bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Cut and Paste
Authors: Logie John
Published: May 2011

This chapter posits a widening gap between workplace writing practices and traditional composition pedagogies. In particular, this chapter suggests that traditional composition pedagogies persist in foregrounding solitary, proprietary authors as model composers, despite the limited applicability of these models. The fields of technical and professional communication, by contrast, have long valued collaboration and modes of authorship that do not always imply the composer’s ownership of a given text. These fields’ biases are reinforced by the advent of digital media, and the Internet in particular. Digital technologies facilitate collaboration and promote a greater range of authorial stances than their print counterparts. The chapter concludes by offering pedagogical approaches directed at promoting composition pedagogies commensurate with the challenges faced by professional and technical writers working in digital composing spaces.
Domains of Teaching
Authors: Tomei Lawrence A.
Published: May 2011

This chapter establishes the domains of teaching as one of two “pillars of instructional technology” and offers the necessary grounding in the history and evolution of cognitive, affective, and psychomotor teaching. The cognitive domain encompasses intellectual objectives that deal with “the recall or recognition of knowledge and the development of intellectual abilities and skills.” The affective domain takes in individual “changes in interest, attitudes, and values, and the development of appreciations and adequate adjustment.” Finally, the psychomotor domain embraces physical skills and the performance of actions involved in learning described as “the manipulative or motor-skill area” (Bloom, 1956).
Taxonomies of Education
Authors: Tomei Lawrence A.
Published: May 2011

This chapter explores the key to taxonomies and their effectiveness as a teaching strategy. The explanation lies in their use of learning objectives constructed to embody three primary characteristics: an observable task, particular learning conditions, and established standards of performance. A properly constructed learning objective involves an observable task that the student must perform to demonstrate that the goal has been mastered. There must be little doubt as to the conditions under which the learning will occur, namely, the actions students are expected to demonstrate. Finally, learning objectives must stipulate what constitutes successful learning. Standards authenticate successful learning.
Technology Integration (Level 5.0)
Authors: Tomei Lawrence A.
Published: May 2011

As this critical level of the taxonomy, technology integration provides for “teaching with technology.” In the previous chapter, infused technologies centered on learning. At level 5.0, the focus is on “creating new technology-based materials by combining various technologies to teach.” Within an effective educational setting, technology becomes an enabling tool for teaching and takes many forms at this level of the taxonomy. A prime function of integrated technologies is to provide learners with knowledge of specific subject areas. Traditionally, students learn from technologies used as delivery tools to communicate messages just as they learn from teachers. But at this level of the taxonomy, learners will create “new technology-based materials, combining otherwise disparate technologies to teach.”
Techology (Level 6.0)
Authors: Tomei Lawrence A.
Published: May 2011

At the apex of the Taxonomy for the Technology Domain lies the study of technology, an often overlooked, yet uncommonly important venue for the application of technology for teaching and learning. Closely akin to the highest level of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives in the cognitive domain, Tech-ology concerns itself with the “ability to judge the universal impact, shared values, and social implications of technology use and its influence on teaching and learning.” Given the impact of technology on society over the past six decades, this level of the taxonomy also concerns itself with judgments, recommendations, implications, influences, values, effect, and affect on teaching and learning. Some of the most essential considerations are presented here.
Rule-Based Transformation of Graphs and the Product Type
Authors: Klempien-Hinrichs Renate , Kreowski Hans-Jörg , Kuske Sabine
Published: May 2011

This chapter presents rule-based graph transformation as a framework for modeling data-processing systems. It recalls the structuring concept of graph transformation units which allows for transforming graphs in a rule-based, modularized, and controlled way. In order to get a flexible typing mechanism and a high degree of parallelism, this structuring concept is extended to the product of transformation units. Moreover, it is demonstrated how the product type can be used to transform graph transformation units. The authors advocate rule-based graph transformation for all applications where data, knowledge, and information can be modeled as graphs and their transformation can be specified by means of rules in an adequate way.
Transformation Based XML Query Optimization
Authors: Che Dunren
Published: May 2011

This chapter addresses the fundamental issues of XML query optimization – equivalences and transformation rules. Equivalences are typically used as the basis to pursue transformation-based query optimization in traditional database systems. In this chapter, we develop the conception of equivalences in the context of XML database and XML query optimization. We then propose to derive deterministic transformation rules by incorporating general and XML-specific optimization heuristics to achieve high optimization efficiency for XML queries. We hope the work presented in this chapter will set a preliminary foundation or framework for further in-depth investigation for transformation-based XML query optimization.
From Conceptual Models to Data Models
Authors: Badia Antonio
Published: May 2011

