Taking advantage of the software product line paradigm to generate customized user interfaces for decision-making processes: a case study on university employability

[EN]University employment and, specifically, employability has gained relevance since research in these fields can lead to improvement in the quality of life of individual citizens. However, empirical research is still insufficient to make significant decisions, and relying on powerful tools to explore data and reach insights on these fields is paramount. Information dashboards play a key role in analyzing and visually exploring data about a specific topic or domain, but end users can present several necessities that differ from each other, regarding the displayed information itself, design features and even functionalities. By applying a domain engineering approach (within the software product line paradigm), it is possible to produce customized dashboards to fit into particular requirements, by the identification of commonalities and singularities of every product that could be part of the product line. Software product lines increase productivity, maintainability and traceability regarding the evolution of the requirements, among other benefits. To validate this approach, a case study of its application in the context of the Spanish Observatory for University Employability and Employment system has been developed, where users (Spanish universities and administrators) can control their own dashboards to reach insights about the employability of their graduates. These dashboards have been automatically generated through a domain specific language, which provides the syntax to specify the requirements of each user. The domain language fuels a template-based code generator, allowing the generation of the dashboards' source code. Applying domain engineering to the dashboards' domain improves the development and maintainability of these complex software products given the variety of requirements that users might have regarding their graphical interfaces

Automatic generation of software interfaces for supporting decisionmaking processes. An application of domain engineering & machine learning

[EN] Data analysis is a key process to foster knowledge generation in particular domains or fields of study. With a strong informative foundation derived from the analysis of collected data, decision-makers can make strategic choices with the aim of obtaining valuable benefits in their specific areas of action. However, given the steady growth of data volumes, data analysis needs to rely on powerful tools to enable knowledge extraction. Information dashboards offer a software solution to analyze large volumes of data visually to identify patterns and relations and make decisions according to the presented information. But decision-makers may have different goals and, consequently, different necessities regarding their dashboards. Moreover, the variety of data sources, structures, and domains can hamper the design and implementation of these tools. This Ph.D. Thesis tackles the challenge of improving the development process of information dashboards and data visualizations while enhancing their quality and features in terms of personalization, usability, and flexibility, among others. Several research activities have been carried out to support this thesis. First, a systematic literature mapping and review was performed to analyze different methodologies and solutions related to the automatic generation of tailored information dashboards. The outcomes of the review led to the selection of a modeldriven approach in combination with the software product line paradigm to deal with the automatic generation of information dashboards. In this context, a meta-model was developed following a domain engineering approach. This meta-model represents the skeleton of information dashboards and data visualizations through the abstraction of their components and features and has been the backbone of the subsequent generative pipeline of these tools. The meta-model and generative pipeline have been tested through their integration in different scenarios, both theoretical and practical. Regarding the theoretical dimension of the research, the meta-model has been successfully integrated with other meta-model to support knowledge generation in learning ecosystems, and as a framework to conceptualize and instantiate information dashboards in different domains. In terms of the practical applications, the focus has been put on how to transform the meta-model into an instance adapted to a specific context, and how to finally transform this later model into code, i.e., the final, functional product. These practical scenarios involved the automatic generation of dashboards in the context of a Ph.D. Programme, the application of Artificial Intelligence algorithms in the process, and the development of a graphical instantiation platform that combines the meta-model and the generative pipeline into a visual generation system. Finally, different case studies have been conducted in the employment and employability, health, and education domains. The number of applications of the meta-model in theoretical and practical dimensions and domains is also a result itself. Every outcome associated to this thesis is driven by the dashboard meta-model, which also proves its versatility and flexibility when it comes to conceptualize, generate, and capture knowledge related to dashboards and data visualizations

Addressing Fine-Grained Variability in User-Centered Software Product Lines: A Case Study on Dashboards

Software product lines provide a theoretical framework to generate and customize products by studying the target domain and by capturing the commonalities among the potential products of the family. This domain knowledge is subsequently used to implement a series of configurable core assets that will be systematically reused to obtain products with different features to match particular user requirements. Some kind of interactive systems, like dashboards, require special attention as their features are very fine-grained. Having the capacity of configuring a dashboard product to match particular user requirements can improve the utility of these products by providing the support to users to reach useful insights, in addition to a decrease in the development time and an increase in maintainability. Several techniques for implementing features and variability points in the context of SPLs are available, and it is important to choose the right one to exploit the SPL paradigm benefits to the maximum. This work addresses the materialization of fine-grained variability in SPL through code templates and macros, framed in the particular domain of dashboards

Aplicación de ingeniería de dominio para la generación de dashboards personalizados

