CAES: A Model of an RBR-CBR Course Advisory Expert System

Academic student advising is a gargantuan task that places heavy demand on the time, emotions and mental resources of the academic advisor. It is also a mission critical and very delicate task that must be handled with impeccable expertise and precision else the future of the intended student beneficiary may be jeopardized due to poor advising. One integral aspect of student academic advising is course registration, where students make decisions on the choice of courses to take in specific semesters based on their current academic standing. In this paper, we give the description of the design, implementation and trial evaluation of the Course Advisory Expert System (CAES) which is a hybrid of a rule based reasoning (RBR) and case based reasoning (CBR). The RBR component was implemented using JESS. The result of the trial experiment revealed that the system has high performance/user satisfaction rating from the sample expert population conducted

Development of Telephone-based e-Learning Portal

The proliferation of mobile phones in Nigeria, particularly among the student community, has continued to inspire the development and delivery of e-Learning applications. Most of the existing web-based e-Learning applications do not support nomadic voice-based learning (i.e. learning on the move through voice), and consequently do not provide a speedy access to information or enquiries on demand. Internet access is required to get every bit of information from most school portal system, which is not directly available to everyone. Lack of provision for voice in the existing web applications excludes support for people with limited capabilities such as the visually impaired and physical disabilities. In this paper, we present a design and development of a prototype telephone-based e-Learning portal that will be used for course registration and examination. This study is part of an ongoing e-Learning project involving the following modules: enrollment, course registration and examination, enquiries/information, messaging/collaboration, e-Learning and library. The prototype application was developed using VoiceXML for the voice user interface(VUI), PHP for database queries, Apache as the middle-ware and MySQL database as back-end. A unified modelling language (UML) was used to model and design the application. The proposed e-Learning system will compliment the web-based system in other to meet the needs of students with a range of disabilities such as visual impairment, repetitive strain injury, etc, that make reading and writing difficult. It also makes multiple platforms available to all users as well as boosting access to education for the physically challenged, particularly the sight impaired in the developing countries of the world. In institutions where students are not allowed to use mobile phones or where cost is an issue, then the alternative is the use of PC-phone

Going on-line on a shoestring: An experiment in concurrent development of requirements and architecture

A number of on-line applications were built for a small university using a micro-sized development team. Four ideas were tested during the project: the Twin Peaks development model, using fully functional prototypes in the requirements elicitation process, some core practices of Extreme Programming, and the use of open-source software in a production environment. Certain project management techniques and their application to a micro-sized development effort were also explored. These ideas and techniques proved effective in developing many significant Internet and networked applications in a short time and at very low cost

A FRAMEWORK FOR INTELLIGENT VOICE-ENABLED E-EDUCATION SYSTEMS

Although the Internet has received significant attention in recent years, voice is still the most convenient and natural way of communicating between human to human or human to computer. In voice applications, users may have different needs which will require the ability of the system to reason, make decisions, be flexible and adapt to requests during interaction. These needs have placed new requirements in voice application development such as use of advanced models, techniques and methodologies which take into account the needs of different users and environments. The ability of a system to behave close to human reasoning is often mentioned as one of the major requirements for the development of voice applications. In this paper, we present a framework for an intelligent voice-enabled e-Education application and an adaptation of the framework for the development of a prototype Course Registration and Examination (CourseRegExamOnline) module. This study is a preliminary report of an ongoing e-Education project containing the following modules: enrollment, course registration and examination, enquiries/information, messaging/collaboration, e-Learning and library. The CourseRegExamOnline module was developed using VoiceXML for the voice user interface(VUI), PHP for the web user interface (WUI), Apache as the middle-ware and MySQL database as back-end. The system would offer dual access modes using the VUI and WUI. The framework would serve as a reference model for developing voice-based e-Education applications. The e-Education system when fully developed would meet the needs of students who are normal users and those with certain forms of disabilities such as visual impairment, repetitive strain injury (RSI), etc, that make reading and writing difficult

Authentication of Students and Students’ Work in E-Learning : Report for the Development Bid of Academic Year 2010/11

