bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Utilization of Concept Maps as Knowledge Systematization and Text-Authoring Tools in Collaboration-Based Educational Processes
Authors: Torres Patricia Lupion , Kucharski Marcus Vinicius Santos
Published: October 2011

More than forming technically competent professionals, universities face a new challenge: doing so under specific principles that can only be achieved by developing competencies and abilities that are extremely valuable for today’s work market, such as being able to work in groups, being aware of the many possibilities of facing and solving problems, being open to constant negotiations and readily-adaptable to new work scenarios. The best way to develop such abilities and competencies is in the contexts in which they will be demanded. The incorporation of building concept maps to a teaching-learning methodology developed for a virtual learning environment of a respected Brazilian University was a successful experiment, one whose positive results in encouraging and developing such competencies and abilities deserves to be presented and discussed, which is what we intend to do in this chapter.
Adapting Three-Dimensional-Virtual World to Reach Diverse Learners in an MBA Program
Authors: Rufer Rosalyn , Adams Ruifang Hope
Published: October 2011

The purpose of this chapter is to adapt instructional strategies to virtual world learning environment in Second Life and reach more diverse learners with different learning styles. Part of the approach will focus on learners who are visual as compared to auditory and kinesthetic. Additionally, the approach will examine how changes in pedagogical methods can be used to reach diverse learners with different learning styles in virtual learning environments. The major topics address how styles of learning were considered in designing an instructional strategy and how differences in learning styles were rationalized via learning in a virtual world. Thus student success can be correlated to teaching pedagogy, and hence modified to reach diverse learners. Suggestions are included for adapting a cognitive process combined with multimedia design principles in a virtual world.
Supporting Automated Container Terminal Design Processes with 3D Virtual Environments
Authors: Fumarola Michele , Versteegt Cornelis
Published: October 2011

Recent trends in container terminal design favor automation above manual labor. Automatic container terminals outperform their manual counterparts in terms of twenty-foot equivalent units per year, and they are economically more effective as well. Due to the use of modern technologies, it is not always clear for actors which consequences every decision has on the design. Although technical design drawings are understandable by engineers, they could lack clarity for others, such as business analysts. To overcome this issue, 3D visualizations have often been employed to present future container terminals. However, constructing such visualizations is often time-consuming, expensive, and lacks the flexibility needed through a design process. In this chapter, we present a solution that allows designers to quickly generate 3D environments from technical design drawings. The environment, which is called the “Virtual Terminal,” consists of an AutoCAD plug-in that communicates with a 3D virtual environment. Whenever an updated visualization is needed throughout the design process, this can be realized with minor efforts. The Virtual Terminal has already been used in design processes of major future container terminals, which allowed us to evaluate its usability, usefulness, and usage. The evaluation has been performed both quantitatively (for assessing the usability) and qualitatively (for assessing usefulness and usage).
Enabling Multilingual Social Interactions and Fostering Language Learning in Virtual Worlds
Authors: Cruz-Lara Samuel , Osswald Tarik , Camal Jean-Pierre , Bellalem Nadia , Bellalem Lotfi , Guinaud Jordan
Published: October 2011

In order to enhance interoperability between virtual worlds, applications, and corpora, it is obvious that standards should come into place. This is the main goal of MLIF and, on a more global perspective, of the Metaverse1 project. In this paper, we study social interactions in virtual worlds, present some cues to facilitate them, and describe the empirical support that we developed for these theories. We also present a few methods for fostering language learning in virtual worlds, and we explain how we have implemented some of them.
Commerce Models in Virtual Worlds and Environments
Authors: Riensche Roderick M. , Cowell Andrew J.
Published: October 2011

Operators of popular virtual worlds, online games, and other environments employ a number of models to engage in commerce with users and to facilitate user-to-user commerce. Subscriptions, direct user-to-user transactions, advertising, and sales of premium content are just a few examples. These virtual economies exist alongside and within traditional local and global economies, introducing dynamics related to regulations and currency valuations. Within an active virtual worlds market, content and service providers continually look for more effective ways to derive revenue from their virtual properties, while researchers explore the potential of virtual worlds as experimental environments. For both proprietors and researchers, the implications of commerce models are important considerations when defining business or research strategies.
Perceptions of Trust
Authors: Gomez Ricardo , Gould Elizabeth
Published: October 2011

