific data servers, our approach creates a dynamic knowledge base from Web Service interface specifications. This assists with brokering of requests to multiple data providers even when those providers have not implemented a community standard interface or have implemented different versions of a community standard interface. A specific context we illustrate here is the domain of meteorological and oceanographic (MetOc) Web Services. Our approach includes the use of specific domain ontologies and has evaluated the use of case-based classification in the IWB to support automated Web Services discovery. It was also demonstrated that the mediation approach could be extended to OGC Web Coverage Services.
Integrating Accessibility Evaluation into Web Engineering Processes
Authors: Power Christopher , Freire André Pimenta , Petrie Helen
Published: May 2011

This chapter presents methodologies and techniques for performing accessibility evaluations on web applications. These methodologies are discussed in the context of performing them within a web engineering process, be it a traditional, unified or agile process. In this chapter the case is made that website commissioners and web engineers cannot afford to overlook accessible practices as they risk alienating an increasingly large user base who may require accessible web features.
VoiceWeb
Authors: Spiliotopoulos Dimitris , Kouroupetroglou Georgios , Stavropoulou Pepi
Published: May 2011

This chapter presents the state-of-the-art in usability issues and methodologies for VoiceWeb interfaces. It undertakes a theoretical perspective to the usability methodology and provides a framework description for creating and testing usable content and applications for conversational interfaces. The methodologies and their uses are discussed as well as certain technical issues that are of specific importance for each type of system. Moreover, it discusses the hands-on approaches for applying usability methodologies in a spoken dialogue web application environment, including methodological and design issues, resource management, implementation using existing technologies for usability evaluation in several stages of the design and deployment. Finally, the challenging usability issues and parameters of the emerging advanced speech-enabled web interfaces are presented.
An Introduction to the Green IT Balanced Scorecard as a Strategic IT Management System
Authors: Wati Yulia , Koo Chulmo
Published: May 2011

This chapter introduces the Green IT Balanced Scorecard by incorporating an environmental aspect of technology into the scorecard measurement method. The authors conceptualized the Green IT balanced scorecard as “a nomological management tool to systematically align IT strategy with business strategy from an environmental sustainability perspective in order to achieve competitive advantage.” The objectives of the Green IT balanced scorecard include the measurement of technology performance via the effective integration of environmental aspects, the investigation of both tangible and intangible assets of Green IT investment, the alignment of IT performance and business performance, and the transformation of the results into competitive advantage. This concept offers a new possibility for both practitioners and researchers to translate their sustainable business strategies into Green IT actions.
Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in Building Knowledge Processes in Vulnerable Ecosystems
Authors: Rao Prakash
Published: May 2011

The present chapter explores the use of some of the current state of the art technologies like ICTs including tools like Remote Sensing and GIS as a means for providing sound and efficient decision making across various sectors.
Toward a Conceptual Model for Sustainability and Greening through Information Technology Management
Authors: Jarmoszko A.T. , D’Onofrio Marianne , Lee-Partridge Joo Eng , Petkova Olga
Published: May 2011

This study describes a conceptual approach to greening and sustainability through Information Technology management. The authors reviewed existing research and publications on the topic of greening, and concluded that while much has been written about ways to go green, much less are available on guidelines to help gauge the degree of greening efforts. To help alleviate this shortcoming, the authors propose a model–called the Greening through Information Technology Model (GITM)–based on the framework of Capability Maturity Model. The authors are currently in the process of developing questions to be used for each aspect of the greening management to determine the GITM level that an organization is in.
GHG Emissions from the International Goods Movement by Ships and the Adaptation Funding Distribution
Authors: Wang Haifeng
Published: May 2011

The GHG reduction from ships has attracted international attention. As the major transportation mode in international trade, how the reduction cost influences the international trade is becoming a major concern. How to allocate the funds collected from the emission regulation is also in controversy. This chapter summarizes the policy instruments under discussion in the International Maritime Organization and discusses the advantages of market based instruments. Using the Ship, Trade, Traffic and Emission Model, this chapter calculates the impact of ship-based GHG reduction cost on the international trade. The impact is small for most countries, but relatively large for small island countries, creating an equity issue ready to be resolved. The ongoing debate between the common but differentiated responsibility and equal treatment for ships principle is documented. This chapter proposes that all countries need to reduce GHGs but developing countries, especially small island countries, should get more benefits.
A Pragmatic Profile Approach to Evaluating Environmental Sustainability Investment Decisions
Authors: Lefley Frank , Sarkis Joseph
Published: May 2011