Trabajo de Fin de Máster en Ingeniería Informática. Curso 2017-2018[ES]Los paneles de información (dashboards, en inglés), juegan un papel clave en el proceso de análisis y visualización de datos sobre un tema o dominio específico. En esencia, los dashboards muestran información y permiten a los usuarios generar conocimiento y llegar a conclusiones para poder realizar una toma de decisiones con una consistente base informativa. Sin embargo, los usuarios finales pueden presentar una serie significativa de necesidades que difieren entre sí, incluyendo la información mostrada, características de diseño o incluso funcionalidades. Aplicar un enfoque de ingeniería de dominio (dentro del paradigma de las líneas de productos software) trae consigo valiosos beneficios, permitiendo producir dashboards personalizados y adaptados a los requisitos particulares de cada usuario (o grupo de usuarios) implicado mediante la identificación de similitudes y puntos de variabilidad de cada producto que podría ser parte de la línea. A través de la parametrización de características y la configuración de los componentes de presentación y fuentes de datos, es posible obtener una línea de productos software de paneles de control, donde podrán irse variando los diversos componentes que conforman el panel, así como sus funcionalidades o fuentes de datos. La creación de esta línea de productos puede llegar a incrementar la productividad, la mantenibilidad y la trazabilidad en cuanto a la evolución de los requisitos de los dashboards, junto a otros beneficios. Para validar esta aplicación, se ha realizado un caso de estudio en el contexto del Observatorio de Empleabilidad y Empleo Universitarios, donde los usuarios (universidades españolas y administradores), podrán controlar sus propios dashboards para explorar datos sobre la empleabilidad y el empleo de sus graduados. Dichos dashboards serán generados automáticamente a través de un lenguaje específico de dominio (DSL), donde se podrán especificar los requisitos de cada usuario, y un generador de código basado en plantillas

