313,266 research outputs found
Why not empower knowledge workers and lifelong learners to develop their own environments?
In industrial and educational practice, learning environments are designed and implemented by experts from many different fields, reaching from traditional software development and product management to pedagogy and didactics. Workplace and lifelong learning, however, implicate that learners are more self-motivated, capable, and self-confident in achieving their goals and, consequently, tempt to consider that certain development tasks can be shifted to end-users in order to facilitate a more flexible, open, and responsive learning environment. With respect to streams like end-user development and opportunistic design, this paper elaborates a methodology for user-driven environment design for action-based activities. Based on a former research approach named 'Mash-Up Personal Learning Environments'(MUPPLE) we demonstrate how workplace and lifelong learners can be empowered to develop their own environment for collaborating in learner networks and which prerequisites and support facilities are necessary for this methodology
Organization of Multi-Agent Systems: An Overview
In complex, open, and heterogeneous environments, agents must be able to
reorganize towards the most appropriate organizations to adapt unpredictable
environment changes within Multi-Agent Systems (MAS). Types of reorganization
can be seen from two different levels. The individual agents level
(micro-level) in which an agent changes its behaviors and interactions with
other agents to adapt its local environment. And the organizational level
(macro-level) in which the whole system changes it structure by adding or
removing agents. This chapter is dedicated to overview different aspects of
what is called MAS Organization including its motivations, paradigms, models,
and techniques adopted for statically or dynamically organizing agents in MAS.Comment: 12 page
A Framework for Evaluating Model-Driven Self-adaptive Software Systems
In the last few years, Model Driven Development (MDD), Component-based
Software Development (CBSD), and context-oriented software have become
interesting alternatives for the design and construction of self-adaptive
software systems. In general, the ultimate goal of these technologies is to be
able to reduce development costs and effort, while improving the modularity,
flexibility, adaptability, and reliability of software systems. An analysis of
these technologies shows them all to include the principle of the separation of
concerns, and their further integration is a key factor to obtaining
high-quality and self-adaptable software systems. Each technology identifies
different concerns and deals with them separately in order to specify the
design of the self-adaptive applications, and, at the same time, support
software with adaptability and context-awareness. This research studies the
development methodologies that employ the principles of model-driven
development in building self-adaptive software systems. To this aim, this
article proposes an evaluation framework for analysing and evaluating the
features of model-driven approaches and their ability to support software with
self-adaptability and dependability in highly dynamic contextual environment.
Such evaluation framework can facilitate the software developers on selecting a
development methodology that suits their software requirements and reduces the
development effort of building self-adaptive software systems. This study
highlights the major drawbacks of the propped model-driven approaches in the
related works, and emphasise on considering the volatile aspects of
self-adaptive software in the analysis, design and implementation phases of the
development methodologies. In addition, we argue that the development
methodologies should leave the selection of modelling languages and modelling
tools to the software developers.Comment: model-driven architecture, COP, AOP, component composition,
self-adaptive application, context oriented software developmen
Managing evolution and change in web-based teaching and learning environments
The state of the art in information technology and educational technologies is evolving constantly.
Courses taught are subject to constant change from organisational and subject-specific reasons. Evolution
and change affect educators and developers of computer-based teaching and learning environments alike –
both often being unprepared to respond effectively. A large number of educational systems are designed
and developed without change and evolution in mind. We will present our approach to the design and
maintenance of these systems in rapidly evolving environments and illustrate the consequences of evolution
and change for these systems and for the educators and developers responsible for their implementation and
deployment. We discuss various factors of change, illustrated by a Web-based virtual course, with the
objective of raising an awareness of this issue of evolution and change in computer-supported teaching and
learning environments. This discussion leads towards the establishment of a development and management
framework for teaching and learning systems
Distributed Learning System Design: A New Approach and an Agenda for Future Research
This article presents a theoretical framework designed to guide distributed learning design, with the goal of enhancing the effectiveness of distributed learning systems. The authors begin with a review of the extant research on distributed learning design, and themes embedded in this literature are extracted and discussed to identify critical gaps that should be addressed by future work in this area. A conceptual framework that integrates instructional objectives, targeted competencies, instructional design considerations, and technological features is then developed to address the most pressing gaps in current research and practice. The rationale and logic underlying this framework is explicated. The framework is designed to help guide trainers and instructional designers through critical stages of the distributed learning system design process. In addition, it is intended to help researchers identify critical issues that should serve as the focus of future research efforts. Recommendations and future research directions are presented and discussed
Comparative Study on Agile software development methodologies
Today-s business environment is very much dynamic, and organisations are
constantly changing their software requirements to adjust with new environment.
They also demand for fast delivery of software products as well as for
accepting changing requirements. In this aspect, traditional plan-driven
developments fail to meet up these requirements. Though traditional software
development methodologies, such as life cycle-based structured and object
oriented approaches, continue to dominate the systems development few decades
and much research has done in traditional methodologies, Agile software
development brings its own set of novel challenges that must be addressed to
satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of the valuable
software. It is a set of software development methods based on iterative and
incremental development process, where requirements and development evolve
through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams that
allows rapid delivery of high quality software to meet customer needs and also
accommodate changes in the requirements. In this paper, we significantly
identify and describe the major factors, that Agile development approach
improves software development process to meet the rapid changing business
environments. We also provide a brief comparison of agile development
methodologies with traditional systems development methodologies, and discuss
current state of adopting agile methodologies. We speculate that from the need
to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of the valuable
software, Agile software development is emerged as an alternative to
traditional plan-based software development methods. The purpose of this paper,
is to provide an in-depth understanding, the major benefits of agile
development approach to software development industry, as well as provide a
comparison study report of ASDM over TSDM.Comment: 25 pages, 25 images, 86 references used, with authors biographie
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