This chapter contends that environmental sustainability is a subject of great contemporary importance, but due to biases associated with traditional project appraisal approaches, projects that have strong environmental issues may be neglected. The chapter then presents a modified version of the pragmatic financial appraisal profile model by including an environmental assessment in the form of the ‘environmental score index.’ An illustrative case study is used to outline the important aspects of this new approach. The chapter concludes that this approach will help to fill a gap in the environmental investment literature, where there is a paucity of comprehensive, structured, and transparent methodologies that can prove acceptable to management decision-makers from a variety of functions and viewpoints.
Green Logistics
Authors: Thiell Marcus , Zuluaga Juan Pablo Soto , Montañez Juan Pablo Madiedo , van Hoof Bart
Published: May 2011

This chapter presents a global overview of green logistics practices at various management levels and the inherent challenges of their implementation in emerging markets. It begins by clarifying the terminology and describing its scope and characteristics, and it continues with an analysis of the impact of green logistics on the creation of economic and social value.
The Impact of Sustainability-Focused Strategies on Sourcing Decisions
Authors: Özcan Ozan , Reeves Kingsley Anthony
Published: May 2011

This book chapter examines the relationship between the pursuit of a sustainability-focused corporate strategy and the level of vertical integration observed in organizations. The study makes two contributions. First, it develops the theoretical foundation for linking sustainability strategies to organizational structure. Second, it empirically examines the vertical integration level of 144 sustainability-focused companies in 9 different industries. The results demonstrate that sustainability-focused companies in the healthcare industry and the industrials industry tend to have more vertically integrated organizational structures than their industry competitors that are not pursuing such a strategy. There was no significant difference in the vertical integration level of sustainability-focused versus non-sustainability-focused companies for the other seven industries studied. In the literature, the linkage between environmental strategies and vertical integration has not been thoroughly examined. These study results should be useful to researchers and managers who are interested in corporate sustainability behavior.
Green Logistics and Supply Chain Management
Authors: Prokop Darren
Published: May 2011

Logistics and supply chain management are an integral part of business activity today. They are crucial drivers of globalization as well. As such, these activities are responsible for a large share of greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, transportation in the United States is the business sector which contributes the most human-generated greenhouse gas emissions. This chapter will discuss the role of logistics and supply chain management in the generation of such pollutants and examine methods to mitigate this byproduct of modern business activity. It will be shown that a series of trade-offs exist which are complex in nature and require careful consideration when confronting environmental concerns.
Greener Transportation Infrastructure
Authors: Fann Jean-Christophe , Rakas Jasenka
Published: May 2011

The presented methodology has two fundamental goals: first, to foster greener design practices among airport managers, planners, and designers, and second, to establish a dynamic dialogue between all airport stakeholders, while overcoming the shortcomings of traditional environmental impact assessments and thus ensuring capacity enhancement. The innovative aspects of the methodology are the combination of a flexible implementation strategy, the use of Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) with cost and utility functions, and a structured definition of environmental sustainability with customized evaluation parameters.
Study on Low-Carbon Economy Model and Method of Chinese Tourism Industry
Authors: Mu Zhang , Jing Luo , Xiaohong Zhang , Lei Tang , Xiao-na Feng , Shan Chen
Published: May 2011

Recent years saw the global wave of new low-carbon economy, which is a new strategic measure to cope with global warming, and it has gained lots of concerns from many governments. As the representatives of developing countries, China is responsible for “common but distinguishing duty for global climate change.” Many policies have been made to develop low-carbon economy with the hope to advocate and innovate low-carbon economy in some industries and cities during these years. Therefore, it is a theoretical and innovative project to find out a low-carbon economical model for various industries and carry out the experiments of low-carbon economy in some cities. Hence, guided by low-carbon economy theory, choosing booming Chinese tourism industry as the object, this chapter tries to construct an operation framework system of low-carbon tourism development from the advantage of low-carbon tourism to the proposal of low-carbon tourism definition so as to conclude an execution scheme of “six elements” of low-carbon tourism with selecting OCT East (Chinese national ecotourism demonstration district) and Mt. Danxia (World Geo-park) as demonstration districts to discuss about models and methods of low-carbon economy in tourism.
Culture
Authors: Rennaker Mark A. , Novak Dan
Published: May 2011