This chapter describes transformations between conceptual models (mainly entity-relationship diagrams and also UML) and data models. It describes algorithms to transform a given conceptual model into a data model for a relational, object-relational, object-oriented and XML database. Some examples are used to illustrate the transformations. While some transformations are well known, some (like the transformation into XML or into object-relational schemas) have not been investigated in depth. The chapter shows that most of these transformations offer options which involve important trade-offs that database designers should be aware of.
Imprecise and Uncertain Engineering Information Modeling in Databases
Authors: Ma Z.M.
Published: May 2011

Computer-based information systems have become the nerve center of current manufacturing systems. Engineering information modeling in databases is thus essential. However, information imprecision and uncertainty extensively arise in engineering design and manufacturing. So contemporary engineering applications have put a requirement on imprecise and uncertain information modeling. Viewed from database systems, engineering information modeling can be identified at two levels: conceptual data modeling and logical database modeling and correspondingly we have conceptual data models and logical database models, respectively. In this chapter, we firstly investigate information imprecision and uncertainty in engineering applications. Then EXPRESS-G, which is a graphical modeling tool of EXPRESS for conceptual data modeling of engineering information, and nested relational databases are extended based on possibility distribution theory, respectively, in order to model imprecise and uncertain engineering information. The formal methods to mapping fuzzy EXPRESS-G schema to fuzzy nested relational schema are developed.
Analysing Transformations in Performance Management
Authors: Wondergem Bernd , Vincent Norbert
Published: May 2011

Performance Management (PM) is a way of managing in which the organisation’s goals and organisation model are made explicit. In this chapter, several forms of PM are investigated to meet these observations. The goals and organisation model together form the management model of the organisation. Steering the organisation towards its strategic goals then comes down to repeatedly transforming this management model. In this chapter, these transformations are systematically analysed. In order to do this, we first provide a framework in which several types of transformation can be identified. Second, properties of the transformations are stated and related to different styles of management. In addition, we sketch future trends in a resource-based view on performance management.
Supporting Proximate Communities with P3-Systems
Authors: Jones Quentin , Grandhi Sukeshini A.
Published: May 2011

In this chapter we examine systems that link People-to-People-to-geographical-Places, which we label P3-Systems. Four major P3-Systems design approaches have been identified by an analysis of systems prototyped to date: (1) People Centric P3-System design that use absolute user location, based on awareness of where somebody is located (e.g., Active Badge); (2) People Centric P3-System design based on user co-location/proximity (e.g., Hocman); (3) Place Centric P3-System design based on the use of virtual spaces that contain representations of user’s use of physical spaces (e.g., ActiveMap); and (4) Place Centric P3-System design based on the use of virtual spaces that contain online interactions related to physical location (e.g., Geonotes). This chapter explores how proximate community member interactions can potentially be well supported by P3-Systems through the improved geographical contextualization and coordination of interactions and the identification of previously unidentified location based affinities between community members.
Indiana University Bloomington Libraries Presents Organization to the Users and Power to the People
Authors: Dallis Diane , Ryner Doug
Published: May 2011

This chapter describes how the Indiana University Bloomington Libraries created a database-driven Web system that enables librarians and staff to publish content to the libraries’ public Web site that maintains a consistent design and places the content into a logical and consistent structure. The system comprises the libraries’ public Web site interface, the content manager (CM) administrative interface, and an intranet. The new Web system was designed to replace a decentralized process that was previously followed to maintain a large Web site of 8,000-plus static HTML pages. The new system made it possible for their large decentralized organization to present a unified and well-designed public interface on the Web. The authors describe the technical and conceptual development of the content management aspect of the system with the hope of increasing understanding of content management systems.
Website Maintenance Workflow at a Medium-Sized University Library
Authors: Mach Michelle
Published: May 2011

Currently, more than half the library staff at a medium-size academic library maintain large numbers of static Web pages using Web editors, rather than content management tools. While not optimal in the technical sense, this process does maximize the individual’s creative contributions to the site. Because of this flexibility, feedback about this process has been primarily positive at an individual level. However, a growing number of challenges in the areas of content, priorities, technical skills, and workflow exceptions have cast doubt on this system’s long-term prospects. This chapter discusses the balance between individual and group needs, and the true cost of a purely technical solution to the problem of Web maintenance.
Database-Driven Web Pages Using Only JavaScript
Authors: Sottong Stephen
Published: May 2011

The California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA) Library decided, as part of an overall redesign of its Web site, to use database-driven Web pages (also called dynamic Web pages). When the servers for the database-driven pages were closed down due to a virus attack, a new method of creating the database-driven pages without the necessity of special servers was devised. The resultant Web pages use JavaScript arrays to simulate a database and embedded JavaScript programs to provide the dynamic content for the pages.
A Duplicate Chinese Document Image Retrieval System
Authors: Chan Yung-Kuan , Ho Yu-An , Wu Hsien-Chu , Chu Yen-Ping
Published: May 2011

