Modelling learning behaviour of intelligent agents using UML 2.0

This thesis aims to explore and demonstrate the ability of the new standard of structural and behavioural components in Unified Modelling Language (UML 2.0 / 2004) to model the learning behaviour of Intelligent Agents. The thesis adopts the research direction that views agent-oriented systems as an extension to object-oriented systems. In view of the fact that UML has been the de facto standard for modelling object-oriented systems, this thesis concentrates on exploring such modelling potential with Intelligent Agent-oriented systems. Intelligent Agents are Agents that have the capability to learn and reach agreement with other Agents or users. The research focuses on modelling the learning behaviour of a single Intelligent Agent, as it is the core of multi-agent systems. During the writing of the thesis, the only work done to use UML 2.0 to model structural components of Agents was from the Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agent (FIPA). The research builds upon, explores, and utilises this work and provides further development to model the structural components of learning behaviour of Intelligent Agents. The research also shows the ability of UML version 2.0 behaviour diagrams, namely activity diagrams and sequence diagrams, to model the learning behaviour of Intelligent Agents that use learning from observation and discovery as well as learning from examples of strategies. The research also evaluates if UML 2.0 state machine diagrams can model specific reinforcement learning algorithms, namely dynamic programming, Monte Carlo, and temporal difference algorithms. The thesis includes user guides of UML 2.0 activity, sequence, and state machine diagrams to allow researchers in agent-oriented systems to use the UML 2.0 diagrams in modelling the learning components of Intelligent Agents. The capacity for learning is a crucial feature of Intelligent Agents. The research identifies different learning components required to model the learning behaviour of Intelligent Agents such as learning goals, learning strategies, and learning feedback methods. In recent years, the Agent-oriented research has been geared towards the agency dimension of Intelligent Agents. Thus, there is a need to conduct more research on the intelligence dimension of Intelligent Agents, such as negotiation and argumentation skills. The research shows that behavioural components of UML 2.0 are capable of modelling the learning behaviour of Intelligent Agents while structural components of UML 2.0 need extension to cover structural requirements of Agents and Intelligent Agents. UML 2.0 has an extension mechanism to fulfil Agents and Intelligent Agents for such requirements. This thesis will lead to increasing interest in the intelligence dimension rather than the agency dimension of Intelligent Agents, and pave the way for objectoriented methodologies to shift more easily to paradigms of Intelligent Agent-oriented systems.The British Council, the University of Plymouth and the Arab-British Chamber Charitable Foundation

Diagram-based intelligent tutoring systems

This work first presents two implementations of Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) on engineering undergraduate-level diagram education: StaticsTutor for free-body diagram and Thermo Cycle Tutor for refrigeration T-v diagram. Initial investigations on several groups of students have shown their educational effectiveness. Unlike text-based input, diagram has some intrinsic challenges that lead it hard to teach. One example is conceptual knowledge is highly interconnected with procedural knowledge. Learned from the two ITSs, we provided some general pedagogical guidelines for the future Diagram-based ITSs. Also, we learned classes can be used as a way of representing geometric shapes in diagrams. Thus, we extended our work to the generality of how the current approach can be applied to other domains. We chose a popular type of diagram, called Block Diagram, which contains geometric objects and lines/arrows in connecting them. We developed a methodology to represent a diagram’s information and an ontology of diagram evaluation processes to diagnose students\u27 diagrams. Our work contributes to the development of Diagram-based ITSs authoring tools

The problem of labels in e-assessment of diagrams

In this short paper we explore a problematic aspect of automated assessment of diagrams. Diagrams have partial and sometimes inconsistent semantics. Typically much of the meaning of diagram resides in the labels, however, the choice of labeling is largely unrestricted. This means a correct solution may utilise differing yet semantically equivalent labels to the specimen solution. With human marking this problem can be easily overcome. Unfortunately with e-assessment this is challenging. We empirically explore the scale of the problem of synonyms by analysing 160 student solutions to a UML task. From this we find that cumulative growth of synonyms only shows a limited tendency to reduce at the margin. This finding has significant implications for the ease in which we may develop future e-assessment systems of diagrams, in that the need for better algorithms for assessing label semantic similarity becomes inescapable

The Automatic Assessment of Multiple Artefacts: An Investigation into Design Diagrams and Their Implementations

As the Higher Education sector has moved towards student-centred learning so too has the growth in electronic support for learning. E-assessment has been a part of this growth as increasingly assessment and its feedback is seen as an integral part of the students’ learning process. Mature e-assessment systems exist, particularly where answers to questions are restricted to a prescribed list of alternatives. However, for free response artefacts, where there is a limited restriction placed on answers to questions, automated assessment systems are embryonic. This dissertation presents an investigation into the automated assessment of free response artefacts. Design diagrams and their accompanying source code implementations are examples of free response artefacts. A case study is developed that investigates how to automatically generate formative feedback for a design diagram by utilizing its accompanying implementation. The dissertation presents a two-staged solution, initially analysing the design diagram in isolation before comparing it with the implementation. A framework for this approach has been developed and tested using a tool applied to coursework submitted by undergraduate computer science students. The tool was evaluated by comparing the formative feedback comments generated by the tool with those produced by a team of computer science educators. Evaluation was undertaken via two Likert questionnaires, one completed by students and one completed by a team of computer scientists. The results presented are favourable, with the majority of comments produced by the tool being seen to be as least as good as those generated by the computer science educators