Culture represents a pattern of beliefs, values, assumptions, and behaviors that both develops and persists over time within a social unit. Cultural patterns might be observed at multiple levels including beliefs or assumptions (Schein, 2004), multiple layers including corporate or global (Marquardt & Engel, 1993), multiple factors including religion and family (Marquardt & Engel, 1993), and multiple dimensions including power-distance and uncertainty avoidance (Hofstede, 2001). The multiple locations and individual cultures represented by distributed team members suggests that creation and enhancement of culture by distributed team leaders is more complex than in face-to-face teams. Culture-building tools available to leaders include primary embedding mechanisms such as what leaders pay attention to and who leaders recruit, along with secondary embedding mechanisms including philosophies and creeds (Schein, 2004).
Ethical Leadership as a Cross-Cultural Leadership Style
Authors: Yates Laurie
Published: May 2011

Although many leadership theories have been offered to date, scholars and practitioners still search for answers to failed leadership. A recent theoretical construct of ethical leadership has been proposed that may offer a solution (Brown, Trevino, & Harrison, 2004; Trevino, Brown, & Hartman, 2003). The increasing number of global companies adds a further dimension to the study of leadership, one that considers the impact of various country cultures. The study outlined in this chapter addressed both issues by exploring ethical leadership as a viable theory that may be considered for use across cultures. Research consisted of interviews with experienced international managers who also held MBA degrees. Results led to recommendations for international managers in leadership positions as well as directions for future research.
New Approaches Needed to Support the Distributed Environment
Authors: Young William H. , Young Brenda G.
Published: May 2011

The implications of all these changes are becoming clearer for HR development, education, and training functions. These changes will make it easier to share information and optimize knowledge creation. They will affect the continuing evolution of the workforce because access to the Internet and a laptop are no longer enough for successful management of a distributed team. Keeping up with change effectively is an important part of a company’s long-term plan. Forward-looking organizations will implement strategies to maximize the benefits of these changes and soften the negative effects. Well-managed distributed teams can be an integral part of a company’s strategy and can provide major benefits to the company.
IT Human Resources
Authors: Schneidermeyer Phil
Published: May 2011

In this chapter, IT human recourse professionals will find confirmation of the important role that they play in ensuring the creation of a high performance department. They develop, recommend, and then lead the talent management strategy. As leadership needs arise, HR works with IT leadership to assess internal candidates, and if they do not fit, then they can assess and recommend external staffing firms with the appropriate expertise and reach. The human resources/CIO partnership will include leading the effort to develop a position specification, managing the candidates through the interview process, and negotiating an offer that often times must be customized to attract the ideal candidate. Finally, once selected, human resources will manage the on-boarding process to ensure that the recent hire has the support they need and can get up to speed quickly.
Retaining IT Professionals
Authors: Pipoli Gina , Fuchs Rosa María
Published: May 2011

Retaining talent is one of the most important issues that HR Managers must address. This chapter discusses the retention practices model applied by IT. In accordance with the model developed by Julia Naggiar in 2001, it analyses six best practices: orientation, training, career development, motivation, compensation, feedback, and evaluation. Additionally, because of their importance, it also deals with turnover rate implications. To find the best retention practices for IT professionals, these variables have been evaluated in an investigation carried out with Latin-American IT professionals and HR Managers to find out which practices IT professionals consider paramount in retaining talent.
Attracting and Retaining ICT Professionals in Brazilian Companies
Authors: Yokomizo Cesar Akira , Nakata Lina Eiko
Published: May 2011

Results show that ICT professionals consider learning and development the most important expectancy in the workplace, followed by satisfaction and motivation. Women in ICT companies consider the learning and development expectancy much more important than their peers in non-ICT companies, and even more than men in both ICT and non-ICT companies. For HR and IT managers, this chapter provides some insights on what expectancy variables could be better explored and exploited to attract and retain IT professionals.
Present, Past and Future of IT Careers, a Review
Authors: Hernández-López Adrián , Colomo-Palacios Ricardo , García-Crespo Ángel , Cabezas-Isla Fernando
Published: May 2011

