Third international workshop on Authoring of adaptive and adaptable educational hypermedia (A3EH), Amsterdam, 18-22 July, 2005

The A3EH follows a successful series of workshops on Adaptive and Adaptable Educational Hypermedia. This workshop focuses on models, design and authoring of AEH, on assessment of AEH, conversion between AEH and evaluation of AEH. The workshop has paper presentations, poster session and panel discussions

Architectural support for ubiquitous access to multimedia content

Tese de doutoramento. Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores (Telecomunicações). Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 200

Electronic democracy strategy for Bahrain

This thesis attempts to answer the question ‘What e-democracy strategy, if any, is most suitable for Bahrain?’. Based on a qualitative case study for the country, an e-Democracy strategy is synthesised and presented in this thesis. The literature review includes the forms, ideals and values of democracy. The researcher supports and argues for the assertion that any attempt to implement e-Democracy must not undermine the basic values and ideals of democracy. In the review on Islam and democracy, the author argues that Islam is not against democracy. However it is asserted that e-Democracy implementation must consider the cultural and religious context of Bahrain. The process of democratisation and how it is taking place in Bahrain and Gulf countries are also discussed. A strategy formulation framework is adopted after reviewing literature on how to formulate a strategy. E-Government strategies of reading players in the e-Government are reviewed with an objective of learning lessons prior to formulating e-Democracy strategy. The literature review on e-democracy helped to understand the theory and practice of e-Democracy elsewhere in the world and identify issues that required further investigation. The issues identified from the literature were investigated using empirical data. Data from multiple sources were collected and analysed. The methods included interviews, focus groups and analysis of documents. The results confirm that most of the issues identified as part of the literature review are relevant to the case under investigation. However, there were issues that were not present in the literature. This includes the need to consider democracy’s human, social and cultural aspects as well as factors pertaining to the political divide in Bahrain. This, if not tackled properly, may pose some challenges to the implementation of e-Democracy. The results also disprove the assumption held by the government of Bahrain, as well as by the researcher at the beginning of the study, that e-voting is a more plausible type of e-democracy than other forms. The author adapts and presents an e-Democracy model for Bahrain based on Chadwick and May (2003) along with the e-Democracy strategy for Bahrain. The author also argues that the model and the strategy can be tailored to use in other GCC countries. The study fills a gap in the literature, namely the lack of e-democracy studies pertaining to the Middle East. It also provides a framework and lessons for other countries in the region for the creation of an e-democracy strategy

Annual report for the town of Bristol, New Hampshire fiscal year ending December 31, 2007.

This is an annual report containing vital statistics for a town/city in the state of New Hampshire

Персональне освітнє середовище – як один із трендів сучасної освіти

To meet the needs of the modern information society one must constantly improve the education system. The effectiveness of teaching today’s students fully depends on the implementation and use in the study of modern information and communication technologies, including network services that allow you to create an appropriate pedagogy and technology support base of modern information systems for educational purposes, and effectively organize the electronic learning university environment. An analysis of e-learning environments of modern domestic and foreign universities demonstrates quite a high level of qualitative and quantitative indicators of the implementation of electronic resources for educational purposes. However, despite the relatively high level of organization and content of university portals, the creation and implementation of students‘ personalized e-learning environment, which in turn is based on personalization in a global network, student-centered learning, which acts as a basis for the formation of ICT and key competencies of modern student, is still an open issue. The selfspontaneous creation of personalized e-learning environment does not cover the training needs of students, but is only partially able to satisfy them, as knowledge students cannot improve the quality of both formal and informal learning. This paper focuses on the study of students‘ ICT competencies and their ability to use information and communication technologies to carry out information activities in their professional field. The authors also discuss the results of studies on personalized and adaptive learning, based on consideration of learning styles. Based on a statistical analysis of the pedagogical experiments, some recommendations are suggested for technology training for teachers and students in order to to improve training efficiency

Integrating Usability Models into Pervasive Application Development

This thesis describes novel processes in two important areas of human-computer interaction (HCI) and demonstrates ways to combine these in appropriate ways. First, prototyping plays an essential role in the development of complex applications. This is especially true if a user-centred design process is followed. We describe and compare a set of existing toolkits and frameworks that support the development of prototypes in the area of pervasive computing. Based on these observations, we introduce the EIToolkit that allows the quick generation of mobile and pervasive applications, and approaches many issues found in previous works. Its application and use is demonstrated in several projects that base on the architecture and an implementation of the toolkit. Second, we present novel results and extensions in user modelling, specifically for predicting time to completion of tasks. We extended established concepts such as the Keystroke-Level Model to novel types of interaction with mobile devices, e.g. using optical markers and gestures. The design, creation, as well as a validation of this model are presented in some detail in order to show its use and usefulness for making usability predictions. The third part is concerned with the combination of both concepts, i.e. how to integrate user models into the design process of pervasive applications. We first examine current ways of developing and show generic approaches to this problem. This leads to a concrete implementation of such a solution. An innovative integrated development environment is provided that allows for quickly developing mobile applications, supports the automatic generation of user models, and helps in applying these models early in the design process. This can considerably ease the process of model creation and can replace some types of costly user studies.Diese Dissertation beschreibt neuartige Verfahren in zwei wichtigen Bereichen der Mensch-Maschine-Kommunikation und erläutert Wege, diese geeignet zu verknüpfen. Zum einen spielt die Entwicklung von Prototypen insbesondere bei der Verwendung von benutzerzentrierten Entwicklungsverfahren eine besondere Rolle. Es werden daher auf der einen Seite eine ganze Reihe vorhandener Arbeiten vorgestellt und verglichen, die die Entwicklung prototypischer Anwendungen speziell im Bereich des Pervasive Computing unterstützen. Ein eigener Satz an Werkzeugen und Komponenten wird präsentiert, der viele der herausgearbeiteten Nachteile und Probleme solcher existierender Projekte aufgreift und entsprechende Lösungen anbietet. Mehrere Beispiele und eigene Arbeiten werden beschrieben, die auf dieser Architektur basieren und entwickelt wurden. Auf der anderen Seite werden neue Forschungsergebnisse präsentiert, die Erweiterungen von Methoden in der Benutzermodellierung speziell im Bereich der Abschätzung von Interaktionszeiten beinhalten. Mit diesen in der Dissertation entwickelten Erweiterungen können etablierte Konzepte wie das Keystroke-Level Model auf aktuelle und neuartige Interaktionsmöglichkeiten mit mobilen Geräten angewandt werden. Der Entwurf, das Erstellen sowie eine Validierung der Ergebnisse dieser Erweiterungen werden detailliert dargestellt. Ein dritter Teil beschäftigt sich mit Möglichkeiten die beiden beschriebenen Konzepte, zum einen Prototypenentwicklung im Pervasive Computing und zum anderen Benutzermodellierung, geeignet zu kombinieren. Vorhandene Ansätze werden untersucht und generische Integrationsmöglichkeiten beschrieben. Dies führt zu konkreten Implementierungen solcher Lösungen zur Integration in vorhandene Umgebungen, als auch in Form einer eigenen Applikation spezialisiert auf die Entwicklung von Programmen für mobile Geräte. Sie erlaubt das schnelle Erstellen von Prototypen, unterstützt das automatische Erstellen spezialisierter Benutzermodelle und ermöglicht den Einsatz dieser Modelle früh im Entwicklungsprozess. Dies erleichtert die Anwendung solcher Modelle und kann Aufwand und Kosten für entsprechende Benutzerstudien einsparen