An optical character recognition (OCR) system enables a user to feed an article directly into an electronic computer file and translate the optically scanned bitmaps of text characters into machine-readable codes; that is, ASCII, Chinese GB, as well as Big5 codes, and then edits it by using a word processor. OCR is hence being employed by libraries to digitize and preserve their holdings. Billions of letters are sorted every day by OCR machines, which can considerably speed up mail delivery.
A Primer on E-Government
Authors: Schelin Shannon Howle
Published: May 2011

E-government (electronic government) has become a mainstay in local, state, and federal government. The era of e-commerce and e-business began with the widespread adoption of the Internet in the mid-1990s and today many citizens expect the same responsiveness and access to government services as found in the private sector. According to the 2002 International City/County Managers Association e-government survey, over 73 percent of municipalities with populations larger than 2,500 have Web sites. The 2002 Pew Internet and American Life Project indicates that 58 percent (68 million people) of American Internet users have accessed at least one governmental Web site (Larson and Rainie, 2002).
Agent-Based Intelligence Infrastructure
Authors: Tang Zaiyong , Sivaramakrishnan Subramanian
Published: May 2011

Today’s enterprises must go beyond traditional goals of efficiency and effectiveness; they need to be intelligent in order to adapt and survive in a continuously changing environment (Liebowitz, 1999). An intelligent organization is a living organism, where all components and subsystems work coherently to enable the enterprise to maximize its potential in its goal-driven endeavors. Stonier (1991) suggested that intelligent organizations must have not only intelligent individuals, but also “collective intelligence” that is created through integration of intelligence from sub-units of the organization. Researchers have developed frameworks for building organizations around intelligence, as opposed to traditional approaches that focus on products, processes, or functions (e.g., McMaster, 1996; Liang, 2002). Analogous to intelligent biological life, an intelligent organization has a life of its own. An intelligent enterprise understands its internal structure and activities, as well as external forces such as market, competition, technology, and customers. It learns and adapts continuously to the changing environment. The learning and adaptation are achieved through real-time monitoring of operations, listening to customers, watching the markets, gathering and analyzing data, creating and disseminating knowledge, and making intelligent decisions.
Antecedents of Trust in Online Communities
Authors: Ridings Catherine M. , Gefen David
Published: May 2011

Online virtual communities have existed on the Internet since the early 1980s as Usenet newsgroups. With the advent of the World Wide Web and emphasis on Web site interactivity, these communities and accompanying research have grown rapidly (Horrigan, Rainie, & Fox, 2001; Lee, Vogel, & Limayem, 2003; Petersen, 1999). Virtual communities arise as a natural consequence of people coming together to discuss a common hobby, medical affliction, or other similar interest, such as coin collecting, a devotion to a rock group, or living with a disease such as lupus. Virtual communities can be defined as groups of people with common interests and practices that communicate regularly and for some duration in an organized way over the Internet through a common location or site (Ridings, Gefen, & Arinze, 2002). The location is the “place” where the community meets, and it can be supported technologically by e-mail listservs, newsgroups, bulletin boards, or chat rooms, for example. The technology helps to organize the community’s conversation, which is the essence of the community. For example, messages in a community supported by a listserv are organized in e-mails, sometimes even grouping together several messages into an e-mail digest. In bulletin board communities, the conversation is organized into message threads consisting of questions or comments posted by members and associated replies to the messages.
Archival Issues Related to Digital Creations
Authors: Kieler Mark , West Michael J.
Published: May 2011

The authors define “intellectual creations” as human expressions embodied in text, music, or other forms of art. Increasingly, we encode these creations in digital formats that have extremely short life cycles. Eventually, backward compatibility is lost. Thus, after very little time, a digital encoding format becomes obsolete, and intellectual works encoded in the format may become irretrievable. In contrast, the cultural worth of an intellectual creation may not be realized for generations. Additionally, future generations must access artifacts, including intellectual creations, to understand a culture in historical context. We contend that technology – intensive storage and manipulation of data may result in an inability to gain this access. Technology creators have some responsibility to facilitate future retrieval through careful documentation, and by selective maintenance of hardware that may be required to access archival media.
Assessing the Value of Information Systems Investments
Authors: Dykman Charlene A.
Published: May 2011