Careers have experienced an evolution parallel to society’s constant progress. Careers have migrated from hierarchical and unidirectional models within a single organization, to models that provide non-linear or vertical movement within the hierarchy, movement between organizations, changes in employer-employee relationships, etc. Furthermore, careers have transferred responsibility from organizations to individuals. Due to these changes, careers have been transmuted from the organizational pyramid to a globalized, boundaryless, and one-dimensional scheme. In addition, within the IT sector, external factors such as gender, organizational culture, differences in requirements between technical and nontechnical positions, among others, have also impacted career management. This chapter presents a review of the changes that have been undertaken in career management from a general point of view, to the peculiarities of the IT sector, and ultimately encompass some conclusions extracted from research.
A State-of-the-Art in Spatio-Temporal Data Warehousing, OLAP and Mining
Authors: Gómez Leticia , Kuijpers Bart , Moelans Bart , Vaisman Alejandro
Published: May 2011

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have been extensively used in various application domains, ranging from economical, ecological and demographic analysis, to city and route planning. Nowadays, organizations need sophisticated GIS-based Decision Support System (DSS) to analyze their data with respect to geographic information, represented not only as attribute data, but also in maps. Thus, vendors are increasingly integrating their products, leading to the concept of SOLAP (Spatial OLAP). Also, in the last years, and motivated by the explosive growth in the use of PDA devices, the field of moving object data has been receiving attention from the GIS community, although not much work has been done to provide moving object databases with OLAP capabilities. In the first part of this paper we survey the SOLAP literature. We then address the problem of trajectory analysis, and review recent efforts regarding trajectory data warehousing and mining. We also provide an in-depth comparative study between two proposals: the GeoPKDD project (that makes use of the Hermes system), and Piet, a proposal for SOLAP and moving objects, developed at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Finally, we discuss future directions in the field, including SOLAP analysis over raster data.
Primary and Referential Horizontal Partitioning Selection Problems
Authors: Bellatreche Ladjel , Boukhalfa Kamel , Richard Pascal
Published: May 2011

Horizontal partitioning has evolved significantly in recent years and widely advocated by the academic and industrial communities. Horizontal Partitioning affects positively query performance, database manageability and availability. Two types of horizontal partitioning are supported: primary and referential. Horizontal fragmentation in the context of relational data warehouses is to partition dimension tables by primary fragmentation then fragmenting the fact table by referential fragmentation. This fragmentation can generate a very large number of fragments which may make the maintenance task very complicated. In this paper, we first focus on the evolution of horizontal partitioning in commercial DBMS motivated by decision support applications. Secondly, we give a formalization of the referential fragmentation schema selection problem in the data warehouse and we study its hardness to select an optimal solution. Due to its high complexity, we develop two algorithms: hill climbing and simulated annealing with several variants to select a near optimal partitioning schema. We present ParAdmin, an advisor tool assisting administrators to use primary and referential partitioning during the physical design of their data warehouses. Finally, extensive experimental studies are conducted using the data set of APB1 benchmark to compare the quality the proposed algorithms using a mathematical cost model. Based on these experiments, some recommendations are given to ensure the well use of horizontal partitioning.
A Systematic Framework of Virtual Laboratories Using Mobile Agent and Design Pattern Technologies
Authors: Li Yi-Hsung , Dow Chyi-Ren , Lin Cheng-Min , Chen Sheng-Chang , Hsu Fu-Wei
Published: May 2011

Innovations in network and information technology have transformed traditional classroom lectures into new approaches that have given universities the opportunity to create a virtual laboratory. However, there is no systematic framework in existing approaches for the development of virtual laboratories. Further, developing a virtual laboratory from scratch is time consuming and costly. This article proposes a systematic framework to classify the activities between learners and instructors in the laboratory and to design the mobile agent-based virtual laboratory by wrapping the existing CAI tools without knowing the source code. Using the existing CAI tools can reduce the time and cost in constructing a virtual laboratory. The framework consists of three parts: mobile agent execution environment, mobile agent and learning platform. Moreover, various mobile agent design patterns are provided for users to design and implement virtual laboratories. This framework of patterns could make mobile agent based virtual laboratories easier to design and understand. The authors’ framework has the following merits: adaptability, cost-effectiveness and collaboration. Their framework has demonstrated its feasibility in several applications, including digital circuit, language learning and digital signal processing laboratories.
A Highly Scalable, Modular Architecture for Computer Aided Assessment e-Learning Systems
Authors: Gierlowski Krzysztof , Nowicki Krzysztof
Published: May 2011