Constructive Use of Errors in Teaching the UML Class Diagram in an IS Engineering Course

A class diagram is one of the most important diagrams of Unified Modeling Language (UML) and can be used for modeling the static structure of a software system. Learning from errors is a teaching approach based on the assumption that errors can promote learning. We applied a constructive approach of using errors in designing a UML class diagram in order to (a) categorize the students’ errors when they design a class diagram from a text scenario that describes a specific organization and (b) determine whether the learning-from-errors approach enables students to produce more accurate and correct diagrams. The research was conducted with college students (N = 45) studying for their bachelor’s degree in engineering. The approach is presented, and the learning-from-errors activity is illustrated. We present the students’ errors in designing the class diagram before and after the activity, together with the students’ opinions about applying the new approach in their course. Twenty errors in fundamental components of the class diagram design were observed. The students erred less after the activity of learning from errors. The displayed results show the relevance and potential of embedding our approach in teaching. Furthermore, the students viewed the learning-from-errors activity favorably. Thus, one of the benefits of our developed activity is increased student motivation. In light of the improved performance of the task, and the students’ responses to the learning-from-errors approach, we recommend that information systems teachers use similar activities in different fields and on various topics

The Automated analysis of object-oriented designs

This thesis concerns the use of software measures to assess the quality of object-oriented designs. It examines the ways in which design assessment can be assisted by measurement and the areas in which it can't. Other work in software measurement looks at defining and validating measures,or building prediction systems. This work is distinctive in that it examines the use of measures to help improve design quality during design time. To evaluate a design based on measurement results requires a means of relating measurement values to particular design problems or quality levels. Design heuristics were used to make this connection between measurement and quality. A survey was carried out to find suggestions for guidelines, rules and heuristics from the 00 design literature. This survey resulted in a catalogue of 288 suggestions for 00 design heuristics. The catalogue was structured around the 00 constructs to which the heuristics relate, and includes information on various heuristic attributes. This scheme is intended to allow suitable heuristics to be quickly located and correctly applied. Automation requires tool support. A tool was built which augmented the functionality available in existing sets, and taking input from multiple sources of design information (e.g., CASE tools and source code) and the described so far presents a potential method for automated design assessment provides the means of automation. An empirical study was then required to consider the efficacy of the method and evaluate the novel features of the tool. A case study was used to explore the approach taken by, and evaluate the effectiveness of, 15 subjects using measures and heuristics to assess the design of a small 00 system(IS classes). This study showed that semantic heuristics tended to highlight significant problems, but where attempts were made to automate these it often led to false problems being identified. This result, along with a previous finding that around half of quality criteria are not automatically assessable at design time, strongly suggeststhat people are still a necessary part of design assessment. The main result of the case study was that the subjects correctly identified 90% of the major design problems and were very positive about their experience of using measurement to support design assessment

Generating natural language specifications from UML class diagrams

Early phases of software development are known to be problematic, difficult to manage and errors occurring during these phases are expensive to correct. Many systems have been developed to aid the transition from informal Natural Language requirements to semistructured or formal specifications. Furthermore, consistency checking is seen by many software engineers as the solution to reduce the number of errors occurring during the software development life cycle and allow early verification and validation of software systems. However, this is confined to the models developed during analysis and design and fails to include the early Natural Language requirements. This excludes proper user involvement and creates a gap between the original requirements and the updated and modified models and implementations of the system. To improve this process, we propose a system that generates Natural Language specifications from UML class diagrams. We first investigate the variation of the input language used in naming the components of a class diagram based on the study of a large number of examples from the literature and then develop rules for removing ambiguities in the subset of Natural Language used within UML. We use WordNet,a linguistic ontology, to disambiguate the lexical structures of the UML string names and generate semantically sound sentences. Our system is developed in Java and is tested on an independent though academic case study

SOA services in higher education

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a recent architectural framework for distributed software system development in which software components are packaged as Services. It has become increasingly popular in academia and in industry, but has been principally used in the business domain. However, in higher education, SOA has rarely been applied or investigated. In this paper, we propose the idea of applying SOA technologies in the education domain, to increase both interoperability and flexibility within the e-learning environment. We expect that both students and teachers in higher educational institutions can benefit from this approach. We also describe a number of possible SOA services, along with a high level service roadmap to support a university's learning and teaching activities