Adaptive dashboard for IoT environments: application for senior residences

Les tableaux de bord sont de puissants outils électroniques qui peuvent fournir des informations exploitables et utiles pour une intervention rapide et une prise de décision éclairée. Ils peuvent être particulièrement bénéfiques pour favoriser un vieillissement en bonne santé en fournissant aux professionnels de la santé un aperçu en un coup d'œil des conditions du patient (par exemple, les personnes âgées). Alors que la population des personnes âgées augmente dans plusieurs pays, dont le Canada, un grand nombre d'entre eux seront forcés de déménager dans des résidences pour personnes âgées pour des raisons telles que la fragilité, la démence ou le sentiment de solitude. Cette population importante de personnes âgées augmentera la charge de travail des infirmières et des professionnels de la santé travaillant dans ces lieux, en raison du fait que les personnes âgées ont besoin de visites fréquentes et d'une surveillance en raison de leur état de santé. Ce problème a le potentiel de mettre plus de pression sur le système de santé déjà tendu dans les prochaines années. La pénurie d'infirmières et de main-d'œuvre rend la situation plus grave, en particulier dans les pays développés. Il faudrait donc prendre des initiatives pour soutenir les soignants de ces résidences. Le tableau de bord peut jouer un rôle clé pour aider les professionnels de la santé dans leurs tâches car il peut fournir des informations en un coup d'œil et en temps réel sur la situation actuelle. De nos jours, avec les progrès technologiques dans les dispositifs de détection et l'infrastructure IoT ainsi qu'un accès Internet élargi, la surveillance des patients à distance est devenue une option réalisable. Par ailleurs, en utilisant un tableau de bord, les professionnels de la santé peuvent visualiser les informations collectées à distance pour surveiller les personnes âgées vivant dans des résidences, ce qui fera gagner un temps considérable aux professionnels de la santé et les aidera à servir plus de patients. Cependant, il est important de considérer que les résidences pour personnes âgées accueillent généralement un grand nombre de résidents et les professionnels de la santé qui les desservent. Chaque professionnel de la santé est motivé par certains objectifs et exécute des tâches précises selon des priorités différentes. Cette différence change la façon dont chaque fournisseur de soins de santé utilisera le tableau de bord, car ils ont besoin d'informations qui les aident dans leurs tâches principales. Les informations qu'un groupe de professionnels de la santé trouve bénéfiques peuvent ne pas être utiles pour un autre groupe. Ainsi, la méthode de visualisation utilisée pour un individu peut ne pas être significative pour un autre. Par conséquence, les informations doivent être présentées de manière personnalisée et adaptée à un utilisateur ciblé. Il est important de souligner que la visualisation appropriée des informations dans les tableaux de bord est un facteur clé pour offrir une valeur réelle aux utilisateurs. Cette diversité de besoins, de préférences et de priorités doit être prise en compte tout au long de l'élaboration du tableau de bord. En raison de la diversité des rôles et des intérêts existant dans les résidences pour personnes âgées, et compte tenu du coût élevé du développement du tableau de bord, il est très difficile de développer des tableaux de bord séparés pour chaque partie. Cependant, les solutions existantes dans la littérature sont développées à l'aide de méthodes statiques et se concentrent sur la satisfaction des besoins d'un groupe particulier. Ces approches limitent les capacités des tableaux de bord existants à s'adapter aux besoins des différentes personnes. Dans cette étude, nous présentons AMI-Dash comme une tentative de réalisation d'une solution de tableau de bord qui permet une conception dynamique et une visualisation appropriée des informations pour plusieurs groupes. Notre solution vise à fournir les bonnes informations aux bonnes personnes en minimisant le temps nécessaire pour fournir un tableau de bord aux professionnels la santé, afin de les aider dans l'exercice de leurs fonctions en accédant à des informations exploitables. Nous avons également évalué notre solution sous deux aspects : l'évaluation de l'interaction homme-machine et l'évaluation technique. Le résultat de notre évaluation montre que la solution proposée peut satisfaire à la fois les exigences de l'utilisateur final et les exigences techniques tout en maintenant un haut niveau de satisfaction.Abstract: Dashboards are powerful electronic tools that can provide actionable insights for timely intervention and wise decision-making. They can be particularly beneficial to support healthy aging by providing healthcare professionals with at-a-glance overview of health conditions of patients (e.g., older adults). As the population of older adults is increasing in several countries including Canada, a large number of them will be forced to move to Senior Residences due to reasons like frailty, dementia or loneliness. This swelled senior population will increase the workload of nurses and health professionals working in these places, due to the fact that older adults need frequent visits and monitoring because of their health condition. This issue has the potential to put more pressure on the already stretched healthcare system in the next years. The situation is aggravated when it is coincided with the shortage of nurses and workforce especially in developed countries. Therefore, initiative should be taken to support healthcare professionals in these residences. Dashboard can play a key role to support healthcare professionals in their tasks as it can provide real-time information about the current situation in more helpful visualization form. Nowadays, with technological advancements in sensing devices and IoT infrastructure along with broadened internet access, remote patient monitoring has become a feasible option. By utilizing a dashboard, healthcare professionals can visualize information collected remotely to monitor patients/ older adults living in senior residences, which will save a considerable time of healthcare professionals and support them to serve more patients. However, it is important to consider that senior residences usually host a large number of older adults and healthcare professionals that serve them. Each healthcare professional is driven with certain goals, and they have different tasks and priorities. This difference, change how each healthcare professional will utilize the dashboard, as they need information that helps them in their main tasks. The information that a group of healthcare professionals find beneficial might not be useful for another group, and the visualization method used for an individual might not be meaningful for another. Therefore, information should be presented in a personalized way to the targeted user. It is important to emphasize that appropriate visualization of interesting information, in dashboards is a key factor to deliver real value to dashboard users. Due to the variety of roles and interests that exists in senior residences, and considering high development cost of a dashboard, developing separate dashboards for each party is not only difficult but also time consuming. Still, existing solutions in the literature are developed using static methods and they focused on satisfying the needs of a particular group in their domain. These approaches limited the capabilities of existing dashboards to adapt to the needs of different people. We argue that dashboard has to be tailored in order to address the diversity in needs, preferences and priorities of healthcare professionals. In this study we introduce AMI-Dash as an attempt to achieve a dashboard solution that allows dynamic design and information visualization. Our solution focused on providing the right information to the right people while minimizing the time required to deliver a dashboard to health professionals, so that supporting them in performing their duties by accessing timely and actionable information. We also evaluated our proposed solution from two aspects: Human-Computer Interaction Evaluation and Technical Evaluation. The result of our evaluation shows that proposed solution can satisfy both end-user and technical requirements while maintaining a high-level of satisfaction among users

The Big Five:Addressing Recurrent Multimodal Learning Data Challenges

The analysis of multimodal data in learning is a growing field of research, which has led to the development of different analytics solutions. However, there is no standardised approach to handle multimodal data. In this paper, we describe and outline a solution for five recurrent challenges in the analysis of multimodal data: the data collection, storing, annotation, processing and exploitation. For each of these challenges, we envision possible solutions. The prototypes for some of the proposed solutions will be discussed during the Multimodal Challenge of the fourth Learning Analytics & Knowledge Hackathon, a two-day hands-on workshop in which the authors will open up the prototypes for trials, validation and feedback

