Cloud e-learning for mechatronics: CLEM

his paper describes results of the CLEM project, Cloud E-learning for Mechatronics. CLEM is an example of a domain-specific cloud that is especially tuned to the needs of VET (Vocational, Education and Training) teachers. An interesting development has been the creation of remote laboratories in the cloud. Learners can access such laboratories to support their practical learning of mechatronics without the need to set up laboratories at their own institutions. The cloud infrastructure enables multiple laboratories to come together virtually to create an ecosystem for educators and learners. From such a system, educators can pick and mix materials to create suitable courses for their students and the learners can experience different types of devices and laboratories through the cloud. The paper provides an overview of this new cloud-based e-learning approach and presents the results. The paper explains how the use of cloud computing has enabled the development of a new method, showing how a holistic e-learning experience can be obtained through use of static, dynamic and interactive material together with facilities for collaboration and innovation

Security Issues in Cloud based e-Learning Part 5(Security Management Standards)

In this part , Security standards are explored, hence all can be aware with available standards

InterCloud: Utility-Oriented Federation of Cloud Computing Environments for Scaling of Application Services

Cloud computing providers have setup several data centers at different geographical locations over the Internet in order to optimally serve needs of their customers around the world. However, existing systems do not support mechanisms and policies for dynamically coordinating load distribution among different Cloud-based data centers in order to determine optimal location for hosting application services to achieve reasonable QoS levels. Further, the Cloud computing providers are unable to predict geographic distribution of users consuming their services, hence the load coordination must happen automatically, and distribution of services must change in response to changes in the load. To counter this problem, we advocate creation of federated Cloud computing environment (InterCloud) that facilitates just-in-time, opportunistic, and scalable provisioning of application services, consistently achieving QoS targets under variable workload, resource and network conditions. The overall goal is to create a computing environment that supports dynamic expansion or contraction of capabilities (VMs, services, storage, and database) for handling sudden variations in service demands. This paper presents vision, challenges, and architectural elements of InterCloud for utility-oriented federation of Cloud computing environments. The proposed InterCloud environment supports scaling of applications across multiple vendor clouds. We have validated our approach by conducting a set of rigorous performance evaluation study using the CloudSim toolkit. The results demonstrate that federated Cloud computing model has immense potential as it offers significant performance gains as regards to response time and cost saving under dynamic workload scenarios.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, conference pape

MaestROB: A Robotics Framework for Integrated Orchestration of Low-Level Control and High-Level Reasoning

This paper describes a framework called MaestROB. It is designed to make the robots perform complex tasks with high precision by simple high-level instructions given by natural language or demonstration. To realize this, it handles a hierarchical structure by using the knowledge stored in the forms of ontology and rules for bridging among different levels of instructions. Accordingly, the framework has multiple layers of processing components; perception and actuation control at the low level, symbolic planner and Watson APIs for cognitive capabilities and semantic understanding, and orchestration of these components by a new open source robot middleware called Project Intu at its core. We show how this framework can be used in a complex scenario where multiple actors (human, a communication robot, and an industrial robot) collaborate to perform a common industrial task. Human teaches an assembly task to Pepper (a humanoid robot from SoftBank Robotics) using natural language conversation and demonstration. Our framework helps Pepper perceive the human demonstration and generate a sequence of actions for UR5 (collaborative robot arm from Universal Robots), which ultimately performs the assembly (e.g. insertion) task.Comment: IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2018. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19JsdZi0TW

A DISTRIBUTED E-LEARNING SERVICE FOR REMOTE AREAS

The cloud-compatible architecture of a distributed distance e-learning system which has been deployed and is being utilized in five remote areas in Eastern Europe (Finland, Poland, Bulgaria, Greece and Cyprus) is presented and discussed as a case study of e-learning. A series of e-courses is being conducted with a variety of learning tools and techniques: a Virtual World, Web 2.0 tools, a web conference platform and a learning management system. Emphasis is placed on the feasibility of the delivery of the integrated Distance Learning (DL) service through distributed web services; an architecture is proposed that extends the existing one by implementing the DL service in the form of a SOA in a hybrid cloud

Embedded scheme of work structure into learning management system

This research is related to the automatic integration of the Teaching Plan (TP) or Scheme of Work (SOW) into Moodle; a popular course management software (CMS). SOW is a document prepared by academic teachers to detail out a plan of the course throughout the teaching duration. It helps to better manage student activities such as quizzes, exam, topics, and etc. However, most departments like the School of Computing (SOC) normally prepare the document manually. Moodle allows for course to be managed effectively though the use of a web service. There are hundreds of features provided by Moodle to assist in teaching. Moodle divides the teaching duration according to pre-set dates. Current Moodle practice is that the SOW needs to be added manually into the SOW section of Moodle. This study found that most of the time, the lecturers’ SOW documents are not the same with their Moodle content and thus would have to modify accordingly. This is due to the manual entry for the SOW in the Moodle system that takes time and becomes cumbersome. This study presents a potential solution and describe show the SOW structure can be integrated automatically according to the weekly activities, like assignments and quizzes, by using a plugin developed in this study. The methodology used in this study is made up of five steps, namely, the awareness of the problem, suggestion, development, evaluation, and conclusion. Based on the evaluation performed through sampling, the plugin developed through this study has significant value by saving precious time in assisting the academician’s task of updating and using Moodle, specifically related to the SOW