In this study, the authors found that trust is a key factor that drives people to actually make use of ICT in public access venues. Several factors contribute to building this trust: safety, relevance, reputation, and what is considered “cool.” They discuss these factors throughout this chapter with a particular emphasis on the “cool factor,” which is a relatively new concept in academic literature, especially in the realm of ICT.
“Free” Service or “Good” Service
Authors: Clark Melody , Gomez Ricardo
Published: October 2011

To help frame their findings and discussion, the authors begin with a review of the existing published literature on user fees and other barriers to use of public access venues. At the heart of this chapter lies the findings and discussion section where they offer an analysis on how influential user fees, content availability, and venue staff are in determining ICT use in public access venues. Through this analysis, they seek to have a clearer picture of what users view as incentives and barriers to their use of ICT in public access venues. To conclude, they propose recommendations for public access venues as they move forward and seek sustainability.
Challenges for Libraries in the Information Age
Authors: Gould Elizabeth , Gomez Ricardo
Published: October 2011

Libraries play a central role as venues that offer public access to information. Increasingly, libraries in developing countries are offering access to computers and the Internet, as well as to books and other types of information services and resources. Given the relatively scant literature on public access to ICT in libraries in many countries, we explore in this chapter the specific challenges libraries face in the countries we studied in the Landscape Study. How are public libraries serving the information needs of marginalized communities in developing countries? How is access to new information and communication technologies (ICT) changing the landscape of public access to information? How can libraries better collaborate with other types of venues (such as telecenters and cybercafés) that offer public access to computers and the Internet? These are some of the questions that we seek to answer in this chapter.
Portable Personality and its Personalization Algorithms
Authors: Uhlmann Stefan , Lugmayr Artur
Published: October 2011

With the advances in ubiquitous computing, there is an increasing focus on personalization of user information especially in web-based applications and services. Currently those personalized user profiles are scattered, mostly stored for each individual service. Therefore, this prohibits the usage of those profiles in different environments such as other web-based services, shopping in local stores or sharing interests among people. The so-called Portable Personality focuses on the management and distribution of personalized profiles (in form of a digital personality representing the real-world user) through mobile devices. These portability aspects merge with the idea of cross-system personalization using a single generic user profile. We will briefly introduce some aspects related to profile representation and management with focus on attempts towards such a generic representation. The main discussion will be concentrated around profile portability and its effects on personalization especially towards cross-system support. We include different portable profile scenarios and their personalization methodologies. Furthermore, current personalization algorithms are considered with possible associations towards the presented portable scenarios. At the end, we reflect on existing challenges of current approaches in the field of portable personalization and try to provide some recommendations.
Re-coding the Algorithm
Authors: Gazzard Alison
Published: October 2011

This chapter highlights the different types of play possible within videogames, developing Roger Caillois’ (1958) original categories of “paidia” and “ludus”. The game is examined in terms of Lev Manovich’s (2001) concept of the “algorithm”, in order to see how different syntagms of play are possible within the greater game paradigm. Play is categorised in terms of purposeful play, defined as the play intended by the designer, as opposed to appropriated play, which is discovered by players seeking more from the system. It is through these new terms that different types of motivation for play are discussed, leading to an analysis of how playing outside of the intended rules of the game can be considered through new terminology beyond the often negative connotations of cheating.
Multi-Modal Content Based Image Retrieval in Healthcare
Authors: Kim Jinman , Kumar Ashnil , Cai Tom Weidong , Feng David Dagan
Published: October 2011

Multi-modal imaging requires innovations in algorithms and methodologies in all areas of CBIR, including feature extraction and representation, indexing, similarity measurement, grouping of similar retrieval results, as well as user interaction. In this chapter, we will discuss the rise of multi-modal imaging in clinical practice. We will summarize some of our pioneering CBIR achievements working with these data, exemplified by a specific application domain of PET-CT. We will also discuss the future challenges in this significantly important emerging area.
Revisiting the Feature and Content Gap for Landmark-Based and Image-to-Image Retrieval in Medical CBIR
Authors: Greenspan Hayit
Published: October 2011

Medical image content-based retrieval entails several possible scenarios. One scenario relates to retrieving based on image landmarks. In this scenario, quantitative image primitives are extracted from the image content, in an extensive pre-processing phase, following which these quantities serve as metadata in the archive, for any future search. A second scenario is one in which image-to-image matching is desired. In this scenario, the query input is an image or part of an image and the search is conducted by a comparison on the image level. In this paper we review both retrieval scenarios via example systems developed in recent years in our lab. An example for image landmark retrieval for cervix cancer research is described based on a joint collaboration with National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the National Library of Medicine (NLM) at NIH. The goal of the system is to facilitate training and research via a large archive of uterine cervix images
Alerts in Healthcare Applications
Authors: Chiu Dickson K.W. , Kwok Benny W. C. , Wong Ray L. S. , Kafeza Marina , Cheung S.C. , Kafeza Eleanna , Hung Patrick
Published: October 2011