In this chapter, the authors propose a novel e-learning system, dedicated strictly to knowledge assessment tasks. In its functioning it utilizes web-based technologies, but its design differs radically from currently popular e-learning solutions which rely mostly on thin-client architecture. The authors’ research proved that such architecture, while well suited for didactic content distribution systems is ill-suited for knowledge assessment products. In their design, they employed loosely-tied distributed system architecture, strict modularity, test and simulation-based knowledge and skill assessment and an our original communications package called Communication Abstraction Layer (ComAL), specifically designed to support communication functions of e-learning systems in diverse network conditions (including offline environment and content aware networks).The system was tested in production environment on Faculty of Electronics, Telecommunications and Informatics, Technical University of Gdansk with great success, reducing staff workload and increasing efficiency of didactic process. The tests also showed system’s versatility in classroom, remote and blended learning environments.
Statistical Inference-Based Cache Management for Mobile Learning
Authors: Li Qing , Zhao Jianmin , Zhu Xinzhong
Published: May 2011

Supporting efficient data access in the mobile learning environment is becoming a hot research problem in recent years, and the problem becomes tougher when the clients are using light-weight mobile devices such as cell phones whose limited storage space prevents the clients from holding a large cache. A practical solution is to store the cache data at some proxies nearby, so that mobile devices can access the data from these proxies instead of data servers in order to reduce the latency time. However, when mobile devices move freely, the cache data may not enhance the overall performance because it may become too far away for the clients to access. In this article, we propose a statistical caching mechanism which makes use of prior knowledge (statistical data) to predict the pattern of user movement and then replicates/migrates the cache objects among different proxies. We propose a statistical inference based heuristic search algorithm to accommodate dynamic mobile data access in the mobile learning environment. Experimental studies show that, with an acceptable complexity, our algorithm can obtain good performance on caching mobile data.
Supporting Interoperability and Context-Awareness in E-Learning through Situation-Driven Learning Processes
Authors: Dietze Stefan , Gugliotta Alessio , Domingue John
Published: May 2011

Current E-Learning technologies primarily follow a data and metadata-centric paradigm by providing the learner with composite content containing the learning resources and the learning process description, usually based on specific metadata standards such as ADL SCORM or IMS Learning Design. Due to the design-time binding of learning resources, the actual learning context cannot be considered appropriately at runtime, what limits the reusability and interoperability of learning resources. This paper proposes Situation-driven Learning Processes (SDLP) which describe learning processes semantically from two perspectives: the user perspective considers a learning process as a course of learning goals which lead from an initial situation to a desired situation, whereas the system perspective utilizes Semantic Web Services (SWS) technology to semantically describe necessary resources for each learning goal within a specific learning situation. Consequently, a learning process is composed dynamically and accomplished in terms of SWS goal achievements by automatically allocating learning resources at runtime. Moreover, metadata standard-independent SDLP are mapped to established standards such as ADL SCORM and IMS LD. As a result, dynamic adaptation to specific learning contexts as well as interoperability across different metadata standards and application environments is achieved. To prove the feasibility, a prototypical application is described finally.
A New Process Phase Diagnostic Technique
Authors: Hsu Pi-Shan , Chang Te-Jeng
Published: May 2011

By improving the imperfections of previous diagnostic techniques, the new process phase real-time diagnostic technique is developed to be suitable for an adaptive e-learning instructional process. This new diagnostic technique combines measures of a learner’s learning effort with associated performance in order to compare the efficiency of learning condition in a process phase, real-time, and non-interfering instructional process. The learning effort is represented as a visualized learning effort curve which is a user-friendly interface to enhance the decision making of learning path through the effective interaction between instructors and learners in an adaptive e-learning instructional process. The situated experiment was designed based on the new diagnostic technique and applied on 165 university students. In-depth group interview was conducted right after accomplishing the experiment. Results indicate that the learning effort curve is a capable real-time and non-interfering tool to diagnose learning progress in adaptive e-learning process.
The Construction of an Ontology-Based Ubiquitous Learning Grid
Authors: Liao Ching-Jung , Chou Chien-Chih , Yang Jin-Tan David
Published: May 2011