Accurate assessment of the potential or realized value and impact of an information systems investment is becoming increasingly important. While hardware and software are, to a large extent, becoming commoditized, the overall cost of information systems projects continues to increase. Labor and other organizational costs continue to escalate. The result is that IS professionals must begin to view their systems projects with a business perspective. Such a business perspective includes the application of various quantitative approaches to assessing the value of information systems.
Audience-Driven Web Site Design
Authors: De Troyer Olga
Published: May 2011

In the last few years, Web sites have evolved from a simple collection of hypertext pages towards applications supporting complex business processes. Although it is still easy to publish a couple of pages, more and more it is recognized that appropriate design methods are needed to develop more complex Web sites. In the past, Web sites were created opportunistically without prior planning or analysis, and without any regard for methodology, resulting in the classical maintenance problems and development backlog. At the same time, a new problem unknown in classical information systems emerged: competition for the visitor’s attention. Especially for commercial Web sites, it is important to hold the interest of the visitors and to keep them coming back. As stated by usability expert Jakob Nielsen: “all the competitors in the world are but a mouse click away” (Nielsen, 2000). Much more than in “classical” software systems, the usability of Web sites is a primary factor for their success.
Behavioral Factors in Strategic Alliances
Authors: Mandal Purnendu , Shao Dale H. , Kim Chong W.
Published: May 2011

Recently, there has been a growing trend among information technology (IT) organizations to form strategic alliances to increase competitive advantages in the marketplace. For an organization to exploit the benefits of alliances, human factors and IT factors must be among the basic components of any strategic plan (Kemeny & Yanowitz, 2000). Despite the obvious need to consider human and IT factors when developing a long-term plan, many strategic plans developed in the past that led to alliances have failed to consider human aspects. Examples of failure in the implementation of IT systems due to the lack of consideration of human factors have come to light in recent years, but a comprehensive study of the consideration of human factors in the development of strategic alliances resulting in a major IT system alignment for a firm, is still rare in IT literature.
Bridging the Digital Divide in Scotland
Authors: Malina Anna
Published: May 2011

Perceptions of the different meanings and issues surrounding the term digital divide have set the scene for policy development in various countries. In recent times, broader analysis of the meanings and problems have altered understanding, and a new range of initiatives to tackle perceived problems is being devised in the United Kingdom (UK) and its regions. In what follows, digital divide perspectives are outlined and action to close the divide in Scotland is discussed.
Business Process and Workflow Modeling in Web Services
Authors: Yen Vincent
Published: May 2011

In large organizations, typical systems portfolios consist of a mix of legacy systems, proprietary applications, databases, off-the-shelf packages, and client-server systems. Software systems integration is always an important issue and yet a very complex and difficult area in practice. Consider the software integration between two organizations on a supply chain; the level of complexity and difficulty multiply quickly. How to make heterogeneous systems work with each other within an enterprise or across the Internet is of paramount interest to businesses and industry.
Cache Management for Web-Powered Databases
Authors: Katsaros Dimitrios , Manolopoulos Yannis
Published: May 2011

In recent years, the World Wide Web, or simply the Web (Berners-Lee, Caililiau, Luotonen, Nielsen, & Secret, 1994), has become the primary means for information dissemination. It is a hypertext-based application and uses the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) for file transfers.
Conducting Ethical Research in Virtual Environments
Authors: Roberts Lynne D. , Smith Liegh M. , Pollock Claie M.
Published: May 2011

The rapid growth of the Internet has been accompanied by a growth in the number and types of virtual environments supporting computer-mediated communication. This was soon followed by interest in using these virtual environments for research purposes: the recruitment of research participants, the conduct of research and the study of virtual environments. Early research using virtual environments raised a number of ethical issues and debates. As early as 1996, a forum in the The Information Society (vol. 12, no. 2) was devoted to ethical issues in conducting social science research online. The debate has continued with more recent collaborative attempts to develop guidelines for ethical research online (Ess & Association of Internet Researchers, 2002; Frankel & Siang, 1999).
Content-Based Retrieval Concept
Authors: Chan Yung-Kuan , Chang Chin-Chen
Published: May 2011

Because of the demand for efficient management in images, much attention has been paid to image retrieval over the past few years. The text-based image retrieval system is commonly used in traditional search engines (Ratha et al., 1996), where a query is represented by keywords that are usually identified and classified by human beings. Since people have different understandings on a particular image, the consistency is difficult to maintain. When the database is larger, it is arduous to describe and classify the images because most images are complicated and have many different objects. There has been a trend towards developing the content-based retrieval system, which tries to retrieve images directly and automatically based on their visual contents.
Cross-Cultural Research in MIS
Authors: Karahanna Elena , Evaristo Roberto , Srite Mark
Published: May 2011