Urgent requests and critical messages in healthcare applications must be delivered and handled timely instead of in an ad-hoc manner for most current systems. Therefore, we extend a sophisticated alert management system (AMS) to handle process and data integration in healthcare chain workflow management under urgency constraints. Alerts are associated with healthcare tasks to capture the parameters for their routing and urgency requirements in order to match them with the specialties of healthcare personnel or the functionalities of Web Services providers. Monitoring is essential to ensure the timeliness and availability of services as well as to ensure the identification of exceptions. We outline our implementation framework with Web Services for the communications among healthcare service providers together with mobile devices for medical professionals. We demonstrate the applicability of our approach with a prototype medical house-call system (MHCS) and evaluate our approach with medical professionals and various stakeholders.
Understanding the Role of User Experience for Mobile Healthcare
Authors: Oinas-Kukkonen Harri , Räisänen Teppo , Leiviskä Katja , Seppänen Matti , Kallio Markku
Published: October 2011

This chapter seeks for deeper understanding of the user experience in mobile healthcare settings. It studies physicians’ mobile user experiences with evidence-based medical guidelines and drug information databases with the concept of flow as the research vehicle. The data was collected among all of the 352 users of a mobile medical application. The response rate was 66.5% (n=234). The results demonstrate that it is the orientation and navigation within the system, rather than usefulness and ease of use, in par with perceived challenges, focused attention and learning that lead to positive user experience. This supports the fact that finding relevant pieces of information is essential in the system utilization. The results also provide support for the claim that mobile applications are not only beneficial for patient safety, but they may also improve the computer and professional skills of the physicians. The frequent use of the system was noted to improve physicians’ computer skills, the feeling of being in control of the system, and their perception of the system’s ease of use. Moreover, our findings suggest that learning may play a greater role for knowledge work than often suggested.
Challenges Associated with Physicians’ Usage of Electronic Medical Records
Authors: Ilie Virginia , Van Slyke Craig , Courtney James F. , Styne Philip
Published: October 2011

Using the Theory of Planned Behavior, institutional and diffusion theories as theoretical foundations, this study investigates physicians’ attitudes towards and usage of electronic medical records (EMR). Interviews with seventeen physician-residents enrolled in a Family Practice residency program and eight attending physicians in the same clinic showed that most physicians held rather negative attitudes regarding the EMR system. EMR was often times seen as an intrusion in the patient-physician interaction. Other findings relate to how EMR impacts physicians’ time, expertise, and learning, as well as the length (and sometimes the accuracy) of clinical notes. Challenges associated with behavioral control issues such as availability of computers and the physical positioning of computers are shown to be very important in the context of this case. In this organization, physician-residents are required to use EMR because of its mandatory nature, however, if they had a choice or the power, the majority of them would use the paper chart.
Internet as a Source of Health Information and its Perceived Influence on Personal Empowerment
Authors: Paré Guy , Malek Jean-Nicolas , Sicotte Claude , Lemire Marc
Published: October 2011

The primary aim of this study is twofold. First, the authors seek to identify the factors that influence members of the general public to conduct Internet searches for health information. Their second intent is to explore the influence such Internet use has on three types of personal empowerment. In the summer of 2007 the authors conducted a household sample survey of a population of Canadian adults. A total of 261 self-administered questionnaires were returned to the researchers. Our findings indicate that use of the Internet as a source of health information is directly realted to three main factors: sex, age and the individual’s perceived ability to understand, interpret and use the medical information available online. Further, their results lend support to the notion that using the Internet to search for information about health issues represents a more consumer-based and participative approach to health care. This study is one of the first to relate Internet use to various forms of personal empowerment. This area appears to have great potential as a means by which consumers can become more empowered in managing personal health issues.
Open Source Health Information Technology Projects
Authors: Katsamakas Evangelos , Janamanchi Balaji , Raghupathi Wullianallur , Gao Wei
Published: October 2011

