Genuine lab experiences for students in resource constrained environments: The RealLab with integrated intelligent assessment.

Laboratory activities are indispensable for developing engineering skills. Computer Aided Learning (CAL) tools can be used to enhance laboratory learning in various ways, the latest approach being the virtual laboratory technique that emulates traditional laboratory processes. This new approach makes it possible to give students complete and genuine laboratory experiences in situations constrained by limited resources in the provision of laboratory facilities and infrastructure and/or where there is need for laboratory education, for large classes, with only one laboratory stand. This may especially be the case in countries in transition. Most existing virtual laboratories are not available for purchase. Where they are, they may not be cost friendly for resource constrained environments. Also, most do not integrate any form of assessment structure. In this paper, we present a very cost friendly virtual laboratory solution for genuine laboratory experiences in resource constrained environments, with integrated intelligent assessment

Working Notes from the 1992 AAAI Workshop on Automating Software Design. Theme: Domain Specific Software Design

The goal of this workshop is to identify different architectural approaches to building domain-specific software design systems and to explore issues unique to domain-specific (vs. general-purpose) software design. Some general issues that cut across the particular software design domain include: (1) knowledge representation, acquisition, and maintenance; (2) specialized software design techniques; and (3) user interaction and user interface

Otistik Ve Zihinsel Engelli Çocuklar İçin Doğal Dil İşleme Tabanlı Bir Yardım Aracı: Bir Başlangıç Çalışması

DergiPark: 245928trakyafbdEngelli çocukların, eğitim ve gelişim olanaklarına mümkün olduğunca kolay ve etkin bir biçimde erişebilmesinin sağlanması, toplum için hem yasal hem de vicdani bir sorumluluktur. Yardımcı teknolojiler, engelli çocukların eğitim faaliyetlerine tam ve yeterli biçimde katılabilmesi için büyük olanaklar sunarlar. Bu makale, otistik ve zihinsel engelli çocukların eğitim ve öğretimine yardımcı olmak için geliştirilen bir yazılım aracını sunmaktadır. Bu araç ile engelli çocukların ifadeler ve onlara karşılık gelen kavramlar arasında resimler aracılığıyla bağlantı kurmalarına yardımcı olmak amaçlanmaktadır. Kullanıcının sistemle olan etkileşiminin doğal dil ifadeleriyle kurulmasını sağlamanın, iletişimi kısıtlanmış anahtar kelimelerle sınırlandırmaktan daha etkin olduğu gerçeğini dikkate alarak aracımızı bir Doğal Dil İşleme (DDİ) modülü ile donattık. Bu modül aracın omurgası olarak görev yapmakta ve doğal dil ifadelerini birleşme tabanlı (unification-based) bir dilbilgisi kullanarak anlamsal çerçeveler şeklinde çözümlemektedir. Giriş ifadeleri, ilgili resimlerle anlamsal çerçeveler aracılığıyla eşleştirilmektedir. Bu anlamsal çerçeveler, resimleri biçimsel bakımdan değil, içerikleri açısından temsil ettiği için, sistem esnek bir şekilde çalışabilmektedir.It is both a legal and conscientious responsibility of the society to enable children with disabilities to have access to and receive education and training as easily and effectively as possible. Assistive technology offers great opportunities for disabled students to participate in educational activities fully and adequately. This paper presents a software tool developed to assist the education and training of autistic and mentally retarded children. The tool is intended to help the disabled child establish the bridge between expressions and the concepts they refer to via relevant images. Taking into consideration the fact that enabling the user to interact with the system using natural language expressions will be much more effective compared to a system constraining the communication to a limited set of isolated keywords, the tool has been equipped with a Natural Language Processing (NLP) module. This module functions as the backbone of the tool. It analyzes natural language expressions into semantic frames using a unification-based grammar. Input expressions are mapped onto relevant images via the mediation of semantic frames. As these semantics frames represent the content of images, rather than their formal aspects, the system is able to operate on a flexible basis

A Game Based, Financial Literacy Oriented Approach to Improving Programming Education

Every year, two thirds of college seniors (about 1.8 million) in the US graduate with significant debts, but most of them are poorly equipped with essential financial knowledge to manage their debts and make intelligent financial decisions. Programming courses are uniquely positioned to offer opportunities to help students improve financial literacy. However, there have been no integrated courses to exploit the synergy. Meanwhile, computing disciplines face continued challenges of getting students interested in computing and finding ways to improve learning effectiveness. To address these challenges, we are developing an innovative teaching strategy that infuses financial literacy into four computing courses and engages students to develop financial literacy games. Students’ interests and learning outcomes will be improved because they enjoy computer games and are motivated when they use computing skills to address issues closely related to their daily lives

A heuristic-based approach to code-smell detection

Encapsulation and data hiding are central tenets of the object oriented paradigm. Deciding what data and behaviour to form into a class and where to draw the line between its public and private details can make the difference between a class that is an understandable, flexible and reusable abstraction and one which is not. This decision is a difficult one and may easily result in poor encapsulation which can then have serious implications for a number of system qualities. It is often hard to identify such encapsulation problems within large software systems until they cause a maintenance problem (which is usually too late) and attempting to perform such analysis manually can also be tedious and error prone. Two of the common encapsulation problems that can arise as a consequence of this decomposition process are data classes and god classes. Typically, these two problems occur together – data classes are lacking in functionality that has typically been sucked into an over-complicated and domineering god class. This paper describes the architecture of a tool which automatically detects data and god classes that has been developed as a plug-in for the Eclipse IDE. The technique has been evaluated in a controlled study on two large open source systems which compare the tool results to similar work by Marinescu, who employs a metrics-based approach to detecting such features. The study provides some valuable insights into the strengths and weaknesses of the two approache