“Globalization of business highlights the need to understand the management of organizations that span different nations and cultures” (Srite et al., 2003, p. 31). In these multinational and transcultural organizations, there is a growing call for utilizing information technology (IT) to achieve efficiencies, coordination, and communication. However, cultural differences between countries may have an impact on the effectiveness and efficiency of IT deployment. Despite its importance, the effect of cultural factors has received limited attention from information systems’ (IS) researchers. In a review of cross-cultural research specifically focused on the MIS area (Evaristo, Karahanna, & Srite, 2000), a very limited number of studies were found that could be classified as cross-cultural. Additionally, even though many of the studies found provided useful insights, raised interesting questions, and generally contributed toward the advancement of the state of the art in its field, with few exceptions, no study specifically addressed equivalency issues central to measurement in cross-cultural research. It is this methodological issue of equivalency that is the focus of this article.
Current Multicast Technology
Authors: Hosszu Gabor
Published: May 2011

Multicast technology is one-to-many communication, oppositely from the usual one-to-one (unicast) communication, which provides an efficient solution to create multiparty collaborative software by delivering the data flows on an appropriate distribution tree. The root of the distribution tree is the sender and its leaves are the receivers. Many Internet applications, such as distributed simulation, remote education, and videoconference require the underlayer network to support multicast communication.
Data Mining in Franchise Organizations
Authors: Chen Ye-Sho , Zhang Bin , Justis Bob
Published: May 2011

Franchising has been a popular business approach given the high rate of business failures (Justis & Judd, 2002; Thomas & Seid, 2000), and its popularity continues to increase in today’s e-business-centered global economy. For example, Entrepreneur magazine¾well known for its Franchise 500 listing¾in early 2001 included a category called Tech Businesses into its Franchise Zone which contains subcategories of Internet Businesses, Tech Training, and Miscellaneous Tech Businesses. At the time of this writing, 35 companies are on the list of Entrepreneur.com. Netchising, combing the power of the Internet for global demand-and-supply processes and international franchising arrangements for local responsiveness, seems to rise as an effective global e-business growth strategy (Beck & Morrison, 2000; Morrison, Beck & Bouquet, 2000). The Netchising business model “offers potentially huge benefits over traditional exporting or foreign direct investment approaches to globalization” and is “a powerful concept with potentially broad applications” (Davenport, 2000, p. 52).
Database Support for M-Commerce
Authors: Leong Hong Va
Published: May 2011

M-commerce applications have evolved out of e-commerce applications, riding on the rapid advancement in mobile communication technologies in the past decade. The diffusion of applications on the Internet into the mobile computing environment has taken an accelerating pace ever since. Virtually all e-commerce and m-commerce applications rely on the provision of information retrieval and processing capability. In this regard, database systems serve as the information source and repository for these applications, backed by efficient indexing mechanism. Bean (2003) gave a good report on supporting Web-based e-commerce with XML, which could be easily extended to m-commerce. An m-commerce framework, based on JINI/XML and a workflow engine, was also defined by Shih and Shim (2002). Customers can receive m-commerce services through the use of mobile devices, such as pocket PCs, PDAs, or even smart phones. These mobile devices together with their users are often modeled as mobile clients. Central to supporting m-commerce applications are three types of entities: mobile device, mobile communication, and database. In particular, we are more interested in providing efficient access mechanisms to mobile-client-enabled database servers, which are often called mobile databases. Mobile databases contain the core information to support the underlying m-commerce applications, while the use of mobile devices serves for the hardware platform, with mobile communication providing the necessary connection between mobile databases and mobile devices for interfacing with real users or customers.
Defining and Understanding ERP Systems
Authors: Sammon David , Adam Frédéric
Published: May 2011

The last 15 years have seen the emergence on the software market of a category of software called Enterprise Resource Planning systems or ERP, which has become the focus of both researchers and practitioners in the information systems area. At this time, the ERP software market is one of the fastest growing markets in the software industry with long-term growth rates of 36-40%. Some estimates put the eventual size of the market by the year 2010 at US$1 trillion (Bingi et al., 1999). Since these estimates have been put forward, the ERP market has slowed down, but the overall growth of the enterprise-wide application market is still quite strong, thanks to a number of additional segments, such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Supply Chain Management (SCM). Also, more recently, a new trend is emerging in the market: the re-implementation and extension of ERP, referred to as ERP II (Humphries and Jimenez, 2003).
Delivering Web-Based Education
Authors: Marold Kathryn A.
Published: May 2011