This chapter discusses the growth of open source software projects in healthcare. It proposes a research framework that examines the roles of project sponsorship, license type, development status and technological complements in the success of open source health information technology (HIT) projects, and it develops a systematic method for classifying projects based on their success potential. Using data from Sourceforge, an open source software development portal, we find that although project sponsorship and license restrictiveness influence project metrics, they are not significant predictors of project success categorization. On the other hand, development status, operating system, and programming language are significant predictors of an OSS project’s success categorization. We discuss research and application implications and suggest future research directions.
An Innovation Ahead of its Time Understanding the Factors Influencing Patient Acceptance of Walk-In Telemedicine Services
Authors: Serrano Christina I. , Karahanna Elena
Published: October 2011

Though healthcare costs continue to soar, the healthcare industry lags other service industries in applying Information Technology to improve customer, and in this case patient, service, improve access to healthcare services, and reduce costs. One particular area of concern is overuse and overcrowding of emergency departments for nonurgent care. Telemedicine is one potentially important application of Information Technology in this realm. The objective of this study is to examine the antecedents of patient acceptance of walk-in telemedicine services for minor ailments. While a few implementations of these walk-in clinics have been attempted in the past, these clinics ultimately closed their services. Given the difficulty in sustaining a walk-in telemedicine service model, it is important to investigate the factors that would lead to patient adoption of walk-in telemedicine services. Drawing upon theoretical models in the healthcare and technology acceptance literatures and based on salient beliefs elicited during interviews with 29 potential adopters, we develop a conceptual model of antecedents of patient acceptance of walk-in telemedicine services for minor conditions. While relative advantage, informational influences, and relationship with one’s physician emerged as important predictors of acceptance, media richness and e-consultation diagnosticity emerged as central concerns for potential adopters. We discuss the study’s implications for research and practice and offer suggestions for future empirical studies.
Managing Intellectual Assets in Small Knowledge-Intensive Organizations
Authors: Huggins Robert , Weir Maria
Published: October 2011

The chapter focuses on how small KIBS (Knowledge-Intensive Business Service) firms manage their knowledge-based processes, or what are termed “intellectual assets.” It finds that approaches to the strategic management of intellectual assets varies significantly according the size and type of KIBS firm. Differences in these approaches impact on the development of effective innovation processes, with resource deficiencies in smaller firms constraining their innovation capability. New technology-based KIBS firms are less likely than traditional professional service KIBS firms to have effective formalised learning systems in place, and generally operate within a more ‘fluid’ working environment. Measures of absorptive capacity indicate that firms perceive gaps in their ability to assimilate and apply knowledge which they recognise to be of strategic importance. The authors conclude that small KIBS firms face particular challenges in managing the innovation process and establishing sustainable knowledge management practices, and may benefit from targeted policy intervention.
Pedagogical Teaching and Learning
Authors: Wang Victor X.
Published: October 2011

From infancy to adolescence, the degree of dependency on the part of learners requires pedagogical teaching and learning. To teach pedagogically, teachers are required to employ the so termed Stimulus-Response theory and some other related theories. To learn pedagogically, learners are accustomed to the so called top down education. With the advent of information communication technologies, there has emerged teaching and learning styles online. This chapter discusses pedagogical teaching and learning in comparison with andragogical teaching and learning. It should be a highly relevant chapter for teachers from K-12, as well as for teachers from adult education settings.
Comparing Traditional Teaching with Andragogical Teaching via Web 2.0 Technologies
Authors: Parker Judith
Published: October 2011

The social networking and knowledge development features of Web 2.0 have offered new opportunities and challenges for teaching. This chapter will explore how these have impacted instructional methods utilized in both traditional and andragogical teaching in both face-to-face and virtual classrooms. It will include case studies as well as student comments.
Age Issues in Online Teaching
Authors: Farmer Lesley S. J.
Published: October 2011

Age impacts online instructional design and delivery in two ways: developmental/biological and social/cultural. Developmental and generational issues are detailed as they impact e-learning. Attitudes towards technology and its social use are explained in light of age. Because the online community reflects lifelong learning, it behooves online educators to factor in age when developing and delivering online instruction.
Addressing Cultures in Online Teaching
Authors: Farmer Lesley S. J.
Published: October 2011

In online environments, identifying and addressing different cultures can be challenging, but differences exist as increasingly diverse student populations interact with resources and humans. Making cultural factors explicit can lead to deeper understanding; students can discover how culture informs knowledge. This chapter focuses on key elements of culture and online teaching: students, teachers, curriculum, and the learning environment. Each element interacts, and has cultural implications.
High-Quality Business Processes Based on Multi-Dimensional QoS
Authors: Liang Qianhui , Parkin Michael
Published: October 2011

