A conceptual architecture for interactive educational multimedia

Learning is more than knowledge acquisition; it often involves the active participation of the learner in a variety of knowledge- and skills-based learning and training activities. Interactive multimedia technology can support the variety of interaction channels and languages required to facilitate interactive learning and teaching. A conceptual architecture for interactive educational multimedia can support the development of such multimedia systems. Such an architecture needs to embed multimedia technology into a coherent educational context. A framework based on an integrated interaction model is needed to capture learning and training activities in an online setting from an educational perspective, to describe them in the human-computer context, and to integrate them with mechanisms and principles of multimedia interaction

International conference on software engineering and knowledge engineering: Session chair

The Thirtieth International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering (SEKE 2018) will be held at the Hotel Pullman, San Francisco Bay, USA, from July 1 to July 3, 2018. SEKE2018 will also be dedicated in memory of Professor Lofti Zadeh, a great scholar, pioneer and leader in fuzzy sets theory and soft computing. The conference aims at bringing together experts in software engineering and knowledge engineering to discuss on relevant results in either software engineering or knowledge engineering or both. Special emphasis will be put on the transference of methods between both domains. The theme this year is soft computing in software engineering & knowledge engineering. Submission of papers and demos are both welcome

FLAME: a Formal Framework for the Automated Analysis of Software Product Lines Validated by Automated Specification Testing

Artículo publicado on-line el 14/12/2015.In a literature review on the last 20 years of automated analysis of feature models, the formalization of analysis operations was identified as the most relevant challenge in the field. This formalization could provide very valuable assets for tool developers such as a precise definition of the analysis operations and, what is more, a reference implementation, i.e. a trustworthy, not necessarily efficient implementation to compare different tools outputs. In this article, we present the FLAME framework as the result of facing this challenge. FLAME is a formal framework that can be used to formally specify not only feature models, but other variability modeling languages (VMLs) as well. This reusability is achieved by its two-layered architecture. The abstract foundation layer is the bottom layer in which all VML-independent analysis operations and concepts are specified. On top of the foundation layer, a family of characteristic model layers-one for each VML to be formally specified-can be developed by redefining some abstract types and relations. The verification and validation of FLAME has followed a process in which formal verification has been performed traditionally by manual theorem proving, but validation has been performed by integrating our experience on metamorphic testing of variability analysis tools, something that has shown to be much more effective than manually-designed test cases. To follow this automated, test-based validation approach, the specification of FLAME, written in Z, was translated into Prolog and 20,000 random tests were automatically generated and executed. Tests results helped to discover some inconsistencies not only in the formal specification, but also in the previous informal definitions of the analysis operations and in current analysis tools. After this process, the Prolog implementation of FLAME is being used as a reference implementation for some tool developers, some analysis operations have been formally specified for the first time with more generic semantics, and more VMLs are being formally specified using FLAME.Junta de Andalucía P12-TIC-1867Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2012-32273Junta de Andalucía TIC-5906Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad IPT-2012-0890-

A linked data-driven & service-oriented architecture for sharing educational resources

The two fundamental aims of managing educational resources are to enable resources to be reusable and interoperable and to enable Web-scale sharing of resources across learning communities. Currently, a variety of approaches have been proposed to expose and manage educational resources and their metadata on the Web. These are usually based on heterogeneous metadata standards and schemas, such as IEEE LOM or ADL SCORM, and diverse repository interfaces such as OAI-PMH or SQI. Also, there is still a lack of usage of controlled vocabularies and available data sets that could replace the widespread use of unstructured text for describing resources. On the other hand, the Linked Data approach has proven that it offers a set of successful principles that have the potential to alleviate the aforementioned issues. In this paper, we introduce an architecture and prototype which is fundamentally based on (a) Linked Data principles and (b) Service-orientation to resolve the integration issues for sharing educational resources

Towards a Base UML Profile for Architecture Description

This paper discusses a base UML profile for architecture description as supported by existing Architecture Description Languages (ADLs). The profile may be extended so as to enable architecture modeling both as expressed in conventional ADLs and according to existing runtime infrastructures (e.g., system based on middleware architectures).

Data integration through service-based mediation for web-enabled information systems

The Web and its underlying platform technologies have often been used to integrate existing software and information systems. Traditional techniques for data representation and transformations between documents are not sufficient to support a flexible and maintainable data integration solution that meets the requirements of modern complex Web-enabled software and information systems. The difficulty arises from the high degree of complexity of data structures, for example in business and technology applications, and from the constant change of data and its representation. In the Web context, where the Web platform is used to integrate different organisations or software systems, additionally the problem of heterogeneity arises. We introduce a specific data integration solution for Web applications such as Web-enabled information systems. Our contribution is an integration technology framework for Web-enabled information systems comprising, firstly, a data integration technique based on the declarative specification of transformation rules and the construction of connectors that handle the integration and, secondly, a mediator architecture based on information services and the constructed connectors to handle the integration process