A decade of hindsight allows us to examine the phenomenon of Web-based course delivery and evaluate its successes and failures. When Web-delivered courses mushroomed from campuses in the 1990s, they were embraced by students, faculty, and administrators alike. The prospect of “electronic tutelage” (Marold, 2002), which allowed students through Web interface to take college courses for credit any time, any place (ATAP), was immediately popular with students. The interruptions of job and schedule changes, relocation, childbirth, failed transportation to campus, and so forth no longer necessitated an interruption in progress toward a degree. Likewise, faculty saw online teaching as an opportunity to disseminate knowledge and assess student progress according to their personal preferences, and to communicate personally with their students, albeit virtually. Administrators saw the revenue without physical classroom allocations as an immediate cash cow. In the beginning, there was satisfaction all around. Although this state of affairs was not necessarily universal, generally it could be concluded that Web-based education was a very good thing.
Developing Trust in Virtual Teams
Authors: Panteli Niki
Published: May 2011

During the last few years, there has been an increasing acknowledgment of the importance of trust in business interactions within the management and organizational literatures (e.g., Kramer & Tyler, 1996; Mayer, Davis, & Schorman, 1995; Rousseau, Sitkin, Burt, & Camerer, 1999). Trust, as a positive and confident expectation in the behavior of another party (Cook & Wall, 1980; Currall & Judge, 1995), enables cooperation and becomes the means for complexity reduction, even in situations where individuals must act under uncertainty with ambiguous and incomplete information. Therefore, it is not surprising that in the current age of global and digital economy and virtuality (Shepherd, 2004), there has been an overwhelming interest in trust. Motivated by the need to better understand trust in the digital era, this paper views the case of global virtual teams in commercial business organizations.
Digital Literacy and the Position of the End-User
Authors: Utsi Steven , Lowyck Joost
Published: May 2011

As an educational setting, the traditional classroom fails to meet the learner’s need for suitable skills to learn with educational software. The development of digital learning skills in school curricula challenges designers of educational software. A useful starting point of research in this domain is the study of literacy, both in its traditional and new forms (Tyner, 1998). It is a powerful background for research on the interaction of learners with educational software platforms. A “platfom” is a particular software package, designed for educational use.
Distributed Construction through Participatory Design
Authors: Zaphiris Panayiotis , Laghos Andrew , Zacharia Giorgos
Published: May 2011

This article presents an empirical study of an online learning community that collaborates with the course design team under the Participatory Design methodology. The different phases of this methodology were implemented using a four-stage participatory design process (Zaphiris & Zacharia, 2001).
E-Collaboration Support Systems
Authors: Karacapilidis Nikos
Published: May 2011

Removal of communication impediments and provision for techniques that systematically direct the pattern, timing, and content of cooperative processes are two key prerequisites in the contemporary organization. Their establishment has been proven to facilitate the solution of ill-structured problems by a set of individuals working together as a team, through the interactive sharing of information between them. E-collaboration involves a variety of both communication and cooperation issues, in that it leverages the connective powers of a computer network to coordinate the efforts of a group of people. By using e-collaborative capabilities in an organization, people can operate as a single business entity, thus making joint decisions of added value.
E-Commerce Curriculum
Authors: Knight Linda V. , Chan Susy S.
Published: May 2011

This article begins by tracing the rapid development of e-commerce curricula in response to demand from employers and students, and the subsequent impact of the dot-com implosion on e-commerce degree programs. The main portion of the article then identifies the major approaches currently taken by universities with respect to e-commerce curricula and explores the three critical e-commerce curriculum issues facing universities. These issues concern (1) whether e-commerce is indeed a separate and distinct discipline, (2) appropriate e-commerce curriculum content, and (3) strategies that can facilitate implementation of an e-commerce program. In the next section of the article, five trends are identified that are critical to the immediate future of e-commerce curricula. Finally, conclusions are drawn concerning the long-term prospects for e-commerce degree programs.
Effective Learning Through Optimum Distance Among Team Members
Authors: Choudhary Bishwajit
Published: May 2011

For several years, researchers have argued that too much closeness or distance among the team members inhibits intellectual debate and lowers the quality of decision-making. In fact it is often said that if two people always agree, then one is useless and if they always disagree, then both are useless. While too much “closeness” leads to copycat attitude, too much “distance” among the team members results in incompatibility. Creating teams in which the members experience “optimum distance” is not easy.
Eight Key Elements of Successful Self-Funding E-Learning Programs
Authors: Levy Yair , Ramim Michelle M.
Published: May 2011