An important area of services research gathering momentum is the ability to take a generic business process and instantiate it by selecting services that meet both the functional and non-functional requirements of the process owner. These non-functional or quality-of-service (QoS) requirements may describe essential performance and dependability requirements and apply across different logical layers of the application, from business-related details to system infrastructure; i.e., they are cross-cutting and considered multidimensional. Configuring an abstract business process with the “best” services to meet the process owner’s multidimensional end-to-end QoS requirements is a challenging task as there may be many services that match to the functional requirements but provide differentiated QoS characteristics. In this chapter we explore an approach to discover services, differentiated by their QoS attributes, to configure an abstract business process by selecting an optimal configuration of the “best” QoS combinations. The approach considered takes into account the optimal choice of multi-dimensional QoS variables. We present and compare two solutions based on heuristic algorithms to illustrate how this approach would work practically.
Achieving Dependable Composite Services through Two-Level Redundancy
Authors: Sun Hailong , Zeng Jin , Guo Huipeng , Liu Xudong , Huai Jinpeng
Published: October 2011

Service composition is a widely accepted method to build service-oriented applications. However, due to the uncertainty of infrastructure environments, service performance and user requests, service composition faces a great challenge to guarantee the dependability of the corresponding composite services. In this chapter, we provide an insightful analysis of the dependability issue of composite services. And we present a solution based on two-level redundancy: component service redundancy and structural redundancy. With component service redundancy, we study how to determine the number of backup services and how to guarantee consistent dependability of a composite service. In addition, structural redundancy aims at further improving dependability at business process level through setting up backup execution paths.
Detecting Vulnerabilities in Web Services
Authors: Antunes Nuno , Vieira Marco
Published: October 2011

Although web services are becoming business-critical components, they are often deployed with software bugs that can be maliciously exploited. Numerous developers are not specialized on security and the common time-to-market constraints limit an in-depth testing for vulnerabilities. In this context, vulnerability detection tools have a very important role helping the developers to produce less vulnerable code. However, developers usually select a tool to use and rely on its results without knowing its real effectiveness. This chapter presents two case studies on the effectiveness of several well-known vulnerability detection tools and discusses their strengths and limitations. Based on lessons learned, the chapter also proposes a benchmarking technique that can be used to select the tool that best fits a specific scenario. The main goal is to provide web service developers with information on how much they can rely on widely used vulnerability detection tools and on how to select the most adequate tool.
Introduction to the Broad Concepts Underlying this Book
Authors: Hussey Matthew
Published: October 2011

This introductory chapter presents general suggestions on the concept of quality-assured industry-oriented higher education in software engineering that relate to and underpin the other chapters in the book. The body of work reported here was based initially on the close co-operation since 2002 between Dublin Institute of Technology in Ireland and Harbin Institute of Technology in China, and on the subsequent development and propagation of this co-operation across Europe and China. The experiences described come from a range of countries, France, Spain, Germany, United Kingdom, Romania and Turkey, as well as China and Ireland. They capture many of the interesting and valuable lessons of these past eight years of thinking and research and development relating to international software industry-oriented higher education in the broad context of the global striving towards the knowledge economy. They make the case for a strong role for software industry-oriented higher education in the production of the software architects, developers, and engineers required for the future.
EMERSION
Authors: Wu Bing , Xu Xiaofei
Published: October 2011

China and the European Union both face the challenge of building dynamic and internationally focused knowledge economies. Information Technology (IT) is a key enabler of such economies and IT education must be at the forefront of any strategy to meet the challenges of building them. Recognising this, the School of Computing in Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT), Ireland, the National Pilot School of Software in Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT), China, and the School of Computing and Information Technology in the University of Wolverhampton (UW), United Kingdom, established a collaboration which resulted in the EMERSION (Education to Meet the Requirements of Software Industry and Beyond - Establishing, Implementing and Evaluating an Industry-Oriented Education Model in China) project. This project designed, implemented, and evaluated an education model with an industrial ethos to deliver sustainable, high-quality, and effective IT education in HIT. The project was completed in 2006, and this chapter presents a review of the main lessons that emerged from it.
UB1-HIT Dual Master’s Programme
Authors: Chen David , Vallespir Bruno , Bourrières Jean-Paul , Alix Thècle
Published: October 2011

