Personalization by Partial Evaluation.

The central contribution of this paper is to model personalization by the programmatic notion of partial evaluation.Partial evaluation is a technique used to automatically specialize programs, given incomplete information about their input.The methodology presented here models a collection of information resources as a program (which abstracts the underlying schema of organization and flow of information),partially evaluates the program with respect to user input,and recreates a personalized site from the specialized program.This enables a customizable methodology called PIPE that supports the automatic specialization of resources,without enumerating the interaction sequences beforehand .Issues relating to the scalability of PIPE,information integration,sessioniz-ling scenarios,and case studies are presented

Designing websites with eXtensible web (xWeb) methodology

Today, eXtensible Markup Language (XML) is fast emerging as the dominant standard for storing, describing, representing and interchanging data among various enterprises systems and databases in the context of complex web enterprises information systems (EIS). Conversely, for web EIS (such as e-commerce and portals) to be successful, it is important to apply a high level, model driven solutions and meta-data vocabularies to design and implementation techniques that are capable of handling heterogonous schemas and documents. For this, we need a methodology that provides a higher level of abstraction of the domain in question with rigorously defined standards that are to be more widely understood by all stakeholders of the system. To-date, UML has proven itself as the language of choice for modeling EIS using OO techniques. With the introduction of XML Schema, which provides rich facilities for constraining and defining enterprise XML content, the combination of UML and XML technologies provide a good platform (and the flexibility) for modeling, designing and representing complex enterprise contents for building successful EIS. In this paper, we show how a layered view model coupled with a proven user interface analysis framework (WUiAM) is utilized in providing architectural construct and abstract website model (called eXtensible Web, xWeb), to model, design and implement simple, user-centred, collaborative websites at varying levels of abstraction. The uniqueness xWeb is that the model data (web user interface definitions, website data descriptions and constraints) and the web content are captured and represented at the conceptual level using views (one model) and can be deployed (multiple platform specific models) using one or more implementation models

An End-User Development Approach to Building Customizable Web-Based Document Workflow Management Systems

As organizations seek to control their practices through Business Process Management (BPM - or the process of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of an organization through the automation of tasks), workflow management systems (WFMS) have emerged as fundamental supporting software tools. A WFMS must maintain process state while managing the utilization of people and applications (resources), data (context), and constraints (rules) associated with each of the tasks [Baeyens04]. It must also be configurable so it can be easily adapted to manage specific workflows within any application domain. Finally, the WFMS should be flexible enough to allow for changing business needs. In order to meet these challenges, a WFMS must provide access to process and document definition tools as well as administrative tools. In this project we have used an End User Developmentn (EUD) approach [Repenning04] to build a stand-alone web-based WFMS which offers the non-technical end user the ability to design, launch, and manage multiple automated workflows and their associated documents. It empowers end users to build and customize their own systems without requiring from them skills other than those associated with their domain of expertise

A Query Integrator and Manager for the Query Web

We introduce two concepts: the Query Web as a layer of interconnected queries over the document web and the semantic web, and a Query Web Integrator and Manager (QI) that enables the Query Web to evolve. QI permits users to write, save and reuse queries over any web accessible source, including other queries saved in other installations of QI. The saved queries may be in any language (e.g. SPARQL, XQuery); the only condition for interconnection is that the queries return their results in some form of XML. This condition allows queries to chain off each other, and to be written in whatever language is appropriate for the task. We illustrate the potential use of QI for several biomedical use cases, including ontology view generation using a combination of graph-based and logical approaches, value set generation for clinical data management, image annotation using terminology obtained from an ontology web service, ontology-driven brain imaging data integration, small-scale clinical data integration, and wider-scale clinical data integration. Such use cases illustrate the current range of applications of QI and lead us to speculate about the potential evolution from smaller groups of interconnected queries into a larger query network that layers over the document and semantic web. The resulting Query Web could greatly aid researchers and others who now have to manually navigate through multiple information sources in order to answer specific questions

Personalizable Information Interchange Architecture for EducationalInstitutions

This paper proposes a personalizable service oriented architecture for the interchange of information between educational institutions through an intermediate party. The issues pertaining to standards-personalization convergence are first discussed, followed by a description of the proposed architecture, and an evaluation of its performance at three levels of granularity

Science of Digital Libraries(SciDL)