The Greek philosopher Aristotle indicated that learning is the outcome of both teaching and practice. Clearly, learning is not confined exclusively to classroom lectures. In the past several decades, educators explored the possibilities of providing learning experiences to remote students. With improvement in technology and the growing popularity of Internet usage, e-learning caught the attention of both corporations and educational institutions. However, traditional learning methodology began transforming when elite universities embraced the Internet as a vehicle for their degree programs (Forelle, 2003). Progress in e-learning has increased its popularity in the past decade (Levy & Murphy, 2002). Consequently, it is carving a new brand of universities causing traditional schools to rethink their business model. Furthermore, some elite schools have developed specialized online degree and certificate programs. In doing so, these schools strive to compete on this new learning medium and create a new source of revenue, especially due to the declining enrollment and lower government funding resulting from the events on September 11, 2001 (Roueche, Roueche, & Johnson, 2002, p. 10). This paper provides definitions of the eight key elements any institutions should have in order to successfully implement self-funding e-learning systems.
Enterprise Resource Planning Maintenance Concepts
Authors: Ng Celeste See-pui
Published: May 2011

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is packaged software, and the accompanying set of best practices designed to integrate and serve different departments’ needs, and to automate a corporation’s business functions and processes on a single management system, database, and interface. ERP allows business to operate in a real-time, more effective and responsive manner and can facilitate better identification, storage, analysis, reuse and distribution of a company’s business intelligence (e.g., performance, productivity, customer satisfaction, availability, inventory management, communication). SAP, Oracle, and PeopleSoft are the top three ERP software vendors. ERP software installation and popularity have grown over the past decade, especially in the late 1990s (it was once thought to be the panacea for Y2K problem). The motivations for ERP use are internal business integration, best business practices, competitive advantage, and operational cost reduction. Following the market trend, a large number of ERP implementation projects were conducted, especially by large enterprises. However, multi-million dollar ERP implementation projects are not without problems. In some companies, implementation takes much longer and requires a larger budget than expected, and a large number of modifications and configurations to the software are necessary. Some businesses have to change their existing processes to adapt to the software, and thus have to deal with significant internal resistance and change management. A few companies have even been bankrupted by unsuccessful ERP implementation projects.
Evolution of ERP Systems
Authors: Rashid Mohammad A.
Published: May 2011

The functional units of today’s complex business environment require more and more interfunctional data flow for decision making, timely and efficient procurement of product parts, management of inventory, accounting, human resources, and distribution of goods and services. Management of such organizations need efficient information systems to improve competitiveness by cost reduction and better logistics. Enterprise resource-planning systems (ERP), or enterprise systems (Brady, Monk, & Wagner, 2001; Grant, 2003; Hamilton, 2002; Hossain, Patrick, & Rashid, 2002; O’Leary, 2000), are such software systems for business management encompassing modules supporting functional areas such as planning, manufacturing, sales, marketing, distribution, accounting, finances, human resource management, project management, inventory management, service and maintenance, transportation, and e-business. The architecture of the software facilitates transparent integration of modules providing flow of information between all functions within the enterprise in a consistently visible manner. Corporate computing with ERPs allows companies to implement a single integrated system by replacing or reengineering their mostly incompatible legacy information systems.
Face Expression and Motion Analysis over Monocular Images
Authors: Andrés del Valle Ana C.
Published: May 2011

As computers evolve towards becoming more human-oriented machines, human-computer interfaces, behavior-learning robots, and disable-adapted computer environments will use face expression analysis to be able to react to human action. Furthermore, faces play an essential role in human communication. Consequently, they have been the first objects whose motion has been studied in order to recreate animation on synthesized models or to interpret motion for a posteriori use. The analysis of motion and expression from monocular (single) images is widely investigated because non-stereoscopic static images and videos are the most affordable and extensively used visual media (i.e., Webcams).
Formal Development of Reactive Agent-Based Systems
Authors: Kefalas P. , Holcombe M. , Eleftherakis G. , Gheorghe M.
Published: May 2011

Recent advances in both the testing and verification of software based on formal specifications have reached a point where the ideas can be applied in a powerful way in the design of agent-based systems. The software engineering research has highlighted a number of important issues: the importance of the type of modelling technique used; the careful design of the model to enable powerful testing techniques to be used; the automated verification of the behavioural properties of the system; and the need to provide a mechanism for translating the formal models into executable software in a simple and transparent way.
Formal Methods in Software Engineering
Authors: Dasso Aristides , Funes Ana
Published: May 2011

As a general rule, all engineering applications use mathematics or mathematical tools as a basis for their development. However, software engineering is an exception to this rule.
From Digital Divide to Digital Dividend
Authors: Dholakia Nikhilesh , Kshetri Nir
Published: May 2011

Despite rapidly falling costs of hardware, software, and telecommunications services, a wide gap persists between rich and poor nations in terms of their capabilities of accessing, delivering, and exchanging information in digital forms (Carter & Grieco, 2000). Developing countries, comprising over 81% of the world population, account for a tiny fraction of global e-commerce. An estimate suggests that 99.9% of business-to-consumer e-commerce in 2003 took place in the developed regions of North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific (Computer Economics, 2000).
Graph Encoding and Recursion Computation
Authors: Chen Yangjun
Published: May 2011