Multimodal Challenge: Analytics Beyond User-computer Interaction Data

This contribution describes one the challenges explored in the Fourth LAK Hackathon. This challenge aims at shifting the focus from learning situations which can be easily traced through user-computer interactions data and concentrate more on user-world interactions events, typical of co-located and practice-based learning experiences. This mission, pursued by the multimodal learning analytics (MMLA) community, seeks to bridge the gap between digital and physical learning spaces. The “multimodal” approach consists in combining learners’ motoric actions with physiological responses and data about the learning contexts. These data can be collected through multiple wearable sensors and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. This Hackathon table will confront with three main challenges arising from the analysis and valorisation of multimodal datasets: 1) the data collection and storing, 2) the data annotation, 3) the data processing and exploitation. Some research questions which will be considered in this Hackathon challenge are the following: how to process the raw sensor data streams and extract relevant features? which data mining and machine learning techniques can be applied? how can we compare two action recordings? How to combine sensor data with Experience API (xAPI)? what are meaningful visualisations for these data

International Academic Symposium of Social Science 2022

This conference proceedings gathers work and research presented at the International Academic Symposium of Social Science 2022 (IASSC2022) held on July 3, 2022, in Kota Bharu, Kelantan, Malaysia. The conference was jointly organized by the Faculty of Information Management of Universiti Teknologi MARA Kelantan Branch, Malaysia; University of Malaya, Malaysia; Universitas Pembangunan Nasional Veteran Jakarta, Indonesia; Universitas Ngudi Waluyo, Indonesia; Camarines Sur Polytechnic Colleges, Philippines; and UCSI University, Malaysia. Featuring experienced keynote speakers from Malaysia, Australia, and England, this proceeding provides an opportunity for researchers, postgraduate students, and industry practitioners to gain knowledge and understanding of advanced topics concerning digital transformations in the perspective of the social sciences and information systems, focusing on issues, challenges, impacts, and theoretical foundations. This conference proceedings will assist in shaping the future of the academy and industry by compiling state-of-the-art works and future trends in the digital transformation of the social sciences and the field of information systems. It is also considered an interactive platform that enables academicians, practitioners and students from various institutions and industries to collaborate

SMEs and international business : finance, innovation, enterprise architecture and business education

This volume combines eleven chapters written by sixteen academics from six countries namely Austria, Germany, Hungary, India, Latvia, and Turkey. They are the outputs of the WIBF’s annual International Business Conferences.Acknowledgement -- Contents -- List of Contributors -- 1. SMEs and International Business: Introduction -- Emin Akçaoğlu and Rainer Wehner -- 2. Internationalization of Indian MSMEs with reference to the Post-Covid Era -- Sonia Mukherjee and Reeta Tomar -- 3. Innovation Centres in the Contribution of SMEs to the Economy -- Halit Targan Ünal, Elif Y. Başaran and Hakan Bektaş -- 4. Global Trade and Political Risk for SMEs: A Case Study on Supplier Selection -- A. Murat Köseoğlu -- 5. Internal Factors and Networking – Critical for Success of SMEs in International Markets: Practical Implications in a Reference SME -- Tanja Evrosimovska -- 6. The importance of performance and credit access of SMEs in their internationalization process -- Mehmet Civelek -- 7. Access to Finance of MSMEs in Turkey -- Halit Targan Ünal and Neslihan Özdemir -- 8. Export Credit Agencies and Small Firm Internationalization -- Emin Akçaoğlu and Rainer Wehner -- 9. Demonstration of the Impact of Enterprise Architecture Management in a Company by Using Frameworks -- Ronja Höpfner and Bjarne Erik Roscher -- 10. Teaching International Business via Labs: Business Skills Development by Virtual and Augmented Reality –the BBS FIMB Case Study -- Gábor Andrási, Katalin Csekő and László Budai -- 11. Designing a Performance Measurement System Based on a Simplified Strategy Process – An Action Research Case Study -- Björn Baltzer -- Editor

Artificial Intelligence and Education. Guidance for Policy-makers

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to address some of the biggest challenges in education today, innovate teaching and learning practices, and ultimately accelerate the progress towards SDG 4. However, these rapid technological developments inevitably bring multiple risks and challenges, which have so far outpaced policy debates and regulatory frameworks. This publication offers guidance for policy-makers on how best to leverage the opportunities and address the risks, presented by the growing connection between AI and education. It starts with the essentials of AI: definitions, techniques and technologies. It continues with a detailed analysis of the emerging trends and implications of AI for teaching and learning, including how we can ensure the ethical, inclusive and equitable use of AI in education, how education can prepare humans to live and work with AI, and how AI can be applied to enhance education. It finally introduces the challenges of harnessing AI to achieve SDG 4 and offers concrete actionable recommendations for policy-makers to plan policies and programmes for local contexts