This chapter presents a double complementary international collaboration approach between the University of Bordeaux 1 (UB1) and Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT). Within this framework, the higher education collaboration (dual Master’s degree programme) is supported by research collaboration that has existed for more than 15 years. Furthermore this collaboration is based on the complementarities of competencies of the two sides: production system engineering (UB1) and software system engineering (HIT). After a brief introduction on the background and overview, the complementarities between UB1 and HIT are assessed. Then a formal model of the curriculum of the dual UB1-HIT Master’s programme is shown in detail. A unified case study on manufacturing resource planning (MRPII) learning is presented. Preliminary results of the Master’s programme are discussed on the basis of an investigation carried out on the first two cohorts of students.
A Holistic Approach to Software Engineering Education
Authors: Rogerson Simon
Published: October 2011

These ideas were developed and refined in a compulsory 30-credit module for software engineering and computer science students. The module employs a number of novel techniques in delivery and assessment, as well as a number of online learning tools. These provide an exemplar environment of new educational experiences for those preparing for a career in software engineering. Also included in this chapter are summarised feedback ideas received from students and the experiences of the tutors delivering the module. This leads to a series of recommendations for future developments, which will be of interest to all involved in software engineering education.
iPod Enhancement for Field Visits in Religious Studies
Authors: Burke Dierdre , Barber Brian , Johnson Yvonne , Nore A. , Walker C.
Published: October 2011

This chapter reports on a project to explore the potential of a mobile learning device (Apple iTouch iPod) to enhance student field visits to local places of worship, which are part of the Religious Studies degree programme. Places of worship are a valuable resource for student learning, but often the value of the visit is linked to the quality of information and the style of presentation by the faith informant. In addition, there is a particular problem for university students who need to go beyond basic information about history and artifacts to explore key concepts in situ. The project is a collaboration between staff and second year students to develop podcasts on local places of worship, which have been trialed by first year students. These podcasts include a range of media: video, audio, images, text, and hyperlinks to offer a rich learning experience. The podcasts link to theoretical issues in the study of religion to enhance the development of appropriate literacies for the discipline of Religious Studies. The chapter reports on the range of technical and other issues encounters, the way we responded to them, and our overall assessment of the potential applications for mobile learning during field visits.
Utilitarian and Hedonic Motivations in the Acceptance of Web Casts in Higher Education
Authors: van Baalen Peter , van Dalen Jan , Smit Ruud , Veenhof Wouter
Published: October 2011

Today, many universities offer e-learning programs to reach new student markets and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of learning. A key component in e-learning programs are webcasts: condensed, live- and studio-recorded lectures made available, by streaming video technology, via the Web as multimedia presentations that combine videos, audio, lecture slides, and a table of contents (Day, 2008). Web lectures have the potential to become a vital technology in higher education as they enable students to take courses in a convenient and flexible way, at a time and place they prefer. The success of Web lectures in higher education depends to a large extent on the acceptance of the technology by students. To investigate these influencing factors we use the technology acceptance model (TAM), which has originally been developed by Davis, Bagozzi, and Warshaw (1992) and Davis and Venkatesh (1996) to explain the intention to make use of Information Technology. In this study, we are interested in the question what motivates students to use webcast? Most technology acceptance studies have focused on extrinsic (utilitarian) motives (increase in efficiency, ease of use and effectiveness, etc.) to explain the use of e-learning systems. However, recent research suggests that intrinsic (hedonic) motivations, like attractiveness and enjoyment play an important role as well.
Streaming Live
Authors: Adi Ana
Published: October 2011

In an increasingly interconnected world, it is highly important that professors and researchers alike not only find cost-effective solutions to further their work, but also methods to inspire their students to go beyond the traditional methods. This chapter aims to show a couple of examples of successfully integrating new media features in the teaching and research of new media emphasizing their effectiveness, as well as their innovation, involvement, and surprise factors. Furthermore, the methods suggested are easy-to-use and mostly accessible on a non-fee basis. Additionally, the chapter reviews a series of platforms that allow live video broadcasting such as Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, Skype, Oovoo, Google Talk, PalBee, TokBox, PalTalk, TinyChat, TimZon, VoiceThread, Ustream.tv, and Livestream, giving some examples where they could be used in the daily teaching process. Finally, a call for more cross-cultural teaching and collaborative projects is launched.
The New Chalk and Slate?
Authors: Barnatt Christopher
Published: October 2011

This chapter explores the rise of public online video in higher education as both a compliment to and a potential replacement for more traditional means of teaching students. It also proposes that the publication of public online videos has the potential to turn some academics into powerful online brands in a manner that was only previously open to those who excelled in the research or consultancy parts of a higher education career, or to those who published best-selling textbooks.
Developing Interactive Dramatised Videos as a Teaching Resource
Authors: Tombs Alastair , Nguyen Doan
Published: October 2011

