Supporting interoperability and context-awareness in e-learning through situation-driven learning processes

Current E-Learning technologies primarily follow a data and metadata-centric paradigm by providing the learner with composite content containing the learning resources and the learning process description, usually based on specific metadata standards such as ADL SCORM or IMS Learning Design. Due to the design-time binding of learning resources, the actual learning context cannot be considered appropriately at runtime, what limits the reusability and interoperability of learning resources. This paper proposes Situation-driven Learning Processes (SDLP) which describe learning processes semantically from two perspectives: the user perspective considers a learning process as a course of learning goals which lead from an initial situation to a desired situation, whereas the system perspective utilizes Semantic Web Services (SWS) technology to semantically describe necessary resources for each learning goal within a specific learning situation. Consequently, a learning process is composed dynamically and accomplished in terms of SWS goal achievements by automatically allocating learning resources at runtime. Moreover, metadata standard independent SDLP are mapped to established standards such as ADL SCORM and IMS LD. As a result, dynamic adaptation to specific learning contexts as well as interoperability across different metadata standards and application environments is achieved. To prove the feasibility, a prototypical application is described finally

Relating the philosophy and practice of ecological economics: The role of concepts, models, and case studies in inter- and transdisciplinary sustainability research

We develop a comprehensive multi-level approach to ecological economics (CML-approach) which integrates philosophical considerations on the foundations of ecological economics with an adequate operationalization. We argue that the subject matter and aims of ecological economics require a specific combination of inter- and transdisciplinary research, and discuss the epistemological position on which this approach is based. In accordance with this understanding of inter- and transdisciplinarity and the underlying epistemological position, we develop an operationalization which comprises simultaneous analysis on three levels of abstraction: concepts, models and case studies. We explain these levels in detail, and, in particular, deduce our way of generic modeling in this context. Finally, we illustrate the CML-approach and demonstrate its fruitfulness by the example of the sustainable management of semi-arid rangelands. --ecological economics,interdisciplinarity,philosophy of science,transdisciplinarity

Towards Method Component Contextualization

International audienceMethod Engineering (ME) is a discipline which aims to bring effective solutions to the construction, improvement and modification of the methods used to develop Information Systems (IS). Situational Method Engineering (SME) promotes the idea of retrieving, adapting and tailoring components, rather than complete methodologies, to the specific context. Existing SME approaches use the notion of context for characterizing situations of IS development projects and for guiding the method components selection from a repository. However, in the reviewed literature, there is no proposed approach to specify the specific context of method components. This paper provides a detailed vision of context and a process for contextualizing methods in the IS domain. This proposal is illustrated with three case studies: scenario conceptualization, project portfolio management, and decision-making

Relating the Philosophy and Practice of Ecological Economics. The Role of Concepts, Models, and Case Studies in Inter- and Transdisciplinary Sustainability Research

We develop a comprehensive multi-level approach to ecological economics (CML-approach) which integrates philosophical considerations on the foundations of ecological economics with an adequate operationalization. We argue that the subject matter and aims of ecological economics require a specific combination of inter- and transdisciplinary research, and discuss the epistemological position on which this approach is based. In accordance with this understanding of inter- and transdisciplinarity and the underlying epistemological position, we develop an operationalization which comprises simultaneous analysis on three levels of abstraction: concepts, models and case studies. We explain these levels in detail, and, in particular, deduce our way of generic modeling in this context. Finally, we illustrate the CML-approach and demonstrate its fruitfulness by the example of the sustainable management of semi-arid rangelands.ecological economics, interdisciplinarity, philosophy of science,transdisciplinarity

Designing for mathematical abstraction

Our focus is on the design of systems (pedagogical, technical, social) that encourage mathematical abstraction, a process we refer to as designing for abstraction. In this paper, we draw on detailed design experiments from our research on children's understanding about chance and distribution to re-present this work as a case study in designing for abstraction. Through the case study, we elaborate a number of design heuristics that we claim are also identifiable in the broader literature on designing for mathematical abstraction. Our previous work on the micro-evolution of mathematical knowledge indicated that new mathematical abstractions are routinely forged in activity with available tools and representations, coordinated with relatively naïve unstructured knowledge. In this paper, we identify the role of design in steering the micro-evolution of knowledge towards the focus of the designer's aspirations. A significant finding from the current analysis is the identification of a heuristic in designing for abstraction that requires the intentional blurring of the key mathematical concepts with the tools whose use might foster the construction of that abstraction. It is commonly recognized that meaningful design constructs emerge from careful analysis of children's activity in relation to the designer's own framework for mathematical abstraction. The case study in this paper emphasizes the insufficiency of such a model for the relationship between epistemology and design. In fact, the case study characterises the dialectic relationship between epistemological analysis and design, in which the theoretical foundations of designing for abstraction and for the micro-evolution of mathematical knowledge can co-emerge. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V