It is a general opinion that relational database systems are inadequate for manipulating composite objects that arise in novel applications such as Web and document databases (Abiteboul, Cluet, Christophides, Milo, Moerkotte & Simon, 1997; Chen & Aberer, 1998, 1999; Mendelzon, Mihaila & Milo, 1997; Zhang, Naughton, Dewitt, Luo & Lohman, 2001), CAD/ CAM, CASE, office systems and software management. Especially, when recursive relationships are involved, it is cumbersome to handle them in relational databases, which sets current relational systems far behind the navigational ones (Kuno & Rundensteiner, 1998; Lee & Lee, 1998). To overcome this problem, a lot of interesting graph encoding methods have been developed to mitigate the difficulty to some extent. In this article, we give a brief description of some important methods, including analysis and comparison of their space and time complexities.
Heuristics in Medical Data Mining
Authors: George Susan E.
Published: May 2011

Deriving—or discovering—information from data has come to be known as data mining. Within health care, the knowledge from medical mining has been used in tasks as diverse as patient diagnosis (Brameier et al., 2000; Mani et al., 1999; Cao et al., 1998; Henson et al., 1996), inventory stock control (Bansal et al., 2000), and intelligent interfaces for patient record systems (George at al., 2000). It has also been a tool of medical discovery itself (Steven et al., 1996). Yet, it remains true that medicine is one of the last areas of society to be “automated,” with a relatively recent increase in the volume of electronic data, many paper-based clinical record systems in use, a lack of standardisation (for example, among coding schemes), and still some reluctance among health-care providers to use computer technology. Nevertheless, the rapidly increasing volume of electronic medical data is perhaps one of the domain’s current distinguishing characteristics, as one of the last components of society to be “automated.”
Histogram Generation from the HSV Color Space
Authors: Sural Shamik , Vadivel A. , Majumdar A. K.
Published: May 2011

Digital image databases have seen an enormous growth over the last few years. However, since many image collections are poorly indexed or annotated, there is a great need for developing automated, content-based methods that would help users to retrieve images from these databases. In recent times, a lot of attention has been paid to the management of an overwhelming accumulation of rich digital images to support various search strategies. In order to improve the traditional text-based or SQL (Structured Query Language)-based database searches, research has been focused on efficient access to large image databases by the contents of images, such as color, shape, and texture. Content-based image retrieval (CBIR) has become an important research topic that covers a large number of domains like image processing, computer vision, very large databases, and human computer interaction (Smeulders, Worring, Santini, Gupta & Jain, 2000). Several content-based image retrieval systems and methods have recently been developed.
Hyper Video for Distance Learning
Authors: Bochicchio Mario , Fiore Nicola
Published: May 2011

In general, the production of hypermedia applications is a complex and expensive task, requiring both technical skills and communicative abilities (Bochicchio, Paiano & Paolini, 1999a, 1999b). Nevertheless, some specific kinds of multimedia production can give good quality results, even without specialized IT skills, at a low cost. We have concentrated on this particular field, with the goal of supplying a valid tool to teachers who want to publish their educational material easily and at a low cost.
Hypothetical Reasoning Over Databases
Authors: Dang Lei , Embury Suzanne M.
Published: May 2011

In recent years, the term agile organisation has been coined to denote an organisation which is able to change its working practices quickly in order to adapt to changing external pressures or to take advantage of new market opportunities that may arise (Perez-Bustamante, 1999). A key element of such agility is fast and reliable decision making; that is, the ability to determine what the new organisational behaviour shall be, as well as how the changes to it should be affected. In general, an organisation will be faced with several possible strategies for change, each of which has competing strengths and weaknesses. Management must then evaluate and compare each of these to determine which has the best forecasted outcome. This process is often referred to as “what if?” analysis (WiA), since it tries to answer the question: what will the outcome be if we adopt change X? (Codd, Codd, & Salley, 1993)
ICT-Supported Gaming for Competitive Intelligence
Authors: Achterbergh Jan
Published: May 2011

Collecting and processing competitive intelligence for the purpose of strategy formulation are complex activities requiring deep insight in and models of the “organization in its environment.” These insights and models need to be not only shared between CI (competitive intelligence) practitioners for the purpose of data direction, collection, analysis, and dissemination, but also between CI practitioners and strategy makers. Sharing these insights and models requires high-quality communication (both regarding content and process) between these parties. In this overview, we examine the potential of (ICT- [information communication technology] enabled) simulation games to improve the quality of communication between CI practitioners and strategy makers.