Our purpose is to ensure that people and institutions better manage information through digital libraries (DLs). Thus we address a fundamental human and social need, which is particularly urgent in the modern Information (and Knowledge) Age. Our goal is to significantly advance both the theory and state-of-theart of DLs (and other advanced information systems) - thoroughly validating our approach using highly visible testbeds. Our research objective is to leverage our formal, theory-based approach to the problems of defining, understanding, modeling, building, personalizing, and evaluating DLs. We will construct models and tools based on that theory so organizations and individuals can easily create and maintain fully functional DLs, whose components can interoperate with corresponding components of related DLs. This research should be highly meritorious intellectually. We bring together a team of senior researchers with expertise in information retrieval, human-computer interaction, scenario-based design, personalization, and componentized system development and expect to make important contributions in each of those areas. Of crucial import, however, is that we will integrate our prior research and experience to achieve breakthrough advances in the field of DLs, regarding theory, methodology, systems, and evaluation. We will extend the 5S theory, which has identified five key dimensions or onstructs underlying effective DLs: Streams, Structures, Spaces, Scenarios, and Societies. We will use that theory to describe and develop metamodels, models, and systems, which can be tailored to disciplines and/or groups, as well as personalized. We will disseminate our findings as well as provide toolkits as open source software, encouraging wide use. We will validate our work using testbeds, ensuring broad impact. We will put powerful tools into the hands of digital librarians so they may easily plan and configure tailored systems, to support an extensible set of services, including publishing, discovery, searching, browsing, recommending, and access control, handling diverse types of collections, and varied genres and classes of digital objects. With these tools, end-users will for be able to design personal DLs. Testbeds are crucial to validate scientific theories and will be thoroughly integrated into SciDL research and evaluation. We will focus on two application domains, which together should allow comprehensive validation and increase the significance of SciDL's impact on scholarly communities. One is education (through CITIDEL); the other is libraries (through DLA and OCKHAM). CITIDEL deals with content from publishers (e.g, ACM Digital Library), corporate research efforts e.g., CiteSeer), volunteer initiatives (e.g., DBLP, based on the database and logic rogramming literature), CS departments (e.g., NCSTRL, mostly technical reports), educational initiatives (e.g., Computer Science Teaching Center), and universities (e.g., theses and dissertations). DLA is a unit of the Virginia Tech library that virtually publishes scholarly communication such as faculty-edited journals and rare and unique resources including image collections and finding aids from Special Collections. The OCKHAM initiative, calling for simplicity in the library world, emphasizes a three-part solution: lightweightprotocols, component-based development, and open reference models. It provides a framework to research the deployment of the SciDL approach in libraries. Thus our choice of testbeds also will nsure that our research will have additional benefit to and impact on the fields of computing and library and information science, supporting transformations in how we learn and deal with information

Paving the Way for Lifelong Learning:Facilitating competence development through a learning path specification

Janssen, J. (2010). Paving the Way for Lifelong Learning. Facilitating competence development through a learning path specification. September, 17, 2010, Heerlen, The Netherlands: Open University of the Netherlands, CELSTEC. SIKS Dissertation Series No. 2010-36. ISBN 978-90-79447-43-5Efficient and effective lifelong learning requires that learners can make well informed decisions regarding the selection of a learning path, i.e. a set of learning actions that help attain particular learning goals. In recent decades a strong emphasis on lifelong learning has led educational provision to expand and to become more varied and flexible. Besides, the role of informal learning has become increasingly acknowledged. In light of these developments this thesis addresses the question: How to support learners in finding their way through all available options and selecting a learning path that best fit their needs? The thesis describes two different approaches regarding the provision of way finding support, which can be considered complementary. The first, inductive approach proposes to provide recommendations based on indirect social interaction: analysing the paths followed by other learners and feeding this information back as advice to learners facing navigational decisions. The second, prescriptive approach proposes to use a learning path specification to describe both the contents and the structure of any learning path in a formal and uniform way. This facilitates comparison and selection of learning paths across institutions and systems, but also enables automated provision of way finding support for a chosen learning path. Moreover, it facilitates automated personalisation of a learning path, i.e. adapting the learning path to the needs of a particular learner. Following the first approach a recommender system was developed and tested in an experimental setting. Results showed use of the system significantly enhanced effectiveness of learning. In line with the second approach a learning path specification was developed and validated in three successive evaluations. Firstly, an investigation of lifelong learners’ information needs. Secondly, an evaluation of the specification through a reference (sample) implementation: a tool to describe learning paths according to the specification. Finally, an evaluation of the use and purpose of this tool involving prospective end-users: study advisors and learning designers. Following the various evaluations the Learning Path Specification underwent some changes over time. Results described in this thesis show that the proposed approach of the Learning Path Specification and the reference implementation were well received by end-users.The work on this publication has been sponsored by the TENCompetence Integrated Project that is funded by the European Commission's 6th Framework Programme, priority IST/Technology Enhanced Learning. Contract 027087 [http://www.tencompetence.org