Applying adaptive course caching and presentation strategies in M-learning environment

[[abstract]]The use of portable device like pocket PCs and smart phone to support teaching and learning is not a new concept. Although the variety of mobile platforms provide more flexible and extendable learning experience, the various hardware restrictions consequently become the unavoidable challenges and barriers we need to overcome. In this paper we focus on: (1) improving the learning performance by prefetching the upcoming learning content; (2) improving the reading experience on small screen by adaptive content presentation; (3) distributing the well presentation learning content corresponding to user's specific mobile platforms by multi-presentation course package. There are four Web Service based modules proposed to carry out the above ideas.[[conferencetype]]國際[[conferencedate]]20101207~20101210[[iscallforpapers]]Y[[conferencelocation]]Macao, Chin

An Event-Driven Integration Platform for Context-Aware Web Services

Abstract: Web services are nowadays one of the preferred technologies to implement serviceoriented architectures and to communicate distributed applications. On the other hand, contextawareness is highly demanded for distributed applications. However, even though there are excellent tools and frameworks for service development, getting services to be context-aware is still under investigation. In turn, an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is a standards-based integration platform, which provides mediation capabilities (e.g. routing, transformation). ESBs are being increasingly used in conjunction with Complex Event Processing (CEP) engines to support event-driven architectures scenarios. In this regard, this paper proposes an ESB-based integration platform which, leveraging its mediation capabilities and a CEP engine, allows the construction of context-aware web services. Concretely, CEP techniques are used to detect the complex situations that may affect services and mediation mechanisms are used to adapt service requests and responses to make them context-aware

Virtual Reality Games for Motor Rehabilitation

This paper presents a fuzzy logic based method to track user satisfaction without the need for devices to monitor users physiological conditions. User satisfaction is the key to any product’s acceptance; computer applications and video games provide a unique opportunity to provide a tailored environment for each user to better suit their needs. We have implemented a non-adaptive fuzzy logic model of emotion, based on the emotional component of the Fuzzy Logic Adaptive Model of Emotion (FLAME) proposed by El-Nasr, to estimate player emotion in UnrealTournament 2004. In this paper we describe the implementation of this system and present the results of one of several play tests. Our research contradicts the current literature that suggests physiological measurements are needed. We show that it is possible to use a software only method to estimate user emotion

Adaptación de contenidos web usables para usuarios móviles: guías de diseño web para facilitar el acceso a la información desde teléfonos inteligentes

180 páginas. Maestría en Diseño.Actualmente las personas tienen mayor acceso a contenidos web desde dispositivos móviles como los teléfonos inteligentes, que desde computadoras de escritorio, ya que esto les permite estar comunicados y disponibles en cualquier momento y en cualquier situación que lo requieran; sin embargo, cuando el usuario navega en la web móvil, se enfrenta a problemas de usabilidad debido a que muchos de los contenidos web no están adaptados para visualizarse en dispositivos con pantallas pequeñas y aquellos que si lo están, inciden en problemas de navegación, presentación de la información, cantidad adecuada de información, uso adecuado de los gráficos, etc. Tomando como base esta problemática, en el presente trabajo se plantea la necesidad de generar guías de diseño web que orienten en la adaptación de contenidos usables para usuarios móviles, para lo cual se emplea la metodología del diseño centrado en el usuario, y para comprobar la factibilidad de las guías de diseño web propuestas, éstas se aplican a un caso de estudio con usuarios de dispositivos móviles de la marca BlackBerry

Optimizing Mobile Application Performance through Network Infrastructure Aware Adaptation.