Simulating Evolutionary Games: A Python-Based Introduction

This paper is an introduction to agent-based simulation using the Python programming language. The core objective of the paper is to enable students, teachers, and researchers immediately to begin social-science simulation projects in a general purpose programming language. This objective is facilitated by design features of the Python programming language, which we very briefly discuss. The paper has a 'tutorial' component, in that it is enablement-focused and therefore strongly application-oriented. As our illustrative application, we choose a classic agent-based simulation model: the evolutionary iterated prisoner's dilemma. We show how to simulate the iterated prisoner's dilemma with code that is simple and readable yet flexible and easily extensible. Despite the simplicity of the code, it constitutes a useful and easily extended simulation toolkit. We offer three examples of this extensibility: we explore the classic result that topology matters for evolutionary outcomes, we show how player type evolution is affected by payoff cardinality, and we show that strategy evaluation procedures can affect strategy persistence. Social science students and instructors should find that this paper provides adequate background to immediately begin their own simulation projects. Social science researchers will additionally be able to compare the simplicity, readability, and extensibility of the Python code with comparable simulations in other languages.Agent-Based Simulation, Python, Prisoner's Dilemma

Generating collaborative systems for digital libraries: A model-driven approach

This is an open access article shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). Copyright @ 2010 The Authors.The design and development of a digital library involves different stakeholders, such as: information architects, librarians, and domain experts, who need to agree on a common language to describe, discuss, and negotiate the services the library has to offer. To this end, high-level, language-neutral models have to be devised. Metamodeling techniques favor the definition of domainspecific visual languages through which stakeholders can share their views and directly manipulate representations of the domain entities. This paper describes CRADLE (Cooperative-Relational Approach to Digital Library Environments), a metamodel-based framework and visual language for the definition of notions and services related to the development of digital libraries. A collection of tools allows the automatic generation of several services, defined with the CRADLE visual language, and of the graphical user interfaces providing access to them for the final user. The effectiveness of the approach is illustrated by presenting digital libraries generated with CRADLE, while the CRADLE environment has been evaluated by using the cognitive dimensions framework

FROM MUSIC INFORMATION RETRIEVAL (MIR) TO INFORMATION RETRIEVAL FOR MUSIC (IRM)

This thesis reviews and discusses certain techniques from the domain of (Music) Information Retrieval, in particular some general data mining algorithms. It also describes their specific adaptations for use as building blocks in the CACE4 software application. The use of Augmented Transition Networks (ATN) from the field of (Music) Information Retrieval is, to a certain extent, adequate as long as one keeps the underlying tonal constraints and rules as a guide to understanding the structure one is looking for. However since a large proportion of algorithmic music, including music composed by the author, is atonal, tonal constraints and rules are of little use. Analysis methods from Hierarchical Clustering Techniques (HCT) such as k-means and Expectation-Maximisation (EM) facilitate other approaches and are better suited for finding (clustered) structures in large data sets. ART2 Neural Networks (Adaptive Resonance Theory) for example, can be used for analysing and categorising these data sets. Statistical tools such as histogram analysis, mean, variance as well as correlation calculations can provide information about connections between members in a data set. Altogether this provides a diverse palette of usable data analysis methods and strategies for creating algorithmic atonal music. Now acting as (software) strategy tools, their use is determined by the quality of their output within a musical context, as demonstrated when developed and programmed into the Computer Assisted Composition Environment: CACE4. Music Information Retrieval techniques are therefore inverted: their specific techniques and associated methods of Information Retrieval and general data mining are used to access the organisation and constraints of abstract (non-specific musical) data in order to use and transform it in a musical composition

Evolution of ecosystems for Language-Driven Engineering

Language-Driven Engineering (LDE) is a means to model-driven software development by creating Integrated Modeling Environments (IMEs) with Domain/Purpose-Specific Languages (PSLs), each tailored towards a specific aspect of the respective system to be modeled, thereby taking the specific needs of developers and other stakeholders into account. Combined with the powerful potential of full code generation, these IMEs can generate complete executable software applications from descriptive models. As these products themselves may again be IMEs, this approach leads to LDE Ecosystems of modeling environments with meta-level dependencies. This thesis describes new challenges emerging from changes that affect single components, multiple parts or even the whole LDE ecosystem. From a top-down perspective, this thesis discusses the necessary support by language definition technology to ensure that corresponding IMEs can be validated, generated and tested on demand. From a bottom-up perspective, the formulation of change requests, their upwards propagation and generalization is presented. Finally, the imposed cross-project knowledge sharing and transfer is motivated, fostering interdisciplinary teamwork and cooperation. Based on multifaceted contributions to full-blown projects on different meta-levels of an exemplary LDE ecosystem, this thesis presents specific challenges in creating and continuously evolving LDE ecosystems and deduces a concept of PUTD effects to systematically address various dynamics and appropriate actions to manage both product-level requests that propagate upwards in the meta-level hierarchy as well as the downward propagation of changes to ensure product quality and adequate migration of modeled artifacts along the dependency paths. Finally, the effect of language-driven modeling on the increasingly blurred line between building and using software applications is illustrated to emphasize that the distinction between programming and modeling becomes a mere matter of perspective