Global e-learning market is projected to reach $107.3 billion by 2015 according to a new report by The Global Industry Analyst (Analyst 2010). The popularity and growth of the online programmes within the School of Computer Science obviously is in line with this projection. However, also on the rise are students’ dishonesty and cheating in the open and virtual environment of e-learning courses (Shepherd 2008). Institutions offering e-learning programmes are facing the challenges of deterring and detecting these misbehaviours by introducing security mechanisms to the current e-learning platforms. In particular, authenticating that a registered student indeed takes an online assessment, e.g., an exam or a coursework, is essential for the institutions to give the credit to the correct candidate. Authenticating a student is to ensure that a student is indeed who he says he is. Authenticating a student’s work goes one step further to ensure that an authenticated student indeed does the submitted work himself. This report is to investigate and compare current possible techniques and solutions for authenticating distance learning student and/or their work remotely for the elearning programmes. The report also aims to recommend some solutions that fit with UH StudyNet platform.Submitted Versio

Higher-Order Process Modeling: Product-Lining, Variability Modeling and Beyond

We present a graphical and dynamic framework for binding and execution of business) process models. It is tailored to integrate 1) ad hoc processes modeled graphically, 2) third party services discovered in the (Inter)net, and 3) (dynamically) synthesized process chains that solve situation-specific tasks, with the synthesis taking place not only at design time, but also at runtime. Key to our approach is the introduction of type-safe stacked second-order execution contexts that allow for higher-order process modeling. Tamed by our underlying strict service-oriented notion of abstraction, this approach is tailored also to be used by application experts with little technical knowledge: users can select, modify, construct and then pass (component) processes during process execution as if they were data. We illustrate the impact and essence of our framework along a concrete, realistic (business) process modeling scenario: the development of Springer's browser-based Online Conference Service (OCS). The most advanced feature of our new framework allows one to combine online synthesis with the integration of the synthesized process into the running application. This ability leads to a particularly flexible way of implementing self-adaption, and to a particularly concise and powerful way of achieving variability not only at design time, but also at runtime.Comment: In Proceedings Festschrift for Dave Schmidt, arXiv:1309.455

Campus information systems for undergraduate students in Spain: a country-wide cluster classification

The availability of broad characterizations of campus information systems for students can be useful for the strategic information management of higher education centres. First we describe and contextualize a characterization model for on-line campus information systems for undergraduate students. This serves as a framework of conceptual reference for empirical work on Spanish universities. Information was gathered by means of structured visits to institutional websites and structured interviews with undergraduate students. Analyzing the information collected enables us to classify Spanish higher education institutions into three clusters with homogeneous characteristics, in the sense of their information system and organizational aspects. Finally, we discuss future research on this subject

An overview of the nature of the preparation of practice educators in five health care disciplines

Practice education is a core element of all educational programmes that prepare health care professionals for academic award and registration to practice. Ensuring quality and effectiveness involves partnership working between Higher Education Institutions (HEI’s) and health care providers, social care communities, voluntary and independent sectors offering client care throughout the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland. Clearly practitioners who support, supervise and assess learners for entry to their respective professions need to be well prepared and supported in their roles as practice educators. However it would appear that the nature of this support and preparation varies across disciplines and that good practice is not easily shared. With this in mind, the Making Practice Based Learning Work (MPBLW) project aims to make practitioners more effective at supporting and supervising students in the workplace across a range of health care disciplines namely Dietetics, Nursing, Occupational Therapy, Physiotherapy and Radiology. The Department of Employment and Learning (Northern Ireland) and the Higher Education Funding Council for England has funded this collaborative project involving staff from Ulster, Northumbria and Bournemouth Universities. The outcomes for each phase of the project are: Phase One: • Identify and document good practice on how practitioners are prepared for their educational role. Phase Two: • Develop and evaluate learning materials for use by practitioners across five health care disciplines. • Make learning materials available in a number of efficient media, e.g. paper, electronic, CD-ROM and web-based. • Develop a programme applicable to interprofessional and uniprofessional contexts. • Widen access for a multicultural workforce. Phase Three: • Embed best educational practice through the establishment of an academicpractitioner network. • Disseminate a range of materials and processes across the wider academic and health and social care communities