This chapter presents a reflection of the development of dramatized video cases as a resource for use in teaching marketing. It explains the benefits of developing and the pitfalls with making this sort of interactive media. The benefits of using dramatized video scenarios as a teaching resource are: a) they facilitate problem based learning; b) they provide the student with a realistic view of the ethical decisions that are faced by marketing managers, and c) they keep the class learning at the same pace. The development of a multi-platform format means that the videos can be streamed into lectures and tutorial groups, published as streaming content on Web based platforms such as Blackboard and/or downloaded onto students’ cell phones and iPods. However, the problems associated with developing this sort of resource are the cost and time required to make a high quality and credible dramatized case study.
Use of Blended E-Learning Resources in Higher Education
Authors: Jenkins Catharine , Walsh Andrew
Published: October 2011

This chapter discusses the challenges for higher education raised by socio-cultural, technological, and pedagogical developments. The authors’ response as experienced healthcare educators was to develop videos and e-learning objects as part of a blended approach to training mental health nursing students. The authors describe the initiative, discuss progress, analyse outcomes, and highlight implications for practice. The chapter ends by drawing wider conclusions about use of streaming media within professional education.
Medium Matters
Authors: Kumar Rajiv , Goel Abhishek , Jha Vidyanand
Published: October 2011

Using three auto-ethnographies, in this chapter we have explored the experiences of teaching organizational behavior in an online environment. Before presenting the three auto-ethnographies, we have attempted to situate auto-ethnography as a tool in the domain of qualitative research. The analysis of these auto-ethnographies highlights the strengths and limitations of online medium in teaching organizational behavior. Our analysis shows that medium of teaching impacts the teaching style instructors adopt, poses challenges of mastering new technology, forces them to choose some content types over others, has an impact on their satisfaction with delivery and on their overall experience.
Online Business Education in India
Authors: Kumar Rajiv , Goel Abhishek , Jha Vidyanand
Published: October 2011

Several scholars have described the advantages of online education. The Indian market for business management education is also increasingly accepting this mode of delivery. This case presents the history and policy environment leading to the origin, design, and delivery of a one-year online management education program by a leading business school in India. The technological and marketing support received from a partner organization is presented. The structure of this program, along with the unique challenges faced in operationalizing such a program with limited resources is highlighted. The interplay between program administrators, business school, faculty members, program participants, and service provider is discussed. The authors illustrate various enablers and impediments faced, and provide some key points of learning.
A Comparison of Human and Computer Information Processing
Authors: Whitworth Brian , Ryu Hokyoung
Published: October 2011

Over 30 years ago, TV shows from The Jetsons to Star Trek suggested that by the millennium’s end computers would read, talk, recognize, walk, converse, think, and maybe even feel. People do these things easily, so how hard could it be? However, in general we still don’t talk to our computers, cars, or houses, and they still don’t talk to us. The Roomba, a successful household robot, is a functional flat round machine that neither talks to nor recognizes its owner. Its “smart” programming tries mainly to stop it getting “stuck,” which it still frequently does, either by getting jammed somewhere or tangling in things like carpet tassels. The idea that computers are incredibly clever is changing, as when computers enter human specialties like conversation, many people find them more stupid than smart, as any “conversation” with a computer help can illustrate. Computers do easily do calculation tasks that people find hard, but the opposite also applies, for example, people quickly recognize familiar faces but computers still cannot recognize known terrorist faces at airport check-ins. Apparently minor variations, like lighting, facial angle, or expression, accessories like glasses or hat, upset them. Figure 1 shows a Letraset page, which any small child would easily recognize as letter “As” but computers find this extremely difficult. People find such visual tasks easy, so few in artificial intelligence (AI) appreciated the difficulties of computer-vision at first. Initial advances were rapid, but AI has struck a 99% barrier, for example, computer voice recognition is 99% accurate but one error per 100 words is unacceptable. There are no computer controlled “auto-drive” cars because 99% accuracy means an accident every month or so, which is also unacceptable. In contrast, the “mean time between accidents” of competent human drivers is years not months, and good drivers go 10+ years without accidents. Other problems easy for most people but hard for computers are language translation, speech recognition, problem solving, social interaction, and spatial coordination.
Adaptive Technology and Its Applications
Authors: Neto João José
Published: October 2011