Multi-level Autonomic Business Process Management

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-38484-4_14Nowadays, business processes are becoming increasingly complex and heterogeneous. Autonomic Computing principles can reduce this complexity by autonomously managing the software systems and the running processes, their states and evolution. Business Processes that are able to be self-managed are referred to as Autonomic Business Processes (ABP). However, a key challenge is to keep the models of such ABP understandable and expressive in increasingly complex scenarios. This paper discusses the design aspects of an autonomic business process management system able to self-manage processes based on operational adaptation. The goal is to minimize human intervention during the process definition and execution phases. This novel approach, named MABUP, provides four well-defined levels of abstraction to express business and operational knowledge and to guide the management activity; namely, Organizational Level, Technological Level, Operational Level and Service Level. A real example is used to illustrate our proposal.Research supported by CAPES, CNPQ and Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.Oliveira, K.; Castro, J.; España Cubillo, S.; Pastor López, O. (2013). Multi-level Autonomic Business Process Management. En Enterprise, Business-Process and Information Systems Modeling. Springer. 184-198. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-38484-4_14S184198España, S., González, A., Pastor, Ó.: Communication Analysis: A Requirements Engineering Method for Information Systems. In: van Eck, P., Gordijn, J., Wieringa, R. (eds.) CAiSE 2009. LNCS, vol. 5565, pp. 530–545. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)Ganek, A.G., Corbi, T.A.: The dawning of the autonomic computing era. IBM Systems Journal 42(1), 5–18 (2003)Gonzalez, A., et al.: Unity criteria for Business Process Modelling. In: Third International Conference on Research Challenges in Information Science, RCIS 2009, pp. 155–164 (2009)Greenwood, D., Rimassa, G.: Autonomic Goal-Oriented Business Process Management. Management, 43 (2007)Haupt, T., et al.: Autonomic execution of computational workflows. In: 2011 Federated Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems, FedCSIS, pp. 965–972 (2011)Kephart, J.O., Chess, D.M.: The vision of autonomic computing. IEEE (2003)Lee, K., et al.: Workflow adaptation as an autonomic computing problem. In: Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Workflows in Support of Large-Scale Science, New York, NY, USA, pp. 29–34 (2007)Mosincat, A., Binder, W.: Transparent Runtime Adaptability for BPEL Processes. In: Bouguettaya, A., Krueger, I., Margaria, T. (eds.) ICSOC 2008. LNCS, vol. 5364, pp. 241–255. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)Oliveira, K., et al.: Towards Autonomic Business Process Models. In: International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge, SEKE 2012, San Francisco, California, USA (2012)Rahman, M., et al.: A taxonomy and survey on autonomic management of applications in grid computing environments. Concurr. Comput.: Pract. Exper. 23(16), 1990–2019 (2011)Reijers, H.A., Mendling, J.: Modularity in process models: Review and effects. In: Dumas, M., Reichert, M., Shan, M.-C. (eds.) BPM 2008. LNCS, vol. 5240, pp. 20–35. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)Rodrigues Nt., J.A., Monteiro Jr., P.C.L., de O. Sampaio, J., de Souza, J.M., Zimbrão, G.: Autonomic Business Processes Scalable Architecture. In: ter Hofstede, A.H.M., Benatallah, B., Paik, H.-Y. (eds.) BPM Workshops 2007. LNCS, vol. 4928, pp. 78–83. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)Strohmaier, M., Yu, E.: Towards autonomic workflow management systems. ACM Press (2006)Terres, L.D., et al.: Selection of Business Process for Autonomic Automation. In: 2010 14th IEEE International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference, pp. 237–246 (October 2010)Tretola, G., Zimeo, E.: Autonomic internet-scale workflows. In: Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Monitoring, Adaptation and Beyond, New York, NY, USA, pp. 48–56 (2010)Vedam, H., Venkatasubramanian, V.: A wavelet theory-based adaptive trend analysis system for process monitoring and diagnosis. In: Proceedings of the 1997 American Control Conference, vol. 1, pp. 309–313 (June 1997)Wang, Y., Mylopoulos, J.: Self-Repair through Reconfiguration: A Requirements Engineering Approach. In: 2009 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering, pp. 257–268 (November 2009)Yu, T., Lin, K.: Adaptive algorithms for finding replacement services in autonomic distributed business processes. In: Proceedings Autonomous Decentralized Systems, ISADS 2005, pp. 427–434 (2005

Architecting business process maps

Process maps provide a high-level overview of an organization's business processes. While used for many years in different shapes and forms, there is little shared understanding of the concept and its relationship to business process architecture. In this paper, we position the concept of process map within the domain of architecture description. By 'architecting' the concept of business process map, we identify and clarify diverging views of this concept as found in the literature and set requirements for describing process maps. A meta-model for a process mapping language is produced as a result. The proposed meta-model allows investigating the suitability of EA modelling languages as a basis for defining a domain-specific language for process mapping along with the creation of a better understanding of business process architecture in relation to enterprise architecture, which can be beneficial for both BPM and EA professionals

Understanding Coordination in the Information Systems Domain: Conceptualization and Implications

In this paper, we suggest a new conceptualization of coordination in the information systems (IS) domain. The conceptualization builds on neurobiological predispositions for coordinating actions. We assume that human evolution has led to the development of a neurobiological substrate that enables individuals to coordinate everyday actions. At heart, we discuss six activity modalities: contextualization, objectivation, spatialization, temporalization, stabilization, and transition. Specifically, we discuss that these modalities need to collectively function for successful coordination. To illustrate as much, we apply our conceptualization to important IS research areas, including project management and interface design. Generally, our new conceptualization holds value for coordination research on all four levels of analysis that we identified based on reviewing the IS literature (i.e., group, intra-organization, inter-organization, and IT artifact). In this way, our new approach, grounded in neurobiological findings, provides a high-level theory to explain coordination success or coordination failure and, hence, is independent from a specific level of analysis. From a practitioner’s perspective, the conceptualization provides a guideline for designing organizational interventions and IT artifacts. Because social initiatives are essential in multiple IS domains (e.g., software development, implementation of enterprise systems) and because the design of collaborative software tools is an important IS topic, this paper contributes to a fundamental phenomenon in the IS domain and does so from a new conceptual perspective