Encouraged by the fast adoption of mobile devices and the widespread deployment of mobile networks, mobile applications are becoming the preferred “gateways” connecting users to networking services. Although the CPU capability of mobile devices is approaching that of off-the-shelf PCs, the performance of mobile networking applications is still far behind. One of the fundamental reasons is that most mobile applications are unaware of the mobile network specific characteristics, leading to inefficient network and device resource utilization. Thus, in order to improve the user experience for most mobile applications, it is essential to dive into the critical network components along network connections including mobile networks, smartphone platforms, mobile applications, and content partners. We aim to optimize the performance of mobile network applications through network-aware resource adaptation approaches. Our techniques consist of the following four aspects: (i) revealing the fundamental infrastructure characteristics of cellular networks that are distinctive from wireline networks; (ii) isolating the impact of important factors on user perceived performance in mobile network applications; (iii) determining the particular usage patterns of mobile applications; and (iv) improving the performance of mobile applications through network aware adaptations.PhDComputer Science & EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/99829/1/qiangxu_1.pd

A sensibilidade ao contexto na utilização de aplicações móveis

Mestrado em Comunicação MultimédiaDesde a introdução dos primeiros dispositivos móveis, estes têm evoluído rápida e significativamente, aproximando do utilizador comum tecnologias complexas e promissoras, cujo acesso não era tão facilitado nem democratizado (como os sensores, acelerómetros e o acesso wireless). Assim, a aplicabilidade do conceito de sensibilidade ao contexto ao domínio móvel está intimamente ligada com as infra-estruturas tecnológicas disponíveis e com a popularidade dos telemóveis junto da população. Esta conjuntura potencia a utilização do contexto para fornecer informações e serviços relevantes para a actividade que o utilizador está a levar a cabo, envolvendo o detectar e interpretar de informação contextual em tempo real, que pode conduzir a uma alteração/adaptação no comportamento e funcionalidades da aplicação para corresponder ao contexto de uso. Ao nível da usabilidade e experiência de utilização (user experience), se a capacidade de sensibilidade ao contexto oferece novas oportunidades e novas variáveis às aplicações disponibilizadas aos utilizadores, acarreta, simultaneamente, potenciais problemas e ameaças. O presente estudo pretende assim explorar esta linha de investigação, pela realização de uma avaliação em campo de uma aplicação sensível ao contexto de distribuição de conteúdo audiovisual – aplicação C-Cast – com o envolvimento de participantes, tendo em vista a recolha de dados que permitam perceber a interferência da sensibilidade ao contexto ao nível da user experience da aplicação testada.Since the introduction of the first mobile devices these have evolved quickly and meaningfully, approaching the regular user to complex technologies (such as sensors, accelerometers and wireless access). The applicability of the concept of context awareness to the mobile field is intimately linked with the available technological infrastructure and the popularity of mobile phones among the population. This situation enhances the use of context to provide relevant content and services, including the detection and interpretation of contextual information in real time, which can lead to a modification/adaptation in the application behaviour and functionalities, to match the context of use. In what concerns usability and user experience, if the context awareness sensibility provides new opportunities and new variables to the mobile applications, it simultaneously leads to potential problems and threats. This study intends to explore this premise by conducting a field trial of a context-aware mobile application – the C-Cast application - with the involvement of participants, in order to collect data to perceive the influence of context-awareness in the user experience of the tested application

A framework for real time collaborative editing in a mobile replicated architecture