Before the advent of software engineering, the lack of memory space in computers and the absence of established programming methodologies led early programmers to use self-modification as a regular coding strategy. Although unavoidable and valuable for that class of software, solutions using self-modification proved inadequate while programs grew in size and complexity, and security and reliability became major requirements. Software engineering, in the 70’s, almost led to the vanishing of self-modifying software, whose occurrence was afterwards limited to small low-level machinelanguage programs with very special requirements. Nevertheless, recent research developed in this area, and the modern needs for powerful and effective ways to represent and handle complex phenomena in hightechnology computers are leading self-modification to be considered again as an implementation choice in several situations. Artificial intelligence strongly contributed for this scenario by developing and applying non-conventional approaches, e.g. heuristics, knowledge representation and handling, inference methods, evolving software/ hardware, genetic algorithms, neural networks, fuzzy systems, expert systems, machine learning, etc. In this publication, another alternative is proposed for developing Artificial Intelligence applications: the use of adaptive devices, a special class of abstractions whose practical application in the solution of current problems is called Adaptive Technology. The behavior of adaptive devices is defined by a dynamic set of rules. In this case, knowledge may be represented, stored and handled within that set of rules by adding and removing rules that represent the addition or elimination of the information they represent. Because of the explicit way adopted for representing and acquiring knowledge, adaptivity provides a very simple abstraction for the implementation of artificial learning mechanisms: knowledge may be comfortably gathered by inserting and removing rules, and handled by tracking the evolution of the set of rules and by interpreting the collected information as the representation of the knowledge encoded in the rule set.
Machine Learning as a Commonsense Reasoning Process
Authors: Naidenova Xenia
Published: October 2011

One of the most important tasks in database technology is to combine the following activities: data mining or inferring knowledge from data and query processing or reasoning on acquired knowledge. The solution of this task requires a logical language with unified syntax and semantics for integrating deductive (using knowledge) and inductive (acquiring knowledge) reasoning. In this paper, we propose a unified model of commonsense reasoning. We also demonstrate that a large class of inductive machine learning (ML) algorithms can be transformed into the commonsense reasoning processes based on wellknown deduction and induction logical rules. The concept of a good classification (diagnostic) test (Naidenova & Polegaeva, 1986) is the basis of our approach to combining deductive and inductive reasoning.
Combining Classifiers and Learning Mixture-of-Experts
Authors: Xu Lei , Amari Shun-ichi
Published: October 2011

Expert combination is a classic strategy that has been widely used in various problem solving tasks. A team of individuals with diverse and complementary skills tackle a task jointly such that a performance better than any single individual can make is achieved via integrating the strengths of individuals. Started from the late 1980’ in the handwritten character recognition literature, studies have been made on combining multiple classifiers. Also from the early 1990’ in the fields of neural networks and machine learning, efforts have been made under the name of ensemble learning or mixture of experts on how to learn jointly a mixture of experts (parametric models) and a combining strategy for integrating them in an optimal sense. The article aims at a general sketch of two streams of studies, not only with a re-elaboration of essential tasks, basic ingredients, and typical combining rules, but also with a general combination framework (especially one concise and more useful one-parameter modulated special case, called a-integration) suggested to unify a number of typical classifier combination rules and several mixture based learning models, as well as max rule and min rule used in the literature on fuzzy system.
A Self-Organizing Neural Network to Approach Novelty Detection
Authors: Albertini Marcelo Keese , Fernandes de Mello Rodrigo
Published: October 2011

Machine learning is a field of artificial intelligence which aims at developing techniques to automatically transfer human knowledge into analytical models. Recently, those techniques have been applied to time series with unknown dynamics and fluctuations in the established behavior patterns, such as humancomputer interaction, inspection robotics and climate change. In order to detect novelties in those time series, techniques are required to learn and update knowledge structures, adapting themselves to data tendencies. The learning and updating process should integrate and accommodate novelty events into the normal behavior model, possibly incurring the revaluation of long-term memories. This sort of application has been addressed by the proposal of incremental techniques based on unsupervised neural networks and regression techniques. Such proposals have introduced two new concepts in time-series novelty detection. The first defines the temporal novelty, which indicates the occurrence of unexpected series of events. The second measures how novel a single event is, based on the historical knowledge. However, current studies do not fully consider both concepts of detecting and quantifying temporal novelties. This motivated the proposal of the self-organizing novelty detection neural network architecture (SONDE) which incrementally learns patterns in order to represent unknown dynamics and fluctuation of established behavior. The knowledge accumulated by SONDE is employed to estimate Markov chains which model causal relationships. This architecture is applied to detect and measure temporal and nontemporal novelties. The evaluation of the proposed technique is carried out through simulations and experiments, which have presented promising results.