Enhancing the Guidance of the Intentional Model "MAP": Graph Theory Application

The MAP model was introduced in information system engineering in order to model processes on a flexible way. The intentional level of this model helps an engineer to execute a process with a strong relationship to the situation of the project at hand. In the literature, attempts for having a practical use of maps are not numerous. Our aim is to enhance the guidance mechanisms of the process execution by reusing graph algorithms. After clarifying the existing relationship between graphs and maps, we improve the MAP model by adding qualitative criteria. We then offer a way to express maps with graphs and propose to use Graph theory algorithms to offer an automatic guidance of the map. We illustrate our proposal by an example and discuss its limitations.Comment: 9 page

Capturing System Intentionality with Maps

International audienceConceptual modelling has emerged as a means to capture the relevant aspects of the world on which it is necessary to provide information. Whereas conceptual models succeeded in telling us how to represent some excerpt of the world in informational terms, they failed to guide system analysts in conceptualising purposeful systems, i.e. systems that meet the expectations of their users. This chapter aims to investigate this issue of conceptualising purposeful systems and to discuss the role that goal driven approaches can play to resolve it. It considers the challenge of new systems having a multifaceted purpose and shows how intention/strategy maps help facing this challenge

Towards automated knowledge-based mapping between individual conceptualisations to empower personalisation of Geospatial Semantic Web

Geospatial domain is characterised by vagueness, especially in the semantic disambiguation of the concepts in the domain, which makes defining universally accepted geo- ontology an onerous task. This is compounded by the lack of appropriate methods and techniques where the individual semantic conceptualisations can be captured and compared to each other. With multiple user conceptualisations, efforts towards a reliable Geospatial Semantic Web, therefore, require personalisation where user diversity can be incorporated. The work presented in this paper is part of our ongoing research on applying commonsense reasoning to elicit and maintain models that represent users' conceptualisations. Such user models will enable taking into account the users' perspective of the real world and will empower personalisation algorithms for the Semantic Web. Intelligent information processing over the Semantic Web can be achieved if different conceptualisations can be integrated in a semantic environment and mismatches between different conceptualisations can be outlined. In this paper, a formal approach for detecting mismatches between a user's and an expert's conceptual model is outlined. The formalisation is used as the basis to develop algorithms to compare models defined in OWL. The algorithms are illustrated in a geographical domain using concepts from the SPACE ontology developed as part of the SWEET suite of ontologies for the Semantic Web by NASA, and are evaluated by comparing test cases of possible user misconceptions

A systemic framework for managing e-learning adoption in campus universities: individual strategies in context

There are hopes that new learning technologies will help to transform university learning and teaching into a more engaging experience for twenty-first-century students. But since 2000 the changes in campus university teaching have been more limited than expected. I have drawn on ideas from organisational change management research to investigate why this is happening in one particular campus university context. My study examines the strategies of individual lecturers for adopting e-learning within their disciplinary, departmental and university work environments to develop a conceptual framework for analysing university learning and teaching as a complex adaptive system. This conceptual framework links the processes through which university teaching changes, the resulting forms of learning activity and the learning technologies used – all within the organisational context of the university. The framework suggests that systemic transformation of a university’s learning and teaching requires coordinated change across activities that have traditionally been managed separately in campus universities. Without such coordination, established ways of organising learning and teaching will reassert themselves, as support staff and lecturers seek to optimise their own work locally. The conceptual framework could inform strategies for realising the full benefits of new learning technologies in other campus universities

Hypermedia support for argumentation-based rationale: 15 years on from gIBIS and QOC

Having developed, used and evaluated some of the early IBIS-based approaches to design rationale (DR) such as gIBIS and QOC in the late 1980s/mid-1990s, we describe the subsequent evolution of the argumentation-based paradigm through software support, and perspectives drawn from modeling and meeting facilitation. Particular attention is given to the challenge of negotiating the overheads of capturing this form of rationale. Our approach has maintained a strong emphasis on keeping the representational scheme as simple as possible to enable real time meeting mediation and capture, attending explicitly to the skills required to use the approach well, particularly for the sort of participatory, multi-stakeholder requirements analysis demanded by many design problems. However, we can then specialize the notation and the way in which the tool is used in the service of specific methodologies, supported by a customizable hypermedia environment, and interoperable with other software tools. After presenting this approach, called Compendium, we present examples to illustrate the capabilities for support security argumentation in requirements engineering, template driven modeling for document generation, and IBIS-based indexing of and navigation around video records of meetings

The influence of context on intentional service

International audienceSeveral service-oriented approaches promote the intention concept as a way to describe and document services based on user's requirements. However, these approaches have two main limitations: (1) they don't take into account the fact that a user evolves in a context that can influence his intentions, and (2) at the software service level, the corresponding intentional description of these software services is missing. Such a description should be a high level one, which is not directly connected to the software services. The objective of the paper is to propose a semantic service description that considers both intention corresponding to the service and context in which it is supposed to emerge. In addition, the variability embedded in the intentional description can be also affected by the user context. Such influence is also considered in our proposition

Bringing context to intentional services

International audienceIn service-orientation, the notion of service is used in different views. On the one hand, several approaches have been proposing services that are able to adapt themselves according to the context in which they are used. On the other hand, some researches have been proposing to consider user's goals when proposing business services. We believe that these two views are complementary. A goal is only meaningful when considering the context in which it emerges, and conversely, context description is only meaningful when associated with a user goal. In order to take profit of both views, we propose to extend the OWL-S service description by including on it both the specification of context associated with the service and the goal that characterize it

Multi-Dimensional Views for Sustainability: Ontological Approach

Sustainability has been assessed by measuring the environmental, social and economic performance. Such diverse measurements could include contrasting attributes in sustainability measures namely environmental, social, and economic attributes. Our research argues that it is necessary to use a multi-dimensional approach for sustainability knowledge improvements that consist of all sustainability dimensions. Ontology models the real world and is useful in understanding different dimensions of a phenomenon. The use of an appropriate ontology such as static, dynamic, social, and intentional ontologies help to better understand the sustainability dimensions - environmental, social, and economic. This research develops ontology-based multi-dimensional view to environmental management by focusing on sustainability. The research uses hypothetical situations to develop ontological views and maps the ontological knowledge onto the sustainability dimensions to develop knowledge. This approach integrates information systems and environmental research, while encouraging multi-dimensional approaches for improved knowledge