Bolstering the quality and integrity of online collaborative university- level courses via an open Sim standalone server in conjunction with sloodle

26 Halama

Requirements engineering aspects for sustainable eLearning systems

Sustainability in software engineering is about (1) continued functionality and maintainability in changing circumstances, and (2) functionality's effect on the surrounded environment, economic and people. Frequent changes of software requirements negatively affect sustainability of software systems. To reduce the number of requirements' changes and improve sustainability, sustainability requirements have to be considered from the beginning of the requirements engineering stage of software development. Sustainability in requirements engineering has five dimensions including individual, social, technical, economic and environmental dimensions. Most of the existing work analysed only one or two dimensions and ignore the interrelated effects among other dimensions. To address this issue, we selected eLearning systems because they provide comprehensive example to study. This thesis focuses on analysing sustainability requirements of eLearning systems with regard to the five sustainability dimensions. The following studies were performed: (1) identifying theoretically the sustainability requirements of eLearning systems, (2) investigating empirically the sustainability of eLearning systems, (3) constructing a methodology for the analysis and evaluation of sustainability requirements on eLearning systems, and (4) evaluating the constructed methodology. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first research conducted to investigate sustainability requirements of eLearning systems covering the five sustainability dimensions. Our findings highlighted that (1) technical, economic and environmental sustainability requirements are similar to other software domains, where individual and social sustainability requirements are specific for the domain of eLearning systems, (2) individual and social sustainability requirements need to be carefully considered and analysed together because of the strong correlation, and (3) culture and gender diversity play an important role for sustainability requirements. On this basis, we developed a framework for analysing sustainability requirements of software systems as well as a web-based tool SuSoftPro (the name stands from Software Sustainability Profiling) that allows requirements engineers to: investigate sustainability of software systems based on the systems' requirements, analyse the sustainability dimensions of software systems, measure the sustainability of each individual requirement, visualise analysis results to support decision making towards high-quality software, involve stakeholders to rate their requirements for one or more of the five sustainability dimensions, and manage requirement and stakeholder details easily. We evaluated the SuSoftPro framework through case studies, comparative evaluation and a quantitative questionnaire. Our framework successfully provides a comprehensive view of analysing sustainability requirements to improve the attention to sustainability and allow practitioners to develop sustainable software

Designing an engaging learning universe for situated interactions in virtual environments

A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)Studies related to the Virtual Learning approach are conducted almost exclusively in Distance Learning contexts, and focus on the development of frameworks or taxonomies that classify the different ways of teaching and learning. Researchers may be dealing with the topic of interactivity (avatars and immersion are key components), yet they do so they mainly focusing on the interactions that take place within the virtual world. It is the virtual world that consists the primary medium for communication and interplay. However, the lines are hard to be drawn when it comes to examining and taxonomising the impact of interactions on motivation and engagement as a synergy of learners’ concurrent presence. This study covers this gap and sheds light on this lack—or, at least, inadequacy—of literature and research on the interactions that take place both in the physical and the virtual environment at the same time. In addition, it explores the impact of the instructional design decisions on increasing the learners’ incentives for interplay when trying to make sense of the virtual world, thus leading them to attain higher levels of engagement. To evaluate the potential of interactions holistically and not just unilaterally, a series of experiments were conducted in the context of different Hybrid Virtual Learning units, with the participation of Computer Science & Technology students. One of the goals was to examine the learners’ thoughts and preconceptions regarding the use of virtual worlds as an educational tool. Then, during the practical sessions, the focus was placed on monitoring students’ actions and interactions in both the physical and the virtual environment. Consequently, students were asked as a feedback to report their overall opinion on these actions and interactions undertaken. The study draws a new research direction, beyond the idea of immersion and the development of subject-specific educational interventions. The conclusions provide suggestions and guidelines to educators and instructional designers who wish to offer interactive and engaging learning activities to their students, as well as a taxonomy of the different types of interactions that take place in Hybrid Virtual Learning contexts