The purpose of this study is to incorporate adaptive ontology into ubiquitous learning grid to achieve seamless learning environment. Ubiquitous learning grid uses ubiquitous computing environment to infer and determine the most adaptive learning contents and procedures in anytime, any place and with any device. To achieve the goal, an ontology-based ubiquitous learning grid (OULG) was proposed to resolve the difficulties concerning how to adapt learning environment for different learners, devices, places. OULG through ontology identifying and adapting in the aspects of domain, task, devices, and background information awareness, so that the adaptive learning content could be delivered. A total of 42 freshmen participate in this study for four months to learn Java programming. Both of pretesting and posttesting are performed to ensure that the OULG is useful. Experimental results demonstrate that OULG is feasibile and effective in facilitating learning.
Effect of Teaching Using Whole Brain Instruction on Accounting Learning
Authors: Lee Li-Tze , Hung Jason C.
Published: May 2011

McCarthy (1985) constructed the 4MAT teaching model, an eight step instrument developed in 1980, by synthesizing Dewey’s experiential learning, Kolb’s four learning styles, Jung’s personality types, as well as Bogen’s left mode and right mode of brain processing preferences. An important implication of this model is that learning retention is improved in the whole brain treatment group and thus this model is effective in retaining learning information as long term memory. Specifically, when examine the effectiveness of student scoring levels (high, median, and low), the results indicated that retention improved across all levels in the treatment group while results were inconsistent in the control group. When examine academic achievement and attitudes, interaction factor of both school and method showed a statistically significant difference.
3D Assistive Technologies and Advantageous Themes for Collaboration and Blended Learning of Users with Disabilities
Authors: Dafoulas Georgios A. , Saleeb Noha
Published: May 2011

The significance of newly emergent 3D virtual worlds to different genres of users is currently a controversial subject in deliberation. Users range from education pursuers, business contenders, and social seekers to technology enhancers and many more who comprise both users with normal abilities in physical life and those with different disabilities. This study aims to derive and critically analyze, using grounded theory, advantageous and disadvantageous themes, and their sub concepts of providing e-learning through 3D Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs), like Second Life, to disabled users. Hence providing evidence that 3DVLEs not only support traditional physical learning, but also offer e-learning opportunities unavailable through 2D VLEs (like Moodle, Blackboard), and offer learning opportunities unavailable through traditional physical education. Furthermore, to achieve full potential from the above-mentioned derived concepts, architectural and accessibility design requirements of 3D educational facilities proposed by different categories of disabled students to accommodate for their needs, are demonstrated.
Spatial Knowledge Communication to Visually Challenged People
Authors: Patel Kanubhai K. , Vij Sanjay Kumar
Published: May 2011

A computational model of non-visual spatial learning through virtual learning environment (VLE) is presented in this chapter. The inspiration has come from Landmark-Route-Survey (LRS) theory, the most accepted theory of spatial learning. An attempt has been made to combine the findings and methods from several disciplines including cognitive psychology, behavioral science and computer science (specifically virtual reality (VR) technology). The study of influencing factors on spatial learning and the potential of using cognitive maps in the modeling of spatial learning are described. Motivation to use VLE and its characteristics are also described briefly. Different types of locomotion interface to VLE with their constraints and benefits are discussed briefly. The authors believe that by incorporating perspectives from cognitive and experimental psychology to computer science, this chapter will appeal to a wide range of audience - particularly computer engineers concerned with assistive technologies, professionals interested in virtual environments, including computer engineers, architect, city-planner, cartographer, high-tech artists, and mobility trainers, and psychologists involved in the study of spatial cognition, cognitive behaviour, and human-computer interfaces.
Statistical Analysis of Facial Expression on 3D Face Shapes
Authors: Minoi Jacey-Lynn , Gillies Duncan
Published: May 2011

The aim of this chapter is to identify those face areas containing high facial expression information, which may be useful for facial expression analysis, face and facial expression recognition and synthesis. In the study of facial expression analysis, landmarks are usually placed on well-defined craniofacial features. In this experiment, the authors have selected a set of landmarks based on craniofacial anthropometry and associate each of the landmarks with facial muscles and the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) framework, which means to locate landmarks on less palpable areas that contain high facial expression mobility. The selected landmarks are statistically analysed in terms of facial muscles motion based on FACS. Given that human faces provide information to channel verbal and non-verbal communication: speech, facial expression of emotions, gestures, and other human communicative actions; hence, these cues may be significant in the identification of expressions such as pain, agony, anger, happiness, et cetera. Here, the authors describe the potential of computer-based models of three-dimensional (3D) facial expression analysis and the non-verbal communication recognition to assist in biometric recognition and clinical diagnosis.