Mobile collaborative work is a developing sub-area of Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW). The future of this field will be marked by a significant increase in mobile device usage as a tool for co-workers to cooperate, collaborate and work on a shared workspace in real-time to produce artefacts such as diagrams, text and graphics regardless of their geographical locations. A real-time collaboration editor can utilise a centralised or a replicated architecture. In a centralised architecture, a central server holds the shared document as well as manages the various aspects of the collaboration, such as the document consistency, ordering of updates, resolving conflicts and the session membership. Every user's action needs to be propagated to the central server, and the server will apply it to the document to ensure it results in the intended document state. Alternatively, a decentralised or replicated architecture can be used where there is no central server to store the shared document. Every participating site contains a copy of the shared document (replica) to work on separately. Using this architecture, every user's action needs to be broadcast to all participating sites so each site can update their replicas accordingly. The replicated architecture is attractive for such applications, especially in wireless and ad-hoc networks, since it does not rely on a central server and a user can continue to work on his or her own local document replica even during disconnection period. However, in the absence of a dedicated server, the collaboration is managed by individual devices. This presents challenges to implement collaborative editors in a replicated architecture, especially in a mobile network which is characterised by limited resource reliability and availability. This thesis addresses challenges and requirements to implement group editors in wireless ad-hoc network environments where resources are scarce and the network is significantly less stable and less robust than wired fixed networks. The major contribution of this thesis is a proposed framework that comprises the proposed algorithms and techniques to allow each device to manage the important aspects of collaboration such as document consistency, conflict handling and resolution, session membership and document partitioning. Firstly, the proposed document consistency algorithm ensures the document replicas held by each device are kept consistent despite the concurrent updates by the collaboration participants while taking into account the limited resource of mobile devices and mobile networks. Secondly, the proposed conflict management technique provides users with conflict status and information so that users can handle and resolve conflicts appropriately. Thirdly, the proposed membership management algorithm ensures all participants receive all necessary updates and allows users to join a currently active collaboration session. Fourthly, the proposed document partitioning algorithm provides flexibility for users to work on selected parts of the document and reduces the resource consumption. Finally, a basic implementation of the framework is presented to show how it can support a real time collaboration scenario

A Framework for pervasive web content delivery

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Context-Aware Interactive Content Adaptation

Automatic adaptation of content for mobile devices is a challenging problem because optimal adaptation often depends on the usage semantics of content, as well as the context of users (e.g., screen size of device being used, network connectivity, location, etc.). UsageawaRe Interactive Content Adaptation (URICA) is an automatic technique that adapts content for mobile devices based on usage semantics. URICA allows a user who is unsatisfied with the system’s current adaptation prediction to take control of the adaptation process and make changes until the content is suitably adapted for her purposes. The adaptation system learns from the user’s modifications and adjusts its prediction for future accesses by other users. This paper shows that it is possible to exploit user interaction to learn how to adapt content based on context. We introduce Feedback-driven Context Selection (FCS), an automatic technique that leverages user interaction to identify the context that has the most impact on adaptation requirements. We added contextawareness to URICA so that it makes adaptation predictions for a user based only on the history of the community of users that share the context identified by FCS. The result is an automatic adaptation system that provides fine grain adaptations that reflect both the user’s context and the content’s usage semantics. This level of fine grain adaptation was previously available only in content that was customized manually. Experiments with two context-aware URICA prototypes show that FCS correctly identifies the contextual characteristics that impact adaptation requirements, and that grouping users into communities based on context improves the performance of the adaptation system by up to 79%

ABSTRACT Context-Aware Interactive Content Adaptation

Automatic adaptation of content for mobile devices is a challenging problem because optimal adaptation often depends on the usage semantics of content, as well as the context of users (e.g., screen size of device being used, network connectivity, location, etc.). UsageawaRe Interactive Content Adaptation (URICA) is an automatic technique that adapts content for mobile devices based on usage semantics. URICA allows a user who is unsatisfied with the system’s current adaptation prediction to take control of the adaptation process and make changes until the content is suitably adapted for her purposes. The adaptation system learns from the user’s modifications and adjusts its prediction for future accesses by other users. This paper shows that it is possible to exploit user interaction to learn how to adapt content based on context. We introduce Feedback-driven Context Selection (FCS), an automatic technique that leverages user interaction to identify the context that has the most impact on adaptation requirements. We added contextawareness to URICA so that it makes adaptation predictions for a user based only on the history of the community of users that share the context identified by FCS. The result is an automatic adaptation system that provides fine grain adaptations that reflect both the user’s context and the content’s usage semantics. This level of fine grain adaptation was previously available only in content that was customized manually. Experiments with two context-aware URICA prototypes show that FCS correctly identifies the contextual characteristics that impact adaptation requirements, and that grouping users into communities based on context improves the performance of the adaptation system by up to 79%